The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied California's emergency request to modify language from a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down policies allowing public schools to hide a student's gender transition from parents. The ruling is another decisive loss for a state that has spent years trying to insert itself between parents and their children.
California filed the emergency motion seeking to revise the language of a permanent injunction against the policy. The 9th Circuit wasn't having it, ruling that any effort to modify the injunction in Mirabelli v. Bonta must be addressed by the district court, not the appellate court.
The state tried to go over the lower court's head. The appellate court sent it right back down.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that California's policies violated the First and 14th Amendments. The decision vacated a 9th Circuit stay order that had paused a lower court injunction blocking the gender policy. That injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, came after he certified the case as a class action in December and issued a permanent injunction against the state's policies.
The permanent injunction's language is unambiguous, Center Square noted:
"Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence, teachers and school staff having a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence."
The injunction went further:
"These federal constitutional rights are superior to any state or local laws, state or local regulations, or state or local policies to the contrary."
That's the Supreme Court of the United States, with a commanding 6-3 majority, affirming that parents have a constitutional right to know what is happening with their own children in public schools. And that no state law, regulation, or policy can override it.
Paul M. Jonna, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, didn't mince words about California's maneuver. He called the motion a "desperate attempt" and laid out why the 9th Circuit was right to reject it:
"It was obviously a very desperate attempt to have the 9th Circuit improperly rewrite the injunction."
"We're glad that the 9th Circuit did not accept that invitation into error."
Jonna also pointed to language in the Supreme Court's ruling that undercuts California's apparent concern that the injunction somehow endangers children in abusive homes. Quoting the ruling, he noted that the injunction "permits the state to shield children from unfit parents by enforcing child abuse laws and removing children from parental custody in appropriate cases."
In other words, the safeguard California claimed to be worried about already exists. The state just didn't want to acknowledge it because doing so would strip away its last rhetorical justification for the policy.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office was contacted for comment. No response. The California Department of Education said it "cannot comment on pending litigation."
That's convenient. A state that spent enormous political capital defending a policy of keeping secrets from parents now has nothing to say when the courts dismantle it at every level. The Supreme Court ruled against them. The 9th Circuit, a court not exactly known for its conservative leanings, refused to bail them out. And the officials who championed these policies have gone quiet.
Strip away the legal procedural maneuvering, and the core question here is simple: Do parents have the right to know what is happening with their children in government-run schools?
California's answer, for years, was no. The state built a framework that empowered school staff to act as ideological gatekeepers, deciding what information parents deserved to receive about their own kids. Teachers were placed in the impossible position of being required to conceal information from the very people legally responsible for a child's welfare.
The constitutional problems with this arrangement were always obvious. The First Amendment protects the right of school staff to communicate truthfully with parents. The 14th Amendment protects parental rights over the upbringing of their children. California's policies ran headlong into both.
What's remarkable is how far California was willing to go to defend the indefensible. After losing at the district court level, after losing at the Supreme Court in a lopsided 6-3 decision, the state's response was to rush to the 9th Circuit with an emergency motion to rewrite the terms of its own defeat.
Three courts. Three losses. And still no willingness to accept that parents come first.
The Supreme Court's ruling keeps in place a statewide block on these policies, and the 9th Circuit's refusal to intervene reinforces the finality of that decision. For families across California and potentially across the country, this establishes a clear constitutional floor: schools cannot build walls of secrecy between children and their parents on matters this significant.
Other states that have pursued similar policies should take note. The highest court in the land has spoken, and the legal architecture supporting parental notification is now reinforced at every level of the federal judiciary.
California gambled that it could use the machinery of public education to override the most fundamental relationship in a child's life. The courts told them, three times over, that the Constitution disagrees.
Starbucks is hunting for office space in Nashville that could house upward of 2,000 employees, according to sources close to the property search cited by CoStar. The coffee giant has reportedly hired CBRE and is looking into leasing the new Peabody Union complex, a nearly 300,000 square foot development completed last year.
The move would dwarf the company's earlier announcement this month that it planned to relocate its logistics operations from its Pacific Northwest offices to Nashville, a shift affecting around 300 workers. If the larger expansion materializes, it would represent a stunning migration of corporate talent away from the city where Starbucks opened its first coffee shop in 1971.
Starbucks has vowed to maintain its headquarters in Seattle. But the math tells a different story. The company currently employs around 3,000 corporate staff in Seattle. A Nashville office housing 2,000 would make Tennessee the de facto center of gravity.
CEO Brian Niccol framed the strategic shift in a September letter to employees, according to the Daily Mail:
"Putting our resources closest to the customer so we can create great coffeehouses, offer world-class customer service, and grow the business."
The company pointed to "rising customer demand, in particular, the southeast region of the US" as the driving force. Niccol added that more coffeehouses would open in 2026.
On the surface, it's a straightforward business decision. Companies follow growth. The Southeast is booming. Tennessee is deep red, business-friendly, and doesn't punish success with punitive tax regimes.
