The Justice Department ended its first-ever Second Amendment lawsuit after the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department cleared a massive concealed carry permit backlog, one that left nearly 4,000 applicants waiting months or years for a constitutional right.
The settlement, announced Thursday, caps a federal enforcement action that began in March 2025 when the DOJ's Civil Rights Division opened a pattern-or-practice investigation into the nation's largest sheriff's department. The probe found that LASD had received 3,982 applications for new concealed carry licenses between January 2024 and March 2025, and approved exactly two of them. The rest sat in bureaucratic limbo, with roughly 2,768 still pending and another 1,210 withdrawn by applicants who apparently gave up waiting.
Those numbers alone tell the story of a permitting system that functioned less like a licensing office and more like a wall. Applicants waited an average of 281 days before LASD even took action on their paperwork. The median delay stretched to 372 days. Some residents waited as long as 1,030 days, nearly three years, for a decision on a permit that California law says should take 90 days to approve or deny.
The DOJ filed its federal lawsuit against LASD and Sheriff Robert Luna on September 30, 2025, calling it the department's "first-ever affirmative lawsuit brought in support of gun owners' Second Amendment rights." The complaint alleged that the sheriff's department had engaged in a pattern or practice of depriving applicants of their constitutional right to bear arms through deliberate processing delays.
The investigation, which Just The News reported began on March 27 after numerous complaints from applicants, involved a review of more than 8,000 concealed carry applications. The data painted a picture of a department that was either unwilling or unable to process the permits its own state law required it to handle.
California's strict firearms regulations make carrying a gun without a permit a serious criminal offense. That legal reality, as Breitbart noted, means that permit delays do not merely inconvenience applicants, they effectively strip law-abiding residents of a right the Constitution guarantees.
When the lawsuit was filed, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi made the administration's position plain. AP News reported her statement at the time:
"The Second Amendment protects the fundamental constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms. Los Angeles County may not like that right, but the Constitution does not allow them to infringe upon it."
That framing, a liberal jurisdiction using bureaucratic obstruction to nullify a constitutional right it dislikes, sits at the center of the case. Los Angeles County did not pass a law banning concealed carry. It did not need to. It simply stopped processing the applications. The effect was the same.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who heads the Civil Rights Division, said LASD ultimately fixed the problem after the lawsuit forced the issue. In a statement, Dhillon credited the sheriff's department with devoting real resources to clearing the backlog.
"The sheriff acknowledged the problem and devoted substantial additional resources, including new processing software and additional personnel, to cutting waiting times dramatically. We applaud their efforts and are happy to be able to bring this litigation to a successful conclusion!"
Under the settlement terms, LASD agreed to maintain procedures designed to ensure concealed carry applications are processed under objective standards and without lengthy delays. The DOJ described the outcome as a "huge win" for Los Angeles County residents and gun owners. LASD did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
The settlement raises an obvious question: why did it take a federal lawsuit to make the nation's largest sheriff's department comply with a 90-day deadline that already existed under state law? LASD had the statutory obligation long before the DOJ got involved. It simply was not meeting it, and no one in California's state government appears to have forced the issue.
The DOJ's victory in Los Angeles fits within a broader pattern of conservative legal wins on gun rights that have reshaped the Second Amendment landscape in recent years. Courts and federal enforcers have increasingly treated firearms restrictions, particularly those that function through delay, denial, or bureaucratic obstruction, as constitutionally suspect.
The LASD case was not an isolated action. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division established a dedicated Second Amendment Section that has pursued challenges involving firearms laws and permitting practices in several jurisdictions. Dhillon told Fox News Digital that the section will continue accepting complaints from current and prospective gun owners who believe state or local governments have infringed their right to keep or bear arms.
That posture marks a sharp departure from how prior administrations used the Civil Rights Division. For years, the division focused its pattern-or-practice authority almost exclusively on police misconduct cases. Turning that same enforcement tool toward Second Amendment violations represents a fundamental shift in how the federal government defines civil rights enforcement.
Separate from the DOJ's action, private gun rights organizations, including the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners of California, and the Second Amendment Foundation, brought their own litigation challenging California's concealed carry restrictions. That effort produced a preliminary injunction that, among other things, allowed qualifying non-California residents to apply for concealed carry permits. California subsequently changed its law to permit qualifying non-residents to apply, and LASD's current application portal now includes an option for out-of-state applicants.
A recent federal ruling striking down a longstanding suppressor registration requirement further illustrates the momentum gun owners are seeing in the courts. Meanwhile, the Washington Examiner reported that the Supreme Court will hear consolidated cases challenging so-called "assault weapons" bans in Illinois and Connecticut, with oral arguments potentially as early as December 2026.
The legal environment for Second Amendment rights has shifted faster than many state and local officials seem to realize. Jurisdictions that once relied on administrative friction to discourage gun ownership are finding that federal enforcers, and federal courts, now treat those tactics as civil rights violations rather than routine policy choices.
The administration has shown a willingness to use federal legal authority aggressively across multiple fronts, from executive orders on immigration policy to civil rights enforcement on firearms. The LASD settlement fits that pattern: identify a constitutional right being obstructed by a hostile local government, investigate, sue if necessary, and force compliance.
The numbers from the DOJ complaint deserve a second look, because they capture something beyond ordinary government inefficiency. Two approvals out of 3,982 applications is not a backlog. It is a policy outcome, achieved not through legislation, but through inaction.
When a licensing authority approves 0.05 percent of applications over a 15-month period, the system is not slow. It is closed. The 1,210 applicants who withdrew their applications understood that. They paid their fees, submitted their paperwork, and waited, some for nearly three years, before concluding that the permit was never coming.
Those are real people. Residents of one of the largest and most crime-affected counties in America who followed the law, applied through the proper channels, and were effectively told to wait indefinitely for a right the Constitution says they already have. The DOJ's lawsuit gave them leverage they could not generate on their own. The settlement, whatever its limits, forced a result that years of state-level inaction did not.
Not every administration legal effort has ended in victory, but the LASD case demonstrates what happens when the federal government treats the Second Amendment with the same seriousness it applies to every other constitutional guarantee.
The question now is whether other jurisdictions that use bureaucratic delay as a backdoor gun ban will take the hint, or whether they will wait for their own lawsuit to arrive.
A newly released email shows the FDA's top official privately urged Anthony Fauci and NIH chief Francis Collins to fund studies on COVID-19 vaccine adverse events in May 2021, a warning that, five years later, appears to have gone unheeded.
Janet Woodcock, then the acting head of the Food and Drug Administration, sent the email on May 27, 2021, telling Fauci and Collins that healthcare professionals were reporting side effects from the COVID vaccines that the government's existing safety monitoring systems could not detect. She asked the NIH, the country's leading funder of medical science, to step in and pay for dedicated research, even if the pharmaceutical industry refused to support it.
