A federal judge appointed by President Joe Biden ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic who carries an Interpol Red Notice tied to a homicide case in his home country, and did so, federal officials say, without knowing the man was wanted for murder.
U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose, sitting in Rhode Island, issued the release order on April 28 for Bryan Rafael Gomez. The Department of Homeland Security says Gomez is in the country illegally, has a standing deportation order, and has been wanted by Dominican authorities since January 2023 in connection with a killing there.
The case has drawn sharp condemnation from DHS and raised pointed questions about the legal reasoning a federal judge used to put a man with an international homicide warrant back on American streets.
The sequence of events is straightforward. On April 4, the Worcester Police Department in Massachusetts arrested Gomez on charges of assault and battery. ICE agents lodged a detainer against him, and local police honored it. After Gomez finished his time in local custody, he was transferred to federal immigration authorities, as Breitbart News reported.
Then came DuBose's ruling. On April 28, the judge ordered Gomez released from ICE custody. Her legal rationale, laid out in the order, turned on a question of detention authority. DuBose ruled that ICE had relied on a statute meant for migrants apprehended at the border, a provision she said did not apply to Gomez because he was arrested by local police inside the United States, Fox News reported. She found he was entitled to a bond hearing rather than mandatory detention.
Put plainly: a man with a deportation order, an Interpol Red Notice for homicide, and a fresh assault charge walked out of federal custody because a judge decided the government cited the wrong line of the immigration code.
DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis responded on Thursday evening with language that left no room for ambiguity. She called DuBose "an activist judge" and framed the release as a direct obstacle to the administration's enforcement mission.
Bis told reporters:
"Bryan Rafael Gomez is a criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic with an international warrant for homicide. An activist judge appointed by Joe Biden released this wanted murderer back into American communities."
She added that the ruling was "yet another example of an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump's mandate from the American people to remove criminal illegal aliens from our communities."
The pattern of Biden-appointed judges drawing accusations of activism in immigration cases is not new. But the facts of this case, a murder suspect freed on what amounts to a procedural technicality, give the charge a harder edge than usual.
The Department of Justice, meanwhile, moved to defend DuBose. U.S. Attorney Charles C. Calenda issued a statement through the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Rhode Island, pointing to a recent filing in the case.
Calenda stated:
"As our recent filing in this matter makes clear, Judge DuBose did not have knowledge at the time of her ruling that Gomez was wanted by authorities in the Dominican Republic."
That defense raises its own uncomfortable question: How does a federal court issue a release order for a detained illegal immigrant with a deportation order and an Interpol Red Notice, and nobody in the process flags the homicide warrant?
DuBose's reasoning rested on a narrow statutory distinction. ICE detained Gomez under an authority designed for migrants caught at or near the border. Because Gomez was arrested by local police inside the country, DuBose ruled the authority did not apply and that he was entitled to a bond hearing instead, the New York Post reported.
On paper, the distinction may have legal merit in the abstract. In practice, it produced a result that most Americans would find indefensible: a man wanted internationally for murder, already charged with assault in the United States, released from the custody of the one agency equipped to remove him from the country.
The episode fits a broader pattern of federal judges intervening in immigration enforcement on procedural grounds while the real-world consequences fall on the communities left to absorb the risk. Judges in other high-profile immigration cases have issued similar release orders that drew public backlash, and the friction between the judiciary and enforcement agencies shows no sign of easing.
DHS has described Gomez as a man with a deportation order already on file. That means the federal government had already determined he had no legal right to remain in the United States. The Interpol Red Notice, an international alert requesting the location and provisional arrest of a wanted person, added a layer of urgency that apparently never reached the courtroom before DuBose signed the order.
Several questions hang over this case. The most pressing: Where is Bryan Rafael Gomez now? The available information does not say whether he has been physically released, re-detained, or located since the April 28 order. Nor does it specify which facility held him before the ruling.
The case number and full docket for the proceeding have not been publicly identified in the reporting so far. The underlying facts of the Dominican Republic homicide case, who was killed, what evidence exists, and whether extradition has been pursued, remain unclear from the public record.
The ongoing friction between federal judges and the Justice Department over immigration enforcement has become one of the defining legal battles of the current administration. Each new case adds another data point to a pattern that voters can see plainly: judges appointed during the Biden era are repeatedly intervening to slow or block the removal of illegal immigrants, even those with serious criminal histories.
Calenda's defense, that DuBose simply didn't know about the murder warrant, may be technically accurate. But it only deepens the concern. If the system that feeds information to federal judges before they release detained immigrants cannot surface an Interpol Red Notice for homicide, the system is failing at a basic level.
And if ICE cited the wrong detention statute, the agency bears responsibility for that procedural misstep. But the answer to a paperwork error is not to release a murder suspect. It is to correct the paperwork.
The administration has made clear that removing criminal illegal immigrants is a top priority. Federal courts at multiple levels have been drawn into the fight over how far that enforcement authority extends. This case in Rhode Island will likely become Exhibit A for those who argue that the judiciary has become an obstacle to public safety rather than a guardian of it.
DHS has the facts on its side: a deportation order, an Interpol Red Notice, an assault charge, and a homicide warrant stretching back more than two years. Judge DuBose had a statutory argument. The public has a man wanted for murder who is no longer in federal custody.
When the legal process produces an outcome that common sense cannot defend, the problem isn't with common sense.
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, deleted roughly 6,000 social media posts, and the ones that survived in web archives paint a picture of a candidate who spent years disparaging the very state and people she now asks to send her to Washington.
The mass deletion, first flagged by CNN's KFILE investigative unit, reportedly took place in 2025 after the New York Post began reporting on several of McMorrow's old comments. Fox News Digital reported that archived versions of the scrubbed posts show McMorrow mocking Middle America, pining for California, and comparing Trump supporters to followers of Hitler and Stalin.
The fallout has been swift. McMorrow's own Democratic primary rivals have seized on the posts, Republicans are hammering the contrast between her public persona and her private social media record, and her campaign is left insisting that trashing your home state is just what "normal people" do.
In December 2016, McMorrow posted a fantasy about the country splitting in two. "I had a dream that the U.S. amicably broke off into The Ring (coasts + Can + Mex + parts Mich/Tex) and Middle America," she wrote. A follow-up added: "Oh and The Ring nominated Obama as Prime Minister and everyone was given $1,000 and six months to pick a side."
The message was clear enough. The coasts were the desirable half. Middle America was the leftover.
That was not a one-off. In November 2016, responding to another user's comments about diversity in Detroit, McMorrow wrote: "I wish I never left California." Two months later, in January 2017, she posted: "There are days like these that make me miss California even more." The New York Post reported that another deleted post from April 2014 read: "Aaaand it's snowing. Screw you, Michigan. #NYCtoLA."
These are the words of someone who viewed Michigan as a downgrade, and said so publicly, repeatedly, over a period of years.
The Michigan gripes were only part of the archive. Shortly after President Trump began his first term in 2017, McMorrow posted a Dr. Seuss cartoon referring to Nazi Germany alongside the caption: "Dr. Seuss, 1941. We've been here before, America. #AmericaFirst #NoMuslimBan." Months later, she replied to another user: "Agreed. But how do we fight back? Hitler had supporters. Stalin had supporters. Putin has supporters. No one will change their minds."
In October 2020, she urged followers to watch a video featuring a Holocaust survivor "drawing parallels between Nazi Germany and Trump's 'authoritarian aspirations.'" The pattern is familiar: a progressive politician who casually equated mainstream Republican voters with history's worst regimes, then tried to scrub the record before running statewide.