But the other half of this equation is what Starbucks is leaving behind. Last year, the company laid off more than 1,100 corporate employees globally, including 900 in Seattle and nearby Kent, Washington. It shuttered 1 percent of its shops, more than 430 across North American locations, including its Seattle Reserve Roasteries.
That's not a company expanding out of abundance. That's a company restructuring away from a city that made doing business painful.
Starbucks founder Howard Schultz didn't wait around for the corporate relocation. He and his wife, Sheri, relocated to Miami earlier this year after nearly five decades in Seattle, citing closeness to children and grandchildren. He moved his private office to Miami as well.
Schultz, whose Forbes-estimated net worth sits at $4.3 billion, publicly announced his retirement plans the same day Washington state passed its first-ever income tax. The new levy goes into effect in 2029 and imposes a 9.9 percent tax on households earning more than $1 million annually. Florida is one of eight US states without a state personal income tax.
The timing speaks for itself.
But Schultz's frustrations with Seattle predate the tax question. Four years ago, he closed five profitable Seattle stores, citing rising crime. When Starbucks shuttered 16 stores across the country in 2022, Schultz blamed city leaders directly. He accused lawmakers in Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, and Washington DC of "abdicating their responsibility." He alleged the stores had become "unsafe." He warned it was "just the beginning" of store closures and said there "would be many more."
He was right.
While Starbucks eyes the exits, Seattle's leadership is doubling down on the policies that accelerated the decline. Mayor Katie Wilson, a 43-year-old Democrat, issued a police order that allows drug users to avoid prosecution for using illegal substances in the streets.
A memo filed by progressive city attorney Erika Evans on January 1 says anyone arrested for doing drugs in public must be referred to the city's "LEAD" diversion program. Only users whose circumstances are deemed "acute or problematic" would be referred to Evans' office for potential prosecution. Prosecutors would consult with LEAD officers before making a final charging decision.
Read that again: the default response to public drug use in Seattle is now diversion, not prosecution. The city attorney's office has essentially made itself a last resort rather than a first responder to lawlessness.
Meanwhile, Seattle's homeless population has surged by 88 percent in the past 10 years.
The Starbucks migration fits a pattern that progressive leaders refuse to acknowledge. Companies don't flee cities because of geography. Seattle has mountains, water, a tech workforce, and cultural cachet that Nashville can't replicate overnight. Businesses leave when the cost of staying, measured in crime, regulation, taxation, and ideological hostility to commerce, exceeds the benefits.
What makes this case particularly striking is the symbolism. Starbucks isn't just any Seattle company. It is Seattle's company. Pike Place Market. The green mermaid. The whole mythology of Pacific Northwest coffee culture starts at that counter. When even the company synonymous with your city's identity starts shipping thousands of jobs to Tennessee, the problem isn't corporate greed. The problem is governance.
Nashville didn't poach Starbucks. Seattle pushed it away. The city chose:
Every one of those choices has a price. The bill is arriving in the form of moving trucks headed southeast.
The Schultz Family Foundation, which Sheri started in 1990, will continue to operate from Seattle under the leadership of CEO Vivek Varma, who has served in the role since July 2023. It's a small anchor in a city losing its biggest ones.
But foundations don't employ thousands. They don't fill office towers or generate the commercial activity that sustains a downtown. The people who write the checks are in Miami now. The people who fill the desks may soon be in Nashville.
Tennessee offers Starbucks something Seattle can't: a government that treats businesses like assets rather than problems to be managed. No state income tax. A growing population. A workforce that doesn't require hazard pay to commute through open-air drug markets.
The Southeast has been absorbing corporate refugees from blue states for years. What's different here is scale and speed. Starbucks isn't relocating a satellite office. It's potentially building a second headquarters in all but name, one that could rival Seattle's footprint within a few years.
Niccol can frame it as following the customer. Schultz can frame his move as being closer to grandchildren. The framing doesn't matter. The direction of travel is unmistakable, and it runs from blue to red, from permissive to orderly, from taxed to free.
Seattle built something extraordinary over the decades. Its leaders are dismantling it in real time, one policy at a time, and wondering why the golden goose stopped laying eggs. It didn't stop. It moved to Tennessee.
President Trump revealed Monday that Rep. Neal Dunn of Florida (R) had received a terminal heart diagnosis, a fact that had never been made public, and described how he personally intervened to get the congressman emergency surgery at Walter Reed.
Speaking in the White House East Room ahead of a Kennedy Center board meeting, Trump initially declined to name the ailing lawmaker. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), standing nearby, filled in the blank.
Trump had begun by alluding to the political stakes of losing a member of a razor-thin majority.
"We had one man who was very ill. It looked like he wasn't going to make it. I don't know. I don't I won't mention his name."
Johnson then identified the congressman as Neal Dunn and confirmed the severity of the situation.
"OK, that wasn't public, but, yeah, OK, it was grim."
