Attorneys for Rep. Max Miller have acknowledged that the Ohio congressman fabricated testimony about a key witness in court proceedings where he sought a protection order against his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio). The admission, first reported by the New York Post, has triggered a sanctions motion from Moreno's legal team and cast serious doubt on Miller's credibility in an already bitter custody fight.
The concession is not a matter of interpretation. Miller's own legal team sent an email to opposing counsel stating they had "learned that [the girlfriend] was in fact not likely present at Max's home during the time of the child exchange." That directly contradicts a notarized statement Miller signed and testimony he gave under oath, both on the same day.
For conservatives who believe in the rule of law, accountability, and honest dealing in court, this is not a story to wave away because Miller has an "R" next to his name. Fabricating testimony in a domestic violence proceeding is a serious matter, no matter who does it.
The sequence of events is damning in its specificity. On February 1, Moreno alleged that Miller grabbed her by the arm and shoved her against a wall during a custody exchange at his home. Her legal team has claimed this was the second time Miller assaulted her during such an exchange.
Miller denied the allegation. In February, his attorneys submitted a statement from the 37-year-old congressman in support of obtaining a protection order against Moreno. On February 27, Miller signed a notarized statement making a very particular claim: that his girlfriend, identified only as "J.A.," was inside his home during the entire custody exchange.
The statement was emphatic. Miller declared that J.A. "makes it a practice to remain out of sight at my home during custody exchanges" due to what he called Moreno's "unpredictable, irrational, unhinged, and confrontational behavior." He further stated that J.A. had "provided statements to DCFS [Department of Children and Family Services] and a private investigator confirming that she was present at my home on February 1 during the custody exchange" and that "she did not hear any commotion."
That same day, February 27, Miller appeared at a court hearing. When asked whether footage showed that his "girlfriend was present immediately preceding the custody exchange," Miller answered: "Yes."
A judge agreed to issue a protection order for Miller against Moreno, though the court found no evidence "to issue an order to protect the minor child at this time."
Then, nearly two weeks later, Miller's attorneys reversed course. In an email to Moreno's lawyers, they acknowledged that J.A. was "in fact not likely present" at Miller's home during the exchange. The email tried to soften the blow, adding: "We still, however, feel the video-recorded exchange demonstrates no altercation between Max and Emily."
That hedge does not erase the problem. Miller made specific, notarized claims about a witness who, by his own lawyers' later admission, was not there. He then affirmed those claims under oath. The entire foundation of his corroboration, the girlfriend who supposedly heard nothing and saw Moreno acting normally, was fabricated.
Moreno's attorney, Andrew Zashin, moved swiftly. On Monday, he demanded that Miller's legal team drop or amend the request for a protection order against Emily Moreno. When that apparently did not resolve the matter, Zashin filed a motion on Wednesday demanding that the court sanction Miller's lawyers and award Moreno attorney fees.
Zashin did not mince words in his public comments. He told the Post:
"Max Miller is trying to weaponize the law to avoid having his parenting rights reduced or terminated. He believes the best defense is a good offense. Max Miller will fail."
Zashin also characterized the broader legal strategy in blunt terms:
"The congressman's civil domestic violence claims are meritless and only designed to use as leverage against his ex-wife in their contested custody case."
The accusation is that Miller, facing allegations of domestic violence himself, filed a counter-claim against his ex-wife to gain tactical advantage in their custody dispute over their 2-year-old daughter. If Zashin's characterization is accurate, the fabricated witness testimony was part of that tactical play. The sanctions motion now asks the court to hold Miller's legal team accountable for presenting false evidence.
Congressional misconduct, whether personal or professional, has been a recurring source of tension inside the Republican caucus. The GOP has had to confront similar situations with other members facing allegations that test the party's stated commitment to accountability.
Miller's attorney, Adam Brown, has pushed back aggressively on the underlying abuse allegations, even as the witness fabrication stands uncontested. Brown told the Post that the surveillance videos in question were "from immediately after the congressman allegedly abused Ms. Moreno." He called Moreno "a liar."
Brown pointed to Ring doorbell footage as evidence that Moreno showed no signs of distress:
"You can see from this video that Ms. Moreno was under no distress whatsoever; she was in an uplifted mood, telling their child to 'say bye' and that the congressman is nothing but a loving father saying 'I love you' to both his daughter and his ex-wife on their way out of the door."
The Post reported that it reviewed some of the footage cited by Miller and his lawyers. Moreno could be heard saying "bye" on the Ring video. But the footage argument, whatever its merits, does not address the central problem: Miller told a court, under oath and in a notarized statement, that a specific witness was present and could corroborate his account. His own lawyers later said that witness was not there.
The distinction matters. You can argue about whether video shows distress. You cannot argue about whether you fabricated a witness. Miller's legal team has already conceded the point.
Democrats, of course, have their own long history of looking the other way when their members face misconduct allegations. The silence from House Democrats on cases involving their own colleagues has been well documented. But that double standard does not excuse dishonesty in court from anyone, least of all a sitting member of Congress.
Max Miller married Emily Moreno in 2022 at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey. He was elected to the House that same year. Before entering Congress, Miller served in multiple roles during the first Trump administration, including associate director of the Presidential Personnel Office and special assistant to the president.