The Washington Examiner noted that the resurfaced posts also included support for Black Lives Matter and anti-car comments such as "Cars are dead", raising questions about whether McMorrow has been presenting herself as a centrist while holding far more progressive positions. That gap between brand and record is precisely the kind of thing voters in a swing state tend to notice.
It is not the first time a Michigan Democrat has faced scrutiny for trying to conceal damaging information from public view.
McMorrow's autobiography, published in 2025, states she "relocated permanently" from the Los Angeles area to Michigan in 2014. But the timeline her own posts create tells a more complicated story.
Fox News Digital reported that McMorrow repeatedly referenced voting in California's June 2016 Democratic Primary and urged other voters to do the same. She also referenced voting in person in the Los Angeles area in November 2014 and described herself in 2016 as a constituent of Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu, who represents a California district.
Fox News Digital further reported that McMorrow and her husband did not vacate their California apartment until 2016, and public records show she registered to vote in Michigan in August 2016. California law prohibits non-residents from voting in its elections.
In 2024, McMorrow chided someone on social media who said they voted in a state they no longer lived in. The contradiction speaks for itself.
Michigan has seen its share of questionable conduct by state Democrats around voting rules, and voters can be forgiven for wondering whether the people who lecture them about election integrity apply the same standards to themselves.
McMorrow's campaign spokesperson, Hannah Lindow, dismissed the posts as harmless. She told Fox News Digital:
"These are normal tweets by a normal person. Normal people complain about the weather. The Michigan sky does in fact sometimes 's--- ice.' She stands by that."
Lindow also pointed to McMorrow's legislative record, saying she had spent "the past eight years fighting and delivering to make people's lives better: higher wages, universal pre-K, no kid going hungry in schools, comprehensive gun violence prevention laws, and more."
That framing might hold if the posts were limited to weather complaints. They were not. Dreaming about the country splitting into a coastal paradise and a flyover leftover is not griping about snow. Comparing your political opponents to Hitler is not small talk. And deleting 6,000 posts, including everything before 2020, is not the act of someone who stands by what she said.
The Rogers campaign, a Republican rival, was less diplomatic. Rogers spokeswoman Alyssa Brouillet said: "If Mallory is that homesick for California, she's better off to go home and run for office there."
The most damaging responses came from inside McMorrow's own party. Rep. Haley Stevens, a fellow Democrat also running for the Michigan Senate seat, posted a lengthy thread on X that took what Fox News Digital described as thinly veiled shots at McMorrow:
"I'm a born and raised Michigander and d*** proud of it. I love everything that makes us Michiganders, from our manufacturing heritage to our lakes and yep, even our accent. That's why I have pretty thick skin about people making fun of the way I talk or the clothes I wear, because this campaign isn't about me."
Stevens continued: "It's about the amazing people who live in this state. About them having a real champion in the Senate. So what actually ticks me off, someone who wants that job, representing Michiganders, talking crap about us and our state."
Another Democratic primary candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, posted a photo of himself with the caption: "Born in Michigan, hallelujah. Raised in Michigan, hallelujah. Believe cars should exist, hallelujah." That last line was a pointed reference to McMorrow's deleted "Cars are dead" post, a risky sentiment in the state that built the American auto industry.
When your own party rivals are defining themselves by how much they are not you, the damage is real. This is not a pattern unique to McMorrow; Michigan Democratic politics has long featured tensions between progressive ambition and the blue-collar identity the party claims to champion.
Ted Goodman, spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, framed the posts as confirmation of a broader trend:
"Mallory McMorrow just revealed her deep disdain for Middle America, which is exactly in line with where the Democrat Party has been trending for decades. McMorrow and today's Democrat Party abandoned hardworking families across Middle-America decades ago, and these deleted tweets only reaffirm this fact."
Chris Gustafson, a spokesperson for the Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation, posted on X: "The death of a campaign, brought to you, by, the campaign." The Republican National Committee's research arm also weighed in with criticism on social media.
Conservative radio host Andrew Wilkow summed up the sentiment many on the right share: "As I've told you the 'elites' hate your guts if you are culturally in the space between West of the George Washington Bridge and East of the Golden Gate Bridge."
Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at the Capital Research Center, added a Michigan-specific warning: "One of my greatest fears for my home state is the Traverse-City-ification of the great Up North. Coastal libs like Buttigieg and McMorrow have realized how beautiful it is here, and they've decided they can tolerate our 'backwards' midwestern ways if they balkanize the state."
The broader pattern of Democrats facing consequences for conduct that contradicts their public image is not lost on voters who have watched one politician after another say one thing and do another.
McMorrow's predicament is straightforward. She moved to Michigan from California, spent years publicly wishing she hadn't, fantasized about the country splitting along coastal-versus-heartland lines, compared her political opponents to Nazis, and then, when she decided she wanted a promotion, tried to erase the evidence. The internet, as usual, had other plans.
The campaign's "normal person" defense misses the point entirely. The issue is not whether a candidate is allowed to complain about winter. The issue is whether a candidate who privately viewed Middle America as the lesser half of a national divorce can credibly claim to fight for the people who live there.
Michigan voters will decide that for themselves. But they deserve to make that decision with the full record in front of them, not the sanitized version McMorrow tried to leave behind.
If you have to delete 6,000 posts before asking people for their vote, maybe the problem isn't the posts.
Florida's state legislature approved a redrawn congressional map on April 29, moving within hours of a Supreme Court ruling to redraw lines that could hand Republicans four additional U.S. House seats, and gut Democratic hopes of flipping the chamber in November.
The vote fell along party lines. The map passed the Florida House 83-28 and cleared the Senate 21-17, though four Republican senators broke ranks. The new map now heads to Gov. Ron DeSantis's desk, and he has made clear he intends to sign it.
If enacted, the map would reshape Florida's 28-member congressional delegation from a 20-7 Republican advantage (with one vacant Democratic-leaning seat) to a projected 24-4 GOP stronghold. Four Democratic-held seats, one near Tampa, one near Orlando, and two in the Fort Lauderdale area, would effectively disappear.
The legislature acted just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 decision that struck down Louisiana's majority-Black House district and narrowed the reach of the Voting Rights Act in redistricting challenges. DeSantis seized on the ruling as both legal cover and political opportunity, calling a special session to push the maps through before the midterm calendar tightened further.
DeSantis praised the Supreme Court decision, arguing it "invalidates" Florida constitutional provisions "requiring the use of race in redistricting." On X, the governor wrote that the ruling "implicates a district in FL, the legal infirmities of which have been corrected in the newly-drawn (and soon to be enacted) map."
He went further in public remarks, stating that Florida's representation in the U.S. House "has been distorted by considerations of race" and that the newly drawn districts "are race neutral."
Democrats voted unanimously against the map. They are expected to challenge it in court, though the specific legal grounds and plaintiffs have not yet been disclosed.
The four seats slated for elimination tell the story of where Democrats have clung to power in an increasingly red state. The redrawn districts include the 9th, 14th, 22nd, and 25th, all carried by Kamala Harris in 2024 and now projected to lean Republican under the new lines.
Tampa, Orlando, and Fort Lauderdale have been the last reliable patches of blue in Florida's congressional map. Under DeSantis's plan, those patches shrink to almost nothing. The math is blunt: Democrats would hold just four of twenty-eight seats in the nation's third-largest state.
That kind of shift doesn't just rearrange Florida politics. It reshapes the national fight for the House. Democrats need a net gain of just three seats in November to win control of the chamber. Losing four seats in a single state, before a single ballot is cast, turns a narrow path into something closer to a wall.