Dunn, 73, represents part of the Florida panhandle, including Tallahassee, and is himself a medical doctor. He announced in January of this year that he would retire rather than seek a sixth term in the House. A spokeswoman for Dunn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to both Trump and Johnson, the chain of events started when the Speaker mentioned Dunn's condition to the president. Johnson described Dunn as someone who kept showing up to work despite a diagnosis that would have sent most people home, the Post reported.
"I mentioned it to the president, and I said, 'Congressman Dunn is a real champion and a patriot, because he's still coming to work, and if others got this diagnosis, they would be apt to go home and retire.'"
Trump asked what the diagnosis was. Johnson replied that he believed it was terminal. Trump then described the call he made to Dunn and the realization that followed.
"I said, 'That's bad.' Number one, it was bad because I liked him. Number two, it was bad because I needed his vote."
What happened next moved fast. Trump said he remembered the White House medical team and reached out immediately.
"And I said, 'I have to call them.' And I called the two doctors, they're both great, and they immediately went over to see the congressman, and he was on the operating table like two hours later, and it was a long operation."
Trump described the surgery as extensive, involving stents and other interventions. He said Dunn now has "a new lease on life" and "more energy than a man half his age."
Trump made no effort to disguise the political dimension of his concern. The Republican majority in the House currently stands at four seats. Losing even one member, whether to illness or death, narrows the margin to a point where a single defection on any vote can kill legislation.
Trump put it bluntly.
"Death is very bad when you're the speaker, and you have a majority of two or three. But we had it, and then we had another death."
He also acknowledged the dual motivation with characteristic candor, saying he acted for Dunn first and for the vote second, "but it was a close second, actually."
This is the kind of honesty that drives Washington commentators to distraction but registers as plain dealing with everyone else. Of course, a president cares about keeping his majority intact. Pretending otherwise would be the actual scandal. Trump simply said what any honest leader in his position would think, and did so while also acting to save a man's life.
One of the more interesting threads in Trump's remarks was his praise for the White House medical team and his willingness to deploy them on behalf of others. He described the doctors as "miracle workers" and indicated this was not an isolated case.
"And I realized I have doctors in the White House, and White House doctors are incredible and they've helped me with other people. They're helping me with people right now, people that are very sick."
The fact that Dunn, a physician himself, was apparently unable to secure the kind of rapid intervention that the White House medical apparatus delivered says something about the speed at which government healthcare can move when the president picks up the phone. It also says something about the dysfunction of the system when he doesn't.
Dunn's January retirement announcement takes on a different complexion in light of Monday's revelations. What might have looked like a routine decision by a senior member not to seek reelection now appears to have been shaped, at least in part, by a life-threatening medical crisis.
Johnson's initial reaction to Trump's disclosure, the resigned "OK, that wasn't public," captured the moment perfectly. This was a private matter that became public in the most Trumpian way possible: on stage, in real time, with the Speaker of the House wincing through confirmation.
Trump told the story because it illustrated something he wanted people to understand about how he operates. He sees a problem. He remembers he has resources. He uses them. The congressman was described as terminal. Now he has more energy than a man half his age.
Neal Dunn is alive, and he's still casting votes. That's the story.
Costco is pulling ready-to-eat meatloaf meals from shelves across 26 states and two territories after an ingredient supplier flagged possible salmonella contamination. The retailer sent a notice to members warning them not to eat the affected product and to return it for a full refund.
The recalled item is Costco's "Meatloaf with Mashed Yukon Potatoes and Glaze," sold between March 2 and March 13, 2026, with sell-by dates ranging from March 5 through March 16. That means some of these meals are still sitting in customers' refrigerators right now.
No illnesses or injuries have been reported at this time.
According to Newsweek, The recall traces back to Griffith Foods Inc., one of Costco's ingredient suppliers for the meatloaf product. Griffith Foods announced a recall of one of the ingredients used in the meatloaf due to the potential presence of Salmonella, which prompted Costco to act.
Costco did not specify how many units were sold during the nearly two-week window, nor did it identify which specific ingredient was the source of concern. What the company did make clear is that customers should stay away from anything covered by the recall.
"Do not consume any product that is part of this recall."
Costco added that customers can return the product to their local store for a full refund.
The affected meals were sold at Costco locations across a wide geographic footprint. The full list of states and territories includes:
That covers a substantial chunk of the country, from the Pacific to the Atlantic and down to the Caribbean.
Salmonella is no minor inconvenience. Symptoms can appear anywhere from several hours to a few days after exposure and can range from gastrointestinal distress to severe illness, particularly in the elderly, young children, and those with compromised immune systems. The potential for fatal infections is what gives recalls like this their urgency.
The fact that no illnesses have been reported is good news. But the sell-by dates on these meals run through today, March 16, which means the window for exposure hasn't closed. Anyone who purchased the product during those two weeks and hasn't eaten it yet should check the packaging carefully.
This recall is a useful illustration of how modern food supply chains work, and where they can break down. Costco didn't produce the contaminated ingredient. Griffith Foods did. But the product carried Costco's name, sat in Costco's deli cases, and went home with Costco's members. The retailer owns the customer relationship, and to its credit, it moved to notify members and offer refunds.
