A 52-year-old man who killed a 76-year-old Arizona pastor and left his body in a position resembling a crucifixion has been sentenced to life in prison plus 102 years, the culmination of a case investigators say was part of a broader plot to murder religious leaders across the country.
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell announced on August 14 that Adam Sheafe received the sentence for the first-degree murder of Pastor Bill Schonemann, the longtime leader of New River Bible Chapel, a small congregation north of Phoenix. Schonemann, a 76-year-old Navy veteran who served during Vietnam, was found dead in his home on April 28, 2025, by members of his own congregation. His arms were outstretched in a position described as similar to a crucifixion.
Sheafe did not stumble into this. Investigators determined that Schonemann's killing was part of a deliberate scheme Sheafe called "Operation First Commandment", a plan to murder 14 Christian leaders across 10 states. Breitbart reported that Schonemann was found with his hands nailed to the wall and a crown of thorns placed on his head. Sheafe confessed on camera and, at one point, refused to apologize.
Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan called it "probably one of the most bizarre cases I have ever seen in my 40 years with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office."
Schonemann was not a public figure in any national sense. He led New River Bible Chapel for a quarter century, according to the New York Post. He served in the U.S. Navy during Vietnam. At sentencing, a family member described him plainly:
"Truly a one-of-a-kind man. He served our country in the Navy during Vietnam. He was a devoted husband and a loving father, a business owner, and a mentor. He was a kind and gentle soul."
That a man like Schonemann, quiet, faithful, decades deep in his community, became the target of a religiously obsessed killer is the kind of crime that defies easy explanation. But the facts of the case, laid out across more than a year of legal proceedings, paint a clear picture of premeditation and fanaticism.
Sheafe drove from Phoenix to New River on April 28, 2025, specifically to carry out the killing. Two days earlier, he had broken into another location and stolen a truck, a crime also charged against him in the indictment. He was indicted in July 2025 on multiple charges connected to both the murder and the break-in. The case that followed was as unusual as the crime itself, in part because Sheafe seemed determined to control its outcome.
In March, Sheafe attempted to plead no contest to the charges. Prosecutors rejected the plea. He then tried to plead guilty in a way that would move the case toward a death sentence. The judge refused that too.
Sheafe, who represented himself at points during the proceedings, was blunt about what he wanted. Fox News reported that he told the court:
"Put me on death row, set the execution date for right now. The victims want it. The victim's families want it. I want it, and the taxpayers want it."
He also said, "We're dragging this out in the interest of justice," and indicated he wanted the case resolved "so we can move on with our lives." The casual phrasing, "move on with our lives", from a man who had taken someone else's life in the most grotesque fashion imaginable, captured the disconnect at the center of the case.
In another courtroom statement, Sheafe was even more direct about the nature of the crime. The New York Post reported his words:
"It's an undisputable fact that the crime was heinous in nature. I intended it to be heinous."
That is not remorse. That is a man describing his own actions with something closer to satisfaction. The court, to its credit, did not give Sheafe the ending he scripted for himself.
Investigators learned that Schonemann's murder was not meant to be an isolated act. Sheafe had devised what he called "Operation First Commandment," a plan to kill 14 Christian leaders across 10 states. The name itself, a reference to the biblical commandment that God alone shall be worshipped, points to a warped religious fixation rather than any coherent theology.
Sheafe's father told reporters that his son had become obsessed with the Old Testament. Sheafe had a large tattoo of a Hebrew word for God on his neck. The fixation was visible, literal, and, as the crime proved, dangerous. Breitbart reported that Sheafe had also planned additional attacks at the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, a well-known Catholic landmark built into the red rocks of central Arizona, but was arrested on a separate charge before he could carry them out.
Whether any of the other 14 alleged targets were contacted, warned, or harmed remains unclear from available court records. The scope of the plot, however, underscores how close this case came to being far worse. In a country that has seen mass violence met with severe sentences, the life-plus-102-year term ensures Sheafe will never have the chance to act on whatever remains of his plan.
In June, Sheafe finally pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and other charges. With the guilty plea, the death penalty was removed as a sentencing option. Sheafe's change of course came after a personal loss: his father and stepmother died in a plane crash, and the experience reportedly prompted a shift in his willingness to face execution.
At sentencing, Sheafe struck a different tone from his earlier defiance. He apologized, a reversal from his earlier on-camera refusal, and told the court:
"I now recognize that my method of delivering my message, that our heavenly father alone deserves all praise and all glory, was severely flawed."