Fauci's response, preserved in a separate note to Collins, was three sentences long. "Janet asks what we think of this? We cannot ignore her. We should probably bring in CDC and see what Rochelle thinks," he wrote, referring to then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Whether Walensky was ever brought in, or whether any study of the kind Woodcock requested was ever launched, remains unclear. Sen. Ron Johnson's office, which released the email, said it could not confirm either happened.
Woodcock's email was blunt about the limits of the federal government's vaccine safety infrastructure. She told Fauci and Collins that the problems being reported were "not the sort that a system like VAERS would be able to detect." VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, is the main federal database where doctors and patients can log suspected vaccine side effects. Woodcock said even the CDC's more advanced population-tracking system and the FDA's own medical-records-based system, called BEST, would fall short.
The symptoms healthcare workers were flagging, she wrote, did not "fit together into a distinctive syndrome" and were "not easily quantifiable or evaluated with standard laboratory testing." That made them hard to study, but not, in Woodcock's view, something the government could afford to ignore.
She was direct about the political dynamics at play. Woodcock, a 37-year FDA veteran who had cultivated a reputation for working closely with the pharmaceutical industry, told Fauci she doubted drugmakers would fund the research themselves. "I doubt the industry would support, for obvious reasons," she wrote.
And she warned that inaction carried its own risk. As Just The News reported, Woodcock wrote that "the peoples' main complaint is that no one takes them seriously, no one knows how to treat them, and there is no effort to study this." She added a line that now reads as prescient:
"But my experience is, that if you let a problem fester, then it will come back to bite you later and you are not prepared."
Fauci, who directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and steered roughly $5.5 billion in annual research funding, was one of the few people in the federal government with the authority and the budget to commission the kind of study Woodcock described. That he apparently responded with a suggestion to loop in another agency, rather than committing resources, raises a straightforward question about priorities.
Woodcock's warning did not arrive in a vacuum. By the time she sent her email, there were already 440,025 worldwide adverse event reports and 8,650 deaths logged in VAERS in connection with COVID-19 vaccines. VAERS data is self-reported and does not prove causation, but the volume alone was enough to concern the FDA's own leader, and she said so in writing.
Fauci did not respond to the Daily Caller's request for comment. Neither did Collins. Woodcock, now on the board of a patient advocacy group called Every Cure, also did not respond. All three received requests through their current affiliations.
The email's release comes as Senate Republicans continue to press for answers about how federal health officials handled safety signals during the mass vaccination campaign. Sen. Rand Paul, who chairs the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, has used his position since Republicans retook the Senate in 2025 to compel testimony and subpoena records from officials involved in the COVID response. Johnson, who chairs the committee's chief investigative subcommittee, has focused on vaccine safety and official communications.
Woodcock's email is not the only document to surface in recent weeks that raises questions about what Fauci knew privately versus what he said publicly. Texts recovered from Fauci's government-issued cellphone, which contained more than 34,000 texts and 522 voicemails, obtained by Johnson's subcommittee on August 5, show he was informed in January 2021 that COVID vaccine safety studies had not been performed on women in their first trimester of pregnancy.
Dr. John Mascola texted Fauci on January 25, 2021, warning that initial vaccine studies had avoided first-trimester vaccination because of possible fever and higher miscarriage rates. Fauci himself texted then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Walensky that "since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester," the New York Post reported.
Nine days later, on February 3, 2021, Fauci told JAMA, one of the country's most widely read medical journals, that the FDA had found "no red flags" for pregnant women receiving the vaccine. The gap between what he said privately and what he said publicly is now part of the Senate investigation's focus.
Fauci has since invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a Senate hearing on July 29. His attorney called further compelled testimony an attempt to "impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes," the Washington Examiner reported.
That decision has only intensified congressional pressure. Sen. Paul has since moved to refer Fauci to the Department of Justice for contempt, and Sen. Ted Cruz has publicly called for criminal prosecution.
Woodcock was not the only federal official whose safety concerns appear to have been sidelined. An April 29, 2026 interim report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Johnson's panel, revealed that Peter Marks, then the director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, brushed off warnings from a safety data expert who flagged that the FDA's own surveillance systems might be missing statistically significant side effects.
Marks's stated reason for dismissing the analysis was that it could "create erroneous conflicts that feed in to anti-vaccination rhetoric." The identity of the safety data expert was not disclosed in the report. Marks, who now serves as senior vice president of molecule discovery at Eli Lilly, did not respond to a request for comment sent through his employer.
The pattern that emerges from these documents is consistent: officials inside the federal health bureaucracy raised concerns about vaccine safety through internal channels, and the institutional response ranged from deflection to active suppression. Woodcock asked for studies. Fauci suggested a meeting. A safety expert flagged data gaps. Marks worried about public relations.
Fauci has declined requests to testify before multiple Senate panels, and his repeated invocations of the Fifth Amendment have left the public record incomplete. The emails and texts now filling that gap tell a story the officials themselves have refused to.
Woodcock warned in plain language that ignoring the problem would make it worse. Five years later, the problem has not gone away, but the people she warned still will not talk about it.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has refused to appear voluntarily before a second Senate panel investigating his COVID-19 pandemic response, weeks after invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times during a contentious hearing.
Fauci's attorney, David Schertler, rejected a request from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director to sit before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Schertler argued that compelling Fauci to testify again would "impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes," the New York Post reported Friday.
The refusal lands on top of an already escalating confrontation between Fauci and Republican lawmakers. On July 29, Fauci appeared under subpoena before Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times, declining to answer questions about his role in the federal government's pandemic response and the origins of COVID-19.
That stonewalling triggered a party-line vote by Paul's committee to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. Paul has since moved to send the contempt referral directly to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., bypassing a full Senate vote, an unusual procedural step that underscores how far Republicans are willing to push.
Johnson, who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is running a parallel probe focused on Fauci's pandemic-era conduct, including questions about vaccine safety and efficacy. His subcommittee has separately obtained records related to Fauci and the government's COVID-19 response, and the Department of Health and Human Services turned over Fauci's pandemic-era cellphone to the panel ahead of the contempt vote.
Johnson made clear that Fauci's refusal to show up will not slow his investigation. The Washington Examiner reported that Johnson issued a pointed response:
"Since Fauci refuses to talk about his role and decisions related to COVID-19, my Subcommittee will continue to obtain his records and request to speak with key individuals that he worked with."
Johnson also took aim at Fauci's shifting posture. The Wisconsin Republican noted that Fauci once publicly boasted he was "very happy to testify before any congressional oversight committee" and declared, "I have nothing to hide."
"He arrogantly once stated that he was very happy to testify before any congressional oversight committee. I have nothing to hide. Apparently, he has a lot to hide."
Whether Johnson's subcommittee will escalate to a formal subpoena remains an open question. Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson's office, Paul's office, and Schertler for comment on the possibility, but the source does not indicate any of them responded.
Paul, who has spent years pressing Fauci on the origins of COVID-19, has accused the former health official of funding research in China that Paul describes as "risky", work the Kentucky senator alleges contributed to a lab leak of the virus. Paul has repeatedly called for Fauci to face prosecution and subpoenaed him earlier this year to appear before his committee.