Still, the episode raises a fair question: how much visibility do major retailers actually have into the ingredients that go into their prepared foods? Costco hasn't disclosed which ingredient triggered the concern or when Griffith Foods first identified the problem. The gap between when the meals started selling on March 2 and when customers received the recall notice matters. Every day of delay in a Salmonella situation is a day someone might get sick.
Consumers who bought the meatloaf should not eat it, should not try to cook it to a higher temperature as a workaround, and should return it to Costco or dispose of it. When a company tells you to throw something away and come get your money back, take them up on it.
President Trump declared Saturday that Iran wants to negotiate a ceasefire, but he's not biting. Not yet.
In a nearly 30-minute telephone interview with NBC News, Trump laid out his position plainly: Iran is feeling the pressure, but the deal on the table doesn't meet his standards. He declined to specify what terms he's seeking.
"Iran wants to make a deal, and I don't want to make it because the terms aren't good enough yet."
That single sentence captures the posture of the entire operation. Two weeks into a joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, the administration is negotiating from a position of overwhelming force, and it intends to stay there until the terms reflect it.
The facts on the ground back up the confidence. U.S. Central Command announced Saturday morning that it had conducted precision strikes on 90 military targets while preserving Iran's oil infrastructure. Trump confirmed strikes on Kharg Island, Iran's critical oil export hub, though he noted the deliberate restraint around energy infrastructure, as NBC News reports.
"We totally demolished Kharg Island, but we may hit it a few more times just for fun."
Behind the bravado is a calculated strategy. Trump explained that he spared Iran's energy lines because rebuilding them "would take years." The goal isn't to destroy Iran's economy permanently. It's to destroy Iran's capacity to project military power.
And on that front, the progress is striking. Trump told NBC that U.S. forces have knocked out most of Iran's missiles, most of its drones, and most of its manufacturing capacity for both. He said that within two days, those capabilities would be "totally decimated."
"The only power they have, and it's a power that can be closed off relatively quickly, is the power of dropping a mine or shooting a relatively short-range missile. But when we get finished with the shoreline, they're not going to have that power either."
The message to Tehran could not be clearer: every day you wait, you have less to bargain with.
One of the most significant developments from the interview was Trump's plan to internationalize the security of the Strait of Hormuz. He posted on Truth Social Saturday morning that multiple countries would be sending warships to keep the strait open.
"Many Countries, especially those who are affected by Iran's attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe."
He specifically called on China, France, Japan, South Korea, and the UK to contribute, and said the U.S. would be "sweeping the strait very strongly." When pressed on which countries had already committed, Trump declined to name them but described their response as "very solid." He said the nations involved "think it's a great idea."
This is exactly the kind of burden-sharing that American foreign policy has needed for decades. The Strait of Hormuz isn't an American waterway. It's a chokepoint for global energy, and the nations that depend on it should bear the cost of keeping it open. Trump is forcing that conversation in real time, under live-fire conditions.
The stakes are not abstract. According to UAE data, 1,475 unmanned aerial vehicles had been fired at the country as of March 10. Iran's campaign of regional intimidation has hit real targets in real countries, and the coalition forming around the Strait reflects the reality that Iran's "thuggery," as Trump called it, affects far more than just the United States.
Perhaps the most revealing exchange in the interview concerned Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's newly named supreme leader. Khamenei was elevated earlier this week after U.S. and Israeli strikes killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the new leader's first public statement was conspicuously delivered in writing, not on camera.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed this on Friday with characteristic directness:
"Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why. His father: dead; he's scared, he's injured, he's on the run, and he lacks legitimacy."
Hegseth described Mojtaba Khamenei as "wounded and likely disfigured" and called his statement "a weak one." Trump went further, saying he's "hearing he's not alive" but acknowledged it was "a rumor." Then he added a line that doubles as both diplomacy and a threat:
"I'm hearing he's not alive, and if he is, he should do something very smart for his country, and that's surrender."
Trump also mentioned that there are people "living that would be great leaders for the future of the country," but declined to identify them, saying he didn't want to "put them in jeopardy." The implication is unmistakable: the U.S. has a vision for a post-theocratic Iran, and it involves people who already exist inside or near the regime's orbit.
None of this comes without a price. Thirteen active U.S. service personnel have died since the conflict began, including six crew members killed Friday when their military refueling plane crashed in Iraq. Trump said of the troops involved that they "have been terrific" but that "they got shot at unnecessarily."
Iraqi officials reported Saturday that an Iranian strike hit a helipad inside a U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. The conflict is not one-sided, and the administration isn't pretending otherwise.
There is also the question of gas prices. On March 1, the day after the U.S. and Israel began operations, gas averaged $2.94 a gallon nationally. By Saturday, it had risen to $3.66. Trump, who hammered Biden over gas prices throughout 2024, dismissed concerns.
