Tommy Tuberville says booming north Alabama is drawing voters raised on socialist and Communist ideas in government schools, and Republicans must win them over before the culture shifts.
Republican nominee for governor Tommy Tuberville told radio listeners this week that people moving into the Huntsville area arrive carrying political habits formed far from Alabama’s traditions, and that the GOP has work to do if the state is going to stay deep red.
al.com reported that Tuberville made the remarks on “The Jeff Poor Show,” tying the influx to years of growth around federal, aerospace, and defense jobs and warning that turnout and persuasion will decide whether the newcomers absorb Alabama’s constitutional culture or resist it.
Census figures cited in the coverage show the scale. Madison County reached an estimated 433,516 residents in 2025, up 11.7 percent from the 2020 base. Limestone County grew 18.7 percent over the same span to an estimated 122,928 people. Those numbers track the pull of Redstone Arsenal and related employers that keep drawing families from elsewhere.
Tuberville said the pattern is not new.
“That hasn’t just started,” he said. “That’s been going on for 10 or 15 years.”
The core of Tuberville’s argument was blunt. He said many arrivals come from states where public schools taught a worldview he rejects, and that Republicans cannot assume those voters will automatically share Alabama’s priorities.
He put it this way on air:
“You’ve got people coming from other states that were brought up in these government-educated schools that have taught socialism and Communism.”
“It’s hard to get them out of that mindset,” Tuberville added. “And that’s what we have to do. We have to educate them.”
His pitch to those newcomers was direct rather than hostile: “Don’t go out there and fight us. Try to work with us.” He framed the task as bringing people “on the side of freedom and our Constitution,” not writing them off. That same socialist branding now shows up in Democratic primaries elsewhere, including a DSA-backed challenger who ousted a sitting House Democrat in Michigan.
He also pointed to one group already living the contrast. Tuberville said hundreds of FBI personnel and their families moved north for the bureau’s expanding footprint at Redstone Arsenal and found better schools and daily life than they expected.
“We’ve brought six to seven hundred FBI agents and their families to north Alabama in their center up there and they’re shocked at how much better the schools are, how much better living it is, and their minds have even changed.”
The FBI’s own figure is larger in scope: more than 1,300 personnel now work at Redstone Arsenal as the bureau has expanded training, technology, data analysis, and other operations there. Tuberville’s agent-and-family number and the bureau’s total headcount are not the same category, and the reporting does not reconcile them. What he claimed is that some of those families have already shifted their outlook after living under Alabama’s conditions.
Tuberville did not pretend the migration stops at the schoolhouse door. He said more voters from blue states will cast ballots this year and that changing minds takes time.
“I think we’ll have probably a little bit more of the folks from some of these blue states that will come in and vote this year, but it’s just going to take time to get them on the side of freedom and our Constitution.”
He later dialed back the panic. Concerns about political change in north Alabama are “a little bit overblown,” he said. The larger problem is turnout. Midterms usually favor the side out of power, he noted, and he argued Democrats get a built-in assist from national newsrooms.
“It’s easier for the Democrats because they’ve got most of the mainstream media encouraging people to go out and vote for this socialist, Communist nonsense and it’s harder for Republicans,” Tuberville said. Progressive primary shocks keep underscoring that leftward pull, from a self-described Democratic Socialist winning a Florida Senate primary to other races where ideology, not seniority, drives the result.
His closing math was simple. Alabama remains a deep-red state, he said, and Republicans still hold the numbers if they show up.
“We just have to go out and vote because we outnumber them pretty much two-to-one.”
“In our state, we are a deep red state and I just encourage people to go out and vote because times are changing. People are changing. Their ideas are changing,” he said. That pressure on turnout and cohesion is familiar territory for Tuberville, who has also been pressing colleagues over missing Senate votes when the GOP margin is thin.
The region is not abstract for him. In the 2020 Senate race against Democrat Doug Jones, Tuberville said he performed worse in parts of north Alabama than in many other parts of the state, even with President Donald Trump on the ballot. The article does not supply precinct-level margins, only Tuberville’s own assessment of that relative softness.
Jones’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the latest remarks. The absence of a reply leaves Tuberville’s diagnosis of schooling, media incentives, and migration unchallenged on the record in the coverage.
Growth itself is not in dispute. Defense and aerospace jobs, the FBI expansion, and the Census counts all point the same direction: north Alabama is absorbing people faster than much of the rest of the state. The political question Tuberville raised is whether those arrivals adopt the state’s constitutional habits or import the left-wing framing he says government schools taught them. Similar leftward primary energy has already pushed Democratic voters to oust aging incumbents at a pace Republicans have not matched.
He cast the remedy as education, persuasion, and ballots, not surrender and not scorched rhetoric aimed at neighbors. Republicans, in his telling, still hold the two-to-one edge if they use it. The open risk is that low enthusiasm and a media climate he calls tilted will leave that advantage sitting unused while new arrivals vote the habits they brought with them.
Alabama stays free only if the people who already live free keep showing up, and keep making the case to the ones still learning what that means.
An 81-year-old Georgia man was shot and killed outside a Walmart, and police say they believe he was an innocent bystander caught in the gunfire.
Channel 2 Action News reported that James McDaniel, 81, of Lula, died after he was shot in the parking lot of the Walmart on Shallowford Road in Gainesville, Ga.
Gainesville Police confirmed his death Thursday morning. Officers had responded to the store around 7 p.m. Wednesday night after reports of gunfire outside the store.
Investigators believe McDaniel was not the intended target. He was an elderly man in a store parking lot who never made it home.
Gainesville Police requested help from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to process the scene. That step usually follows a serious shooting when local departments want extra resources on evidence and forensics.
No suspect has been named. No arrest has been announced. No motive has been made public. Police are still asking the public for help.