Florida's move does not exist in a vacuum. Republicans in Texas are also pursuing redistricting, aiming to counter expected Democratic gains from new maps in Virginia and California. The party sees mid-decade redistricting, enabled by favorable court rulings, as a way to lock in structural advantages before the midterms.
States like South Carolina and Mississippi could also benefit Republicans through redrawn maps, but filing deadlines in both states have already passed. Voters there are preparing for upcoming primaries under existing lines. Florida, by acting fast, positioned itself as the first and most consequential domino.
The broader pattern is clear: voters in states like West Virginia are already abandoning the Democratic Party by the thousands, and Republican-led legislatures are moving aggressively to translate that realignment into durable structural gains.
DeSantis proposed the maps himself, making the redistricting effort a personal project rather than a purely legislative exercise. He used the Supreme Court's ruling as justification for redrawing seats mid-decade, an unusual move that will invite legal scrutiny.
Florida's constitution includes anti-gerrymandering provisions that were designed to prevent exactly this kind of partisan mapmaking. Whether the new lines survive a court challenge may hinge on how judges interpret the Supreme Court's fresh limits on Voting Rights Act claims in the redistricting context.
The question isn't whether a lawsuit is coming. It's whether any court will move fast enough to block the map before November. If the lines hold, the 2026 midterms will be fought on terrain DeSantis chose.
Republican leaders in the House have been exercising governing power on multiple fronts this session, from blocking Democratic efforts to restrict presidential war powers to pushing election-related legislation through both chambers.
That legislative energy has not always been smooth. Internal GOP disagreements have surfaced on election policy, four Republican senators recently sided with Democrats to block the SAVE America Act from a budget package, exposing fault lines even within a party riding a wave of political momentum.
And in state legislatures across the country, Republicans are pressing forward on election integrity measures. Kansas advanced sweeping bills addressing noncitizen voting, mail ballots, and advanced voting deadlines, part of a coordinated effort to tighten election rules before November.
The arithmetic confronting Democrats is grim. They entered 2026 needing to flip just three House seats to reclaim the majority. Florida's new map, if it stands, wipes out that margin before the campaign even begins in earnest.
Democrats will argue the map is an illegal racial gerrymander. Republicans will counter that the Supreme Court itself cleared the path. The legal fight will be fierce, but the political calendar favors the side that already has the lines drawn.
DeSantis moved fast, moved first, and moved with the full weight of a Supreme Court majority behind him. Democrats can file all the lawsuits they want. The clock is not on their side.
In politics, the people who draw the lines usually win the game. Florida just reminded everyone why.
More than 16,000 registered Democrats in West Virginia have switched to the Republican Party since January 2024, part of a massive wave of party-affiliation changes that is reshaping the political map in one of Appalachia's most closely watched states. The numbers, released by Secretary of State Kris Warner, show 68,235 voters changed their registration since Jan. 31, 2024, and the movement runs heavily in one direction.
As of April 23, West Virginia counted 519,756 registered Republicans, 327,089 registered Democrats, and 301,933 independents. That gap, nearly 193,000 voters, represents a registration advantage the GOP has built in a state that, within living memory, was a Democratic stronghold.
The shift comes just weeks before the state's May 12 primary election, a closed contest in which only registered party members may vote in their party's primary. Fox News reported that the closed-primary structure appears to be accelerating the exodus from the Democratic rolls, as voters who want a say in competitive Republican races register accordingly.
Warner's data tells a detailed story. Of the 68,235 voters who changed affiliation, the largest single bloc, 20,003, were previously unaffiliated voters who moved to the GOP. Another 16,910 switched directly from Democrat to Republican. Together, those two groups account for nearly 37,000 new Republican registrations.
Democrats lost voters in both directions. Some 12,299 dropped their party label entirely and became unaffiliated. Only 5,211 unaffiliated voters moved to the Democratic Party, and just 2,399 Republicans crossed over to register as Democrats.
Republicans lost some ground, too, 7,559 dropped their affiliation. But the net math is lopsided. The GOP gained tens of thousands; Democrats shed them.
Combined, registered Democrats and independents still number roughly 620,000, outnumbering the GOP's 519,756. But that figure includes a large pool of independents who cannot vote in either party's closed primary, a structural disadvantage for any faction trying to claim those voters as allies.
Del. Josh Holstein, chairman of the West Virginia Republican Party, linked the surge to the primary rules. He told the Herald-Dispatch:
"This huge uptick in the last couple of months is certainly tied to the primary being closed."
Holstein added his read on what motivated the wave:
"So I think it's why a lot of those folks said, 'Hey, I'll just register Republican.'"
That explanation makes plain sense. In a state where President Trump won every county in 2024, many of the most competitive races are decided in the Republican primary, not the general election. A registered Democrat in much of West Virginia has little practical voice in who governs. Switching parties is not ideology, it is arithmetic.
The view from the other side of the aisle was predictably different. Del. Mike Pushkin, chairman of the state Democratic Party, framed the data as something less than a GOP triumph. In a statement obtained by the Herald-Dispatch, Pushkin said:
"Thousands of West Virginians are stepping away from party labels entirely, which reflects a broader frustration with politics as usual."
Pushkin also argued that the picture is more mixed than the headline numbers suggest. He noted that Republicans are "also losing thousands to 'No Party'" and that "many voters who re-engage are continuing to choose Democrats." He called the overall trend "none of this is particularly surprising," given that the data window includes the 2024 presidential cycle.
Pushkin's spin has a grain of truth buried in a mountain of wishful thinking. Yes, 7,559 Republicans dropped their affiliation. Yes, some voters moved toward the Democrats. But the net flow is stark: the GOP gained roughly 34,500 voters from Democrats and independents combined, while losing fewer than 10,000 in the other direction. That is not a wash. That is a rout on the registration rolls.
The broader trend in Appalachian politics mirrors what has happened across rural America. Communities that once voted Democratic out of union loyalty, family tradition, or local habit have been moving rightward for two decades. West Virginia's coal counties led that migration. What the new data shows is that the formal paperwork is finally catching up to the voting behavior.
Fox News Digital reached out to both Holstein and Pushkin for comment but did not immediately hear back. The secretary of state's office noted that the final count of eligible voters will be set ahead of the April 28 deadline for updating voter rolls. Early in-person voting begins April 29 and runs through May 9.
More than 1.19 million registered voters are currently eligible to participate in the May 12 primary. In a closed system, the party you belong to determines which ballot you receive, and which races you can influence. That structural reality is a powerful incentive for voters who want their registration to match the contests that matter most in their communities.
West Virginia's registration shift is not happening in a vacuum. Across the country, voters and even elected officials have been rethinking long-held party affiliations. In Washington, Sen. John Fetterman has repeatedly broken with his own party on key votes, reflecting the kind of ideological restlessness that shows up in registration data at the grassroots level.
The phenomenon cuts both ways inside the GOP as well. Party unity has been tested on Capitol Hill, where four Republican senators recently sided with Democrats to block the SAVE America Act from a budget package, a reminder that registration numbers and legislative discipline do not always move in lockstep.
Still, the West Virginia numbers carry a weight that congressional maneuvering does not. These are not politicians calculating their next vote. These are ordinary citizens walking into a county clerk's office and changing the letter next to their name. That is a personal decision, and tens of thousands of West Virginians made the same one.
The Democratic Party's challenge in Appalachia is not new, but the scale of the registration losses should alarm anyone at the DNC paying attention. A party that cannot hold its registered base in a state it once dominated has a problem that no amount of messaging about "frustration with politics as usual" can paper over.
