Jeremy Boreing, the co-founder of the Daily Wire, is breaking his silence on Candace Owens, and the portrait he paints is not flattering. In a recent interview, Boreing told the Daily Mail that he bears some responsibility for elevating the media personality and wishes he had exercised better judgment along the way.
"I'm not the cause of Candace's talent or fame, but I did play a role," Boreing said. "I should have been more discerning."
Boreing, who co-founded the conservative media brand alongside Ben Shapiro and helped build the startup into a billion-dollar enterprise, stepped away from his role at the Daily Wire in March. He has since focused on creative projects like producing "The Pendragon Cycle: Rise Of The Merlin," but his comments about Owens mark a rare and pointed return to the public conversation about the direction of the right.
Boreing's central claim is simple: Candace Owens is not driven by ideology. She is driven by celebrity. And he says the evidence was there all along, if you knew where to look.
"Fame is the driving, fundamental priority in her life. Once you see it, you can't unsee it."
According to Boreing, Owens used to tell PragerU CEO Marissa Strite that her goal was to be "the most famous woman in the world." The version she shared with Boreing was slightly different in phrasing but identical in ambition: she wanted to be Oprah.
That kind of ambition is not, by itself, disqualifying. Plenty of effective conservatives have large personalities and sharp elbows. The question is whether the ambition serves a set of convictions, or whether the convictions are just fuel for the ambition. Boreing is firmly in the second camp, as Yahoo Entertainment reports.
"Candace uses ideology in the same way that she uses conspiracy, or in the same way that she uses slander, and that's for clicks."
He described Owens as someone with an almost preternatural ability to sense where the energy is flowing online and to position herself at the center of it. "She has the highest quantity of 'it' of any person that I've ever encountered," Boreing said, adding that in any interaction, "she's the star of the room. She's the center of gravity."
That is a remarkable concession. Boreing is not dismissing Owens as talentless. He is arguing something more uncomfortable: that extraordinary talent, unmoored from principle, becomes a liability to the movement that hosts it.
One of the more revealing anecdotes Boreing shared concerns a private conversation about Nick Fuentes and the Groypers, the online movement that has drawn sharp criticism from mainstream conservatives for its open flirtation with antisemitism and white identity politics.
Boreing recalled pressing Owens on her unwillingness to challenge what he called "very obviously bad actors starting to emerge in the movement." Her response, as he tells it, was blunt:
"I'll never go against the YouTube boys, are you crazy? I don't go against the YouTube boys."
Boreing called this "one of the most honest things that I think Candace has ever said." Not because the position was defensible, but because it revealed the operating logic. She wasn't making a principled case for engagement or free speech. She was making a market calculation. The Groypers had an audience. She was not going to alienate it.
This is the pattern that should concern anyone invested in the future of conservative media. When audience metrics replace editorial judgment, the boundary between populism and pandering disappears entirely.
Owens joined the Daily Wire on March 19, 2021, after gaining recognition at PragerU and Turning Point USA. She left in March 2024. Boreing addressed her departure in a leaked staff speech, claiming she had violated contractual obligations.
But the real rupture, Boreing says, was not contractual. It was moral. He pointed to Owens' engagement with users, accusing a rabbi of "drinking the blood of Christians," a reference to blood libel, the centuries-old antisemitic trope that has been used to justify persecution of Jews for generations.
"I'd been uncomfortable with a lot of what she had said in the months leading up to that, but really, if there was a straw, it was the blood libel."
"A centuries-old trope used by anti-Semites to defame the Jews, from my point of view, that was the point of no return," Boreing added.
There is a meaningful distinction between criticizing specific policies of the Israeli government and trafficking in medieval conspiracy theories about Jewish people. Conservatives can and do disagree on foreign policy. What they should not do is provide cover for rhetoric that has been the prelude to pogroms.
Boreing's most interesting observation may be his characterization of where Owens has landed since leaving the Daily Wire. He describes her as "post-political," noting that she is "openly telling people not to vote" and presenting herself as no longer constrained by the right-wing framework that made her famous.
"She's really actually just sort of detransitioning. She's returning to her first identity."
When asked what Owens actually believes, Boreing recounted that she once answered the question herself: "I believe what the people believe, I'm the voice of the people." It is a statement that sounds populist until you realize it means nothing at all. It is a mirror held up to whatever audience is standing in front of it.
"She views herself as primarily a famous person. She is going to give the people what they want. And she has an unbelievable instinct, as many incredibly talented people do, to [determine] which way the river is flowing at any given time. She knows where the clicks are."
This is worth taking seriously, not because Boreing is a disinterested observer (he plainly is not), but because the pattern he describes is recognizable. The conservative movement has a recurring vulnerability to personalities who adopt its language, build a following on its platforms, and then drift toward whatever content maximizes engagement, regardless of whether it serves the movement's actual goals.
Perhaps the most strategically important thing Boreing said was this:
"I think that Candace can be opposed. I think that she must be opposed, [but] I don't think that she can be defeated."