Anyone with information is being told to call 911 or submit a tip online. In cases like this, parking-lot cameras, witness phones, and nearby drivers often decide whether a case moves or stalls.
Public violence that snuffs out ordinary life is not abstract for the families left behind, a hard truth also felt in coverage of an Afghan man detained in Athens after a British woman’s body was found stuffed in a suitcase.
McDaniel was 81 and lived in Lula, a small community near Gainesville. The shooting happened outside a big-box store on a Wednesday evening, the kind of errand run millions of Americans make without a second thought.
Gunfire in a retail parking lot puts shoppers, workers, and nearby drivers in the line of fire. When police say the dead man was an innocent bystander, that means someone else brought a gunfight into a public space and an older man paid the price.
Deadly recklessness in everyday places keeps filling the crime blotter, including a Sacramento County drunk driver sentenced to 188 years after a crash killed five passengers.
Channel 2 Action News tried to reach the store about when it would reopen and got no response. Reopen timing was not confirmed.
As of the latest police confirmation, the public still does not know who fired the shots, whether more than one person was involved, or whether any other people were hurt. Charges and custody status have not been released.
The absolute calendar date was not pinned down beyond Wednesday night and Thursday morning. The medical details beyond death after the shooting were not spelled out in the initial report.
That information gap matters. Families deserve a clear account of how an 81-year-old man ended up dead outside a store. Taxpayers deserve a full investigation, not a quiet fade from the headlines.
Crime stories with lasting fallout keep landing in public view, from a woman who vandalized the World War II Memorial now facing federal felony charges to other cases that test whether accountability actually follows the act.
For now, Gainesville Police and the GBI hold the scene work and the tip line. McDaniel’s name is known. The shooter, at last report, is not.
Other painful cases stay with the public for the same reason, an ordinary person is gone and the system is left to catch up, much like the distress surrounding appeals for a missing mother renewed during an Emmy tribute.
An 81-year-old man went to a Walmart and never came home. Law and order means finding who pulled the trigger and making sure a parking lot is not a free-fire zone for the rest of us.
Federal investigators searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. home and subpoenaed her relatives in a criminal probe of immigration paperwork, a move she brands political retaliation.
Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant at the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington residence early Monday morning, the Justice Department confirmed, as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation tied to immigration records.
Fox News reported that grand jury subpoenas went to family members, including Omar’s sister Sahra Noor, while investigators examine whether her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, lied or omitted information on forms before he became a citizen.
Omar, a member of the progressive “Squad,” denied wrongdoing and cast the action as political payback. She posted on X that she was unharmed and would not be silenced.
"I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,"
She added that President Donald Trump had targeted her for a decade with what she called baseless campaigns, calling the search the latest escalation. Her communications director, Jacklyn Rogers, struck the same note after the warrant was carried out.
"This raid by Trump’s DHS is an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies."
Just The News noted the probe’s focus on the father’s citizenship paperwork and the potential exposure that could follow for Omar’s own naturalization status if material falsehoods are proven. The precise statutes and forms under review have not been publicly detailed.
Omar has long said she became a U.S. citizen through her father’s naturalization in 2000, before she turned 18. In a September 2018 interview with The Intercept, she put it plainly.
"I became a citizen actually before I turned 18,"
She continued that her father became a citizen and she obtained citizenship through that process. Opponents have questioned the timing and the age she claimed at naturalization. A federal judge’s approval of the home search means agents presented probable cause that a federal crime occurred and that evidence would be found at the residence, former assistant U.S. attorney Jonathan Fahey told the New York Post.
Fahey said search warrants typically come toward the end of an investigation, after agents have already built a body of evidence. Boxes of materials were removed from the home, according to that reporting. Naturalization fraud carries a statute of limitations, but related new offenses can reset the clock.
Months after Omar entered Congress, her staff contacted the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. On May 17, 2019, staff told the library her listed birth year was wrong and asked that it be changed from 1981 to 1982. The library director documented the request days later.
"On May 17, 2019, Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982,"
The director said the 1981 date had been drawn from other reference sources and added without documentation, and that staff were also working with Wikipedia and the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. The discrepancy alone does not prove falsified immigration records, and available reporting has not established that the biography change triggered Monday’s warrant.
Unsuccessful 2022 primary challenger AJ Kern had pressed related questions, filed an FEC complaint, and sued seeking proof of citizenship. A state judge dismissed the lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction. Prior federal looks at Omar’s immigration history did not produce charges, the New York Times has reported.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro disclosed a separate examination of Omar’s financial disclosures. Filings showed two businesses tied to husband Tim Mynett, eStCru LLC, a California winery, and Rose Lake Capital LLC, a Washington-based venture firm, jumping from a combined reported value of roughly $15,000 to $51,000 in 2023 to between $6 million and $30 million in 2024.
Omar amended the filings in April, cutting the combined reported assets to between $18,004 and $95,000. Her office said the originals failed to properly account for business liabilities. In September the Office of Congressional Conduct voted 5-1 to recommend that the House Ethics Committee dismiss misconduct allegations, finding no substantial reason to believe she reported false or incomplete information in violation of federal law or House rules. That review is distinct from Pirro’s inquiry, and it remains unclear whether the money questions connect to the immigration search.
President Trump, in a statement the White House shared on X on Tuesday, demanded speed.
"America wants answers, and we want them, NOW!"
Vice President JD Vance said he had no advance knowledge of the search and framed the standard in plain terms: if there is a real case, the facts will be followed; if not, they will not. Vance has previously accused Omar of immigration fraud. The Squad’s record on enforcement already draws heavy pushback, including when Trump DHS officials challenged Delia Ramirez over legislation aimed at abolishing ICE.