"I think they'll go lower than they were before, and I had them at record lows."
He pointed to global oil supply as a reason for optimism, saying there's "so much oil, gas" available but that "it's being clogged up a little bit. It'll be unclogged very soon." He also referenced a decision to temporarily lift some sanctions on Russian oil, a move clearly designed to stabilize global markets during the conflict.
In one of the more unexpected turns in the interview, Trump addressed Ukrainian President Zelenskyy's offer to help U.S. forces intercept Iranian drones. Zelenskyy posted on X Friday that Ukraine had already sent expert teams to three countries in the Middle East to share drone interception expertise.
Trump was unimpressed.
"We don't need help. Last person we need help from is Zelenskyy."
He then pivoted to the broader conflict between Russia and Ukraine, saying he was "surprised that Zelenskyy doesn't want to make a deal" and that "Zelenskyy is far more difficult to make a deal with" than Putin. An unnamed Iranian politician called Ukraine a "legitimate and lawful target," a statement that underscores how tangled these overlapping conflicts have become.
Trump acknowledged reports that Russia may be sharing intelligence with Iran but was measured in his response, saying, "Russia is perhaps giving information, perhaps they're not." He noted that the U.S. is "giving a little information to Ukraine" while trying to broker peace between the two nations.
The geopolitical web is thick: the U.S. is striking Iran, coordinating with Israel, easing sanctions on Russia to manage oil prices, and fending off Ukrainian attempts to insert itself into the Middle East theater. It's a lot of spinning plates. But the through line is consistent: Trump is managing each relationship on American terms, not getting pulled into anyone else's preferred framing.
Trump said the conflict is "way ahead of the timetable," faster than the month or longer he had initially suggested it might take. He described Iran's remaining military capability in terms that suggest the campaign's kinetic phase is nearing its conclusion. There is, he said, "practically nothing left to target."
But the military campaign was never the hard part. The hard part is what comes after: the deal, the diplomatic architecture, the question of who governs Iran and under what constraints. Trump made clear Saturday that he's in no rush.
"The only thing I want to do is make sure that Iran can never be the bully of the Middle East again."
That's not a ceasefire condition. That's a strategic objective. And it requires patience, leverage, and a willingness to walk away from a bad deal. Saturday's interview was Trump telling the world he has all three.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has endorsed former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn in his bid for Maryland's 5th Congressional District, marking the second time she's thrown her weight behind a candidate whose entire political identity rests on a single day five years ago.
Pelosi, who is not seeking re-election, announced the endorsement in a release, according to The Hill.
"On January 6, 2021, Harry Dunn bravely defended our democracy from Donald Trump's violent MAGA mob. Since then, Harry's been called to do everything he can to protect Marylanders and all Americans from extremists like Donald Trump. I'm proud to endorse Harry Dunn for Congress."
Dunn returned the favor, saying Pelosi "stood firm when our democracy was under attack and helped lead the country through one of the most difficult moments in our history."
This is not Pelosi's first time endorsing Dunn. She backed him in 2024 as well. That endorsement didn't carry him very far. Dunn failed to win the Democratic primary that year in Maryland's 3rd Congressional District.
Now he's running in a different district entirely. The 5th is opening up because Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer is not seeking re-election.
Hoyer, for his part, has endorsed his own former campaign manager, Maryland Delegate Adrian Boafo, for the seat. So Dunn isn't just running against the Republican field eventually; he's navigating an intraparty fight where the outgoing incumbent's preferred successor is someone else, as Fox News reports.
Pelosi called Dunn "a true American hero and exactly the right person to represent Maryland in Congress." The question Maryland Democrats will have to answer is whether being present at the Capitol on January 6 constitutes a congressional résumé, or whether voters in the 5th District want something more from their representative.
Dunn's candidacy is a case study in a particular kind of Democratic branding that emerged after 2021: take a figure associated with January 6, elevate them to symbolic status, and convert that symbolism into political office. It worked for some. It hasn't worked for Dunn, at least not yet.
The language of the endorsement tells the story. Pelosi's statement doesn't mention a single policy position. Not healthcare. Not taxes. Not infrastructure. Not education.
Not anything that a voter in Bowie or College Park or Upper Marlboro might actually care about when deciding who represents them in Washington. The entire pitch is January 6, five years later.
There's a shelf life on that argument, and Democrats seem unwilling to test whether it's already expired. Dunn already lost one primary with this exact framing. Switching districts doesn't change the product. It just changes the audience.
Pelosi's endorsement matters less for what it says about Dunn than for what it reveals about the state of the Democratic bench. When a former Speaker of the House, one of the most powerful figures in modern Democratic politics, is spending her remaining political capital on a candidate who already lost a primary, it raises a straightforward question: Who else do they have?
The Democratic Party has spent years investing in narrative over governance. The January 6 committee. The endless hearings. The made-for-television moments. Dunn's candidacy is an extension of that project. It treats political theater as a qualification.