He explained the asymmetry plainly:
"Everyone who stands up to her is engaged in an action that's fundamentally about worldview, ideology, morality and truth. And that's not even the game Candace is playing."
This is the core problem with influence merchants who operate outside ideological frameworks. You cannot win a principled argument against someone who is not having one. Every rebuttal becomes content for them. Every confrontation becomes a storyline. The attention economy rewards the person who treats everything as performance, and punishes the person who treats anything as serious.
Conservatives have faced this before. The right has always had to police its own boundaries more carefully than the left, because the media establishment is eager to amplify the worst voices on the right and ignore the worst on the left. That reality makes discernment not optional, but essential.
Boreing says he learned that lesson too late. The question is whether the broader movement learns it at all.
President Trump wants the SAVE America Act on his desk before he picks a side in the Texas Senate runoff, and he's making sure Senate leadership heard him clearly.
Breitbart reported that Trump delivered that message directly to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. John Cornyn on Friday during an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, laying down a legislative marker that transforms a state-level primary into a national fight over election integrity.
The bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Trump made clear he wants the full package, not a watered-down version.
"We have to have voter ID. We have to have proof of citizenship. We have to have no mail in ballots except the military, illness, disability and travel. We have to have no men in women's sports. I added two things, and we have to have no transgender operations for youth."
That's not a wish list. That's a condition.
Tuesday's primary produced a dead heat that sent shockwaves through Texas Republican politics. Cornyn pulled 42 percent of the vote. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton grabbed 41 percent. Rep. Wesley Hunt earned 14 percent. Neither Cornyn nor Paxton eclipsed the 50 percent threshold, forcing a runoff.
On Wednesday, Trump announced he would soon make an endorsement in the runoff and called for whoever does not get his nod to drop out immediately. The signal was unmistakable: fall in line or face a fight.
Paxton responded by saying he would not drop out even if Cornyn gets the president's endorsement. In a Thursday interview with Politico, Trump's reaction was blunt: "Well, that's bad for him to say."
Paxton then took to X with a counteroffer. Rather than simply defying the president, he tried to reframe the standoff around the very legislation Trump is demanding.
"I would consider dropping out of this race if Senate Leadership agrees to lift the filibuster and passes the SAVE America Act."
It's a savvy move on paper. Paxton aligned himself with Trump's top legislative priority while putting the pressure back on Thune and Cornyn to deliver. He didn't just ask for a vote. He asked for the filibuster to be lifted to get it done.
He also went after Cornyn directly, calling him "a coward who has refused to support abolishing the filibuster to pass this bill." He accused the media and "the establishment" of trying to destroy him with misinformation.
Paxton then laid out his loyalty credentials in unmistakable terms:
"The truth is clear: No one has been more loyal to Donald Trump than me — fighting the stolen 2020 election, being in Mar-a-Lago when he announced his 2024 campaign, and standing with him in NY in the face of lawfare."
He concluded by pledging to help the president get the SAVE America Act across the finish line "for the good of our country and for the good of passing President Trump's agenda."
While Trump wouldn't commit publicly, NBC News' Garrett Haake reported on X that the president may have revealed his leanings during a Thursday night conversation. When Haake noted that Cornyn had outperformed polls on Tuesday, Trump responded warmly.
"Cornyn is a very underrated person. He was supposed to lose by ten points and he won. He's a good man."
That's not an endorsement. But it's nothing, either. Trump said he would make a "decision fairly shortly."
What makes this moment interesting isn't just the Texas race. It's the leverage architecture Trump is building. By conditioning a high-profile endorsement on legislative action, he's converting political capital in one arena into results in another.
The SAVE America Act isn't stuck because it lacks popular support. Proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration are common sense to most Americans. The bill is stuck because Senate procedure protects inaction.
Trump is telling Thune and Cornyn, in plain language, that there's a price for his involvement. Pass the bill. Get it to my desk. Then we'll talk about Texas.
Paxton, for his part, is trying to make the same argument from the other direction: that the bill matters more than any single Senate seat. Whether that's principled conviction or campaign survival instinct dressed in legislative clothing, only Paxton knows.
But the effect is the same. Both lanes of the Texas runoff now run through the SAVE America Act. Both candidates need to show they can deliver what Trump actually wants. And what Trump wants is simple:
Prove you're a citizen before you vote. No exceptions. No excuses.
The Texas Senate seat is the carrot. The SAVE America Act is the point.
Lou Holtz, the legendary college football coach who led Notre Dame to the 1988 national championship and later became one of the most prominent conservative voices in American sports, died Wednesday in Orlando, Florida. He was 89 years old.
His family confirmed the news in a statement posted to Holtz's X account, saying he passed surrounded by family. Reports had surfaced just over a month earlier that Holtz was in hospice care.