Meanwhile, the closed-primary structure has drawn its own debate. Critics argue it locks out independent voters. Supporters say it ensures that each party's nominees are chosen by actual party members, not strategic crossover voters. In West Virginia, the practical effect is clear: if you want a voice in the races that decide who governs, you register Republican. Voters have done the math.
Leadership fights and policy reversals in Congress, like Speaker Johnson's reversal on a Senate DHS plan, may grab national headlines. But the slow, steady movement of voter registrations in states like West Virginia tells a deeper story about where the country's political center of gravity is shifting.
The Democratic establishment continues to invest in national messaging and coastal battlegrounds. In Appalachia, the voters are not waiting around for a better pitch. They are leaving.
Even in districts where Democratic incumbents still hold local offices, the registration erosion threatens the bench. Fewer registered Democrats means fewer primary voters, weaker fundraising pools, and thinner candidate pipelines. The downstream effects of a 16,000-voter exodus do not show up only on Election Day, they hollow out the party infrastructure that makes future campaigns possible.
National Democrats have also faced internal friction over endorsements and candidate recruitment, as seen in races like Nancy Pelosi's decision to back Harry Dunn's second congressional run in Maryland. The party's energy and resources flow toward blue-state contests, leaving red-state Democrats further isolated.
West Virginia's May 12 primary will be the first real test of what these registration changes mean at the ballot box. With early voting starting April 29, the clock is ticking.
When 68,000 voters change their party registration in a single state and the movement overwhelmingly favors one side, you are not looking at a statistical blip. You are looking at a verdict, delivered not by pundits or pollsters, but by the people who actually live there.
Drops of blood on the front porch of Nancy Guthrie's Tucson home tell a grim story, and a retired FBI profiler says the pattern points to a single abductor who struck the 84-year-old woman in the face, knocked her to the ground, and then carried her to a waiting vehicle. The assessment, delivered by former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jim Clemente, adds a new forensic layer to a disappearance that has gripped the nation since Feb. 1.
Guthrie, the mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, had lived for decades in Tucson's Catalina Foothills neighborhood before she vanished under suspicious circumstances. She was last seen on a Saturday night. By early the following morning, her doorbell camera had disconnected, and her pacemaker app showed it had lost contact with her phone.
No suspects have been publicly identified. No arrests connected to the abduction itself have been announced. A combined reward of more than $1.2 million now stands for information that cracks the case, and the FBI has asked anyone with knowledge to call 1-800-CALL-FBI.
Photographs taken Feb. 3 show visible blood drops concentrated near the mat at Nancy Guthrie's front door, thinning along the front walkway, and ending where the walkway meets the driveway edge. Torn flowers were also visible on the porch. Fox News Digital reported that Clemente reviewed the images and walked through what the evidence suggests step by step.
Clemente told Fox News Digital on Monday that the blood concentration near the front door indicates Guthrie resisted at that point, either putting up a fight or refusing to go further.
"If there was no blood spatter pattern inside the house, then outside by the front door or while she was going through the door this is where she put up a fight or refused to go any further. This is where she was assaulted. Most likely struck in the nose or mouth. She fell to her knees or on the ground, aspirated, then coughed up blood, which also dripped around the same spot."
That reading of the scene carries a significant implication: if two people had been controlling Guthrie, Clemente argued, she never would have hit the ground.
"It rules out more than one person because if two people had control of her as they were leaving the house she would never have fallen to the ground. They would have been in control of her body and prevented her from resisting and fighting and falling after she was struck in the face."
Authorities, for their part, have said they have not ruled out the possibility that multiple people were involved in the suspected kidnapping. That gap between the profiler's assessment and the official posture remains unresolved.
Clemente described the larger droplets near the door as "low-velocity blood spatter that fell directly out of her mouth." The smaller drops, he said, were medium-velocity spatter, created when Guthrie coughed while her face was inches from the ground, pointing straight down.
The pattern shifts along the walkway. Clemente noted the lack of directionality, the drops fell straight down, without the elongated "tails" that would appear if she had been dragged or moved quickly. That led him to a striking conclusion: Guthrie was carried, face up, from the porch to a vehicle.
"The lack of directionality of the blood splatter says that those drops fell straight down, and she wasn't moving fast. So there is a contradiction in the evidence. I believe this was caused by the fact that she was carried from that first location to the car with her face up so only a minimum amount of blood was deposited on the walkway."
The process, Clemente added, was not rushed. Had the abductor moved quickly, the blood would have shown directional tails consistent with rapid movement. Instead, the pattern suggests a deliberate pace, an abductor who took time to manage the situation.
Investigators have also been probing a mystery incident at Guthrie's home in the weeks before her disappearance, raising questions about whether the abduction was preceded by surveillance or prior contact.
Clemente's analysis aligns with earlier remarks from Dr. Michael Baden, the famed forensic pathologist who reviewed the same evidence. Baden told Fox News Digital in February that the blood spots had distinctive characteristics, pale centers and donut shapes, typical of drops mixed with air from the nose or mouth.
"The nature of the blood spots with little pale centers or donut shapes are typical for drops that come from the nose or mouth, because they're mixed with air. These are not innocent droplets. From the shape, number of droplets and the place of the droplets outside the house on the porch, they are entirely consistent and indicative of occurring during an abduction."
DNA testing later confirmed what the experts suspected. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told reporters at a press conference that the blood on the porch belonged to Nancy Guthrie. "The blood on the porch, that was one we did, it came back to Nancy. That's what we know," Nanos said. Other forensic items from the home were submitted for expedited FBI analysis, with results still pending at the time of that briefing.
The sheriff also confirmed that the FBI had committed significant resources. "The FBI has committed a very large number of men and women to work side by side with us," Nanos said. The case was escalated to a criminal investigation shortly after Guthrie's disappearance, and the FBI announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to her recovery or the arrest of those responsible.
One of the most disturbing details in the case involves the doorbell camera at Guthrie's front door. National Review reported that the FBI released recovered Nest doorbell-camera images and video showing a masked individual wearing a backpack and what appeared to be a gun holster attempting to cover or disable the camera. Guthrie had been dropped off at her home around 9:50 p.m. on January 31. The doorbell camera disconnected at 1:47 a.m. on February 1. By 2:28 a.m., her pacemaker app showed it had lost its connection to her phone.
That timeline, roughly four hours from arrival home to electronic silence, suggests the abductor waited, watched, and acted in the early morning hours when an 84-year-old woman living alone would have been most vulnerable.
Forensic experts have continued to weigh the DNA evidence and blood trail clues as the investigation stretches on, with questions still outstanding about what additional lab results may reveal.
The case has also drawn the attention of opportunists. Investigators confirmed that at least one ransom note was a hoax, and that deception led to an arrest. A separate ransom note sent to media outlets remains under investigation. FBI Special Agent Heith Janke noted a chilling reality: "We talked about there has been no proof of life."
Despite that, Sheriff Nanos maintained a posture of cautious hope. "Right now, we believe Nancy is still out there. We want her home," he said. Savannah Guthrie herself made a public plea, addressing whoever may have taken her mother: "We need to know without a doubt that she is alive and that you have her. We want to hear from you and we are ready to listen."
Newsmax reported that authorities believe Guthrie was taken from her home against her will, though no suspects have been identified.
Clemente's analysis is the assessment of a retired profiler reviewing photographs, not an official investigative conclusion. Authorities have not publicly confirmed or denied whether the evidence points to one abductor or several. The back door of Guthrie's home was found propped open, a detail that raises its own set of questions about how the intruder entered and exited.