The couple split in 2024. Miller has agreed to pay $2,500 in monthly child support. The custody dispute has been contentious, with Moreno's legal team alleging a pattern of physical abuse during exchanges and Miller's side characterizing Moreno as unstable and dishonest.
When the Post reached Miller for comment, he responded: "This is truly exhausting. I just want what's best for my daughter. Please stop giving my previously diagnosed bipolar ex-wife so much attention. You all need to move on."
That response does not address the fabricated testimony. It redirects attention to Moreno's mental health, a tactic that may play in the court of public opinion but carries no weight in an actual courtroom where his own lawyers have already admitted the witness claim was false.
The broader pattern of internal Republican tensions in the House makes cases like this more damaging, not less. Every member who creates a credibility problem weakens the caucus at a time when the GOP majority is razor-thin and public trust in institutions is already low.
Several questions remain open. The court has not yet ruled on Zashin's sanctions motion. It is unclear what consequences, if any, Miller will face for the fabricated testimony, both in the domestic case and potentially from the House itself. The specific court handling the matter has not been publicly identified in available reporting.
It is also unclear how Miller's attorneys say they "learned" that J.A. was not present. Did the girlfriend come forward? Did new evidence surface? The email to Moreno's lawyers offers no explanation for how a notarized, sworn claim turned out to be false barely two weeks after it was made.
Questions of judicial accountability and courtroom integrity cut across party lines. When a sitting congressman submits fabricated evidence to a court, the system's response matters, not just for the parties involved, but for public confidence in the legal process itself.
The protection order against Moreno remains in place. No order was issued to protect the couple's minor child. The custody battle continues.
Conservatives rightly demand honesty from public officials and integrity in our courts. Those standards don't come with a party exemption. If Max Miller lied under oath, and his own lawyers say the claim was false, then the court should act accordingly, and his colleagues should expect better.
A federal grand jury in Alabama has charged the Southern Poverty Law Center with 11 counts of fraud and money laundering, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams responded by praising the organization as a force for good.
The indictment alleges the SPLC secretly routed more than $3 million in donor funds to individuals tied to the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi organizations, and other white supremacist groups between 2014 and 2023. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the group was "manufacturing racism to justify its existence." Abrams, speaking with Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, offered a full-throated defense of the SPLC's mission and legacy.
The contrast tells you everything about where the Democratic establishment's loyalties lie, not with the donors who were allegedly deceived, but with the institution that spent decades branding mainstream conservative groups as hate organizations.
The charges, returned by a grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama, include six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering, as first reported by Breitbart. The Department of Justice's Office of Public Affairs released a press statement laying out the core allegations.
The indictment states that starting in the 1980s, the SPLC "began operating a covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent and extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC's direction." The DOJ press release continued:
"Unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website."
Prosecutors allege the SPLC paid at least $3 million to eight individuals affiliated with extremist organizations, including the KKK, the National Socialist Movement, the United Klans of America, and the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. The Washington Examiner reported that Blanche said the group used "shell entities, fictitious organizations, layered bank accounts, and prepaid cards to conceal the source and movement of funds."
Blanche did not mince words about the alleged scheme's purpose. As the New York Post reported, the acting attorney general said the SPLC "was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred."
That is the government's theory: an organization that built its brand, and its fundraising machine, on identifying hate groups was allegedly bankrolling the very extremists it claimed to fight. Donors gave money believing it would combat racism. The indictment says it went to Klansmen.
Against that backdrop, Abrams chose to defend the SPLC publicly. In a conversation with Schmidt, she cast the organization as a necessary force against Southern authoritarianism, with no apparent acknowledgment of the federal charges.
Abrams told Schmidt that the South has long been the incubator for national threats:
"Often what you see on the national stage got incubated in the south, and so we know, in the south, we've always needed, for example, litigation as one of the tools to fight back against authoritarianism. Whether that was Jim Crow, the KKK, the antisemitic behaviors that were manifest in the deep south."
She went further, crediting the SPLC with broad community investment. "It recognizes what hate groups are and says we're not going to let you get away with it, we're gonna tell people about you," Abrams said. "It invests in communities and says we're not just going to say this is wrong, we're going to help invest in what makes it right."
The DOJ indictment, of course, alleges the opposite, that the SPLC was investing in what made hate groups operational, not what made communities safer. Abrams did not address the specific fraud charges or the allegation that donor money went to extremist-linked individuals. She framed the SPLC's work as fighting "the anti-Asian, anti-Latino" hatred that "probably had some genesis in the South."
For a former candidate who built her political brand on accountability and justice, the selective silence on the substance of the charges is notable. The DOJ's 11-count indictment is not a policy disagreement or a political talking point. It is a federal criminal case alleging that donors were systematically deceived.
While Abrams was praising the SPLC, organizations that have spent years on the receiving end of the group's "hate map" designations offered a very different reaction. Fox News reported that groups including the Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty, PragerU, ACT for America, Awake Illinois, and the Center for Immigration Studies all responded to the indictment by calling it vindication.
Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich said the SPLC's designations had real-world consequences far beyond reputation. "The SPLC's hate map has been weaponized against us countless times, including by law enforcement where training manuals labeled us as an extremist group by citing the SPLC," Descovich said.