Holtz was a man who built winners everywhere he went. He coached at six programs across four decades, and he led every single one of them to a bowl game. William and Mary. NC State. Arkansas. Minnesota. Notre Dame. South Carolina. No rebuilding years are treated as acceptable. No excuses dressed up as process. Just results.
When President Donald Trump awarded Holtz the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020, he captured the coach's origins in a single image, the Christian Post reported:
"He grew up in poverty in a two-room cellar, but as Lou says, 'I knew God and my family loved me, and their love was all the wealth I needed. That's everything I needed. That's all I wanted.'"
That wasn't a biography for applause. It was the engine behind everything Holtz did. A man who started with nothing and understood that faith and family weren't slogans but load-bearing walls.
His family's statement reflected as much, describing a life defined by "enduring values of faith, family service, and an unwavering belief in the potential of others." His wife Beth, who predeceased him, was the person with whom he shared what the family called "a life grounded in faith, devotion, and service."
He is survived by four children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Holtz's time at Notre Dame, from 1986 to 1996, is what cemented his legend. The 1988 national championship remains one of the defining moments in the history of college football. But his influence stretched well beyond the sideline.
Through the Holtz Charitable Foundation and related initiatives, he poured resources back into communities that needed them. The Lou's Lads Foundation worked to ensure "underprivileged students and legacies have access to the support they need to succeed." The Holtz's Heroes Foundation, which included the Bread of Life Drive and partnerships with the Notre Dame Alumni Association, built what was described as a "global footprint in the fight against hunger."
The Bobby Satterfield Fund addressed what so many charities won't touch directly: "financial strain, mental health hurdles, or physical ailments," along with addiction and the devastation of "unforeseen job loss or illness."
A Notre Dame Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications noted that Holtz directed "attention and support to his hometown, alma mater, Catholic Charities, the Women's Care Foundation, the Center for the Homeless in South Bend, and other worthy organizations through his charitable foundation."
His family put it plainly:
"His influence extended far beyond the football field through the Holtz Charitable Foundation and the many players, colleagues, and communities shaped by his leadership."
In an era when athletes and coaches increasingly mouth whatever platitudes the cultural establishment demands, Holtz never bent. At the 2020 Republican National Convention, he did something almost unheard of for a sports figure: he spoke clearly, without hedging, about his Catholic faith and its implications for public life.
He called the Biden-Harris ticket "the most radically pro-abortion campaign in history." He called out Catholics who supported it as "Catholics in name only" who "abandon innocent lives." And he said plainly that "nobody has been a stronger advocate for the unborn than President Trump."
There was no focus-grouped ambiguity in those words. No carefully constructed deniability. Holtz said what he believed because he believed it, and he understood something that too many public figures have forgotten: conviction is not a liability. It is the thing that makes a life coherent.
The same man who demanded excellence from his players on Saturdays demanded moral seriousness from his country's leaders. That consistency is rare. It is also why millions of Americans saw Holtz not just as a great coach but as a man worth listening to on things that mattered far more than football.
Visitation will be held on March 15 at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the Notre Dame campus, with the funeral mass on March 16 at 1 p.m. The mass will be available via livestream.
There will be tributes in the coming days that focus on the wins, the championship, and the coaching tree. All deserved. But the fuller picture is a man who grew up in a two-room cellar and spent his life proving that character is not circumstance. That faith is not decoration. The measure of influence is not what you accumulate but what you build in other people.
Lou Holtz built plenty.
Kurdish Iranian dissident groups stationed in northern Iraq say they are moving fighters toward the Iranian border and preparing for potential military operations inside Iran, with Kurdish officials telling the Associated Press that the United States has asked Iraqi Kurdish leaders to support the effort.
Khalil Nadiri, an official with the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), said Wednesday that some PAK forces had relocated to areas near the Iranian border in Sulaymaniyah province and were waiting on standby. An official with Komala, another Kurdish opposition group, said its forces could be ready to cross the border within a week to 10 days. The groups are believed to have thousands of trained fighters between them.
The preparations come after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday, triggering a new phase of conflict in the Middle East.
Three Iraqi Kurdish officials told the AP that a phone call took place Sunday night between President Trump and two of the most powerful figures in Iraqi Kurdistan: Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Bafel Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. One of the officials said Trump asked the Iraqi Kurds to militarily support Iranian Kurdish groups in operations inside Iran and to open the border, according to Newsmax.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan confirmed the call in a statement, saying Trump "provided clarification and vision regarding U.S. objectives in the war." The PUK also added that it "believes that the best solution is a return to the negotiating table."
Spokespeople for Barzani declined to comment.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a more limited characterization of the conversation. Asked about the call and reports that Trump had sought military support for Iranian Kurdish groups, Leavitt said:
"He did speak to Kurdish leaders with respect to our base that we have in northern Iraq."
She denied that Trump had agreed to a specific plan. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, asked Wednesday about reports that the administration was considering arming Iranian Kurdish groups, was similarly careful:
"None of our objectives are premised on the support or the arming of any particular force. So, what other entities may be doing, we're aware of, but our objectives aren't centered on that."