At the July 29 hearing, Fauci offered a brief statement but refused to engage substantively with lawmakers' questions, pleading the Fifth more than 100 times across roughly three hours of testimony. AP News reported that Fauci told the committee he believed the hearing's sole purpose was to get him to "say something, anything, that could vindicate" Paul's repeated public pledges to see him "behind bars."
Paul framed the hearing differently. He called the session "the capstone to Anthony Fauci's 40 years of abuse of power at NIH."
After the hearing, Paul's committee voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt, a step that set up a direct referral to the Justice Department. Paul told Fox News Digital ahead of the vote that the legal questions surrounding Fauci's Fifth Amendment claims are worth pressing.
"It's a good legal discussion, and we will make those legal points to DOJ in sending the referral over."
At the center of the legal dispute is a preemptive pardon that former President Joe Biden issued to Fauci before leaving office. Paul and other Republicans have argued that the pardon eliminated Fauci's risk of federal prosecution, and therefore removed the legal foundation for invoking the Fifth Amendment, which protects individuals from being compelled to give testimony that could incriminate them.
Fauci and his attorneys have disputed that interpretation, though the specific legal arguments they have advanced are not detailed in available reporting. The question of whether a presidential pardon nullifies a witness's Fifth Amendment privilege is a genuinely unsettled area of constitutional law, and it is the core issue the contempt referral will force the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office to evaluate.
Paul's committee also received more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's personal diary before the July hearing. What those pages contain has not been publicly disclosed, but the sheer volume, combined with the cellphone records HHS turned over to Johnson's subcommittee, suggests investigators have significant material to work through even without Fauci's live testimony.
Meanwhile, the pressure is not limited to Capitol Hill. Breitbart reported that Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has opened a separate state-level investigation into Fauci following his July testimony, a move that adds another front to the legal exposure Fauci faces outside the federal pardon's reach.
Fauci's current posture stands in sharp contrast to the public persona he cultivated for decades. As the nation's most visible public health official during the pandemic, he appeared on television almost daily, fielded questions from hostile and friendly interviewers alike, and publicly declared his eagerness to face congressional scrutiny.
Now he will not sit for a voluntary hearing. He will not answer questions under subpoena. He invoked his right to silence more than 100 times in a single session, and his attorney's response to a second panel's request was to call the inquiry political harassment.
Johnson and Paul have both signaled they will not let Fauci's refusal end the matter. Johnson's subcommittee will keep pulling records and interviewing people who worked alongside Fauci. Paul's contempt referral is heading to the Justice Department. And a state attorney general in Florida has opened his own probe.
Fauci can decline every invitation. But the records, the diary, and the cellphone do not plead the Fifth.
Federal agents arrested Lawrence, Massachusetts, Mayor Brian DePena on wire fraud and money laundering charges for allegedly diverting more than $1.5 million in pandemic-era small business loans to his campaign, his tax debts, and his personal mortgage payments.
DePena, 61, a Democrat who has led the Boston suburb since 2021, was taken into custody Friday morning after a federal investigation found he allegedly used COVID-era Economic Injury Disaster Loan funds, meant to keep struggling businesses afloat, as a personal slush fund. He appeared in Boston federal court Friday afternoon and was released under conditions that included surrendering his passport, AP News reported.
The federal complaint lays out a paper trail stretching back to May 2020, when DePena applied for an EIDL on behalf of his auto service and tire shop, Tenares Tire Service Inc. The SBA approved a $150,000 loan the following month. DePena went back for more, a $350,000 modification in April 2021, then a second bump in October 2021 that brought the total to $1.1 million, all at a 3.75 percent interest rate. Prosecutors say the money never went where it was supposed to.
Between August and October 2021, DePena allegedly transferred nearly $90,000 from his business accounts into personal accounts. He also allegedly wrote checks totaling more than $42,000 directly to "The Committee to Elect Brian DePena", his mayoral campaign committee. That November, he won the mayor's race in Lawrence.
The biggest alleged diversion dwarfed the campaign checks. Prosecutors say DePena funneled $883,293 in EIDL proceeds to pay off high-interest mortgages on personal properties in Lawrence. Another $85,000 allegedly went to the IRS to settle his personal back taxes.
EIDL funds carried explicit restrictions. They were to be used only to alleviate pandemic-related financial struggles for the borrower's business, not to retire personal debt, not to bankroll a political campaign, and not to settle a tax bill. Fox News Digital reported that DePena faces one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, carrying a combined maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and fines up to $500,000.
As of August 5, DePena had made just 16 payments on the loan, totaling $130,160. Because those payments covered only accrued interest, the outstanding balance still sat at roughly $1.65 million, more than the original principal.
The complaint includes translated Spanish text messages DePena allegedly sent to an unnamed financial advisor who helped him with the EIDL application. The messages paint a picture of a man desperate for money, and uninterested in the rules attached to it.
U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley said in a statement:
"Mayor DePena was elected to be a leader for the City of Lawrence. He was looked up to and trusted by his constituents, but he betrayed that trust through his alleged corruption and lies. Today's arrest is just another example of our determination to root out fraud by anyone, even public officials, and hold elected officials accountable."
In one message, DePena allegedly wrote: "Brother, call me, I'm in trouble. I don't want to pressure you, but I don't have time to wait for this loan. I'm in your hands." In another: "I know I'm bothering you a lot, but I have no other option. Only you can give me what I need."
When DePena's second loan modification came through in October 2021, he allegedly could not access the funds for a month, a delay prosecutors described as causing him to "panic." The urgency had nothing to do with keeping his tire shop open. It had everything to do with cash flow problems DePena had created for himself, prosecutors allege.
The case fits a broader pattern of COVID-era relief fraud that federal investigators are still unwinding years later. The Department of Justice has launched enforcement actions tied to anti-fraud task forces targeting millions in pandemic loan schemes across the country.
DePena's arrest was not a quiet affair. FBI agents descended on his home with a bullhorn and a battering ram, the New York Post reported. The dramatic scene underscored how seriously federal law enforcement is treating the case.
FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Ted E. Docks did not hold back. "The FBI arrested Mayor Brian DePeña for allegedly cashing in on a public health crisis and blatantly defrauding a government program meant to keep businesses afloat during the pandemic," Docks said.
Docks added a warning aimed well beyond Lawrence:
"When elected officials misuse federal funds for personal gain, they're breaking the trust of their constituents, and breaking the law. You'll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that easy money won't seem so easy after all."
Thomas Demeo, the IRS Criminal Investigation special agent in charge of the Boston field office, struck a similar note, saying CARES Act funds "were created to help small businesses survive an unprecedented national crisis, not to bankroll personal debts, political ambitions, or real estate ventures."
DePena's office did not respond to a request for comment. He has not entered a public plea. The questions surrounding Democratic officials and their financial conduct continue to mount, from calls for DOJ probes into governors' ties to fraud cases to broader scrutiny of how elected leaders handle public money.