Hoyer's endorsement of Boafo suggests that at least some Maryland Democrats understand the district needs a candidate with actual legislative experience and local roots, not a national symbol parachuting into an open seat. Whether primary voters agree will say something about where the party's base actually is.
Fox News Digital reached out to Dunn's campaign but received no response as of the time of reporting.
Dunn served as a Capitol Police officer. That's an honorable profession. But honorable service in one role does not automatically translate into competence in another, and voters who lived through a primary where this same pitch fell short have every reason to ask what's different this time.
The answer, apparently, is the district. The messenger hasn't changed. The message hasn't changed. Pelosi hasn't changed. Only the zip codes have.
Walter Carter Jr., the president of Ohio State University, resigned Monday after disclosing what the school called an "inappropriate relationship" with "someone seeking public resources." Carter had held the position for barely two years.
The university announced the departure in a statement, though it offered almost nothing in the way of specifics. Neither the identity of the person involved nor the nature of the relationship appeared in the school's announcement. What did appear was a careful selection of language designed to convey seriousness while revealing as little as possible.
Carter, according to the New York Times, acknowledged he had "made a mistake in allowing inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership to support her personal business." That single sentence does more work than the entire university statement. It confirms the relationship involved a woman, that she had a private business interest, and that Carter used his position to open doors for her.
Carter went to work at Ohio State in January 2024 on a contract running through 2028 with a salary of about $1.2 million. He is a former vice admiral and naval flight officer who served as superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, president of the U.S. Naval War College, and president of the University of Nebraska before arriving in Columbus.
That résumé makes the fall steeper. This was not some mid-career administrator with a thin portfolio. Carter carried the weight of military command and institutional leadership at the highest levels. The expectation that accompanies credentials like those is not merely competence but integrity. Ohio State hired a man whose career was built on discipline and accountability. What they got was someone who, by his own admission, compromised university access for someone's private gain.
John W. Zeiger, chairman of the university's board, wrote a letter accepting Carter's resignation. His public statement was measured but unmistakable, Breitbart reported:
"The Board was surprised and disappointed to learn of this matter and takes the situation and its potential impact on the university very seriously."
"Surprised and disappointed" is board-speak, but the phrase "potential impact on the university" signals that the board understands the damage may extend well beyond one man's career. When someone with the keys to a flagship public university grants "inappropriate access" to advance a private business, the questions multiply fast. What resources were offered? What decisions were influenced? Who else knew?
The most striking feature of this episode is the vacuum at its center. The university disclosed almost nothing:
That level of opacity from a public institution spending public money should concern every Ohio taxpayer. Ohio State is not a private company handling a quiet personnel matter. It is one of the largest public universities in the country, and its president was drawing a seven-figure salary from funds that ultimately trace back to the people of Ohio. The public deserves more than a carefully worded press release.
Zeiger closed his letter with a notably diplomatic line:
"We respect your decision and appreciate your cooperation in supporting an orderly leadership transition."
Translation: Carter cooperated, so the board let him walk out the front door. That may be the pragmatic choice for institutional stability, but it leaves the impression that elite leaders at elite institutions still get to manage the terms of their own accountability.
This story fits a pattern that conservatives have watched develop across American higher education for years. University presidencies have become less about academic stewardship and more about institutional empire-building. Salaries climb into the millions. Administrative layers multiply. And the culture at the top starts to resemble corporate boardrooms where conflicts of interest are managed rather than prevented.
Carter's admission that he allowed "inappropriate access" to support a private business is not just a personal failure. It is a window into how university leadership operates when the money is large enough and the oversight is loose enough. Public universities enjoy enormous autonomy. Their boards are often composed of political appointees and donors whose incentive is to protect the brand, not to scrutinize the president's calendar.
The result is a system where a scandal like this surfaces only when the president himself decides to come forward, and even then, the institution releases the minimum information necessary to close the chapter.
Carter resigned. That is a consequence. But resignation without disclosure is damage control, not accountability. If a state legislator had granted government access to a private individual to advance her business interests, the calls for investigation would be immediate. The standard should not be lower because the institution is a university rather than a statehouse.
Ohio State's board now faces a choice. It can treat this as a closed matter, appoint an interim president, and move on. Or it can answer the questions that its own statement deliberately left open. The first option is easier. The second is what a public institution owes the public.
A man who commanded warships and led service academies walked away from a $1.2 million job because he opened the wrong doors for the wrong person. The university that hired him would prefer you not ask which doors or how far they opened.
The Bank of England will replace the historical figures on its banknotes with images of wildlife, trading some of Britain's most celebrated minds for animals after a public consultation found that about 60 percent of respondents "wanted nature to feature" on the next series of currency.
Sir Winston Churchill will be gone from the £5 note. Gone will be Jane Austen from the £10, J.M.W. Turner from the £20, and Alan Turing from the £50. In their place: beavers, birds, or whatever fauna a panel of wildlife experts eventually shortlists.
King Charles III will remain on the front of the notes. The backs, however, belong to the animal kingdom now.