Meanwhile, the handling of the case has drawn scrutiny of its own. Reports have surfaced that the Pima County sheriff sent key evidence to a private Florida lab even after the FBI had requested it be sent to Quantico, a decision that raises questions about coordination between local and federal investigators at a moment when every hour matters.
No motive has been publicly stated. No official statement has confirmed the precise identity of the masked figure on the doorbell camera. And the central question, where is Nancy Guthrie?, remains unanswered.
Separate reporting has also revealed that the Pima County Sheriff's Department courted a television crew in the months before Guthrie vanished, adding another uncomfortable dimension to the public's evaluation of the department's priorities.
An 84-year-old woman was taken from her own front porch in the middle of the night. The blood she left behind may be the clearest witness to what happened. The people responsible for finding her owe the public, and her family, answers that match the evidence.
A pair of judges nominated by Democratic presidents struck down President Donald Trump's border restrictions on asylum seekers in a split ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, setting up a high-stakes appeal to the Supreme Court over the reach of executive power on immigration.
The 2, 1 decision found that Congress never granted the president the broad removal authority the administration claimed. Judge J. Michelle Childs, a Joe Biden nominee, wrote the majority opinion. Judge Nina Pillard, an Obama appointee, joined her. Trump-nominated Judge Justin Walker dissented, arguing the executive branch possesses the discretion to deny asylum categorically and that the lower court lacked jurisdiction to issue its injunction in the first place.
The ruling targets restrictions Trump imposed in January 2025, part of a first-day push to regain control of a border that, under the Obama and Biden administrations, became a revolving door for millions of migrants who entered the asylum pipeline and, in many cases, never left.
The majority opinion, as Breitbart reported, concluded that the text, structure, and history of federal immigration law point in one direction:
"We conclude that the [immigration law's] text, structure, and history make clear... Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts."
Judge Walker saw it differently. His dissent laid out three specific objections, each one a direct challenge to the legal reasoning the majority relied on. Walker wrote:
"In sum, although I agree with the majority on several fronts, I disagree on three: First, the district court improperly issued relief to innumerable [migrant] individuals without standing. Second, the [President] Executive possesses discretion to categorically and ex ante deny asylum, and once he has done so, he need not accept frivolous and futile asylum applications. Third, [Congress' law] § 1252(f)(1) stripped the district court of authority to issue the injunction in this case."
Walker's standing argument matters. If the lower court granted relief to migrants who lacked standing to sue, the entire foundation of the injunction is suspect, a point the Supreme Court may find worth examining.
This ruling did not land in isolation. It fits a broader pattern in which Democrat-appointed judges have moved to dismantle Trump's border policies piece by piece since his 2024 election victory. The D.C. Circuit's split decision is only the latest example.
The Washington Examiner reported that a federal appeals panel separately allowed a lower-court ruling to take effect blocking Trump's day-one asylum proclamation at the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss ruled that Trump exceeded his authority and that the Immigration and Nationality Act provides the exclusive legal process for removing migrants already in the country.
Moss wrote that "nothing in the INA or the Constitution grants the President... the sweeping authority asserted in the Proclamation and implementing guidance." He added: "An appeal to necessity cannot fill that void." The Examiner noted this is part of a string of legal setbacks for Trump's immigration agenda, including another judge blocking expanded expedited removal policies.
The judiciary's posture toward Trump's border enforcement stands in sharp contrast to its relative silence during the years when the Obama and Biden administrations stretched executive discretion in the opposite direction, using it to wave migrants through rather than turn them away. Courts rarely intervened when Biden's "catch and release" policies funneled millions of migrants into American communities and workplaces.
Separate legal battles over Trump's birthright citizenship executive order underscore how aggressively judges have moved to constrain this administration's immigration authority on multiple fronts simultaneously.
Open-borders advocates at the ACLU and within the Democratic Party applauded the ruling. An ACLU lawyer who argued the case told The Washington Post:
"The court's opinion does not mean there are now open borders, but only that the United States will no longer be one of the few countries in the world [that] does not provide a hearing for those fleeing persecution."
That framing omits a great deal. The asylum system the ACLU wants to preserve has become, in practice, a backdoor immigration channel. Millions of illegal migrants remain in the asylum process. Federal law caps legal immigration at roughly one million per year, yet the asylum pipeline has allowed millions more to enter American workplaces while their claims stall for years.
The human cost has been staggering. Thousands of migrants have died on the journey north, lured by the promise of a system that rewards illegal entry with a work permit and a years-long wait. More than 1,000 Americans have been killed as a consequence of the border crisis, according to the same reporting.
When the ACLU's legal director, David Cole, is married to one of the two judges who ruled against the administration, Judge Nina Pillard, the public has a right to ask hard questions about the appearance of impartiality. That connection alone does not prove bias. But it is the kind of entanglement that, in any other context, would prompt calls for recusal.
Questions about judicial conduct in Trump-related cases have surfaced elsewhere, too. A misconduct complaint targeting Judge Boasberg over alleged coordination with the Biden DOJ illustrates the broader unease about how certain jurists handle politically charged matters involving this president.
The administration will appeal to the Supreme Court. The central question is whether the president has the authority to categorically restrict asylum at the border, or whether courts can force the executive branch to accept and process every claim, no matter the circumstances at the border or the credibility of the application.
It remains unclear whether Trump's January 2025 restrictions will stay in effect during the months before the Supreme Court takes up the case. That gap matters. If the restrictions are lifted in the interim, the same magnet that drew millions of migrants under Obama and Biden could switch back on.
The Supreme Court's posture on other Trump immigration orders has been mixed, and there is no guarantee the justices will side with the administration. But the Walker dissent gives the government a clear roadmap: standing, executive discretion, and statutory jurisdiction are all live issues that a majority of the high court could find persuasive.
Democrats and their allies in the judiciary have grown more aggressive since Trump's 2024 victory, and the pattern is hard to miss. Judges appointed by Democratic presidents are not merely interpreting the law, they are functioning as a policy veto, blocking enforcement measures that a newly elected president campaigned on and that voters endorsed at the ballot box.
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have pushed back. Calls to impeach judges who overstep their authority reflect a growing frustration on the right with a judiciary that appears to reserve its skepticism of executive power for Republican administrations only.
Strip away the legal jargon, and the fight is simple. One side wants every person who crosses the border illegally to receive a full asylum hearing, a process that takes years and, in the meantime, grants access to American jobs and communities. The other side says the president can set the terms at the border and deny entry to those who do not qualify.
The federal immigration cap exists for a reason. The asylum system was designed for genuine refugees, not as a mass-entry program for economic migrants coached to say the right words at the border. When courts strip the executive of the tools to enforce that distinction, they are not protecting the rule of law. They are hollowing it out.
Voters chose Trump in 2024 in no small part because they wanted the border secured. Two judges appointed by the presidents who created the crisis now say he cannot do it. The Supreme Court will have the final word, and millions of Americans are watching to see whether the law still means what it says.
The Justice Department charged the Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday with an 11-count federal indictment, accusing the storied civil-rights nonprofit of secretly funneling more than $3 million to individuals tied to the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the National Socialist Party of America, then lying to donors about where the money went.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the charges, calling the Montgomery, Alabama-based organization a fraud factory that propped up the very hate it claimed to fight. The SPLC denied wrongdoing. And former MSNBC host Joy Reid rushed to defend the group, calling the prosecution "absolutely insane."
The case marks a rare federal prosecution of a major nonprofit on fraud grounds. It also exposes a question the SPLC's defenders would rather not answer: if the organization was paying people inside white-supremacist groups for nearly a decade, did it tell donors that's where the money was going?