The timeline makes the alleged scheme especially brazen. DePena sat on the Lawrence City Council from 2016 to 2021, the very period during which he applied for and received the EIDL funds. He allegedly began diverting money to his campaign committee and personal accounts in the summer and fall of 2021, then won the mayoral election that November.
In other words, prosecutors allege DePena used taxpayer-backed emergency relief to help finance the campaign that put him in charge of a city of roughly 89,000 people. He won reelection in November 2025, meaning Lawrence voters returned him to office without knowing federal investigators were building a case against him.
The accountability questions extend beyond one Massachusetts mayor. Across the political landscape, voters are asking harder questions about how officials at every level accumulate wealth while in or adjacent to public office.
DePena now faces the prospect of up to 30 years in federal prison. His outstanding EIDL balance of $1.65 million remains unpaid. The tire shop that was supposed to justify the loan sits in the same city where DePena still holds the title of mayor, for now.
Meanwhile, the broader fight over government ethics and official misconduct shows no sign of cooling. Just recently, the Senate Ethics Committee weighed misconduct charges against another sitting Democrat, a reminder that public trust, once broken, is not easily rebuilt.
COVID relief was supposed to save small businesses from ruin. When the people entrusted with public office treat it as their personal credit line, the only thing left to do is what federal prosecutors did Friday morning, show up at the door.
Younger Democratic challengers have toppled a historic number of aging House incumbents in 2026 primaries, while Republican voters keep sending their oldest members back to Washington, a split that is reshaping one party and exposing the other's resistance to generational change.
The numbers tell a blunt story. At least eight sitting House Democrats have lost primaries this cycle, many to candidates half their age. On the Republican side, long-tenured incumbents have largely survived, and the party's congressional leadership still skews well past retirement age. The contrast raises a pointed question for GOP voters: if the party preaches accountability and fresh energy, why does its congressional bench look like a seniority roster from the 1990s?
The most dramatic results came in rapid succession this summer. In Connecticut, 78-year-old Rep. John Larson, a Democrat who has held his seat since 1999, lost by more than 20 points to Luke Bronin, the 47-year-old former mayor of Hartford. Larson had suffered a highly publicized freeze-up on the House floor in 2025, later saying he experienced a complex partial seizure. Voters decided they had seen enough.
In Michigan's August 4 primary, 71-year-old Rep. Shri Thanedar fell 51.1 percent to 48.1 percent to state Rep. Donavan McKinney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Thanedar had the backing of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar. None of it mattered.
McKinney ran hard against Thanedar's wealth and his record on Israel. Fox News reported that McKinney framed Thanedar as out of touch with his own district, telling voters: "People like our congressman, Shri Thanedar, are the problem. A multimillionaire who spent millions to buy a seat in Congress, who has more in common with Donald Trump and Elon Musk than people like us."
Thanedar had drawn national attention in early 2025 for introducing articles of impeachment against President Trump. That stunt did not save him. Just The News noted that Thanedar also carried the endorsement of AIPAC, yet still lost in a district covering much of Detroit.
After the loss, Thanedar acknowledged the scale of the shift. Breitbart reported his concession:
"The socialist movement that has defeated many sitting members in New York and elsewhere has come to Michigan, and we came out short."
That socialist movement is not slowing down. The DSA is on pace to field its largest congressional delegation in history. In Colorado's 1st Congressional District, 29-year-old DSA candidate Melat Kiros defeated 69-year-old Rep. Diana DeGette, who had held the seat for three decades. In New York, DSA-backed Darializa Avila Chevalier beat Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the veteran chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
The Washington Examiner reported that the Michigan race was seen as a test of whether the DSA could expand beyond its traditional base of white, college-educated progressives into a majority-minority urban district. A Detroit News/WDIV poll had found Black voters in Michigan were less likely to support socialism than white voters. McKinney won anyway, capturing 52 percent.
Primary losses were not the only way older Democrats exited. In Texas, redistricting forced 78-year-old Rep. Al Green into a head-to-head contest with 38-year-old state Rep. Christian Menefee. Green lost, ending a congressional career that spanned two decades.
In Tennessee, 31-year-old state Rep. Justin Pearson challenged longtime Rep. Steve Cohen. Cohen dropped out after the state redrew his district lines. New York's Jerry Nadler and Texas's Lloyd Doggett also chose not to run for reelection after facing pressure to step aside. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the longtime D.C. delegate, did the same.
Amanda Litman, founder of the progressive group Run For Something, told Axios that the results reflect something deeper than individual matchups:
"Democratic voters are hungry for a new generation of leaders who can credibly argue they'll fight for change."
Whether that "change" means a harder left turn is the question Democratic strategists are now wrestling with. Former DNC chair Donna Brazile has warned her party to define itself before the socialist wave defines it for them.
On the GOP side, the picture looks very different. Older Republican incumbents mostly held their seats. In Kentucky, 79-year-old Rep. Hal Rogers, first elected in 1981, won his May primary against four challengers. In Alabama, Rep. Robert Aderholt, who has served since 1996, and Rep. Mike Rogers, in Congress since 2003, both won their primaries.
The one notable Republican incumbent to fall was Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, but his defeat did not fit the generational-turnover pattern. Massie lost to 68-year-old Ed Gallrein after a pro-Israel lobby spent more than $9 million in mostly independent expenditures against him. Younger voters actually backed Massie; it was Baby Boomer voters who overwhelmingly chose Gallrein. The money, not a youth movement, drove that result.
A rare exception was 26-year-old Michael Alfonso, who won the Republican primary in Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District with 48.9 percent of the vote. But one young winner does not make a trend.
Meanwhile, the GOP's senior ranks in the Senate remain strikingly aged. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, turns 93 in September. Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho is 83. Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas is 76. Sen. Mitch McConnell, 84, has missed several votes due to serious health issues and is retiring in January. In the House, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina chairs the Rules Committee at 83.
Pro-establishment and older Republican voters have helped oust incumbents who did not align with President Trump, but they have shown little appetite for replacing long-serving members simply because of age. The broader 2026 primary season has produced plenty of competitive races on both sides, yet the generational gap between the parties keeps widening.
For conservatives, the Democratic turnover carries a double edge. On one hand, watching the left's establishment crumble under pressure from DSA-backed socialists is satisfying. Incumbents who spent years accumulating power and endorsements discovered that none of it could protect them from voters who wanted something different. The Michigan result alone, where the entire House Democratic leadership endorsed the loser, showed how disconnected the party's Washington apparatus has become from its own base.
But the new Democrats replacing those incumbents are not moderates. They are DSA members, Sanders-backed progressives, and candidates who ran explicitly against military aid to Israel and in favor of policies that most of the country has not signed up for. If these candidates win their general elections in deep-blue districts, and most will, the Democratic caucus in Congress will shift further left than it has been in a generation.
And Republicans? Their voters keep reelecting the same faces. There is nothing wrong with experience. But a party that claims to stand for renewal and accountability should not need a $9 million outside spending campaign to produce the only competitive generational challenge on its side of the aisle.