The Bank of England held a public consultation on banknote imagery last year and received some 44,000 responses. Based on those results, the bank announced that nature would replace historical figures as the dominant theme on future notes. Victoria Cleland, the bank's chief cashier, framed the decision in practical terms, Politico reported:
"The key driver for introducing a new banknote series is always to increase counterfeit resilience, but it also provides an opportunity to celebrate different aspects of the U.K."
She added:
"Nature is a great choice from a banknote authentication perspective, and means we can showcase the U.K.'s rich and varied wildlife on the next series of banknotes."
The bank said it will hold a second public consultation in the summer to gather views on the kind of nature people would like to see featured, with a shortlist to be drawn up by the wildlife panel. The new notes won't enter circulation for several years.
There is nothing wrong with loving nature. Britain's countryside is genuinely beautiful. But currency is not a nature documentary. It is one of the few remaining artifacts of shared national identity that every citizen handles, often daily. What a country chooses to print on its money is a statement about what it values most.
For generations, Britain answered that question with its greatest contributions to civilization:
These are not obscure bureaucrats. They are titans. And now they're being swapped out because 60 percent of consultation respondents preferred otters.
Consider what that consultation actually represents. Forty-four thousand people responded. The United Kingdom has a population of 67 million. The decision to erase some of the most consequential figures in Western history from daily public life rests on the preferences of a fraction of a fraction of the country.
This fits a pattern that conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic recognize well. The slow, administrative removal of national heroes from public spaces never arrives as a dramatic confrontation. It comes wrapped in the language of freshness, inclusion, and "celebrating different aspects" of a country. The phrasing is always anodyne. The effect is always the same: the past disappears, and nothing of comparable weight replaces it.
Nobody had to tear down a statue this time. Nobody had to organize a protest. A consultation was held, a bureaucratic process churned, and Winston Churchill got replaced by wildlife. The machinery of cultural forgetting doesn't need a mob. It just needs a committee.
The counterargument writes itself: it's just money, it's just design, the figures aren't being "canceled." But symbols matter. That's precisely why activists spend so much energy fighting over them. A country that can't bring itself to keep its wartime prime minister on a banknote is a country experiencing a quiet crisis of civilizational confidence.
Cleland's justification leaned heavily on counterfeit resilience. Fair enough. Security features on currency evolve, and new note series are periodically necessary. But updating security features has never required abandoning the entire thematic framework of a nation's currency. You can make a more secure banknote without removing Churchill from it. The decision to change the theme was a choice, not a technical requirement, and the bank should own that honestly rather than hiding behind authentication language.
The second consultation this summer will determine which specific animals make the cut. Expect months of earnest debate about red squirrels versus hedgehogs while the deeper question goes unasked: why did Britain decide that its history was no longer worth displaying?
Every nation gets the currency it deserves. A country confident in its past puts its heroes on its money. A country embarrassed by its past puts a beaver there instead and calls it progress.
Churchill once said that a nation that forgets its past has no future. Soon, his face won't even be there to remind them.
A van plowed through a temporary security barricade near the White House early Wednesday morning, and the driver was promptly detained by uniformed officers at the scene. The incident occurred at 6:26 a.m. ET near Madison Place and H Street Northwest, at the northeast corner of Lafayette Park, due north of the executive mansion.
President Trump was at the White House at the time. He was scheduled to travel to Ohio and Kentucky later on Wednesday.
The Secret Service said charges against the driver are pending, but did not provide further details. The driver has not been publicly identified.
The sequence of events moved quickly, according to the New York Post. Washington's Metropolitan Police Department was called to assist the Secret Service roughly ten minutes after the crash, at approximately 6:37 a.m. ET. The department's bomb squad responded and checked the van, ultimately declaring it safe.
Streets approaching the area were blocked off by police and Secret Service vehicles shortly after 8 a.m. By 10 a.m. ET, all road closures had been lifted, according to the Secret Service.
That's a tight operational window: barricade breach to all-clear in under four hours. The rapid response and controlled reopening suggest the security apparatus around the White House performed as designed, even after a perimeter was physically compromised.
This breach did not occur in a vacuum. Security at sensitive sites around the country and at U.S. outposts abroad has reportedly been stepped up amid the ongoing U.S.-Israel war on Iran, which entered its 12th day on Wednesday. A vehicle ramming a barricade near the president's residence, during an active military conflict, immediately raises the stakes of any incident from routine to potentially grave.
We don't yet know the driver's identity or motive. That matters. The difference between a disoriented commuter and a deliberate attack is the difference between a local police blotter item and a national security event. Until authorities release more information, speculation is irresponsible. But vigilance is not.
What we can say is this: temporary barricades are, by definition, temporary. They are not walls. They are not bollards rated for vehicle-borne attacks. The fact that a van was able to crash through one and reach the vicinity of Lafayette Park should prompt serious questions about whether the current perimeter security posture is adequate given the threat environment.