The word "method" does a lot of work in that sentence. Sheafe did not renounce his beliefs or his stated mission. He called the execution of a 76-year-old pastor, hands nailed to a wall, a crown of thorns on his head, a flawed "method." The distinction between condemning the act and merely regretting the approach is one the court apparently noted. The sentence handed down, life in prison plus 102 years, leaves no ambiguity about how the justice system viewed his conduct.
Schonemann's family members and close friends spoke at the sentencing hearing. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office issued a press release confirming the sentence. The case, which began with a congregation arriving at their pastor's home to find him dead in a scene of deliberate sacrilege, ended with a courtroom full of people who had loved him.
Violent crimes against the vulnerable, including horrific acts in Arizona, have tested the state's criminal justice system repeatedly in recent years. In this case, the system delivered a sentence that matches the severity of the crime.
New River Bible Chapel lost more than a pastor. Schonemann had led the congregation for 25 years. He was a Vietnam-era Navy veteran, a husband, a father, a business owner. The family member who spoke at sentencing called him "a kind and gentle soul." He was 76 years old, a man in the final chapter of a long life of service, killed by a stranger acting on a delusion.
Cases like this one, and other acts of shocking violence against the defenseless, remind the public why the justice system exists in the first place: not to rehabilitate every offender, but to protect the innocent and ensure that those who commit the most grievous acts are permanently removed from society.
Sheafe will spend the rest of his life in an Arizona prison. The 14 religious leaders he allegedly planned to target are, as far as the public record shows, still alive. Schonemann is not.
The broader questions, how a man spirals from religious obsession into a multi-state murder plot, whether the other targets were ever warned, and what additional charges may have been folded into the sentencing, remain unanswered. The case file may hold more. For now, the facts on the record are enough: a faithful pastor was killed in his own home, and the man who did it will never walk free.
Some crimes are so deliberate, so calculated, and so devoid of conscience that the only just answer is a cell and a locked door. In a country where violent offenders too often face lenient consequences, Maricopa County got this one right.
A New York Times report alleges that Jennifer Hegseth has played an unusually active role in her husband's Defense Department, reigniting Democratic complaints about Pete Hegseth's fitness for the job and raising questions about civilian oversight at the Pentagon.
The reporting, published by the Times, focuses on the involvement of the Defense Secretary's wife in day-to-day Pentagon operations, a claim that, if accurate, would mark a significant departure from the traditional boundaries observed by spouses of senior cabinet officials. The details of her alleged involvement have not been independently confirmed by other outlets, and the Pentagon has not publicly addressed the specific claims in the report.
Pete Hegseth has been a lightning rod since before he took office. His confirmation fight was one of the most contentious in recent memory, and his tenure has generated a steady stream of controversy, much of it driven by opponents who tried to block him from the start.
Hegseth's path to the Pentagon was narrow. The Senate confirmed him on a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking ballot. Three Republicans, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitch McConnell, joined all 47 Democrats in voting no.
Democrats made their position clear from the outset. Sen. Elizabeth Warren declared that "Pete Hegseth's confirmation will make our nation less safe." The opposition cited allegations of sexual assault, financial mismanagement, and binge-drinking, charges Hegseth denied under oath during his Senate hearing.
Hegseth struck a different tone after his confirmation. "This is for the troops. For the warriors. For our country. America First. Every day. We will never back down," he posted.
The hostility from the left did not end with the vote. One swing-district Democrat told a crowd she wanted to physically assault him, while simultaneously touting her bipartisan credentials. That kind of rhetoric reveals more about the opposition's temperament than about Hegseth's record.
The pre-confirmation attacks relied heavily on last-minute personal allegations. Among the most prominent: claims from Pete Hegseth's ex-sister-in-law suggesting abuse during his second marriage. Those claims fell apart quickly.
Samantha Hegseth, Pete's second wife, issued a direct rebuttal. National Review reported her statement: "There was no physical abuse in my marriage. This is the only further statement I will make to you." She added that she had no representatives speaking on her behalf and had never authorized anyone to share details of her marriage.
A 2021 court document signed by both Pete and Samantha Hegseth stated that neither parent claimed to be a victim of domestic abuse. The allegations, in other words, were contradicted by the person they purported to protect.
Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker saw through the delay tactics. He told reporters he expected Democrats to "delay it to the extent to which they are free to do under the rules," but added bluntly: "He's got the votes."
During the confirmation hearing itself, Hegseth showed he could hold his ground under pressure. Warren attempted what Breitbart described as a "gotcha" moment, pressing Hegseth on whether he would pledge not to enter the defense industry after his service, the same criticism he had leveled at retired generals.
His answer was five words: "I'm not a General, Senator." The room laughed. Warren did not get the clip she wanted.
That exchange captured something the opposition has never fully reckoned with. Hegseth is not a career bureaucrat who wilts under committee-room theatrics. He spent years in combat zones and over a decade in front of television cameras. The assumption that he would crack under questioning was always more wishful thinking than serious analysis.
Since taking office, Hegseth has moved aggressively on several fronts. He and the Department of Justice launched a joint task force to identify and prosecute Pentagon leakers, a priority that earned praise from those who believe the Defense Department has been plagued by unauthorized disclosures for years.
His tenure has not been without stumbles. A policy change on flu vaccines for military recruits led to an outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas that sickened hundreds, forcing the Pentagon to reverse course. That episode gave critics fresh ammunition and raised fair questions about the rollout process.
But the pattern of opposition extends well beyond policy disagreements. A fired Navy admiral entered a Democratic primary in South Carolina, turning a personnel dispute into a political campaign. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie accused Hegseth of violating the War Powers Resolution over the Iran conflict, a charge that shows scrutiny comes from both sides of the aisle.
Now the Times report about Jennifer Hegseth's involvement adds another layer. The specific nature and extent of her role remain unclear from publicly available reporting. Whether her involvement amounts to genuine overreach or simply the kind of spousal engagement that previous administrations tolerated without comment is a question the report raises but does not definitively answer.
What is clear is the context in which the story lands. Every development involving the Defense Secretary, from policy reversals to personnel decisions to his wife's activities, arrives into an environment where his opponents decided before he was even confirmed that he was unfit for the job.
Legitimate oversight of the Pentagon matters. If Jennifer Hegseth exercised authority she did not hold, or influenced decisions outside proper channels, that deserves investigation, the same way it would for any cabinet spouse in any administration. Accountability is not a partisan principle.
But the credibility of the critics matters too. When the same voices that called Hegseth dangerous before he cast a single policy decision are now raising alarms about his wife's role, voters are entitled to weigh the source. The opposition tried unverified abuse allegations. They tried drinking rumors. They tried procedural delays. None of it worked. The question for the public is whether this latest round of concern reflects genuine institutional worry or the next chapter in a campaign that began the moment President Trump announced the nomination.
The 51-50 vote that put Hegseth in office was the narrowest possible margin. His opponents have treated that slim confirmation as an invitation to relitigate the result indefinitely. Every new headline is another bite at the same apple.
If the standard for Pentagon spouses has changed, apply it evenly and prove it with facts. If the standard hasn't changed, then what's really being scrutinized isn't Jennifer Hegseth, it's the man the Senate already confirmed.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now leads prediction market odds for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, overtaking Gavin Newsom, a shift that says as much about the Democratic Party's leftward drift as it does about the congresswoman herself.
The 36-year-old New York congresswoman holds an 18 percent chance of winning the nomination on Kalshi and 19 percent on Polymarket, the Daily Mail reported. Newsom, the California governor who had led the prediction markets since they first opened on the 2028 race, has fallen behind. None of the Democratic hopefuls have formally announced a bid for the White House.
Pressed on the possibility of a presidential run in an ABC News interview earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez did not shut the door.
"I haven't ruled out the possibility. And I'm very humbled by the tremendous amount of support out there."
That is not a denial. It is not an announcement either. But in the currency of early presidential positioning, where ambiguity is a feature, not a bug, it functions as a green light for donors, organizers, and the progressive base that has been looking for a standard-bearer since Bernie Sanders aged out of contention.
The prediction market surge does not match traditional polling, at least not yet. A Rasmussen survey of likely Democratic primary voters released this month put former Vice President Kamala Harris at 37 percent, up from 34 percent in May. Newsom drew 14 percent. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took 10 percent. Ocasio-Cortez sat at 9 percent, dead last among the top four names tested.
That gap between market odds and voter surveys matters. Prediction markets measure where money flows, not where votes land. Bettors are pricing in momentum, media attention, and social media energy, categories where Ocasio-Cortez dominates the Democratic field. Whether that translates into primary votes in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina is a question no one can answer two years out.