Court filings described by the Daily Mail state that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC routed payments through accounts set up under fictitious names. At least nine informants were allegedly compensated. Prosecutors say those informants were embedded inside extremist organizations, including the Klan.
The core fraud charge is straightforward: the SPLC told donors their contributions would be used to combat hate groups. Instead, the government says, some of that money went directly to people inside those groups, and the nonprofit concealed the arrangement.
Blanche framed the case in blunt terms.
"The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose."
Phil Hackney, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, told reporters the legal theory behind the prosecution is unusual. "That's a new way of going after a charity, I'm somewhat surprised," Hackney said. The novelty of the approach will likely shape the courtroom fight ahead, with defense attorney Abbe Lowell expected to challenge the prosecution's framing as the case unfolds.
Bryan Fair, the SPLC's chief executive, rejected the charges outright. He said the payments were part of intelligence-gathering efforts to monitor threats and prevent violence, work he claimed "saved lives."
"We are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC."
Fair's argument amounts to this: the SPLC ran confidential informants inside dangerous organizations, shared information with law enforcement, and did so to protect the public. That framing may carry weight in a courtroom. But the indictment's central allegation isn't about whether informants are useful. It's about whether the SPLC told the truth to the people writing the checks.
Fictitious-name accounts and nine years of covert payments suggest a level of concealment that goes well beyond routine nonprofit operations. If donors believed their money was funding legal advocacy and public education, and it was instead paying operatives inside the Klan, that gap is the government's case.
Joy Reid, now hosting "The Joy Reid Show" after her departure from MSNBC, wasted no time casting the indictment as political retaliation. Reid, no stranger to inflammatory public commentary, framed the prosecution as an effort to silence groups that track right-wing extremism.
"This is absolutely insane. What they're trying to do is criminalize the very work of identifying extremism."
Reid went further, arguing the SPLC's work was nonpartisan threat monitoring. She cited former FBI Director Christopher Wray's prior assessment that "racially motivated violent extremists over recent years have been responsible for the most lethal activity in the US."
But Reid's own words undercut the nonpartisan framing she tried to build. On her show, she said the SPLC had "really p****d off the right by focusing on exactly the kinds of extremism that the groups affiliated with them and therefore with Republicans engage in." She added: "They need those far right wingers in their voting base and they don't want to alienate them and they're p****d off when they get called out."
That's not the language of someone defending impartial threat assessment. It's the language of someone who sees the SPLC as a political ally and its prosecution as an attack on her side. The tell is in the pivot: Reid moved from "the SPLC monitors danger" to "Republicans are angry because the SPLC targets their voters" in the span of a few sentences.
The indictment did not arrive in a vacuum. FBI Director Kash Patel had already moved to sever the bureau's relationship with the SPLC months before the charges dropped. Patel called the organization a "partisan smear machine" and later described its operations as "a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors."
That break came roughly a month after the September 2025 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a college campus in Utah. The killing intensified a debate that had been simmering for years over the SPLC's practice of placing organizations on its "hate map", a designation the SPLC had applied to Kirk's Turning Point USA.
The DOJ's willingness to bring charges against a left-leaning institution follows a broader pattern of federal enforcement actions that have drawn sharp political reaction. Critics on the left see selective prosecution. Supporters of the charges see long-overdue accountability for an organization that has operated with minimal scrutiny for decades.
The SPLC was founded in 1971 and built its reputation tracking the Klan and litigating against white-supremacist organizations. For years, it enjoyed bipartisan credibility. But its more recent expansion into labeling mainstream conservative groups as "hate organizations" eroded that standing on the right and raised questions about whether the group had drifted from civil-rights watchdog into partisan advocacy outfit.
The indictment now forces a different set of questions. Were donors told the truth about how their money was spent? Were fictitious-name accounts a legitimate operational tool or a mechanism for concealment? And did the SPLC's informant payments actually reduce extremism, or, as Blanche alleges, help sustain it?
Those are questions for a jury, not for cable-news commentary. But the political class has already chosen sides. Reid and the SPLC's allies are framing the case as government overreach. The DOJ is framing it as a straightforward fraud prosecution. The tension between federal enforcement and its critics is now a recurring feature of American public life.
The indictment leaves several gaps. The specific statutes underlying the 11 counts have not been detailed in public reporting. The identities of the individuals who allegedly received payments remain undisclosed. And the exact donor representations the government considers fraudulent have not been spelled out in available filings.
Abbe Lowell, the high-profile defense attorney representing the SPLC, has not yet laid out a detailed legal strategy. His involvement signals the organization intends to fight aggressively. The case could take years to resolve, and its outcome may reshape how federal prosecutors approach nonprofit accountability across the political spectrum.
The broader pattern of federal grand jury scrutiny touching political figures and institutions on the left has generated fierce debate about prosecutorial motives. That debate will only intensify as the SPLC case moves forward.
Meanwhile, accountability questions continue to mount for public figures and institutions that have long enjoyed favorable treatment. From ethics findings against sitting lawmakers to fraud allegations against legacy nonprofits, the common thread is the same: organizations and individuals who demanded trust from the public are now being asked to earn it.
Joy Reid can call the indictment insane. The SPLC can call it outrageous. But $3 million routed through fictitious accounts over nine years is the kind of fact that tends to speak for itself, no matter who's doing the shouting.
Carolina Flores Gomez, a 27-year-old former beauty queen and new mother, was fatally shot 12 times inside her Mexico City apartment on April 15, and prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for her 63-year-old mother-in-law, Erika Herrera, who remains at large.
Footage first reported by the Mexican newspaper Reforma appears to show Herrera walking slowly behind Flores Gomez through the apartment's living room, both hands in her pockets, before following the younger woman into a room deeper inside the home. Seconds later, bangs and screaming were heard on the recording. Flores Gomez was struck in the face, neck, and head.
The killing took place in the upscale Polanco neighborhood, the New York Post reported, inside a home where baby items, a playpen, stroller, and toys, were visible in the video. The couple's eight-month-old child was present when the shooting occurred.
Just seconds after his wife was killed, Flores Gomez's husband, Alejandro Gomez, walked into the camera's frame carrying their infant. He confronted his mother on the footage.
Alejandro is heard saying:
"What was that? What crazy thing did you do?"
And then:
"What's wrong with you, she's my family."
Herrera's alleged response, captured on the same recording, was blunt. She reportedly told her son, "Nothing. She made me angry." In a separate remark, she said, "You're mine and she stole you", words that investigators and Mexican media have interpreted as pointing to jealousy as a motive.
The family did not report the fatal shooting until the following day. Carolina's mother, Reyna Gomez Molina, told Univision News that the killing went unreported overnight. Police in Mexico City opened an investigation and questioned why the crime was not reported sooner, Fox News reported. Prosecutors are treating the case as a homicide and examining possible involvement by both Herrera and Alejandro.
That delay raises hard questions. A young mother lay dead in her apartment for hours before anyone contacted authorities. Whether fear, complicity, or confusion drove that silence, the gap in the timeline has drawn scrutiny from investigators.
Flores Gomez was crowned Miss Teen Universe for Baja California in 2017, when she was 18. She later left the state and moved to the capital, building a following as an influencer and content creator. Friends described her as warm and generous.
Her friend Alexa Villalobos posted an emotional tribute on social media:
"Carolina was beautiful inside and out; loving, charismatic, and helpful. It seems impossible to believe that someone with so much grace could leave in this way; the snatching away of a life full of dreams and love is something unforgivable."