Read those statements closely. Neither is a denial that contact occurred. Neither rules out coordination. What they rule out is dependency. The U.S. is not building its Iran strategy around Kurdish fighters, but it is not discouraging them either.
The Kurdish region has already absorbed a string of drone and missile attacks by Iran and allied Iraqi militias in recent days, targeting U.S. military bases, the U.S. Consulate in Irbil, and the Kurdish groups' own positions. Electricity cuts followed after a key gas field halted operations. The region is feeling the pressure from multiple directions.
Iran, predictably, wants the threat neutralized before it materializes. Iraq's National Security Adviser Qassim al-Araji said in a post on X that Ali Bagheri, deputy secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, had requested:
"that Iraq take the necessary measures to prevent any opposition groups from infiltrating the border between the two countries."
Al-Araji responded by pledging Iraq's commitment to "preventing any groups from infiltrating or crossing the Iranian border or carrying out terrorist acts from Iraqi territory," adding that security reinforcements had been sent to the border. Baghdad is caught between its neighbor to the east and the superpower that still maintains forces on its soil. That is not a comfortable position, and al-Araji's language reflects the tightrope.
The Kurdish opposition to Iran's regime is not new. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran's new theocracy battled Kurdish insurgents in fighting that killed thousands over several months. Under the Shah before that, Kurds were marginalized, repressed, and periodically in revolt. The grievances run deep and predate the current crisis by decades.
In 2023, Iraq reached an agreement with Iran to disarm the Kurdish dissident groups and move them from bases near the border into camps designated by Baghdad. The bases were shut down. Movement within Iraq was restricted. But the groups did not give up their weapons. That detail matters enormously now. The infrastructure was dismantled; the fighting capacity was not.
Reza Pahlavi, the former shah's son, has accused the Kurds of being separatists aiming to carve up Iran. That framing is convenient for anyone who wants to delegitimize an armed opposition without engaging with why that opposition exists in the first place.
The strategic logic here is straightforward. Iran is a regime that rules by coercion, and coercive regimes are uniquely vulnerable to internal pressure. Kurdish fighters with local knowledge, existing grievances, and a willingness to operate inside Iranian territory represent exactly the kind of asymmetric challenge that Tehran has spent years trying to suppress through diplomatic agreements with Baghdad.
Those agreements held when the broader region was relatively stable. That stability evaporated Saturday.
Much of the reporting relies on anonymous Kurdish officials, and the White House is clearly managing the public narrative with precision. That is not unusual when military and intelligence equities are in play. What is clear from the public record is that:
The Kurdish groups themselves are not waiting for permission slips. They have fighters, they have weapons they were supposed to have surrendered, and they have generations of reasons to act. Whether Washington is formally coordinating with them or simply not standing in their way, the effect on Tehran's calculations is the same.
Iran now faces the prospect of fighting on multiple fronts: against the U.S. and Israeli military campaign from the air, and against an indigenous armed opposition crossing its western border. That is precisely the kind of strategic squeeze that changes a regime's willingness to negotiate.
The PUK's statement said the best solution is a return to the negotiating table. Perhaps. But negotiating tables tend to appear only after the alternative becomes unbearable.
Sidney Dorsey, the former DeKalb County sheriff convicted of ordering the assassination of the man who beat him at the ballot box, died Monday night at Augusta State Medical Prison. He was 86. A Georgia Department of Corrections official confirmed Dorsey died of natural causes.
Dorsey was serving a life sentence, plus 23 years on corruption-related convictions, including racketeering and violating his oath of office. He spent more than two decades behind bars for a crime that remains one of the most brazen acts of political violence in modern Georgia history.
On December 15, 2000, DeKalb County Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown was shot outside his Decatur home. Brown was a longtime police veteran who had campaigned on a pledge to root out corruption in the sheriff's department. He never took office.
He left behind his wife, Phyllis, and five children.
According to the local ABC affiliate, prosecutors said Dorsey arranged the slaying after losing a bitter reelection campaign amid allegations of corruption. A jury convicted Dorsey in 2002. Two other men were also convicted in connection with the killing.
At sentencing, Dorsey offered this:
"I do not have the blood of Derwin Brown on my hands."
Five years later, in 2007, he reversed course. Authorities said Dorsey admitted from prison that he orchestrated the killing, telling a prosecutor he had ordered the hit but later claimed he tried to call it off.
Phyllis Brown testified during the sentencing hearing and told Dorsey she did not wish him death.
There is no sugarcoating what happened in DeKalb County. A sitting sheriff, entrusted with the power of law enforcement, used that position to eliminate a political rival. Not through opposition research. Not through a recount challenge. Through murder.
This is the nightmare scenario that makes the public trust in local government so fragile and so essential to protect. Law enforcement authority is among the most consequential powers delegated to any official in America. When someone abuses it, the damage extends far beyond a single crime. It poisons the well for every honest officer and every functioning department in the country.