White House security breaches have a long and bipartisan history. Fence jumpers, drones, unauthorized vehicles. Each incident prompts a review, sometimes an upgrade, and then the cycle fades from public attention until the next one. The question is never whether the Secret Service responded well after the breach. They almost always do. The question is whether the breach should have been possible in the first place.
With American forces engaged in a hot conflict overseas and domestic tensions running high, the protective perimeter around the president deserves more than temporary barriers and after-action reports. It deserves the kind of infrastructure that makes a Wednesday morning van attack not just unsuccessful, but physically impossible.
Charges are pending. The driver's identity and motive remain undisclosed. Those details will determine whether this story stays a security incident or becomes something far more consequential.
In the meantime, the van has been towed, the streets have reopened, and Washington is moving on with its day. The system held. But "the system held" is a low bar when the breach happened at the front door of the most important address in the country, during a war, with the president inside.
President Trump told House Republicans in Miami on Monday that passing the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act is the single most important thing the party can do before the fall midterms, and he put Senate Democrats on notice: no SAVE Act, no signatures on anything else.
The bill, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, cleared the House last month with the support of every Republican and one Democrat. It now heads to the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to pass. Republicans hold 53 seats. The math is obvious. So is the fight.
Trump framed the legislation in the plainest terms possible during his remarks at the House Republican retreat at Trump National Doral Miami:
"This is not complicated: voter identification."
He called it a "common sense measure" and "the easiest thing we have," then pointed to polling he said shows 86% of Democrats support voter ID laws. The holdouts, in his telling, aren't rank-and-file voters. They're the people running the Democratic Party.
"Democrats are at 86%, except for the people that run the Democrat Party, because they want to try and win elections illegally."
He didn't leave room for charitable interpretation.
"It's the only reason you vote against voter ID – because you want to cheat."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded exactly the way you'd expect from someone whose party has turned election integrity into a culture-war grenade. He labeled the SAVE Act "Jim Crow 2.0" and claimed it would "disenfranchise tens of millions of people," according to the New York Post.
Think about that claim for a moment. Tens of millions of American citizens, according to Schumer, cannot prove they are citizens. The argument collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. You need identification to board a plane, buy a firearm, open a bank account, or pick up a prescription. But requiring it to vote in a federal election is somehow an act of racial oppression.
Schumer then escalated the stakes in response to Trump's vow on Sunday to "not sign other Bills until this is passed."
"If Trump is saying he won't sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it: there will be total gridlock in the Senate."
He followed that with an even starker declaration:
"Senate Democrats will not help pass the SAVE Act under any circumstances."
Under any circumstances. Not "we have concerns about implementation." Not "we'd like to negotiate amendments." Under any circumstances. Schumer isn't opposing a specific provision. He's opposing the concept of verifying that voters in American elections are Americans.
Trump, being Trump, didn't limit himself to policy arguments. He took a shot at Schumer that landed somewhere between insult and observation, calling him "a horrible politician" and adding that Schumer "is now a Palestinian. Officially, he is registered as a Palestinian." The remark was a jab at Schumer's leftward drift on Israel and his willingness to align with the progressive wing of his party on virtually every issue that matters to them.
The quip will generate headlines. The substance underneath it shouldn't get lost. Schumer has positioned himself and every Senate Democrat as a wall against voter ID, a policy supported by overwhelming majorities of the American public, including, by Trump's cited figures, the vast majority of Democratic voters themselves.
That's the contradiction worth watching. Democratic leadership is not representing Democratic voters on this issue. They're representing a strategic interest in keeping the voting process as porous as possible.
Trump's case to House Republicans was straightforward: pass the SAVE Act and make Democrats own their opposition to it heading into November.
"They're doing everything possible because they know if we get this, they probably won't win an election for 50 years."
He paused, then added: "Maybe longer."
Whether or not the bill clears the Senate, the political logic is sound. Voter ID polls at supermajority levels across party lines. Forcing a vote, or forcing Democrats to block one, creates a clean contrast heading into the midterms. Republicans stand for verifying citizenship. Democrats stand against it. That's not a complicated message to communicate to voters.
Trump also acknowledged that Republicans who push election integrity measures "fight like hell," but conceded "boy, do they get killed," a reference to the media and institutional backlash that accompanies any attempt to tighten voting procedures. The acknowledgment matters. It signals to House members that the White House understands the political cost and is willing to absorb it alongside them.
The SAVE Act needs seven Senate Democrats to reach 60 votes. Schumer has promised that zero will defect. That means one of two things happens:
Trump, for his part, dodged questions at a Monday press conference about whether his vow to withhold signatures extends to specific legislation, including funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The ambiguity is itself a pressure tool. Every piece of legislation Senate Democrats want now sits behind a single gate: prove you believe only citizens should vote.
Schumer called it gridlock. Trump might call it leverage. The distinction depends entirely on which side you think is defending something worth defending.
Eighty-six percent of Democrats support voter ID. Their leaders would rather shut down the Senate than let it happen. That gap between the party and its voters isn't a polling anomaly. It's the whole story.