Villalobos added: "I want justice for Caro, for her family, her mother, her little sister, and her baby, who were her greatest happiness."
Flores Gomez's former school, El Tesoro del Saber, issued a statement of condolence, remembering her as "that beautiful little girl, full of love and tenderness." The school said it joined "in the grief of her family and loved ones."
Cases like this one, where violence erupts inside the home, sometimes with warning signs visible only in hindsight, leave families and communities searching for answers that rarely come fast enough.
Reforma reported that the office of the Attorney General of Mexico City issued an arrest warrant for Erika Herrera. Her whereabouts remain unknown. Police identified her as the prime suspect, but no arrest has been announced.
Whether charges beyond the reported warrant have been filed is unclear. Whether authorities have authenticated the footage through independent forensic review is also not publicly known. The investigation remains open.
Reyna Gomez Molina, Carolina's mother, organized a protest march in her daughter's memory over the weekend. She wrote on social media:
"Let's raise our voices for my daughter so that her name is not just another statistic."
That plea carries weight in a country where femicide, the killing of women, often by partners or family members, remains a persistent crisis. Mexico City prosecutors handle thousands of violent cases each year, and families routinely complain that investigations stall or go cold.
The tragedy of a young mother killed in front of her infant echoes other recent cases where family violence claimed lives that should have been protected. The pattern is grimly familiar: a victim inside her own home, a suspect who is a relative, and a system left scrambling to respond after the fact.
Several questions hang over the case. The exact address and neighborhood details beyond "Polanco" have not been publicly confirmed by prosecutors. The precise time the shooting was reported to police the following day has not been disclosed. And the most pressing question, where Erika Herrera is right now, has no answer.
Alejandro Gomez's own role in the timeline is under examination. Local reports say he accused his own mother of the killing, but prosecutors are reviewing his actions as well, including why the shooting went unreported overnight. Whether he is considered a witness, a cooperating party, or something else has not been clarified publicly.
The footage, if authenticated, would represent damning evidence. It reportedly shows Herrera trailing her daughter-in-law through the apartment moments before the fatal shots, and it captures her own words afterward, words that, on their face, suggest motive and admission. But courts, not cameras, render verdicts. And the suspect first has to be found.
In a broader sense, shootings rooted in family conflict continue to test whether justice systems can move fast enough to hold perpetrators accountable before public outrage fades and the next headline takes over.
An eight-month-old baby lost a mother on April 15. A 63-year-old woman allegedly walked behind her daughter-in-law, fired 12 rounds, and told her own son the victim "made me angry." That woman is still free. The Mexican justice system now has a warrant, a grieving family, and a country watching to see whether another shooting death produces accountability, or just another statistic.
Carolina Flores Gomez's mother asked that her daughter not become a number. The least any justice system owes a murdered young mother is an arrest.
A New Yorker staff writer who owns a $2.5 million Brooklyn brownstone went on a New York Times opinion podcast and casually described the "several" times she stole lemons from Whole Foods, then told listeners she "didn't feel bad about it at all." The people who actually struggle to pay grocery bills in New York City had a very different reaction.
Jia Tolentino's remarks, delivered on what the New York Post reported was a Wednesday podcast episode praising "microlooting" as a form of anti-capitalist protest, drew swift condemnation from low-income New Yorkers, a billionaire supermarket chain owner, and online commenters who called the concept self-serving nonsense dressed up as social justice.
The gap between the people romanticizing petty theft and the people who pay the price for it could not be wider. And the reactions tell you everything about who really gets hurt when elites treat shoplifting as a lifestyle brand.
On the podcast, Tolentino described a routine. She said she had been shopping at Whole Foods for someone else, finished loading up, and then realized she'd forgotten lemons.
Tolentino told listeners:
"I was like, OK, great. And so I'd be getting [her] all of her groceries, and then I would finish, and I'd be like, oh my God, four lemons, I forgot four lemons. And on several occasions I was like, I'm just going to go back, grab those four lemons and get the h*** out."
She added that she felt no remorse. "I didn't feel bad about it at all," she said, framing the theft as no big deal because Whole Foods is "a corporation."
She even sought validation from her fellow guests:
"And it certainly felt, in a utilitarian sense, I was like, this is not a big deal. Right, guys?"
This is a writer employed by The New Yorker, published by Condé Nast, living in a Clinton Hill brownstone valued at $2.5 million. The lemons she swiped probably cost less than the tip on her last dinner out. But the podcast treated the act as something between charming and righteous.
Tolentino was not the only guest to endorse the idea. Nadja Spiegelman, identified as an opinion culture editor, described what she characterized as a social-media trend of people stealing from Whole Foods out of ideological conviction.
Spiegelman told listeners:
"What I'm seeing on TikTok and social media is people saying that they're stealing from Whole Foods not just for the thrill of it, but out of a feeling of anger and moral justification. Because the rich don't play by the rules, so why should I? And Jeff Bezos has too much money, he's a billionaire, so why should I have to pay for organic avocados?"
Lefty political commenter Hasan Piker went further, declaring himself "pro stealing from big corporations" and arguing that companies factor the losses into their bottom line anyway.
Piker said on the podcast:
"I'm pro stealing from big corporations, because they steal quite a bit more from their own workers... one thing that might even help your ethical dilemma is the fact that the automated process that they design, these companies know will increase shrink, right?"
He added: "So it's actually factored in. The lemons that you stole are factored into the bottom line of these mega-corporations regardless."
That argument, corporations expect theft, so theft is fine, is the kind of reasoning that sounds clever in a podcast studio and falls apart the moment you walk into a store where the toothpaste is locked behind plexiglass. The people who live with the consequences of rising "shrink" numbers are not billionaires. They are cashiers, stockers, and shoppers on tight budgets.
The Post spoke to residents of Gompers Houses, a public housing project, and the responses were blistering. Andrea Jones, a 49-year-old who lives there, did not mince words when told about Tolentino's confession.
"She is rich... and I am not. We don't live on the same planet at all."
Jones pointed directly at the downstream cost. "Because of her, they'll raise the price and I have to pay more. She is hurting me, she is not helping me," she said. She also raised the racial double standard: "Me being black, [I'd be] arrested, for sure. As soon as I walk in, they'd be watching me. They are not watching her."
That observation cuts to the heart of the fraud embedded in "microlooting" as ideology. The people who coined the term and celebrate it on podcasts are wealthy, connected, and unlikely ever to face consequences. The people who bear the fallout, higher prices, locked shelves, increased worker scrutiny, are the ones these same commentators claim to champion. It is a pattern familiar to anyone who watches how often the powerful demand that ordinary people absorb the costs of their virtue.
Mr. Carter, a 65-year-old resident of the same housing project who lives on a fixed income, was equally direct.
"What she's saying doesn't make sense. [Whole Foods owner] Mr. [Jeff] Bezos will just increase the prices."
"She is not doing us a favor," Carter added. "She is in a movement of her own, to justify what she's doing."
Jenny Garcia, a 35-year-old low-income single mother of three, offered perhaps the sharpest summary. "This is not how you help us," she said. "Some of these rich people don't know how to stretch a dollar and they don't have to."
Garcia added: "They have never walked in poor people's shoes."
John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes and D'Agostino supermarket chains, did not treat the podcast as a harmless cultural moment. He called it "the beginning of the ruination of our country."
Catsimatidis said he thought Tolentino's employer should act: "I would look to the publisher to do something about it." He also raised the question of prosecution, saying, "We should talk to the US attorney about that because if New York City and New York state don't prosecute things like that, it's a free-for-all."