Omar moved quickly from defense to fundraising. She sent a text appeal seeking money to “fight back,” describing the search as the latest step in what she called a ludicrous, partisan investigation into her immigration status, the Washington Examiner reported.
Longstanding public claims that she married a relative to help him remain in the country, along with overlapping marriage timelines, have also been raised and may form part of the wider federal review, according to Just The News. Omar and her office reject those allegations. Progressive factions inside the Democratic Party keep testing the same left flank, as when a DSA-backed socialist ousted Michigan Democrat Shri Thanedar in a primary upset.
A judicially authorized warrant is not a conviction. Grand jury subpoenas seek evidence and do not by themselves mean the recipients are suspected of crimes. No injuries, arrests, or charges were announced from the Monday search. The full warrant text, the exact list of items seized, and the complete roster of subpoena targets have not been released.
Still, a federal judge had to find probable cause before agents could enter a sitting member of Congress’s home. That bar matters. So does the decision to pull in relatives and revisit the father’s naturalization file. Immigration enforcement fights elsewhere on the left have followed a similar pattern of claims versus records, including when Sen. Markwayne Mullin rejected Pramila Jayapal’s line that most immigration arrests hit people who pose no public safety threat.
Omar remains a high-profile voice against stricter border and interior enforcement. Her allies treat every investigative step as proof of selective prosecution. Taxpayers and lawful immigrants are entitled to something simpler: clear rules, honest paperwork, and equal application of the law. Squad-adjacent controversies keep piling up, from messaging stumbles that pulled Omar into a social-media clash alongside Summer Lee to the broader socialist pressure campaign that also produced a second wave of coverage when the DSA insurgency rattled Democrats in Michigan.
The Justice Department confirmed the warrant. Investigators are following immigration documents, family testimony, and financial filings. Omar calls it intimidation and asks donors to fund the fight. The public is left with a basic demand that should not be controversial in a country that still expects its elected officials to meet the same entry and disclosure standards as everyone else.
When federal agents show up with a judge’s signature and family subpoenas follow, accountability is not a smear, it is the minimum the law requires.
Minnesota Democratic leaders are casting a federal Medicaid funding freeze as political payback rather than accountability for fraud, even as $550 million stays locked and up to $2 billion hangs over the state.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has deferred $550 million in federal payments to Minnesota since the start of 2026 over allegations of widespread healthcare fraud, Daily Caller reported.
Temporary Minnesota Department of Human Services commissioner John Connolly, appointed by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz in May, sent a five-page letter on Oct. 2 to CMS administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz seeking the money restored.
Connolly argued the freeze feels less like fraud enforcement and more like something else entirely.
In comments carried by the Washington Sun, he said pressures “feel increasingly like a war on Medicaid, not a war on fraud.”
"We are deeply concerned that this would be another step in a retribution campaign for Minnesota that was promised very publicly,"
Connolly wrote in that vein, tying the freeze to politics instead of the state’s own record.
The Oct. 2 letter claimed Minnesota Department of Human Services had already met fraud-reporting duties by identifying 14 “high risk” Medicaid service providers.
It also insisted the department had asked repeatedly for evidence of the fraud claims so it could stop payments where needed.
"Minnesota has repeatedly asked CMS and federal law enforcement to provide evidence supporting public claims of of fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid programs so the Department of Human Services can stop payments where warranted,"
the letter stated. It continued that no such evidence had been shared and that CMS had not asked the state to impose any payment withhold on a provider.
State officials have leaned hard on the victim framing even while federal dollars make up 64 percent of Minnesota’s total Medicaid spending, or $11.8 billion a year according to a KFF analysis.
Walz himself answered a June referral the same day by saying the move had “nothing to do with fraud” and calling it a “campaign of retribution.”
That posture fits a pattern already visible in Tim Walz’s mounting fraud scandal coverage as the governor faces sustained scrutiny.
CMS first deferred $259 million earlier in 2026. Of that sum, $243.8 million covered unsupported or potentially fraudulent Medicaid claims and $15.4 million involved claims tied to illegal immigrants, according to a February agency press release.
By June, HHS announced it was deferring $1 billion from both Minnesota and California over Medicaid and social-services fraud.
Minnesota DHS’s own website acknowledges the $550 million already deferred in 2026 and the threat to withhold as much as $2 billion.
In March, then-commissioner Shireen Gandhi and Attorney General Keith Ellison sued CMS, claiming the withhold was illegal. A court denied their bid for a preliminary injunction.
Ellison has filed more than 73 lawsuits against the Trump administration. In 2023 he boasted his office ran the “largest-ever Medicaid fraud prosecution” by a state attorney general, three defendants, 24 counts, $11 million.
That figure sits beside larger federal cases, including the Minnesota Medicaid fraud pleas that keep surfacing in the state.
Vice President JD Vance announced on X on June 9 that he had sent the allegations to the Justice Department’s new Fraud Division for criminal investigation.
"I’ve referred these allegations to DOJ’s new Fraud Division for criminal investigation. Minnesota state officials are not above the law, and if they facilitated fraud, lied under oath about what they knew, or harassed and intimated whistleblowers, they must face justice."
Vance posted. The same month DOJ announced charges against 15 defendants in Minnesota for more than $90 million in fraud.
Minnesota DHS told the Daily Caller News Foundation it “is acting aggressively to detect and prevent fraud and shuts off money to providers when credible allegations of fraud come to light” and works “in close partnership with other state agencies and law enforcement.”
Its website adds that since 2020 the department has run over 3,500 investigations, referred over 1,150 cases to law enforcement, and identified more than $56 million for recovery, returning $2.29 for every dollar spent on investigators.
Those numbers look modest next to the federal freezes and the DOJ’s $90 million case load, a gap that also shadows the $9 billion fraud scandal hanging over Minnesota politics.