Democrats are solving their age problem by lurching left. Republicans are not solving theirs at all. Neither answer inspires much confidence, but at least one party's voters are paying attention.
A top-ranking Democratic Socialists of America official refused to explain how a rapist would be caught and prosecuted under her organization's platform of abolishing police and prisons, deflecting instead to street lights and "root causes."
Dr. Frances Gill, a delegate on the DSA's national political committee, sat for an interview on NBC Los Angeles and was asked a simple, concrete question by anchor Conan Nolan: what happens to a violent criminal in the world the DSA wants to build? Gill's answer wandered everywhere except toward an actual answer.
Nolan put the scenario plainly. As the Daily Mail reported, the anchor asked Gill directly:
"So if my daughter is assaulted and raped, is there any agency that would seek to find her assailant and bring him to justice?"
Gill's initial reply was "of course", a rapist would be held accountable. But she never named the agency, the mechanism, or the system that would do the holding. Instead, she launched into what the Daily Mail described as a meandering explanation of the root causes of crime, pivoting to municipal infrastructure and social spending.
Rather than describe any law-enforcement alternative, Gill steered the conversation toward city services. She told Nolan:
"We're spending absolutely outrageous amounts of money on police and policing, and we're not spending money on things that actually make people safe and feel safe."
She then pointed to broken street lights in Los Angeles, a reference to tens of thousands of streetlights across the city that sit dark because of widespread copper-wire theft, as evidence that the real problem lies elsewhere.
"Which is things like actually well-lit streets. The street lights in Los Angeles. Everybody agrees it's a huge problem."
When pressed further, Gill did not offer a framework for investigating violent crime, arresting suspects, or incarcerating convicted offenders. She said she wanted to talk about "the root causes" and left it there. As Breitbart reported, Gill explicitly stated she wanted to "avoid getting caught into these hypotheticals", a striking admission given that rape is not a hypothetical for millions of American women.
The clip went viral. And it went viral for the obvious reason: a political leader was asked how her platform handles the most basic obligation of civilized government, protecting citizens from violent predators, and she had nothing.
Gill's evasion was not a freelance gaffe. It tracks directly with the DSA's official political platform, which calls on members to "defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards zero." The platform also advocates for "the freedom of all incarcerated people," demilitarizing police, and investing in what it calls "community self-governance."
That is not a reform agenda. It is the abolition of the criminal-justice system as Americans understand it. And when a senior DSA official was asked to explain what replaces it, she talked about street lights.
The DSA's radical posture is not an isolated case within the broader Democratic coalition. DSA-aligned candidates have drawn scrutiny for extreme social-media posts and policy positions that mainstream voters find difficult to square with basic public safety.
Breitbart also noted that DSA co-chair Megan Romer separately confirmed on Fox News Sunday that the organization backs abolishing prisons, ICE, and borders as a long-term plan, a position that extends the same logic Gill could not defend on camera to immigration enforcement and national security.
Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt seized on the viral clip to draw a line between the DSA's platform and progressive mayoral candidate Nithya Raman, a DSA member who won a runoff primary in June and will face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the fall general election. Pratt posted on X:
"Nithya Raman's partner at DSA LA says their goal is to completely abolish police & prisons. When asked what happens if a girl gets raped? Her answer? 'I want to talk about street lights.'"
Raman has tried to put distance between herself and the DSA's most radical planks. She told NBC Los Angeles in February that she would maintain the LAPD's size if elected and is now campaigning on a three-point public safety plan: integrating unarmed officers into 911 calls, restoring accountability, and investing in prevention.
But the DSA made Raman. She was the first DSA member elected to the Los Angeles City Council. And the organization that helped launch her political career still holds a platform that calls for zeroing out police budgets and freeing all incarcerated people. Raman's attempt to walk back her earlier support for defunding the police does not erase the institutional alignment, especially when a senior DSA official cannot explain, on camera, how violent criminals would face consequences.
The tension between progressive candidates and their activist bases has become a recurring problem for Democrats. Intra-party disputes over radical positions have forced several Democratic figures to distance themselves from allies whose views poll poorly with general-election voters.
In the same interview, Gill was asked whether the DSA would endorse Raman's mayoral bid. She said "there are a lot of members who are excited about Nithya" but declined to say whether she personally supported Raman, telling Nolan, "I'm going to defer to our organizational process." The DSA, she said, is still deciding on a general-election endorsement.
That careful hedging is worth noting. Gill would not name an agency to catch rapists, would not describe a mechanism for criminal accountability, and would not even say whether she backs the DSA's most prominent elected official in Los Angeles. The interview was a case study in evasion on every front.
Nolan, for his part, moved on to a question about Michigan Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, whom the anchor noted is not a DSA member but holds a progressive platform. The broader pattern, progressive candidates drawing uncomfortable questions about their associations and funding, continues to dog the Democratic left.
The Daily Mail reported that it reached out to both the DSA and Raman's campaign for comment. Neither response was included in the reporting.
Democrats who want to reshape the criminal-justice system owe voters more than slogans about root causes. They owe an answer to Conan Nolan's question, and to every parent, spouse, and neighbor who expects their government to stand between them and the people who would do them harm.
If the best the DSA can offer a rape victim is better street lighting, voters in Los Angeles and everywhere else have all the information they need.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is fueling speculation that she has quietly ended her engagement to longtime partner Riley Roberts, and the unanswered questions extend well beyond her personal life.
The New York congresswoman announced this week that she is freezing her eggs, sharing the process publicly on Instagram. When a reporter asked whether her fiancé supported the decision, Ocasio-Cortez offered a notably impersonal answer: "All of my loved ones have been very supportive." She did not mention Roberts by name. On Monday, she posted about hitting a strength-training session at her Washington, D.C., gym before taking a train to New York for an ultrasound, again, with no reference to the man she got engaged to more than four years ago, the New York Post reported.
Roberts has all but vanished from Ocasio-Cortez's public life. He last appeared on her social media in a Christmas 2021 post and one other post a few months later. The couple announced their engagement in April 2022, with Ocasio-Cortez touting a ring made from "recycled gold" that she described as "zero-emission." That ring has not been seen on her hand in recent months. She was photographed without it at a Manhattan burger joint in May.
The last time Roberts appeared in Ocasio-Cortez's House financial disclosures was August 2022, when she listed him as a "spouse" for a trip to Italy so that his food and lodging expenses could be covered as gifts. He has not surfaced in those filings since. An unnamed Democratic operative offered a blunt assessment of the relationship to the Post: "Whenever he was around at events, he never spoke. No one thought she actually liked him." The same operative described Roberts as an "awkward guy as a partner for a dynamic woman."
One unnamed Democratic insider speculated that the split, if confirmed, may be tied to Ocasio-Cortez's ambitions for higher office. Neither Ocasio-Cortez nor Roberts has returned multiple messages seeking comment on the status of their relationship.