That is not an idle concern. When cultural tastemakers, writers at elite magazines, commentators with large followings, publicly celebrate theft and face no consequences, the message to everyone watching is clear: the rules are optional. And when local prosecutors decline to enforce shoplifting laws, the message gets louder. The result is the retail environment New Yorkers already know too well: stores closing, shelves emptying, and everyday goods locked behind barriers that punish honest customers.
The broader pattern of public figures preaching one set of values while living by another is nothing new. But the "microlooting" episode is unusually brazen because the hypocrisy is the entire content. There is no policy proposal. No charitable effort. Just a wealthy person describing a crime on a major media platform and asking listeners to affirm that it was fine.
The backlash extended beyond the streets of New York. On a Reddit thread about the podcast, one commenter wrote: "That's not what a protest is. If you're gonna be a shoplifter, at least don't lie to yourself about what you're doing."
Another Reddit user spelled out the real-world impact: "You're not hurting the corporations. The consequences are felt by the workers who get grilled about their location's shrinkage numbers and the rest of us that now have to push a button and wait for someone to come unlock the toothpaste cabinet."
That second point deserves emphasis. "Shrink", the industry term for inventory loss, does not come out of a CEO's bonus. It comes out of store budgets, staffing levels, and shelf prices. The worker who has to explain why product keeps disappearing is not Jeff Bezos. It is someone making an hourly wage. The notion that theft from large entities is somehow victimless collapses the moment you look at who actually absorbs the loss.
The Post reported that it sought comment on Thursday from The New Yorker, Condé Nast, the New York Times, and Whole Foods. None responded.
That silence is telling. A staff writer at one of the country's most prestigious magazines publicly described committing theft, repeatedly, on a podcast produced by the nation's most prominent newspaper. Neither publication apparently felt the need to address it. No statement. No clarification. No distancing.
Whether any law enforcement agency was contacted or involved remains unclear from available reporting. No charges, arrests, or official government actions have been reported. The question of whether institutions will hold their own accountable or simply hope the story fades is one worth watching.
The "microlooting" episode is a small story about lemons and a large story about the disconnect between America's cultural elite and the people they claim to speak for. Jia Tolentino lives in a $2.5 million brownstone. Andrea Jones lives in public housing. Tolentino stole from Whole Foods and felt nothing. Jones knows that if she tried the same thing, she'd be watched, stopped, and likely arrested.
Jenny Garcia, stretching every dollar to feed three kids, put it plainly: "This is not how you help us." Mr. Carter, on a fixed income at 65, saw through the ideological packaging: "She is in a movement of her own, to justify what she's doing."
Hasan Piker says corporations "steal quite a bit more from their own workers." Even if that were true in some abstract policy sense, the answer is not to steal from a grocery store and call it justice. That is not redistribution. It is self-service with a slogan. The consequences, higher prices, locked products, a culture where rules become optional for the privileged, fall on the people least able to afford them.
When the people in public housing can see what the people in brownstones cannot, the problem is not a lack of education. It is a surplus of ideology, and a deficit of honesty.
Former President George W. Bush sat down with Today to talk about an unlikely friendship, and a small gesture at a funeral that captured the country's attention. In a wide-ranging conversation, Bush described his bond with former First Lady Michelle Obama and revisited the now-famous moment in September 2018 when he slipped her an Altoid at Senator John McCain's memorial service.
The exchange was brief. The reaction was not. Cameras caught Bush subtly placing the mint into Obama's hand, and the clip spread across the internet within hours. Bush, by his own telling, had no idea.
As The Independent reported, Bush told Today he offered the mint without any grand motive:
"I was kinda teasing her and stuff, and I slipped her an Altoid. Not as a joke, but I thought she might want one."
He added that he tends to get fidgety at long ceremonies. "I get a little antsy, as I'm sure you know," he said. "And I was sitting next to Michelle, that's who I sit next to at funerals."
The line landed with a kind of plainspoken charm that Bush has leaned into more freely since leaving office. He said that when he got in the car after the service, someone told him, "You're trending." His response: "I didn't know what trending meant."
The Altoids moment was not the first time the two drew public attention. Bush and Michelle Obama made headlines in 2016 when they embraced at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The warmth between the Republican former president and the Democratic former First Lady stood out precisely because it cut against the grain of partisan hostility.
Then came the McCain funeral. And three months later, at the December 2018 funeral of Bush's own father, former President George H.W. Bush, cameras caught him offering another mint to Michelle Obama. The pattern was set. Whatever the occasion, the two seemed comfortable in each other's company.
Michelle Obama, for her part, has made no secret of her fondness for Bush. That same year, she described him as her "partner-in-crime" during an interview with Today. A year later, she returned to the show and went further.
"We disagree on policy, but we don't disagree on humanity. We don't disagree about love and compassion. I think that's true for all of us. It's just that we get lost in our fear of what's different."
She also said the pair's "values are the same." That is a generous claim between a center-right Republican and a center-left Democrat, and Bush seemed to agree with the spirit of it. He framed their friendship as a sign of something the country is hungry for.
Bush did not shy away from drawing a broader lesson. He told Today that the public fascination with his friendship with Michelle Obama reflects a deeper appetite:
"It turns out the country is starved to see a White, center-right Republican and an African-American center-left Democrat having fun, and being able to converse, not as political figures, but as citizens."
That is a reasonable observation, and it carries more weight coming from a man who spent eight years in the political arena and took his share of fire from both sides. Bush has largely avoided the partisan trench warfare of the post-presidency years, and moments like the Altoids clip are part of why.
Whether the public's appetite for cross-party decency translates into anything beyond viral clips is another question. Washington has not exactly taken the hint. But Bush, at least, seems content to model the behavior rather than lecture about it.
The former First Lady's public visibility has itself become a subject of speculation in recent months, with observers tracking her appearances and absences alike. Her willingness to speak warmly about Bush has been one of the more consistent notes in her post, White House media presence.
Bush's daughter, Jenna Bush Hager, who conducted the Today interview, shared a detail that suggests the joke has staying power. After the interview, she said her father told her he planned to bring a "crate of Altoids" to the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in the summer.
That event would bring the two families together again in a public setting, and if Bush follows through, the moment will almost certainly generate another round of attention. The broader Obama orbit has remained active in public life, and the Presidential Center opening is expected to draw significant political and media interest.
Bush Hager has also been interviewing other former presidents, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden, for a program tied to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. During that segment, each of the former leaders shared thoughts on democracy.
Bush used the platform to strike an optimistic note, urging Americans to take the long view:
"I would hope people would take a look at our history and realize we're an imperfect nation trying to be more perfect, but be optimistic about the future of the country."
There is something worth noting about why a former president handing a mint to a former First Lady became one of the most-shared clips of 2018. It was not the gesture itself. It was the contrast. In a political culture defined by performative outrage and tribal loyalty tests, a small act of personal kindness across party lines registered as extraordinary.
That says less about Bush and Obama than it does about the state of American public life. When basic courtesy between political opponents becomes a viral sensation, the bar has been set remarkably low.
Michelle Obama has continued to make headlines with her own public commentary, including remarks on social policy that place her firmly within the progressive camp. Bush, meanwhile, has largely stayed above the fray, painting portraits and making occasional appearances that remind voters he exists outside the daily news cycle.
Their friendship is genuine enough. But it is also easy, precisely because neither of them holds power anymore. The harder test of civility comes when the stakes are real, the votes are on the line, and the cameras are rolling not at a funeral but on the Senate floor.
Bush deserves credit for modeling grace under no particular pressure. Whether the political class that followed him can manage the same when it actually counts is the question that a crate of Altoids will not answer.