Brown ran on cleaning up corruption. He won. And for that, he was killed in his own driveway before he could raise his right hand and take the oath.
The justice system did what it was supposed to do in this case. Dorsey was investigated, tried, convicted, and sentenced. He died in a prison cell, not a free man. That matters. In an era when Americans across the political spectrum worry about two-tiered justice, the Dorsey case stands as a reminder that when institutions function, when prosecutors pursue the truth regardless of the defendant's title, the system can deliver.
It took courage to bring a sitting sheriff to trial. It took a jury willing to convict him. It took a sentence that ensured he would never walk free again.
Derwin Brown never got to serve the people who elected him. His five children grew up without their father. No conviction undoes that. But Dorsey's death in prison, after more than two decades, closes a chapter that began with one of the most corrupt acts an American officeholder has ever committed.
The badge is supposed to protect. Brown understood that. It cost him everything.
A United Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner bound for New Jersey turned back to Los Angeles International Airport on Monday after an engine caught fire shortly into the flight, forcing 256 passengers and 12 crew members to evacuate via emergency slides and airstairs.
United Flight 2127 departed LAX around 10:15 a.m. and reversed course roughly an hour later due to what the Federal Aviation Administration described as "a left engine issue." Video footage from the scene showed smoke pouring from one of the engines as firefighters blasted water inside the aircraft.
The FAA confirmed the basics to Fox News Digital:
"United Airlines Flight 2127 took off from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) around 10:15 a.m. before turning around an hour later because of a left engine issue."
The agency did not specify the nature of the engine problem. The FAA said the incident is under investigation.
United Airlines, for its part, kept the language clinical. The airline told Fox News Digital that the flight "safely returned to Los Angeles to address an issue with one of the engines." Customers deplaned via slides and airstairs and were bused to the terminal.
United also praised its crew:
"We are grateful to our pilots and flight attendants for their quick actions to keep our customers safe."
Note the framing. An engine fire dramatic enough to require emergency slides and a fleet of firefighters hosing down a widebody jet gets reduced to "an issue with one of the engines." That's corporate communications doing exactly what it's designed to do: flatten the severity until the lawyers and investigators finish their work.
A spokesperson for LAX declined to comment entirely, referring all inquiries to United. Fox News Digital reached out to the Los Angeles Fire Department but had not received a response.
Nobody died. That matters, and it should be said plainly before anything else. The pilots executed the emergency return. The crew got passengers off the aircraft. The system, in this instance, worked the way it is supposed to work under pressure.
But "the system worked" is not the same as "there is no problem." The traveling public has watched a steady drumbeat of aviation incidents over the past couple of years: near-misses on runways, doors blowing off fuselages, and mechanical failures forcing diversions. Each one gets its own investigation, its own corporate statement praising the crew, its own quiet fade from the news cycle. The pattern, though, is harder to ignore than any single event.
The aircraft involved was a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, one of Boeing's flagship widebody jets and a workhorse for long-haul routes. The FAA's investigation will determine whether this was an isolated mechanical failure, a maintenance issue, or something with wider implications for the fleet. Until that investigation concludes, speculation is just speculation.
What isn't speculation is that 268 people boarded a routine transcontinental flight Monday morning and ended up evacuating down emergency slides surrounded by fire trucks. They deserve answers, not just gratitude.
The FAA investigation will proceed on its own timeline. The agency has been under scrutiny for its oversight capacity, and incidents like this one only sharpen the focus. Whether this amounts to a one-off mechanical event or feeds into a larger accountability story depends entirely on what investigators find.
For the 256 passengers who started their Monday expecting to land in New Jersey and instead walked down inflatable slides onto a Los Angeles tarmac, the investigation is academic. The experience is not. An engine fire at altitude is the kind of thing that stays with you long after the airline rebooks your flight.
The crew brought them home. Now the question is why they had to.
Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas is staring down what may be the final days of his congressional career. Trailing his primary challenger by 24 points in a recent poll, facing an active congressional ethics probe, and dogged by allegations of an extramarital affair with a staffer who later set herself on fire, the three-term congressman has refused to resign despite calls from more than half a dozen Republican colleagues to step aside.
He and challenger Brandon Herrera face off again Tuesday in a rematch of a razor-thin primary runoff Gonzales won two years ago by roughly 400 votes. This time, the math looks very different.
An internal campaign poll commissioned by Herrera's team in late February showed Gonzales at just 21% support, compared to Herrera's 45%. Another 26% remained undecided, with former Rep. Francisco "Quico" Canseco and construction executive Keith Barton each pulling 4%. If Herrera clears the 50% threshold, there is no runoff. The arrow, as Herrera put it, is already in flight.