A CMS spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation the agency “is committed to safeguarding Medicaid by strengthening program integrity, protecting taxpayer dollars, and ensuring benefits are reserved for those who are eligible under the law.”
"The agency does not comment further on matters in pending litigation."
the spokesperson added. Former Obama-era CMS senior advisor Andy Schneider called the steps against Minnesota unprecedented.
“They have done to Minnesota what CMS has never done to any other state. It’s all uncharted territory,” Schneider said.
Walz’s and Ellison’s offices gave no comment before publication. Connolly’s letter and the state’s public statements keep returning to the same theme: the freeze is unfair targeting, not overdue enforcement.
National pressure for stronger tools continues, including the push seen when Senate Democrats faced anti-fraud division votes after the House acted.
Taxpayers did not create Minnesota’s Medicaid mess, and they should not support excuses that treat basic oversight as an attack.
Former UFC fighter and Green Beret Tim Kennedy is recovering at Walter Reed after three gunshot wounds in a Congo ambush that left roughly 20 dead or wounded.
Kennedy took three rounds to the leg during a September 17 attack in South Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Newsweek reported, citing Reuters sources familiar with the incident.
The ambush struck personnel tied to Vectus Global, the security and consulting firm founded by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, while the group traveled between locations in the province. Sources told Reuters that about 20 people were killed or wounded, including a former member of New Zealand’s Special Forces.
Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin said late Sunday he had spoken directly with Kennedy and confirmed the fighter was alive.
Van Orden posted on X:
"I just spoke to my dear friend @TimKennedyMMA,"
He added:
"That means he is not dead and that means I am thankful."
Van Orden also asked the public for prayer:
"I am asking everyone to pray for his healing and that his wonderful family find Peace,"
Sources familiar with the operation said the force was ambushed by M23 rebels. Some of those sources described sophisticated planning and suggested possible Rwandan involvement. Rwanda has long denied backing the M23 group, a claim United Nations and Western governments have leveled for years.
One Congolese government source offered a different detail: the attackers may have tracked a surveillance drone. Vectus Global had not previously taken casualties in Congo, according to a source close to the operation.
Prince’s company had been working security around the mineral sector. After diplomatic efforts produced an M23 withdrawal from the strategic city of Uvira, Vectus personnel helped Congolese forces secure the area. The overall size of the Prince operation in Congo remains unknown.
Publicly available information offers no evidence the mission was a U.S. military operation, and it does not explain why Kennedy was moved to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, D.C. Kennedy had not publicly disclosed any planned trip to Congo before the attack.
Serious medical fights demand clear priorities, the same clarity voters have seen when General Mills stripped artificial dyes from U.S. cereal under a broader health push.
Newsweek contacted Prince, Kennedy, Van Orden, the Congo military, and Walter Reed on Monday for comment. No on-record replies appear in the available reporting.
Kennedy’s path is well known to fans of both special operations and mixed martial arts. He served as a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier before competing in the UFC middleweight division. Later he worked as a commentator, author, entrepreneur, and podcast host.
That record places him among Americans who keep showing up in unstable places long after the cameras leave. Private security work in eastern Congo carries real risk; the September 17 toll shows it.
Families watching a wounded veteran fight through recovery also live through other health alarms, including the stretch that saw Pennsylvania report a fifth measles death in the worst U.S. year since 1991.
Blackwater, the earlier Prince firm, no longer exists. Its contractors became infamous during the Iraq War. Vectus Global is the current vehicle. The Congo ambush is the first reported casualty event for that team in-country.
Key details stay unanswered. Kennedy’s exact contractual role with Vectus is not stated. The breakdown of dead versus wounded is not public. No primary incident report or company statement has surfaced beyond the secondary sourcing.
Rwandan involvement remains a suggestion from some sources, not a settled finding. The drone-tracking claim rests on a single Congolese government source. Absolute calendar dates for the Friday Reuters account and the Sunday Van Orden posts are not fixed in the reporting beyond the September 17 ambush date itself.
Medical systems under pressure force hard choices, the kind visible when a federal judge paused a teen pregnancy grant overhaul while leaving terminated funding in place.
What is established is straightforward: a decorated former Green Beret and UFC veteran took three gunshot wounds in an ambush aimed at a private security element in eastern Congo, roughly 20 people were killed or wounded, and Kennedy is now under care at Walter Reed while a sitting member of Congress confirms he is alive and asks for prayer.
Americans tracking recovery stories also watch broader medical policy shifts, including the decision that cut the CDC childhood vaccine schedule from 18 diseases to 11.
Kennedy’s condition update closes one question and leaves others open. The men who still take these contracts understand the cost. The country that trains Green Berets should keep clear eyes on who is fighting, who is bleeding, and who answers for the aftermath.
President Trump has named Katie Zacharia the next White House press secretary, replacing Karoline Leavitt with a longtime MAGA ally and Trump Media adviser.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had just hired a new press secretary and that Katie Zacharia would take the job. He framed the pick as a natural fit for the podium and for his team. The New York Post reported the announcement from Washington as Trump moved to fill the vacancy left when Karoline Leavitt stepped away from the role.
Trump also posted the news on Truth Social, stressing Zacharia’s campaign work and her long record of support. The choice puts a familiar conservative communicator in one of the administration’s most visible jobs as the White House heads into a hard political stretch.
Leavitt left the press secretary post in August to spend more time with her family after the birth of her second child on May 1. Zacharia will replace her. That handoff keeps the briefing room in the hands of a loyal Trump ally rather than an outside hire with no stake in the agenda.
Speaking to the White House press corps, Trump cast Zacharia as someone the room already knows.
He told reporters:
"She’s a friend of most of you. I know she likes people. She likes all of you, actually. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but we just hired a new press secretary. And she’s going to be, I think, terrific."