The Family Research Council pointed to the 2012 attack on its Washington, D.C. headquarters, arguing that the SPLC's designation helped legitimize the targeting of its organization. That attack, in which a gunman entered the building and shot a security guard, was carried out by a man who later told the FBI he had used the SPLC's hate map to select his target.
These are not abstract policy grievances. Parents' groups, immigration-policy organizations, and faith-based nonprofits have argued for years that the SPLC's labeling system functions less as a public-interest tool and more as a political weapon, one that treats mainstream conservative positions on immigration, family, and religious liberty as equivalent to white supremacy. The indictment now raises the question of whether the organization's entire model was built on a fraud.
The pattern of criminal referrals and DOJ investigations targeting politically connected institutions has accelerated in recent months, and the SPLC case may prove to be among the most consequential.
Just The News reported that the SPLC has acknowledged using paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups and share intelligence with local and federal law enforcement. SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said the organization "will vigorously defend themselves." The organization has denied wrongdoing.
The Washington Examiner noted that the investigation was long-running, had been paused during the Biden administration, and could expand to include individual defendants. That detail raises its own questions. If federal prosecutors had enough evidence to pursue the case years ago, why did the prior administration let it sit?
The SPLC's defense, that it was running legitimate intelligence-gathering operations against hate groups, will be tested in court. But the indictment's core allegation is not about whether informants were used. It is about whether donors were told the truth about where their money was going. Blanche put it bluntly: "At no point did they tell donors they were giving money to these organizations or their leadership. That's the fraud."
Georgia's political landscape has seen its share of scrutiny over questionable funding arrangements tied to political figures and institutions. The SPLC case now adds a federal dimension to the broader question of how left-leaning nonprofits handle donor money and public trust.
Abrams's choice to defend the SPLC at this moment is not accidental. The SPLC has been a cornerstone of the progressive infrastructure for decades. Its hate-group designations have been cited by media outlets, tech platforms, government agencies, and corporate diversity programs as authoritative. If the indictment's allegations hold up, that entire ecosystem of credibility collapses.
That is what makes Abrams's defense so revealing. She did not say the charges were false. She did not address the $3 million allegedly funneled to extremists. She did not mention the wire fraud, the bank fraud, or the money laundering conspiracy. She talked about Jim Crow and the KKK, the very groups the SPLC is now accused of funding.
The federal grand jury's decision to return an 11-count indictment means a panel of citizens found probable cause that crimes were committed. That is not a political opinion. It is a legal finding.
Abrams is free to admire the SPLC's stated mission. But when a federal indictment alleges that the mission was a cover for fraud, that donors were deceived, that extremists were paid, and that the organization profited from the very hatred it claimed to oppose, defending the brand without addressing the charges is not courage. It is evasion.
The donors who gave money to fight hate deserve better than a politician who won't even acknowledge the possibility they were cheated. But then, accountability has never been the progressive establishment's strong suit, especially when one of its own institutions is the one in the dock.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed the Trump administration's top Supreme Court lawyer Wednesday, arguing that the president's years-old comments about Haiti amount to evidence of racial discrimination, and should prevent the Department of Homeland Security from ending Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants living in the United States.
The exchange came during oral arguments in two consolidated cases, Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot, which challenge the administration's decision to revoke TPS protections. DHS announced last year that it would end TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants and thousands of Syrian migrants. Left-wing groups sued, and the dispute has now landed at the nation's highest court.
At issue is whether a president's political rhetoric, delivered outside any formal policy process, can be used to second-guess an executive branch decision that falls squarely within its statutory authority. Sotomayor's line of questioning suggests she believes it can.
During her exchange with Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who represented the Trump administration, Sotomayor reached back to Trump's widely reported 2018 comments about Haiti and other nations. As Breitbart News reported, Sotomayor told Sauer from the bench:
"Now, we have a president saying, at one point, that Haiti is a 'filthy, dirty, and disgusting s-hole country,' and that he complained that the United States takes people from such countries instead of people from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark, where he declared illegal immigrants, which he associated with TPS, as 'poisoning the blood of America.'"
She then invoked the Supreme Court's own Arlington Heights framework, a legal test used to determine whether a government action was motivated by discriminatory intent, and declared the connection plain:
"I don't see how that one statement is not a prime example of the Arlington example at work and showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson followed up by citing Trump's 2024 radio-show remarks about illegal immigrants who commit murder. In those comments, Trump said: "How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person, and they're now happily living in the United States." He added: "You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it's in their genes. And we've got a lot of bad genes in our country right now."
Jackson, as the Washington Examiner reported, pressed Sauer on whether the administration's position required an "actual racial epithet" before courts could examine broader context. "The position of the United States is that we have to have an actual racial epithet, that we aren't allowed to look at all the context," Jackson said.
The administration countered that Trump's comments referred to issues such as crime, poverty, and welfare, not race. That distinction matters legally. But Sotomayor and Jackson appeared uninterested in drawing it.
The stakes are not abstract. The New York Post reported that the cases involve TPS protections for more than 6,000 Syrians and roughly 350,000 Haitians. Those are not small populations. They represent a significant share of the foreign nationals living in the United States under a program originally designed to offer short-term shelter from natural disasters or armed conflict, not permanent residency.