At the center of the scandal is the death of Regina Santos-Aviles, a 35-year-old mother of one who served as Gonzales' regional director. Santos-Aviles self-immolated in the backyard of her Uvalde home and died on September 14. First responders reported that she told them she had discovered her husband was cheating on her with her best friend, and that she poured gasoline on herself and set herself on fire. Police records and autopsy notes indicated she had been drinking and taking antidepressants.
Text messages obtained by the New York Post from a May 2024 exchange, some 16 months before her death, reportedly show Santos-Aviles admitting to an "affair." One message attributed to Gonzales reads: "Then send me a sexy pic." Her widower, Adrian Aviles, denied the claim when contacted. A former colleague of Santos-Aviles also denied it.
Whatever the full truth, the human cost here is undeniable. A young mother is dead. A family is shattered. And a sitting congressman's only public response, delivered to CNN's Manu Raju on Capitol Hill, was this:
"What you've seen is not all the facts."
That is not a denial. It is not an explanation. It is the kind of sentence a lawyer approves and a voter sees right through.
The affair allegations accelerated Gonzales' decline, but they did not cause it. His standing with the Republican base in Texas's 23rd Congressional District had been eroding for years. The district stretches roughly 800 miles from San Antonio to El Paso across the border regions of west Texas, and all but a handful of its counties voted heavily for Trump in 2024. The voters there care about border security. Gonzales gave them reasons to doubt he did.
A former aide who worked for Gonzales from 2021 to 2023 in a border county office told the Post she was "done with Tony," and laid out her reasoning plainly:
"I don't feel he was doing enough for the border crisis to stop that, the red-flag laws, and then the last straw was him voting for all the LGBT stuff, same-sex marriage."
That is not one grievance. It is a list. Red-flag laws. Same-sex marriage. And a perceived lack of urgency on the border, in a district where the border is not an abstraction but a daily reality. When your own former staff is cataloguing your betrayals for reporters, the problem predates any scandal.
At an event in Corpus Christi on Friday, Gonzales was booed by some attendees. The chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Conference and father of six is watching his political coalition disintegrate in real time.
Brandon Herrera, the firearms enthusiast and YouTuber known as "The AK Guy" with more than 4 million online followers, has run a campaign squarely aimed at the district's priorities. His closing message to voters focused on border security, affordability, and veterans' issues. Speaking to the Post on Sunday, Herrera framed the stakes in terms that mirror the broader MAGA agenda:
"Let's help President Trump codify the things that he's done to secure the border; let's work on the massive financial crisis, the debt crisis we're in in this country; let's make sure that veterans get the health care that they deserve and that they were promised, especially in such a veteran-dense district like District 23."
That is a message built for the district: concrete, policy-forward, and aligned with what Republican voters in border country actually want from their representative. Herrera has also argued that Gonzales' refusal to come clean about the alleged affair creates a general election vulnerability, claiming that Gonzales' "lies" could allow Democrats to "flip a reliable Republican seat blue."
With Republicans holding 218 seats to Democrats' 214 heading into the 2026 midterms, that is not a hypothetical concern. It is arithmetic.
House Speaker Mike Johnson called the accusations against Gonzales "very serious" and said he had privately urged the congressman "to address" the matter "directly and head on with his constituents." That is about as far as a Speaker will go publicly against a sitting member of his own conference, but the message was clear enough. Johnson did not vouch for Gonzales. He did not rally to his defense. He told him to face his voters.
The Office of Congressional Conduct began probing the purported affair in November but will not be able to refer findings to the House Ethics Committee for potential punishments until after the primary election. The timeline means voters will render their verdict before the institution does.
This is a race where the outcome may already be determined, and the election is just a formality. Gonzales' support has collapsed among the people who know him best: his former staff, his colleagues, his constituents. The ethics probe hangs overhead. The text messages are public. The woman at the center of the allegations is dead, and his response has been to say the public doesn't have "all the facts" without offering any of his own.
Herrera does not need to be a perfect candidate. He needs to be an acceptable alternative in a district that has already moved on. In a deep-red stretch of border Texas where voters backed Trump by wide margins, the question is not whether the district stays Republican. It is whether the Republican who holds it deserves to.
Tuesday will answer that.
Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old supreme leader of Iran, was killed in an Israeli strike Saturday as part of a massive joint military operation between the United States and Israel. Iranian state media confirmed his death, and the Iranian government announced 40 days of public mourning, declaring his death a "martyrdom."
The strike also killed seven senior defense and intelligence officials, part of a broader operation targeting 30 top military and civilian leaders overall. Israel says its opening strikes decimated the chain of command.
The man who spent 35 years consolidating near-total control over the Iranian state, who held authority over the judiciary, state media, and all security forces, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is gone.
President Trump celebrated Khamenei's death in a post on Truth Social, calling him "one of the most evil people in History" and declaring that his killing represented "justice." He appeared to confirm that U.S. intelligence played a direct role in tracking and targeting Khamenei:
"was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems"
Trump warned that bombing would "continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or as long as necessary," and laid out a vision for what comes after. In an overnight video address, he called for the Iranian people to remain in their homes during the bombing campaign but rise and "take over your government" when it concludes. The stated goal: "peace throughout the Middle East and, indeed, the world."