On Truth Social he went further, tying her résumé to his own winning map. Trump wrote that she had helped in key swing states “where we won 7 out of 7,” called her a “loyal and brilliant supporter,” and said she has been a devoted MAGA member “right from the beginning.” He closed with a simple send-off: “Good luck Katie.”
Fox News reported that Trump named the attorney and TV commentator on Friday, and that two White House officials had confirmed the selection before his public announcement. Fox also carried his formal praise of her current role as senior communications adviser to Truth Social at Trump Media & Technology Group.
That loyalty-first pattern matches other recent personnel moves, including the White House’s emphasis on proven MAGA hires for sensitive jobs.
Trump’s public case for Zacharia was straightforward. He wants a press secretary who already shares the mission, knows the media fight, and will not need on-the-job conversion.
Katie Zacharia is 42 and a mother of four. She has been a fixture on conservative media, especially Fox News, and has written op-eds for the Post. She advises Trump Media & Technology Group and works at Fix California, the group founded by Trump special envoy Ric Grenell to push a conservative agenda in the Golden State.
Just the News reported that she previously served as spokesperson and deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, and that she graduated from Pepperdine University and its Caruso School of Law. Leavitt, who left in August after giving birth, is expected to join Fox News as a contributor.
Zacharia spent about three months at DHS earlier this year and left after Markwayne Mullin took over as secretary in March. She was reported to have been close to then-Secretary Kristi Noem and special adviser Corey Lewandowski while there. She later told Just the News the long commute from California put a strain on her family.
Her earlier résumé is classic Republican farm-system work. She interned for the Republican National Committee while at Pepperdine and served in the White House Office of Political Affairs during George W. Bush’s second term. Trump’s own description puts her in the swing-state trenches of his campaigns. That mix of government, media, and movement work is why the pick landed with little mystery inside MAGA circles.
Trump has kept a heavy public schedule while locking in staff and message discipline, the same posture on display when he said he never gets tired of a packed midterm travel calendar.
Zacharia answered the appointment on X with full-throated thanks and a clear job description.
She wrote:
"President Trump has shown America that we can be great again, and he works to effectuate that greatness every single day. His confidence is a true privilege, and his leadership is a blessing to this country."
She also said she looks forward to working with the White House press corps and reporters across the country “to get that record out,” and called the post “the honor of a lifetime.” Fox carried a parallel line in which she framed service to Trump and the American people at the country’s 250-year mark as that same honor.
The Washington Examiner reported that Trump tapped the conservative commentator and Trump Media adviser as press secretary less than a month before the 2026 midterm elections, and amid lawsuits from Politico, MS Now, and CNN over White House access bans. The timing is not subtle. The briefing room remains a daily battleground over access, framing, and who sets the record.
A press secretary who already knows the media map and the president’s priorities is a practical answer to that fight. Trump said she has the respect of the media, the American people, and his administration, and that she will work “fantastically” with all three. That is the job description in plain English: defend the record, push the facts out, and refuse to let hostile outlets run the room unchallenged.
The same direct public style has marked other recent Trump moves, from hard-edged campaign endorsements in Michigan to sharp responses when critics try to define the story first.
Leavitt’s exit was personal, not political. She left to focus on her family after a second child. The administration did not leave the podium empty of a trusted voice for long. Zacharia’s selection closes that gap with someone who has already worked the DHS beat, the Trump media orbit, and the conservative airwaves.
Voters watching the next year of briefings will judge the results in real time. They will hear whether the White House answers questions cleanly, corrects false frames fast, and keeps the focus on results rather than process theater. Staffing the room with a proven communicator is how an administration prepares for that test.
Trump has also used executive action to deliver concrete relief on costs that hit working Americans, including when he expanded tax-free red diesel for farmers and truckers. Message and policy still have to travel together.
Zacharia now inherits the daily assignment of making that case under lights. Trump’s public bet is that a loyal, media-fluent hire can do it without confusion about whose agenda she serves.
A White House that picks its own messengers, instead of auditioning for hostile approval, is simply doing the job voters hired it to do.
President Trump has picked Katie Zacharia as White House press secretary, rewarding a loyal fighter after higher-profile critics fell out of the running.
President Donald Trump selected Katie Zacharia as his new White House press secretary in a rapid move announced Friday, tapping a conservative commentator and longtime backer who will start Monday.
CNN reported that Zacharia was in the Oval Office with Trump earlier Friday morning and thanked him in a social media post the same day. As of last week, she was not even under consideration.
Trump cast the choice as a vote for proven loyalty. In announcing the selection, he pointed to her work for Truth Social and Trump Media & Technology Group, her frequent appearances on Fox and Newsmax, and a clean record of support from the start.
"She has an unblemished record of support, and has been a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning."
The hire fills the post left by former press secretary Karoline Leavitt. White House aides had struggled through a search that kept running into higher-profile names who had previously criticized Trump. Lists narrowed, then candidates dropped out over past negative comments.
In recent days, Trump called close allies and advisers for their read on Zacharia. He sought Leavitt’s counsel before making a final decision and offering the job.
Leavitt congratulated the pick on social media and made her backing plain.
"As I told the President, Katie has my full support and I will be cheering for her and the entire team at the White House every day."
Zacharia told Fox News Friday evening how the call landed. She said the president “loved what a fighter I was for him.”
"I got a wonderful phone call from the chief talent recruiter, the president himself, and it turns out that being a huge supporter of all of his policies actually works."
That framing matches the administration’s broader push to staff up with people who will sell results, not undercut them. Readers tracking White House priorities have seen the same pattern in concrete enforcement moves, including how the Trump administration has removed more than 3 million illegal immigrants.