TPS was never meant to be a pathway to indefinite residence. The statute gives the executive branch authority to designate countries for temporary protection and to end those designations when conditions change. Yet successive administrations, particularly under Presidents Obama and Biden, renewed TPS for Haiti again and again, turning "temporary" into something that looked a lot more permanent.
The Trump administration's decision to finally end TPS for Haiti and Syria was a straightforward exercise of that statutory authority. Sotomayor's argument does not challenge the legal power itself. Instead, it attempts to nullify the exercise of that power by mining the president's public statements for evidence of bad motive. That is a remarkable standard, one that would allow courts to block virtually any executive action if a judge found the president's past rhetoric objectionable.
Sotomayor has a pattern of clashing with the Trump administration at the high court. She has previously complained about the pace of emergency appeals the administration has brought to the Court, even as the justices have repeatedly ruled in Trump's favor on those very petitions.
For all the attention Sotomayor and Jackson drew with their questioning, the broader bench appeared far less persuaded. The Washington Examiner noted that most justices seemed inclined to let the administration proceed with ending TPS for both Haiti and Syria, with only limited judicial review of the decision.
That dynamic is worth pausing on. Two liberal justices spent significant oral-argument time constructing a discrimination theory built on political statements made years before the policy decision in question. Meanwhile, the rest of the Court appeared ready to recognize what the statute plainly says: the executive branch decides when temporary protection ends.
Trump himself has acknowledged that the current Supreme Court does not always rule in his favor. He has spoken publicly about expecting losses on certain issues, including birthright citizenship. But on TPS, the administration's legal footing is strong, and the Court's apparent posture reflects that.
The broader pattern of judicial resistance to Trump administration policies has played out across the federal bench. Lower courts have blocked executive action on everything from energy policy to immigration enforcement, often on grounds that stretch well beyond the statutory text. The TPS cases could give the Supreme Court a chance to rein in that tendency, or to entrench it.
Strip away the rhetoric, and Sotomayor's position amounts to this: a president's political speech, delivered outside the formal policy process, can serve as grounds to override a lawful executive decision, indefinitely. If a president once said something unflattering about a country, the government can never change policy toward nationals of that country without a court concluding the motive was discriminatory.
That is not a legal standard. It is a political veto dressed in constitutional clothing.
The Arlington Heights framework Sotomayor cited was designed to examine whether a specific government action was taken with discriminatory purpose. It was not designed to freeze executive authority in place because a president made impolitic remarks at a meeting or on a radio show years earlier. Applying it that way would mean no future president could end TPS for Haiti, or any country a prior president had spoken about in unflattering terms, without surviving a discrimination challenge. The practical effect would be to make "temporary" protection permanent by judicial decree.
The composition of the Supreme Court itself remains a live political issue. Trump has signaled his readiness to fill future vacancies, and the ideological balance of the bench will shape how aggressively courts police executive immigration authority for years to come.
The administration, through Sauer, argued that the president's comments were about crime and public safety, not race. Whether one finds that persuasive or not, the legal question is whether courts should be in the business of psychoanalyzing presidential rhetoric to override statutory authority. Sotomayor clearly thinks they should.
Most of her colleagues, based on the tenor of Wednesday's arguments, appear to disagree.
The Court is expected to issue its ruling before the current term ends. If the majority sides with the administration, DHS will be free to proceed with ending TPS for Haitian and Syrian migrants, a move that would affect hundreds of thousands of people and mark a significant victory for the principle that "temporary" means temporary.
If the Court adopts Sotomayor's reasoning, it will have created a new and potent tool for blocking executive immigration decisions: the presidential-speech test. Any future administration seeking to tighten immigration policy would need to scrub the public record of every presidential utterance that could be characterized as hostile toward a particular nationality.
That is not how the law is supposed to work. Congress gave the executive branch the power to end TPS designations. The question before the Court is whether that power means anything, or whether a well-timed quote from a press conference can override it forever.
Temporary Protected Status was designed to be temporary. If the Supreme Court cannot enforce the plain meaning of that word, the program has become something Congress never authorized, and the American public never agreed to.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin turned a routine budget hearing into a public tutorial on constitutional law Monday, pressing Rep. Rosa DeLauro on whether she understood the Supreme Court decisions that reshaped federal regulatory power, and drawing a profane response when she couldn't answer.
DeLauro, the Connecticut Democrat who serves as ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, opened her questioning by attacking the Trump administration's proposed EPA budget for fiscal year 2027. She called the proposal "a climate change denier's manifesto." What followed was an exchange that, as Fox News Digital reported, went viral Monday night, though not in the way DeLauro likely intended.
Zeldin responded to DeLauro's broadside by citing the 2024 Supreme Court case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which fundamentally limited the power of federal agencies to interpret their own authority. He also referenced what he called the "major policy doctrine", legal precedent that restricts agencies from making sweeping regulatory decisions without clear congressional authorization.
DeLauro did not engage with either case. Instead, the exchange deteriorated into a back-and-forth in which Zeldin pressed the senior lawmaker on her familiarity with the rulings and DeLauro grew visibly agitated.