Trump also claimed that Iranian security forces and IRGC members were already seeking immunity, and urged them to "peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots." That framing matters. This is not just a military strike. It is an invitation to the Iranian people to finish what the bombs started, as Axios reports.
The scale of the decapitation is staggering. Those confirmed killed include:
That is not a leadership reshuffle. That is the elimination of the infrastructure that kept the regime standing. The military. The intelligence apparatus. The nuclear program's brain trust. All in a single operation.
One senior official who survived is Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's supreme national security council and former parliament speaker. Larijani, one of Khamenei's closest confidants, has emerged as the most senior civilian official still standing. In a post on X Saturday, he vowed Iran would deliver Israel and the U.S. an "unforgettable lesson."
That's the kind of statement a regime makes when it has nothing else to offer its people. Larijani can promise revenge, but the men who would carry it out are dead.
Mojtaba Khamenei, one of the supreme leader's sons, had been widely discussed as a possible successor. Israeli officials said Israel targeted Khamenei's sons, though intelligence assessments suggest they survived the strikes. Under Iran's constitution, an interim council assumes power while the Assembly of Experts, a body of 88 Islamic clerics, selects a new supreme leader.
The question isn't whether the constitutional process will be followed. It's whether there is a functioning state left to follow it.
Reza Pahlavi, Iran's exiled former crown prince and a leading opposition leader who has organized mass protests against the regime, also called for the Iranian people to take to the streets. He directed a pointed message at Iran's remaining security forces:
"Join the nation and help ensure a stable and secure transition. Otherwise, you will sink with Khamenei's ship and his crumbling regime."
Both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have called for what amounts to a popular opening. Whether the Iranian people seize it depends on what happens in the coming days and whether the regime's remaining enforcers decide their loyalty is worth dying for.
Khamenei took power in 1989 following the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He had ruled Iran for over 36 years. In that time, he consolidated near-total control over every lever of the Iranian state. Thousands of protesters were killed under his watch. He built a network of proxy forces that destabilized the entire Middle East, funded terrorism, and pursued nuclear weapons.
The regime he built was designed to survive any one strike, any one assassination, any one wave of protests. It was not designed to survive all of them at once.
Saturday, that design was tested. It failed.
President Trump reportedly dressed down FBI Director Kash Patel behind closed doors after a video surfaced of Patel chugging a beer and pounding a table inside the U.S. men's hockey team's locker room following their gold medal victory at the Winter Olympics in Milan.
The Daily Mail reported that Trump told Patel he was unhappy with the locker-room celebration and raised concerns about Patel's use of a government aircraft for the trip to Italy, which could cost taxpayers up to $75,000, according to NBC News.
The president, who does not drink alcohol, took issue with both the optics of the celebration and the travel arrangements, per a person familiar with the matter.
The FBI declined to comment on whether Trump expressed frustration with Patel.
Team USA won its first Olympic men's hockey gold since 1980. That's a legitimate historic moment. Patel was filmed enthusiastically drinking from a beer and shouting inside the locker room with the newly crowned champions. ProPublica first posted the video, which circulated widely.
Patel defended himself on X:
"For the very concerned media - yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys- Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth."
The FBI maintained the trip was official in nature, stating simply that "it is not a personal trip." Patel said he met with Italian law enforcement officials and U.S. agencies involved in security during the visit.
Earlier, he had posted pictures from inside the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena during Sunday's final.
There's nothing wrong with celebrating American greatness. There's nothing wrong with an FBI director being proud of Team USA. But government aircraft cost money, and the director of the FBI is not a sports ambassador. Trump understood that distinction immediately.
This is the kind of thing that hands your opponents ammunition for free. And sure enough, Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wasted no time asking the Justice Department's inspector general to "investigate Director Patel's misuse or mismanagement of government resources."
Predictable as sunrise. But predictable doesn't mean unearned when you give them the material.
The $75,000 price tag for a government jet to watch hockey and pound beers in a locker room writes the attack ad itself. It doesn't matter that Patel also conducted official meetings. The video is what people saw. And in politics, what people see is what exists.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson pivoted to the administration's record rather than relitigating the locker room footage. She pointed to the results:
"Crime rates are dropping across the board. This is a direct result of the President's law and order agenda which is being successfully implemented by his law and order team, including FBI Director Kash Patel."
Jackson added that "the President has full confidence in his Administration." That's the standard vote-of-confidence language, and notably, it came after the reported rebuke, not instead of it.
Trump corrected the problem privately and kept the public messaging unified. That's how leadership works: address the issue internally, present a united front externally.
Lost in the beer-chugging discourse is what the FBI was actually doing this week. The bureau fired at least 10 employees connected to the 2022 search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, according to three people familiar with the matter.