Zacharia first came to Washington in 2006 as an intern for the Republican National Committee during the George W. Bush administration. She later served as legal adviser for Fix California, the conservative group founded by Trump ally Richard Grenell.
She logged a two-month stint as a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, commuting from California, where she lives with young children. She told a friend that commute was not sustainable. Since June she has worked as a senior communications adviser at Trump Media and Technology Group and Truth Social, work Trump highlighted when he announced the hire.
She has also been a frequent guest on Fox, Newsmax, and CNN. Her DHS background sits alongside other administration actions on borders and workforce rules, such as the decision that pulled 28,000 trucker licenses from non-citizens and opened seats for veterans.
Zacharia said she will start the job Monday. She did not say when her first briefing would occur. On X she framed the assignment as results and communication.
"The work ahead is to continue delivering strong results for our Country and communicating to the American people the major wins that this Administration is making every single day."
She added that she looks forward to working with the White House press corps and reporters across the country “to get that record out,” and said “following the fabulous Karoline Leavitt is a high standard, and one worth meeting.” In a separate social media post Friday she wrote: “Serving President Trump and the American people at this critical 250-year mark is the honor of a lifetime.”
Trump, leaving the White House on Friday, told reporters the new hire already knows the press corps.
“She’s a friend of most of you,” he said. “I know she likes people, she likes all of you. Actually, I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but we just hired a new press secretary, and she’s going to be, I think, terrific.”
While Zacharia was on Fox News Friday evening, Trump delivered remarks in Syracuse, New York. The speed of the selection, from outside the mix last week to Oval Office Friday and a Monday start, underscored how the White House valued a known quantity who had never broken ranks.
That same preference for loyal execution shows up in other recent White House moves, from the deportation of more than 25,000 people to third countries to high-profile economic deals Trump has touted.
Zacharia’s brief now is simple: carry the record into the briefing room every day and keep the focus on what the administration is delivering. After a search that kept discarding critics, Trump chose the fighter who never quit the fight.
President Trump branded Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed a radical extremist and terrorist sympathizer while giving Republican Mike Rogers his complete endorsement in Michigan’s open seat race.
Just the News reported that President Donald Trump this week went after El-Sayed on Truth Social, calling the Democrat a poor fit for Michigan and tying him to left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.
Trump referred to the candidate as “Mohammed El-Sayed” and drew a hard contrast with former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican in the contest for the open U.S. Senate seat.
Trump posted:
"Mohammed El-Sayed is a terrible Candidate for the Dumocrats. While his opponent, Mike Rogers, is an extremely good one, Mohammed goes back to the days of the Jihad,"
He kept going in the same post, labeling El-Sayed a “RADICAL Extremist, Terrorist Sympathizer” and saying he was “no different from his best friend, America Hating Hasan Piker.” Trump then asked, “How’s France doing?” and said El-Sayed’s values “are not exactly those of Michiganders, or those of our Great United States of America.”
Trump closed with a full-throated endorsement: “He is WRONG for Michigan, and WRONG for America. VOTE FOR MIKE ROGERS, HE HAS MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT, AND WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
El-Sayed has already taken flak during the race for his ties to Piker. The streamer has said America “deserved” 9/11, among other sensational statements that put him far outside mainstream politics.
That association tracks with earlier pushback Trump has leveled at the same circle, including when Trump branded Hasan Piker a communist and said the streamer hurts Democrats.
Rogers, a former Michigan congressman, now carries the president’s explicit backing in what both sides treat as a high-stakes open-seat fight.
Trump’s “How’s France doing?” jab did not appear in a vacuum. The Washington Free Beacon detailed deleted 2022 World Cup posts in which El-Sayed denounced France as a “colonizer,” cheered for Morocco, and claimed to speak for the African and Arab diaspora while offering no support for the U.S. team.
El-Sayed wrote at the time:
"We are all #Morocco. Can't wait to watch them take it to the colonizer in the #WorldCup semifinal."
The Free Beacon also noted El-Sayed’s broader pattern of anti-Western remarks, including criticism of U.S. foreign policy on 9/11 anniversaries and suggestions that Israel posed a greater threat than Iran. Those posts supply the concrete record behind Trump’s France reference and his larger claim that El-Sayed’s outlook clashes with Michigan voters.
Questions about El-Sayed’s network have followed him on other fronts as well, including reporting on CAIR-affiliated donors who backed his Senate bid.
Breitbart reported that El-Sayed answered the Truth Social broadside by focusing on Trump’s use of “Mohammed” rather than Abdul, and by claiming the president is struggling under criticism.
El-Sayed said:
"He thinks my name’s Mohammed... My name’s Abdul, and you know it. And the only reason he won’t say it is I keep ripping you,"
Breitbart framed the Michigan contest as a knife-edge race that could help decide control of the Senate. Trump’s post treated the choice as clear-cut: Rogers as the strong candidate, El-Sayed as the wrong one for the state and the country.
Democratic tension around the nominee has surfaced inside Michigan too, including when state Democrat Karen Whitsett warned Black voters against El-Sayed and tore into the party’s socialist wing.
Trump returned to the race after a Michigan Senate debate and declared that Rogers had dominated. Fox News reported the president’s fresh Truth Social assessment of the matchup.
Trump wrote that Rogers “completely obliterated” El-Sayed and added that “if this was a fight they would have stopped it.” In related posts he again cast El-Sayed as a “RADICAL Extremist, Terrorist Sympathizer” and went further, calling him a “Jihadist lunatic who hates our Country, the Black People of Detroit, and wants to see the U.S. fail.”
El-Sayed, for his part, accused Trump of using his name and faith as a distraction from policy. Trump’s message stayed fixed on the contrast he wants voters to see: Rogers as a steady Republican hand, El-Sayed as a radical out of step with Michigan.