The confrontation played out in stages. DeLauro opened with a pointed question aimed at the administration's environmental posture:
"When climate change is flooding our streets, poisoning our air, driving up health care, how can the EPA justify abandoning that duty to protect Americans, to appease polluters under the false flag of economic growth?"
She followed up by telling Zeldin directly: "You do not have the right to say climate change does not exist, that it's a hoax."
Zeldin did not retreat. He pivoted to the legal framework governing the EPA's authority and asked DeLauro whether she knew what the major policy doctrine was. When she did not answer, he pressed harder.
"You're upset that you don't know what Loper Bright is."
He added: "You're a member of Congress. You should know."
DeLauro tried to regain control of the exchange by reminding Zeldin of the committee's spending authority. "You know, you're here because you need money from us," she said. "So halt for a second and wait for the questions and answer the question."
But Zeldin did not halt. He told DeLauro he had answered her question and that she simply didn't like the answer because she was unfamiliar with the cases. DeLauro's response was blunt: "I don't have to listen to this BS."
Zeldin fired back: "BS. You think I made up these cases?"
The hearing was called to review the Trump administration's fiscal year 2027 budget request for the EPA. The numbers are stark. The agency received roughly $8.82 billion in the 2026 fiscal year. The White House has requested just $4.2 billion for 2027, a 52 percent cut year over year.
That proposed reduction was the backdrop for DeLauro's combative posture. She framed the cuts as evidence that the administration had abandoned the EPA's core mission. Zeldin framed them as consistent with the legal limits the Supreme Court itself imposed on agency overreach.
The distinction matters. Loper Bright was a landmark 2024 ruling that ended the decades-old Chevron deference doctrine, which had allowed federal agencies to interpret ambiguous statutes in their own favor. The decision forced agencies to operate within the boundaries Congress actually wrote into law, not the boundaries agencies wished Congress had written.
It is difficult to overstate how central that case is to the current regulatory landscape. For a senior member of the committee that funds the EPA to appear unfamiliar with it raises serious questions about the quality of oversight taxpayers are getting from their elected representatives.
The episode is hardly the first time a Trump administration official has put House Democrats on the defensive during a committee hearing. But the specifics here, a ranking member unable to discuss the most consequential regulatory ruling in a generation, gave the moment a particular sting.
The exchange did not end with the profanity. The New York Post reported that later in the hearing, the conversation turned to glyphosate, a widely used herbicide. After Zeldin said DeLauro should not drink glyphosate if her cup were filled with it, DeLauro replied: "Maybe you should try doing that."
Zeldin characterized DeLauro's remark as telling him to kill himself. The comment drew immediate backlash and only deepened the impression that the congresswoman had lost control of the hearing she was supposed to be leading.
The Washington Examiner reported that Zeldin later posted on social media: "Nothing infuriates an uninformed Congressional Dem more than when they realize they voluntarily triggered a debate with someone who actually knows what they are talking about."
The remark about glyphosate added a second dimension to the fallout. DeLauro's inability to engage on the legal questions was one thing. Suggesting the EPA administrator ingest a chemical substance was quite another.
The clip spread fast. Donald Trump Jr. posted a single word on X: "FATALITY." Kari Lake, a senior advisor for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, called the exchange "Brilliant."
Matt Whitlock, a longtime Republican operative, offered a more detailed assessment on X:
"This is one of the most satisfying hearing exchanges I've ever seen. Rosa De Lauro clearly *doesn't* understand the law or Loper Bright, she's used to just spewing climate alarmism pablum."
Whitlock added: "She gets so flummoxed she threatens to *defund EPA*, uh oh don't do that!"
John Seravalli, a top Republican National Committee official, wrote on X that the exchange was "a tough look" for DeLauro. "No idea what she's talking about, no idea about relevant Supreme Court decisions, completely ill prepared," he said. "She, and her staff, don't know what they're doing."
The White House's official X account also weighed in, posting: "Terrible take. Even worse hair." That remark, aimed at DeLauro, drew its own share of attention.
The broader pattern of internal Democratic conflicts and public stumbles has become a recurring theme in this Congress. When senior members of the minority party walk into high-profile hearings unprepared, it does more than embarrass one lawmaker, it undermines the party's credibility on the issues it claims to care about most.
The substance beneath the spectacle deserves attention. A 52 percent budget reduction is not a trim. It would reshape the EPA's capacity to regulate, enforce, and monitor environmental standards across the country.
Democrats have a legitimate interest in scrutinizing that proposal. The Appropriations Committee exists precisely for that purpose. But scrutiny requires preparation. It requires knowing what legal authorities the agency operates under, what the courts have said about those authorities, and where the boundaries of congressional power actually lie.
DeLauro's approach, leading with a climate manifesto accusation and then refusing to engage on the legal framework, accomplished the opposite of what oversight is supposed to do. It gave Zeldin the upper hand and turned a hearing about billions of dollars in public spending into a clip about one lawmaker's knowledge gaps.
With the House operating on razor-thin margins, every committee hearing carries weight. Every exchange shapes how voters perceive whether their representatives are doing the work. Monday's hearing shaped that perception in a way DeLauro will not easily undo.
The episode also fits a wider pattern in which Democrats find themselves on the wrong side of their own arguments when confronted with specific facts, legal precedents, or policy results they did not anticipate.