A New Hampshire Democratic primary poll did offer Ocasio-Cortez one bright spot: she led the field at 22 percent, narrowly ahead of Buttigieg at 21 percent, the Washington Examiner reported. On Polymarket, she has also overtaken Republican Senator Marco Rubio in overall odds of winning the presidency, climbing to a 13 percent chance of reaching the White House.
Even Vice President JD Vance appears to be taking notice. On The Michael Knowles Show, Vance offered his own assessment of the Democratic field.
"I think it's got to be AOC. I know that's probably conventional wisdom."
Ocasio-Cortez's surge has not come from policy white papers or Sunday-show gravitas. It has come from social media. She went viral recently with candid videos about freezing her eggs, posts that generated massive engagement and positioned her as a relatable figure to younger voters. The egg-freezing announcement also raised questions about her personal life, coming after the Daily Mail revealed she and longtime partner Riley Roberts called off their engagement in February.
On the campaign trail, she has leaned into the progressive populist brand. Last year, during the early months of Trump's return to office, Ocasio-Cortez co-headlined a "Fight the Oligarchy" tour with Sanders. At one rally, the Vermont senator joked that Ocasio-Cortez was his "daughter", a remark that underlined the generational handoff taking shape on the Democratic left.
Republican strategist Libby Krieger, in an analysis reported by Fox News, characterized Ocasio-Cortez's approach as a youth-oriented, "vibes-driven" campaign strategy.
"AOC is trying to lean into the Gen Z language and connect with younger voters. She is setting up a campaign that would be based more on vibes than on her policy platform."
That framing, vibes over policy, should concern Democrats who remember how well that formula worked for Harris in 2024. But it clearly resonates with the party's online base, which prizes authenticity theater over legislative accomplishment.
Ocasio-Cortez is not operating in isolation. A broader progressive wave has been building beneath her. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won a contested primary against a centrist opponent. In Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan did the same. In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has carved out a progressive governing model that Ocasio-Cortez appears eager to ride.
That pattern, progressive candidates defeating centrists in blue-state primaries, is the infrastructure a national candidacy would need. Senator Ted Cruz has warned that Democrats are effectively handing their party to Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani, a shift that would push the national party further left than it has gone in a generation.
Ocasio-Cortez herself has not been shy about projecting confidence. Asked about a hypothetical 2028 matchup against Vance, she was blunt: "Let the record show: I would stomp him. I would stomp him!" A Verasight poll showed her leading Vance 51 percent to 49 percent in that hypothetical contest, a margin well within any reasonable error, but enough to generate headlines.
Ocasio-Cortez's rise is partly a story about her own political skill. But it is also a story about the weakness of the alternatives. Newsom led prediction markets for months and still polls at 14 percent in the Rasmussen survey, but his momentum has stalled. His recent Michigan campaign swing fell flat, with top Democrats in the state saying he never even called ahead.
Harris leads the Rasmussen poll by a wide margin at 37 percent, but her path back to a presidential nomination after losing in 2024 remains uncertain. Buttigieg, at 10 percent, has maintained a steady but unspectacular profile. Sanders, the ideological godfather of the progressive movement, is too old to run again, which is precisely why his public embrace of Ocasio-Cortez reads as an endorsement-in-waiting.
The Democratic Party's internal ideological currents are running hard to the left. Ocasio-Cortez is swimming with them. Whether the broader electorate, the voters who actually decide general elections, will follow is another matter entirely.
No one has declared. No debates have been scheduled. No delegates are at stake. Prediction markets in August 2026 are a measure of sentiment, not a forecast of results. And Ocasio-Cortez's 9 percent showing in the Rasmussen poll of actual Democratic voters is a reminder that viral clips and betting odds do not automatically convert into primary wins.
But the trajectory is unmistakable. A self-described Democratic Socialist who entered Congress in 2019 as a protest candidate now sits atop the betting markets for her party's presidential nomination. The Democratic establishment, whatever remains of it after its internal upheavals, has not produced a candidate who can match her energy, her media reach, or her willingness to say plainly what she wants.
If Democrats nominate a 36-year-old democratic socialist who built her brand on Instagram and rally tours with Bernie Sanders, they will have made a choice about what their party is. The rest of the country will make its own choice in response.
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.