But the personal questions are secondary to a more consequential one: what did the prolonged, never-consummated engagement mean for congressional transparency rules? The Washington Free Beacon reported that Ocasio-Cortez has not been photographed wearing her engagement ring since November 2023, a gap of more than 17 months. By remaining unmarried, Roberts was exempt from publicly disclosing his assets, stock trades, and employment in Ocasio-Cortez's financial filings, requirements that apply to legally married congressional spouses.
A House Ethics Committee report scrutinized the arrangement in connection with Ocasio-Cortez's attendance at the Met Gala, where she wore her headline-grabbing "Tax the Rich" dress. Roberts attended the event as her "spouse" and received a free ticket valued at $35,000 per person. Ethics investigators were not persuaded by the label. The committee's report stated plainly:
"The Committee 'takes very seriously its obligation to provide sound and dispassionate advice to the Members of this House' and would have informed Representative Ocasio-Cortez and her counsel that Mr. Roberts did not fit the definition of a 'spouse' for purposes of the Charitable Events Exception."
In other words, Roberts collected benefits reserved for a spouse without being one, and without the financial transparency that comes with the title. He was also granted an official House email address to access Ocasio-Cortez's calendar, a perk that further blurred the line between personal partner and congressional insider. As Sen. Ted Cruz has warned, the progressive wing's rising influence inside the Democratic Party raises questions about accountability that go beyond ideology.
Kendra Arnold of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust framed the disclosure gap in stark terms: "When a member is not legally married but in a long-term relationship similar to marriage, these concerns still apply even though there is no disclosure requirement." Arnold added that "the financial disclosure laws apply to both the members of Congress and their spouse." The implication is clear: the engagement gave Roberts access to congressional perks, while the absence of a marriage certificate shielded him from the disclosure obligations that come with them.
Ocasio-Cortez said in 2022 that the couple was "taking some space to savor this time before diving into planning" a wedding. Four years later, no wedding has materialized, and the ring appears to have disappeared. Conservative critics have noted that Ocasio-Cortez's own stock-trading ban legislation contains a loophole: it would not apply to an unmarried long-term partner like Roberts. Married or not, the arrangement allowed Roberts to operate in Ocasio-Cortez's orbit, attending galas, accessing her schedule, traveling on disclosed trips, without any of the public scrutiny that a legal spouse would face.
The broader pattern inside the Democratic Party is worth noting. Internal fractures have become routine, from more than 100 House Democrats defying their own leadership on Israel aid to progressive candidates borrowing rhetoric from the party's far-left flank. Ocasio-Cortez sits at the center of that fault line, a figure whose personal brand often overshadows the institutional norms she is supposed to follow.
Ocasio-Cortez's 2018 interview with GQ offered an inadvertently revealing window into how she views relationships and ambition. She told the magazine that when women start "being yourself, they kind of freak out. I think it causes a conflict within them that they didn't even anticipate. It's not even a deception. It's just, they uncover insecurities that they didn't know were there." At the time, she described Roberts as "so supportive and willing and deeply engaging."
Whether Roberts is still in the picture or not, the silence from both parties is conspicuous. Ocasio-Cortez, who built her career on transparency, accountability, and challenging the financial arrangements of the powerful, has offered no clarity on a relationship that carried real consequences for congressional disclosure rules.
She defeated incumbent Joseph Crowley in 2018 to become the youngest person ever elected to Congress, and she has spent the years since positioning herself as a leader of the progressive movement. Some Democratic sources now view her as a potential frontrunner for higher office. But the egg-freezing announcement, the missing ring, and the vanished fiancé have shifted attention to a question she plainly does not want to answer.
The fractures widening inside the Democratic Party are not just ideological, they are personal, financial, and institutional. Ocasio-Cortez has built a brand on holding others accountable. The least she owes the public is the same standard applied to her own arrangements.
A congresswoman who demands transparency from everyone else should not get to dodge a simple question about whether the "spouse" collecting perks on her behalf was ever really one at all.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is pressing Democratic leaders to block super PACs from their primary elections, a move aimed squarely at AIPAC after the group spent heavily to defeat a far-left Senate candidate in Michigan.
Sanders sent a letter on Aug. 8 to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and DNC Chair Ken Martin, demanding the party shut outside spending groups out of its nominating contests. The Vermont independent framed the push as a fight against a "corrupt system" that lets billionaire-funded organizations pick Democratic nominees and then turn around and bankroll Republicans in the general election.
The letter's central target is AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group. Sanders claims AIPAC and its affiliated groups poured more than $30 million into Michigan's Democratic Senate primary to defeat Abdul El-Sayed, a far-left candidate backed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Sanders says the same group now plans to spend "tens of millions more" supporting Republican Mike Rogers in the November general election, a sequence he called "absurd."
Sanders posted the letter on social media, writing:
"It is insane that the Democrats allow super PACs like AIPAC to spend millions in their primaries, only for those same special interests to help elect Republicans in the general election. My message to Democratic leaders: Ban super PACs from Democratic primaries NOW."
In the letter itself, Sanders went further. He told Schumer, Jeffries, and Martin that the problem extends beyond the dollar amounts.
"What is particularly obscene is not only the outrageous amount of money coming into Democratic primaries from billionaire-funded super PACs, but the reality that these special interests have no particular desire to see Democrats win. It is absurd that they spend tens of millions of dollars to try to determine who the Democratic nominee is and, if they fail, then proceed to support the Republican candidate in the general election."
He closed by urging the three leaders to "take action and make clear that the Democratic Party will no longer maintain this corrupt system."
None of the three recipients, Schumer, Jeffries, or Martin, have publicly responded to the letter. AIPAC has not responded either.
The silence is notable. Sanders is not a Democrat. He caucuses with the party and uses its primary infrastructure, but he has spent decades criticizing the party's leadership from the outside. His demand puts Schumer and Jeffries in an awkward position: agree with Sanders and alienate a major donor network, or ignore him and hand the party's progressive wing another grievance heading into the midterms.
The scale of super PAC spending this cycle gives Sanders's complaint at least a factual foundation, even if his proposed remedy raises its own questions. Corporate super PACs have already spent a record $517 million this election cycle, Fox News reported, shattering the record set in 2024.
Sanders himself co-introduced the Abolish Super PACs Act in May alongside Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania. The bill's current status in Congress remains unclear, and it has drawn no visible momentum toward a committee vote. The letter to Democratic leaders represents a narrower, more immediately actionable demand: use party rules, not legislation, to keep super PACs out of Democratic primaries.
Sanders has not been shy about confrontation in recent months, and his willingness to publicly pressure his own caucus leadership reflects a broader fracture inside the Democratic coalition over money, Israel, and the party's ideological direction.
That fracture showed up at the DNC's spring meeting in New Orleans, where the committee voted to pass a resolution condemning the surge in outside spending in Democratic primaries. But the resolution was a statement, not a rule change. Larry Cohen, co-chair of Our Revolution, the progressive group Sanders founded, made clear that words were not enough.