Congressional oversight is supposed to be the people's check on executive power. It works only when the people asking the questions know at least as much as the people answering them. On Monday, the ranking Democrat on the committee that funds the EPA could not name the Supreme Court case that rewrote the rules for every federal agency in America.
Zeldin came prepared. DeLauro came with talking points. The difference was obvious within minutes, and the country saw it in real time.
If you're going to hold the executive branch accountable, you have to do the homework first. Outrage is not a substitute for competence, and a committee gavel is not a substitute for knowledge.
Nathan Chasing Horse, the former actor best known for his role in Kevin Costner's 1990 Oscar-winning film Dances with Wolves, will spend the rest of his life behind bars after a Nevada judge sentenced him Monday for sexually assaulting Indigenous women and girls over nearly two decades.
Judge Jessica Peterson imposed the life sentence at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas. AP News reported that Chasing Horse will be eligible for parole after 37 years.
Before handing down the sentence, the judge addressed Chasing Horse directly. "You preyed on these women's trusts and their spirituality, and you manipulated them for your own personal gratification," Judge Peterson said.
Chasing Horse stared straight ahead as victims and their families told the court about the trauma they continue to suffer. When given the chance to speak, he offered no apology and no acknowledgment of the harm described by his accusers. Instead, he told the judge: "This is a miscarriage of justice."
Earlier this year, on January 30, 2026, a jury convicted Chasing Horse on 13 of the 21 charges he faced after an 11-day trial. Three women testified that Chasing Horse sexually assaulted them. Most of the charges involved a victim who was just 14 years old when the assaults began, Fox News Digital reported.
Chasing Horse was acquitted on several sexual assault charges from a later period, when the 14-year-old victim was older and living with him and other companions. But the guilty verdicts on 13 counts were more than enough to seal his fate.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson framed the conviction in stark terms. As the New York Post reported at the time of the verdict:
"Today's verdict sends a clear message that exploitation and abuse will not be tolerated, regardless of the defendant's public persona or claims of spiritual authority."
That statement cut to the heart of the case. Chasing Horse did not merely commit crimes in private. Prosecutors told the court he built a system of manipulation around his public identity, and used it to prey on the most vulnerable people in his own community.
Born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, Chasing Horse is a member of the Sicangu Sioux, one of the seven tribes of the Lakota Nation. He gained fame as a teenager for portraying the character Smiles a Lot in Dances with Wolves. That film role gave him a public platform. Prosecutors said he turned that platform into a weapon.
He "weaponized his reputation as a Lakota medicine man, exploiting cultural traditions and spiritual beliefs to prey on Indigenous women and girls," prosecutors stated. The abuse stretched across nearly two decades, according to the prosecution's case. Chasing Horse claimed spiritual authority over his victims, using sacred traditions as cover for sexual predation.
The case drew attention not only because of Chasing Horse's Hollywood connection but because of what it revealed about the exploitation of trust within Indigenous communities. These were not strangers targeted at random. These were women and girls who believed in the spiritual role Chasing Horse claimed to hold, and who paid a devastating price for that trust.
In a nation that has rightly focused more attention on severe sentences for predators who target children, this case stands out for the calculated, long-running nature of the abuse and the cynical exploitation of cultural authority.
Chasing Horse was first arrested and indicted in 2023. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department released his booking photo on January 31, 2023. His arrest sent what authorities described as "shock waves through the area."
The case took roughly three years to move from arrest to sentencing. The 11-day trial itself produced testimony from three women who described assaults that began when at least one of them was a child. The jury weighed 21 separate charges and returned guilty verdicts on 13.
Courts across the country have handled a number of high-profile cases resulting in life sentences in recent months, but few involved a defendant who so thoroughly corrupted a position of spiritual trust to victimize the people he was supposed to serve.
The Nevada sentence does not close the book on Chasing Horse's legal troubles. He also faces sex crime charges in other states and in Canada. Breitbart reported that British Columbia prosecutors said Friday they will determine how to proceed after his sentencing and any appeals in the United States are completed.
That means Chasing Horse could face additional trials and additional prison time in Canadian courts, depending on how British Columbia prosecutors choose to move forward. The pending charges suggest the scope of his alleged conduct extended well beyond Nevada's borders.
The cross-border nature of the case raises familiar questions about how long serial predators can operate before the justice system catches up. Chasing Horse abused women and girls for years, across multiple jurisdictions, while carrying the public credibility of a Hollywood actor and a spiritual leader. The system eventually worked, but it took decades.
When defendants in other violent criminal cases receive significant prison terms, the sentences serve as a reminder that accountability, however delayed, still matters.
Chasing Horse continued to deny the charges against him even after the jury's verdict. His claim that the conviction represents "a miscarriage of justice" rings hollow against the testimony of three women and the unanimous findings of a jury that heard 11 days of evidence.
The victims in this case were Indigenous women and girls, people whose communities already face disproportionate rates of violence and exploitation, and who are too often ignored by the institutions that should protect them. Prosecutors in this case did not ignore them. A jury believed them. And a judge ensured that the man who exploited their faith and their youth will not walk free.