That same scrutiny has hit El-Sayed in other settings, including moments when he faced direct questions about Iran’s regime and declined to give a clear condemnation.
Rogers now runs as the candidate with the president’s “complete and total endorsement.” El-Sayed runs as the Democrat Trump has defined by the Piker association, the old France posts, and a record Trump says rejects basic American loyalties.
Michigan voters get a clean choice between a former congressman Trump trusts and a Democrat whose own words and alliances keep putting him on the wrong side of the country’s core instincts.
Bodycam footage from a Newport News elementary school captures a 6-year-old cursing at staff and daring officers after he shot his teacher, and a jury later hit the assistant principal with a $10 million verdict for ignoring warnings that could have stopped it.
On Jan. 6, 2023, first-grader J.T. pulled a 9 mm Taurus handgun from his jacket pocket during an afternoon reading class at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, and fired a single round at teacher Abby Zwerner from about 10 feet away, striking her hand and chest in front of 16 students.
Reading specialist Amy Kovac rushed in after hearing the gunshot and seeing blood on the teacher, restrained the boy in a bear hug, and called 911. Police bodycam obtained by local outlets and detailed in a New York Post report shows what happened next: a child still swearing, threatening adults, and showing no fear of jail.
Officers recovered the handgun on the classroom floor roughly 15 to 20 feet from the boy. Radio traffic captured the grim line, “We have the shooter,” followed by questions about the child’s age and a request for small handcuffs. Officer Brian Torrez warned colleagues not to touch the boy’s hands because of gun residue.
Three minutes of that bodycam later became a prosecution exhibit. On the video, J.T. yelled at Kovac and the officers with language no first-grader should know.
Kovac told him to stop. He answered with more abuse.
“Both y’all want a f, king piece of me, b, h?!”
He repeated the same attack on Kovac:
“F, k you, b, h.”
Then he escalated again, daring the adults in the room:
“If you want a piece of me, come get it on, b, h. I don’t care if you call backup. I don’t care if I go to jail, b, h.”
Gesturing toward the gun, he also said he “stole that from my mom.” Kovac later testified he punched her in the face hard enough to send her glasses flying. She tried to calm him and reminded him the language was not appropriate. He did not back down.
Court documents say the boy took the gun from his mother’s purse that morning after climbing on her dresser, put it in his backpack, and brought it to school. Kovac told officers it was his first week without his mother coming to school with him, that he was on a modified schedule, and that his mother was supposed to pick him up at 2:30. She also said she had already told the assistant principal there was a threat earlier.
That earlier warning was not a one-off. Teachers at Richneck warned administrators three times in the hours before the shooting that the six-year-old, described as having an acute disability, was threatening classmates with a gun. Officials brushed the reports aside, with one administrator claiming the student could not be carrying a weapon because he had “little pockets,” and no one contacted law enforcement in time. A Washington Free Beacon account tied the inaction to discipline policies that emphasized reducing disparities over immediate safety reporting, including a district practice of routing firearm concerns through a central office before police.
Former assistant principal Ebony Parker faced eight felony child neglect counts tied to the events before the shooting. Prosecutors introduced the bodycam at her May trial. Days later, before the defense had to put on a case, all charges against her were dismissed. Principal Briana Foster Newton and Parker both left the school afterward.
School violence cases keep forcing the same hard questions about who is held to account when warnings are ignored, a pattern also seen when Colt Gray received life without parole for the Apalachee High School attack.
The criminal case against Parker collapsed. The civil case did not. A jury awarded Zwerner $10 million after finding Parker grossly negligent for failing to act on reports from teachers that the boy had a gun, reports that could have prevented the shooting. Just the News reported the clerk’s reading of the verdict and the plain assessment from Zwerner’s attorney Kevin Biniazan: you cannot stick your head in the sand.
A separate article at Breitbart noted Parker allegedly failed to act despite multiple warnings and did not allow a search, that both sides of the school leadership exited, that Zwerner had sought far more than the final award, and that she still has a bullet lodged in her chest. One of her attorneys said a jury of her peers agreed the tragedy could have been prevented. The civil trial against Parker ended in November 2025.
Parents and taxpayers expect schools to protect classrooms first, the same basic duty that surfaces whenever districts face fallout over student safety and federal education rule changes that reshape how campuses operate.
J.T.’s mother, Deja Nicole Taylor, then 29, was sent to state prison for child neglect and to federal prison in part for lying about drug use on the firearm background-check form when she bought the gun used in the shooting. She was released from prison in February. The boy, now around 9 or 10, lives in Newport News in the custody of his great-grandfather.
Zwerner was severely injured. She is no longer working with the school district. The district and her lawyers have disputed whether she was fired or resigned, a bitter coda reported by the Washington Examiner after the classroom attack that ended her time there.
Tragedies involving students do not stay inside one building. Families already know how fast a school day can turn, whether the headline is a shooting or a middle school athlete collapsing at practice.
Kovac’s bodycam statements remain the clearest snapshot of how little margin the staff had left. She told officers the boy was 6, that he was on a modified schedule, and that she had already flagged a threat to the assistant principal. The gun still came out of the jacket. The round still hit Zwerner. The adults who were supposed to clear the danger still failed to stop it.
Other school-centered scandals, including a Nashville officer who resigned after misconduct tied to a middle school, only sharpen public demand for adults who do their jobs when children are at risk.
A six-year-old should never have had a loaded gun in a backpack, and a wounded teacher should never have needed a jury to force basic accountability after repeated warnings were shrugged off.
Senate Democrats talk up a midterm blue wave, but Pete Buttigieg warns voter anger at Republicans will not automatically translate into trust, and three hard forces could still stop them.