"It's necessary that we actually have the party do something on this issue, not just say something."
Rep. Ro Khanna, who co-chaired Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign, went further, calling on every 2028 Democratic presidential candidate to pledge against super PAC spending in primaries. AP News reported Khanna said, "We should eliminate any super PAC in a Democratic primary."
The Michigan Senate race is the flashpoint. El-Sayed, the far-left Democrat who survived the primary despite AIPAC's spending against him, has drawn sharp criticism from his Republican opponent. Rogers called El-Sayed an "extremist" who wanted to "empty prisons and put murderers and sex offenders back on our streets."
Rogers also accused El-Sayed of pledging support to the Muslim Brotherhood, campaigning "with people who refuse to condemn terrorism," and advocating for "the largest tax hike in American history, costing families already struggling to make ends meet over $3,000 more per year." Rogers said El-Sayed is "leading a movement grounded in ideological fanaticism" whose "agenda would make our communities less safe and our state less affordable."
Ocasio-Cortez, for her part, has said El-Sayed "represents the politics of the future" for America. That framing, a contest between a self-described progressive future and a Republican warning about public safety and radical ideology, makes Michigan one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.
The socialist insurgency in Michigan's Democratic primaries extends beyond the Senate race. Democratic incumbents have already lost seats to far-left challengers in the state, a sign that the party's progressive base is increasingly willing to replace its own candidates with more ideologically aggressive ones.
AIPAC's position inside the Democratic coalition has deteriorated rapidly. The group was historically bipartisan, but many Democrats who were once close to AIPAC now view it as aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. By March, multiple Democratic 2028 presidential contenders were already shunning AIPAC donations, a signal that the group had become "politically toxic" in Democratic fundraising circles.
Sanders's letter exploits that shift. By framing AIPAC as a group that spends to pick Democratic nominees and then funds their Republican opponents, he is making a political argument that resonates with the party's base, even if the underlying legal and structural questions are more complicated. Super PACs are protected by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, and a party rule banning their participation in primaries would face immediate legal challenges.
The deeper tension is one Democrats have avoided confronting directly. Intra-party divisions over Israel have grown sharper since the war in Gaza, and the money question, who funds Democratic candidates, and what those funders expect in return, has become impossible to separate from the policy question.
Sanders's demand is simple on its face: ban super PACs from Democratic primaries. But the demand carries a second, unstated message aimed at Schumer and Jeffries, choose between the donor class and the activist base, because you cannot keep both.
Whether Democratic leaders will act on that demand, or simply let it sit unanswered, will say more about the party's direction than any resolution passed at a spring meeting. The far-left wing of the party is not waiting for permission. It is already reshaping Democratic primaries from the ground up, with or without super PAC money on the other side.
When a party's loudest voice on campaign finance is a man who is not even a member of that party, the leadership vacuum speaks for itself.
Two pilots flying a contracted firefighting helicopter died Friday morning when their aircraft crashed in Utah's Fishlake National Forest, igniting a new fire that merged with the blaze they were trying to stop.
The Sevier County sheriff and coroner confirmed the deaths on Saturday after ground crews finally reached the crash site, a site that had been cut off by the very fire the pilots were battling. The pilots were flying a Sikorsky Skycrane, a heavy-lift helicopter used to drop water on wildfires, when it went down in the remote national forest in central Utah. No cause for the crash has been released.
The pilots worked for Helicopter Transport Services, a private contractor operating under a U.S. Forest Service contract, AP News reported. Their names have not been made public.
When the Skycrane hit the ground, the impact started a separate fire. That fire grew and merged with the wildfire the crew had been fighting. The combined blaze has now scorched nearly 174 square miles, roughly 451 square kilometers, of forest and rangeland, and firefighters were still working to contain it at the time the deaths were announced.
The crash happened Friday morning, but the fire burning around the site kept ground crews from getting close. It was not until Saturday that teams were able to enter the area and confirm what many already feared. Just the News reported that officials waited until crews had physical access before making any public statement about the pilots' fate.
That delay underscores the sheer danger of the conditions. Fishlake National Forest sits in a rugged stretch of south-central Utah, about 170 miles south of Salt Lake City, with steep terrain and limited road access. A wildfire already burning at that scale left few safe routes in.
The Washington Examiner noted that the incident is part of a broader wave of deadly wildfires tearing across the western United States and Canada this summer. Crews across the region have been stretched thin, and the loss of two experienced pilots only deepens the strain.
The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash, but determining the cause could take a year or more, Breitbart reported. No preliminary findings have been released, and no mechanical or weather-related factors have been publicly identified.
The Sikorsky Skycrane, formally designated the S-64, is one of the most recognizable aircraft in wildfire aviation. Built to carry heavy external loads, it can scoop thousands of gallons of water from lakes or reservoirs and deliver it directly over a fire line. Private contractors like Helicopter Transport Services operate fleets of these helicopters under federal contracts during fire season, filling a role the government itself does not have enough aircraft to cover.
That reliance on contractors means the pilots who fly these missions are often private-sector employees, not federal workers. They take on the same risks, flying low, in smoke, over unpredictable terrain, without the same public profile. When they die on the job, the news often arrives in a single paragraph.
The wildfire itself remains a serious threat. At nearly 174 square miles, the combined blaze ranks among the larger fires burning in the West this season. No containment percentage has been released, and officials have not said how many personnel are assigned to the fight.
The New York Post reported that the crash-ignited fire's merger with the original blaze complicated suppression efforts, effectively expanding the fire line at the worst possible moment. Firefighters were already contending with a large and active wildfire; the crash added fuel, literally, to the problem.
Several key questions remain unanswered. What caused the Skycrane to go down? Were other aircraft operating in the same airspace? Did weather, mechanical failure, or terrain play a role? Until the NTSB completes its investigation, the families of the two pilots and the broader firefighting community will be left waiting.
Two men flew into a fire to protect land and lives that were not their own. They deserve more than a footnote, and the people who sent them there owe the public a full accounting of what went wrong.
A medevac crew flying from Roswell to Ruidoso, New Mexico, lost GPS navigation during a military jamming exercise and struck a mountainside, killing all four aboard, and experts warn the FAA's slow certification process is leaving pilots with outdated equipment.
The Beech King Air departed shortly before midnight on May 14 carrying two pilots and two flight nurses on an emergency medical run. Minutes after takeoff, the crew radioed that their GPS had failed. Three other aircraft in the area reported the same problem. On the ground below, the U.S. military was running a planned GPS-denial exercise out of White Sands Missile Range, a drill designed to simulate the kind of signal blackout troops might face in combat.
Air traffic controllers asked the military twice to suspend the jamming while they guided the stricken aircraft. The military complied, and the crew reported the destination airport in sight, requesting a visual approach. Then the military resumed the exercise. The aircraft descended toward the runway and struck the Capitan Mountains, killing everyone on board.