The broader legal landscape includes ongoing high-profile federal prosecutions that test the justice system's willingness to pursue serious charges against defendants regardless of their public profile. The Chasing Horse case offers one clear answer: celebrity and spiritual authority do not place anyone above the law.
Fame can open doors. It can also provide cover for the worst kind of predator, the kind who wraps his crimes in trust. Nathan Chasing Horse exploited both, and now he'll have a lifetime behind bars to reckon with the difference between the authority he claimed and the accountability he earned.
A majority of Senate Republicans have cosponsored the SAVE America Act, the election-integrity bill requiring proof of citizenship and voter ID to cast a ballot, yet the legislation remains stuck in the chamber, and the problem, Rachel Bovard told Breitbart News Saturday, is not opposition. It's a lack of leadership willing to pick the fight.
Bovard, vice president for programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute, laid out a blunt diagnosis: Senate Republicans have the votes, the popular backing, and a House-passed bill in hand. What they lack is a leader willing to push past the Senate's 60-vote filibuster threshold and force the issue onto the floor.
The bill already cleared the House. It would require proof of citizenship to register and voter ID to vote, among other reforms. But the Senate's procedural hurdles have kept it bottled up, even as polls consistently show broad public support for requiring identification at the ballot box.
The standoff came into sharp relief this week when the Senate voted on amendments to its budget resolution. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana offered an amendment that would have established many parts of the SAVE America Act within the resolution. The Senate voted it down, 48, 50, according to the official Senate roll call.
Four Republican senators voted against Kennedy's amendment: Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
That list will surprise no one who follows the Senate. Collins and Murkowski have long been the GOP's most reliable crossover votes. McConnell, who led Senate Republicans for roughly 17 years by Bovard's account, has never been eager for the kind of populist legislative brawl the SAVE America Act represents. Tillis rounds out a familiar quartet of members more comfortable with the status quo than with disrupting it.
But four defections on a 100-member body should not be enough to sink a bill that commands majority support within the Republican conference. The deeper issue, Bovard argued, is structural, and cultural.
Speaking with guest host Bradley Jaye, Bovard described a conference conditioned by nearly two decades under McConnell's leadership to wait for instructions rather than press ahead on its own convictions. She pointed to Senate Majority Leader John Thune as the man who now holds the lever, and has yet to pull it.
"This bill did receive a majority of the conference cosponsoring it; they are just waiting to be led. This is a conference again, the bulk of which has never seen a leader that's willing to listen to them and to lead into a broadly politically popular fight. Mitch McConnell didn't do these things, and so now I think they're waiting for John Thune to tell us what to do and not take the heckler's veto."
The "heckler's veto" Bovard referenced is the familiar dynamic in which a handful of moderate Republicans, or the threat of a Democratic filibuster, paralyzes the entire majority. When leadership declines to force a confrontation, the minority effectively controls the calendar.
That pattern has played out repeatedly in recent months. The broader intraparty tension over ICE and DHS funding showed similar fault lines, with President Trump pressing Senate Republicans to hold firm while leadership explored compromise.
Bovard and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, along with other conservatives, have advocated using the talking filibuster to break through the 60-vote threshold and pass the SAVE America Act with a simple 51-vote majority. The idea is straightforward: force opponents to actually hold the floor and talk, rather than allowing a silent procedural block to quietly suffocate legislation.
President Trump has gone further, calling for eliminating the 60-vote threshold entirely. That position has not gained enough traction inside the conference to become operational, but it reflects the growing frustration on the right with a Senate that moves at a glacial pace on priorities that command broad Republican and public support.
Bovard acknowledged the uncertainty. Even if the filibuster threshold were lowered, it remains unclear whether the SAVE America Act would have enough votes to pass. But her argument was not about guaranteed outcomes. It was about effort.
"That is all we have been asking for the SAVE America Act, just try."
That two-word plea, "just try", captures the conservative grassroots frustration with the upper chamber better than any policy paper could. Voters sent a Republican majority to Washington. The House did its job and passed the bill. And the Senate, with its familiar procedural gridlock, has responded with inaction.
Bovard also took aim at the Senate's schedule, noting what she described as a "two-and-a-half-day workweek." The chamber's leisurely pace has long drawn criticism from both sides, but the complaint carries special weight when a popular, House-passed bill sits untouched while senators spend more time away from the Capitol than in it.
Jaye, the guest host, framed the leadership question in terms of temperature control. Being the Senate Majority Leader, he said, means being a "thermostat, not a thermometer", setting the conditions rather than merely reading them. A Republican leader, he argued, should apply pressure to enact the president's agenda rather than wait to see which way the wind blows.
That framing matters because the SAVE America Act is not some obscure regulatory tweak. Proof-of-citizenship voting requirements and voter ID poll well across party lines. This is the rare issue where the Republican base, swing voters, and even many Democratic voters agree. The only people who seem opposed are the Senate's institutional gatekeepers and their allies in progressive advocacy groups.
The broader pattern of Senate dysfunction has been visible across multiple fronts. The chamber recently blocked a Democratic push on Iran war powers, showing that Republicans can hold together when they choose to. The question is whether leadership will choose to on election integrity with the same resolve.
The 48, 50 vote on the Kennedy amendment tells a clear story. Every Democrat voted against it, as expected. But the margin of defeat came from within the Republican conference itself, four senators who decided that proof-of-citizenship voting requirements were a bridge too far, or at least not worth the political energy.