That search uncovered classified documents and led to one of two federal criminal cases against Trump, both of which were ultimately dismissed.
This is the real story. Patel has been systematically cleaning house at an agency that spent years weaponizing against the man who appointed him.
He disclosed that his own cellphone "toll" records were obtained during those investigations. The man running the FBI knows firsthand what it looks like when the bureau targets people for political reasons.
Also, while Patel was in Italy, an armed man entered the security perimeter of Trump's Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago. Trump was not present at the time. The incident underscores the constant threat environment in which the administration operates and the seriousness of the security apparatus Patel oversees.
Democrats want this to be a scandal. It isn't. It's a moment of poor judgment that the president caught and corrected. The left would love nothing more than to turn a locker room beer into Patel's undoing, because what Patel is actually doing at the FBI terrifies them.
Every agent fired for the Mar-a-Lago raid, every institutional reform, every step toward accountability for the bureau's years of political overreach represents the thing they fear most: consequences.
Durbin's call for an inspector general investigation is theatrical. The same Democrats who shrugged at the FBI being used as a political weapon against a sitting president now want an audit because the FBI director celebrated a hockey game too enthusiastically. The selective outrage isn't even clever anymore.
Patel should take note. Keep the patriotism, lose the government jet to sporting events. The mission is too important and the enemies too eager for the FBI director to hand them distractions on a silver platter.
There's a bureau to rebuild. That job doesn't happen in a locker room.
Sens. Josh Hawley and Jeff Merkley announced the Homes for American Families Act on Thursday, a bipartisan bill that would prohibit large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, townhouses, and condominiums across the United States. The legislation arrives on the heels of President Trump's State of the Union address this week, where he urged Congress to make his executive order banning the practice permanent.
The bill is simple in its logic: American families should not have to outbid hedge funds for a starter home. That this requires legislation at all tells you how far the housing market has drifted from its original purpose.
During his address, Trump put a face on the problem. He introduced Rachel Wiggins, a mother of two from Houston, who placed bids on 20 homes and lost every single one to institutional investors who bypassed inspections and paid all cash. Trump told the chamber:
"Stories like this are why last month I signed executive order to ban large Wall Street investment firms are buying up in the thousands single family homes. And now I'm asking Congress to make that ban permanent, because homes for people, really that's what we want, we want homes for people, not for corporations. Corporations are doing just fine."
Twenty bids. Not two. Not five. Twenty. Everyone lost to a firm that converted the property into a rental. This is the housing market that millions of Americans now navigate, one where a young family with a mortgage pre-approval letter is competing against entities with bottomless capital and no intention of ever living in the home. Breitbart reported.
Hawley framed the legislation in terms that cut straight to the core of the issue:
"Families deserve to be able to buy their own homes and achieve the American dream without competing with big investment companies that irrevocably drive up housing prices. That's why I am introducing legislation to ban Wall Street from buying single family homes once and for all."
Merkley, the Oregon Democrat, struck a similar tone, calling houses in American communities "homes for families, not profit centers for hedge funds." He also acknowledged the political landscape clearly, noting that the bipartisan support gives the effort "wind in our sails."
The two senators have also updated their previous legislation, known as the HOPE for Homeownership Act, which would incentivize Wall Street firms and hedge funds to divest their existing holdings of single-family homes. Together, the measures represent a two-pronged approach: stop the buying, then unwind what's already been bought.
There is a particular kind of economic dislocation that occurs when the most basic unit of American wealth building, a home, gets absorbed into an institutional portfolio. This isn't a niche libertarian debate about free markets. It is a question about what kind of country we intend to be.
When a hedge fund buys a three-bedroom house in a Houston suburb, it doesn't plant roots there. It doesn't join the PTA. It doesn't maintain the property with the care of someone who watches their kids play in the backyard. It extracts rent, defers maintenance to whatever the spreadsheet allows, and moves on to the next acquisition. Multiply that across thousands of homes in hundreds of communities, and you get neighborhoods that look occupied but feel hollow.
Homeownership has been the primary vehicle for middle-class wealth accumulation in this country for generations. The equity a family builds in a home funds retirements, college educations, and small businesses. Every house that disappears into an institutional portfolio is one fewer rung on that ladder.
The push by Trump was reportedly one of the few moments at his State of the Union address that saw both Republicans and left-wing Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, stand and cheer. That alone signals how deeply this issue resonates across ideological lines.
And it should. The conservative case here is straightforward: families and communities are the building blocks of a stable society, and a financial system that systematically prices families out of ownership in favor of institutional landlords undermines both. This isn't hostility toward capitalism. It's a recognition that capital without guardrails can hollow out the very institutions that make free markets worth defending.
Trump signed the executive order last month. Congress now has the chance to write it into law. The bipartisan support exists. The public anger is real. The only question is whether Washington can move at a pace that matches the urgency families like the Wiggins family feel every time they lose another bid.
Rachel Wiggins lost twenty times. The country shouldn't have to lose once more.