The National Transportation Safety Board issued a preliminary report on the crash but has not determined whether the GPS interference caused or contributed to the disaster. That distinction matters legally. But the sequence, GPS loss during a known jamming exercise, a crew forced onto visual navigation in mountainous terrain at night, and a fatal impact, has sharpened a debate that aviation safety experts say the federal government has been too slow to confront.
The FAA had issued a Notice to Airmen, or NOTAM, before the flight warning that the scheduled military exercise could disrupt satellite navigation across a radius of hundreds of miles around White Sands Missile Range. Pilots operating in that airspace were on notice. But a NOTAM is a warning, not a fix. When the crew lost GPS shortly after departure, the burden fell on air traffic controllers to manage the emergency in real time.
Controllers reached out to military officials and asked them to halt the jamming, not once, but twice. The military stopped the exercise. During that window, the crew told controllers they had the airport in sight and requested a visual approach. The military then resumed jamming. After that, the aircraft descended and hit the mountain.
The NTSB has not drawn a causal line between the resumption of jamming and the crash. Investigators are still examining the full chain of events. But the timeline raises an obvious question: why resume an exercise while an aircraft that already lost GPS in that same exercise is still in the air, flying visually toward a runway surrounded by mountains in the dark?
Fatal aviation incidents involving multiple casualties have become a persistent concern for safety regulators. A recent small-plane crash near Bowie, Maryland killed all three aboard after a late-night flight, underscoring the risks that darkness and limited visibility impose on general aviation.
Todd Humphreys, director of the University of Texas' Radionavigation Laboratory and a leading GPS expert, told Fox News Digital that the crash exposes a widening gap between consumer technology and the equipment the FAA certifies for cockpit use.
Humphreys put the problem in terms any smartphone owner can grasp:
"The iPhone that the pilot carried was almost certainly a better GPS receiver inside than the FAA-certified receiver providing navigation guidance to the aircraft."
That is not a knock on the crew. It is an indictment of a certification regime that moves so slowly that off-the-shelf consumer devices outpace the avionics the government approves for flight. Humphreys argued that the FAA's process, which he described as taking "years and millions and millions of dollars", has become a barrier to safety rather than a guarantee of it.
Humphreys was blunt about the agency's pace:
"The FAA, I think they've just got to move faster. They've got to wake up and recognize that sticking to their old rules about you know, certification that takes years and millions and millions of dollars to get through is not at the service of safety anymore, because the environment has changed."
The FAA declined to comment on the ongoing investigation. The agency said it issues notices alerting pilots to planned GPS disruptions and maintains backup navigation systems to help aircraft navigate during satellite outages. It did not directly address Humphreys' criticism about certification timelines or the gap between certified and commercially available GPS technology.
The New Mexico crash did not happen in a vacuum. GPS jamming and spoofing, where a signal is blocked or replaced with a false one, have been spreading worldwide, driven largely by military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. Nations have discovered that disrupting GPS is an effective way to neutralize drones, and the technology to do it is neither expensive nor hard to deploy.
Humphreys framed the broader threat directly:
"Nation states have woken up to the fact that this is one of the ways they can protect themselves from drones. We've got to move more quickly on the aviation side to build better systems, better receivers, better antennas to deal with this so that flights can be safer again."
The numbers back him up. Industry data cited in a 2026 guidance document from the International Civil Aviation Organization, the U.N.'s aviation body, showed that reports of GPS loss increased 65 percent in the first half of 2024 compared with the previous year. The same guidance warned that the hazards associated with GPS jamming and spoofing have "rapidly spread" in recent years.
That guidance spelled out what can go wrong when pilots lose satellite navigation: they may deviate from assigned flight paths, misreport their position, lose situational awareness, and struggle to transition safely to backup navigation. Every one of those risks was present in the New Mexico crash.
In March 2025, ICAO joined with the International Telecommunication Union and the International Maritime Organization to issue a joint warning about increasing GPS jamming and spoofing incidents. European regulators have repeatedly updated guidance for pilots and air traffic controllers in response to the growing interference, most recently in July after analyzing additional incidents. The FAA itself advises pilots to be prepared to fly without GPS because intentional jamming is "of greater and growing concern."
Aviation disasters abroad have drawn similar scrutiny. A fatal skydiving plane crash in France that killed all eleven aboard prompted investigators to open a broad probe into the circumstances, reflecting the same institutional urgency that GPS-related incidents now demand.
The New Mexico crash is not the only recent incident linking GPS-related interference to government operations on American soil. In March 2025, multiple commercial airliners approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport received false collision alerts. Several crews performed go-arounds, aborting their landings and circling back, in response to warnings that turned out to be phantom threats.
Congressional testimony later revealed that the false alerts were triggered by counter-drone testing conducted by the Secret Service and the U.S. Navy. The tests were not rogue operations; they were authorized government exercises. But they disrupted commercial aviation at one of the busiest airports in the country, near the nation's capital, without adequate coordination to prevent false alerts from reaching cockpits.
The pattern is consistent. The military and federal law enforcement are conducting exercises that interfere with civilian navigation and alert systems. The exercises serve legitimate purposes, training troops, defending against drones. But the safeguards meant to protect civilian aviation are not keeping up. When technology failures lead to real-world consequences, the results can be catastrophic, as a fatal Tesla Autopilot crash in Texas demonstrated in a different context.
Humphreys offered a warning that should concern every American who flies:
"There are some in the community who believe that we have passed the point of peak safety in aviation, maybe four years ago."
That claim, that the safest period in American aviation history may already be behind us, runs counter to the assumption most passengers carry onto every flight. If Humphreys and his colleagues are right, the combination of aging certified equipment, expanding GPS threats, and a regulatory process that cannot keep pace with the changing environment is eroding the safety margin that decades of investment built.
Paul Deres, vice president of operations at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Air Safety Institute, offered a more measured view. He said the focus should remain on pilot preparation and proficiency, noting that today's general aviation fleet includes a wide range of older and newer avionics designed to improve situational awareness. But even Deres acknowledged the fundamental vulnerability.
"Technology can always fail, and it does."
That is true. But when the technology fails because a military exercise deliberately knocked it out, and when the FAA's own certification process has left cockpit GPS receivers years behind what a consumer smartphone can do, the failure is not random. It is predictable. Survivors of other aviation emergencies, like the eleven passengers who walked away from a floatplane crash near Washington state's San Juan Islands, were fortunate. The crew flying over the Capitan Mountains was not.
So far, the United States has avoided the scale of GPS disruption that European aviation has faced. Humphreys credited that partly to geography, American airspace is farther from the conflict zones driving most jamming activity. But the New Mexico crash and the Reagan National incident show that the threat is not limited to foreign battlefields. It is here, generated by the U.S. government's own operations, and the systems meant to protect civilian pilots are not keeping up.
Two pilots and two flight nurses climbed into a medevac plane to save someone's life. They deserved equipment and procedures that matched the threat environment they were flying into. The FAA knew the jamming was coming. The military knew civilian aircraft were in the area. And four people are dead. If that does not accelerate the agency's timeline, nothing will.