With one month left until Election Day, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is selling momentum. Last week, as the Senate adjourned until after the vote, he told reporters Democrats had “the wind in our sails” and stood “on the edge of taking back the Senate.”
Republicans hold the chamber 53-47. Democrats need a net gain of four seats. Schumer tied his optimism to public frustration with higher costs and a government people do not believe works for them, the same affordability pitch Schumer has pushed as the party’s midterm message.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg delivered a sharper note after keynoting a New Hampshire Democratic Party fundraising gala on Saturday. Speaking with Fox News Digital, he cautioned that outrage at the GOP does not equal a Democratic free pass.
Buttigieg put the problem in plain terms:
"I think just because Americans are outraged because of how Republicans have failed them and made their life more expensive doesn't automatically mean that they're going to embrace and trust Democrats."
He said Democrats must “make sure that our candidates get out there, make it very clear who they are, what they're about, and what we would do differently.” That warning lands against three concrete obstacles: shaky polling history, a damaged party brand, and a large Republican cash edge.
President Donald Trump, nearly two years back in the White House with GOP control of both chambers, is not treating the map as settled. At a rally Saturday night in Ohio, he told supporters critics and pollsters are in for a shock.
Trump’s line was direct:
"I think we’re going to have a big surprise, because they don’t know what’s happening."
Polling analyst Nate Silver noted this past weekend that surveys “considerably underestimated Donald Trump and other Republicans on the ticket with him in 2016, 2020, and, to a slightly lesser extent, in 2024.” Silver added that the 2018 and 2022 midterm polls were essentially unbiased, a distinction that still leaves presidential-year and ticket-wide undercounts as a live risk for anyone reading today’s numbers as destiny.
This summer’s Democratic primaries already produced misses in both directions. Polls overestimated Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow win in Michigan’s Senate showdown. They underestimated Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota’s Senate primary, Angie Nixon in Florida’s Senate contest, and David Crowley’s upset for the Wisconsin gubernatorial nomination. Each of those winners beat an establishment-backed rival. Republicans now argue several of the left-leaning nominees sit too far left for general-election voters, a vulnerability that compounds any soft spots in the horse-race data.
Favorability numbers back the caution. In the most recent Fox News national poll, Democrats stood at 44% favorable and 55% unfavorable. The latest Wall Street Journal national survey was worse: 38% favorable and 58% unfavorable. A party that needs ticket-splitters and soft partisans is asking voters to hand it the Senate while a clear majority views it unfavorably.
Primary results have not helped the center-lane problem. Michigan’s El-Sayed, Minnesota’s Flanagan, Florida’s Nixon, and Wisconsin’s Crowley all defeated establishment-aligned opponents. In Texas, a Fox News poll found 53% of voters extremely or very concerned that Democrat Talarico is too liberal, while 51% were extremely or very concerned that Republican Paxton is too close to Trump. Even in a race with mutual baggage, the liberalism worry is a live messaging gift for the GOP.
That leftward pull tracks a broader fight over who steers the party, the same struggle captured when Ted Cruz warned Democrats are ceding ground to their progressive wing. Candidates who win activist primaries still have to clear swing-state general elections. Brand damage makes that climb steeper.
Longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley told Fox News Digital the party is not sleepwalking into November after 2024.
Buckley said:
"I don't think any Democrat is over optimistic after... 2024. We all understand that anything can happen in the closing days, and we're preparing for that."
Preparation is not the same as a wave. Schumer’s “edge of taking back the Senate” line assumes voters who dislike the status quo will default to the minority party. Buttigieg’s point is that default is not automatic when trust is missing. Party fractures and discipline fights, including the kind of Senate turmoil around figures like Fetterman, do not rebuild that trust on their own.
The third force is cash. AdImpact, the top ad-tracking firm cited in the reporting, shows Republicans holding large spending leads in the states Democrats must win or flip. The GOP edge is roughly $70 million in Ohio, nearly $30 million in Maine and Texas, and about $25 million in Michigan. MAGA Inc. and other leading Republican groups and donors have poured money into that advantage.
Democrats are working to flip seats in places like Maine and Iowa and must hold ground in Michigan. Several of those contests sit inside the margin of error in the latest Fox News polls. Alaska, Kansas, Minnesota, Florida, Wisconsin, and the New Hampshire race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen are also in the mix. Money does not guarantee a win. It does buy message volume in the final month, especially when the other side is already explaining unpopular primary nominees.
Buckley conceded the air war is ugly for Democrats in New Hampshire while insisting the ground game is not.
"The amount of money being spent is enormous. We might not be as competitive as we'd like on television, but we're certainly competitive knocking on the doors. We've got the energy out there. The voters are excited. You saw that with the turnout in the primaries throughout the country."
Door knocks matter. So do paid ads when undecided voters are still making up their minds. The spending gap is not a press release problem. It is a reach problem in the states that decide Senate control. Democratic institutional strain, including the kind of financial and leadership turmoil at the DNC, does not shrink that gap.
Political history often punishes the party in the White House at the midterms. Republicans know that. They are mostly on defense while Democrats probe red and purple turf. Schumer is counting on cost-of-living anger to finish the job. Trump is counting on a late surprise. Silver’s record of Republican undercounts in recent presidential cycles is a reminder that published polls are not ballots.
Buttigieg, a 2020 presidential candidate who is considering another White House run in 2028, framed the Democratic task as clarity: who the candidates are, what they stand for, and what they would do differently. That is a brand repair job, not a wave assumption. A party underwater on favorability, carrying several hard-left primary winners, and getting outspent by tens of millions in the decisive states is asking voters for a leap.
Schumer hears wind in the sails. The numbers still show headwinds, and headwinds decide close Novembers.
Voters angry at Washington rarely reward a party that cannot explain itself, police its own lane, or match the other side’s war chest.