Meanwhile, the ongoing tensions between House conservatives and Senate negotiators over DHS funding illustrate how the upper chamber's instinct toward accommodation can undermine the broader Republican agenda. When the Senate softens everything the House sends over, voters notice.
Bovard's core point is simple. A majority of the Republican conference cosponsored the SAVE America Act. The House passed it. The president supports it. The public supports it. The only obstacle is the Senate's own procedural inertia and a leadership class that has spent nearly two decades learning to avoid fights rather than win them.
The McConnell era trained Senate Republicans to manage, not to lead. Bovard is arguing that Thune has a chance to break that pattern, if he's willing to take the risk.
Voters didn't send a Republican majority to Washington to cosponsor bills and then shrug when the filibuster stops them. They sent it to govern. The SAVE America Act is sitting right there, passed by the House, backed by the public, waiting for a Senate leader who will do more than read the room.
More than 220 pages of internal emails show the Pima County Sheriff's Department gave a reality television production company extraordinary access to deputies, bodycam footage, and active operations in the months before 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie disappeared from her Tucson home, raising hard questions about whether the department's leadership had its priorities straight when it mattered most.
The correspondence, covering June through December 2025, details how producers from Twenty Twenty Productions worked hand-in-glove with senior PCSD officials to build content for Desert Law, an A&E series that premiered on January 1, 2026. Exactly one month later, on February 1, Guthrie, the mother of NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie, is believed to have been kidnapped from her home in the early morning hours. She has not been seen since. No arrests have been made, and no suspect has been formally charged.
The emails, first reported by IBTimes, paint a picture of a sheriff's department that bent over backward for a TV crew, offering ride-alongs, operational access, and direct lines to deputies on active duty. Fox News Digital obtained and reviewed the newly released correspondence.
The emails show that the relationship between PCSD and Twenty Twenty Productions went well beyond the typical media ride-along. In one exchange from June 2025, a producer requested contact information for multiple unit leaders, and apparently got it. Captain Robert Koumal, who oversees the sheriff's records administration and community services division, emailed colleagues urging deputies to contact the show's producers "if any incidents occur."
That directive effectively turned the department's deputies into a tip line for a television production company. When something happened on the streets of Pima County, the show's crew wanted to know, and the department's own brass told deputies to make sure they did.
Producer Tom Olney, meanwhile, repeatedly pushed for faster access to bodycam material. In at least one instance, Olney suggested reordering pending public records requests so that new Desert Law footage could be fast-tracked ahead of earlier submissions. Fox News Digital's account of the documents indicates the department agreed to reshuffle its priorities at least once.
The crew even flagged an incident where a deputy switched on a body-worn camera only after a confrontation had already begun, a complaint that suggests the production team was monitoring footage closely enough to notice gaps in recording. That level of access to law enforcement operations is unusual, and the emails suggest the department welcomed it.
Olney's gratitude was effusive. In one email, the producer wrote:
"Thank you as ever for all your continued support, it's amazing and absolutely the best I've ever received from any law enforcement department!"
That is not the kind of praise a law enforcement agency should be chasing. Taxpayers fund a sheriff's department to solve crimes and keep the public safe, not to earn five-star reviews from London-based TV producers.
The Desert Law emails land in the middle of a growing crisis of confidence in Sheriff Chris Nanos and his department's handling of the Guthrie investigation. To be clear, the released material contains no indication that Nanos personally ordered any corners cut for the TV show. But the institutional culture the emails reveal, one oriented toward cameras and content, sits uncomfortably alongside a string of investigative stumbles that have drawn national scrutiny.
Among the most damaging criticisms: the Washington Examiner reported that Nanos opened the crime scene at Guthrie's Tucson home early in the investigation, a decision the sheriff himself later acknowledged was likely a mistake. That early release of the scene has haunted the case, fueling questions about whether physical evidence was compromised before it could be properly collected.
Forensic questions have continued to mount as experts weigh DNA evidence and blood trail clues tied to the disappearance.
Reuters reported allegations that Nanos blocked the FBI from accessing a glove and DNA evidence and sent materials to a private Florida lab instead of the FBI's lab in Quantico. That decision raised eyebrows among law enforcement observers and deepened friction between the sheriff's department and federal investigators. Breitbart reported that the FBI reportedly wants to take over the investigation, but Savannah Guthrie's family would have to request that transfer.
Sgt. Aaron Cross, president of the Pima County Deputies Organization, did not mince words about what he sees inside the department. Cross told reporters:
"It is a common belief in this agency that this case has become an ego case for Sheriff Nanos."
Cross also said it is "widely believed he thinks the FBI cost him his election", a reference to prior political friction that may be coloring the sheriff's willingness to cooperate fully with federal investigators.
Investigators have also been probing a mystery incident at Guthrie's home in the weeks before her kidnapping, a detail that underscores how many threads remain unresolved.
The department's communications failures have compounded the investigative ones. The New York Post reported that PCSD posted on social media: "Update: Nancy has been located." The post referred to a different missing woman, Nancy Radakovich, but did not include a last name. The result was predictable. Readers believed Nancy Guthrie had been found. One commenter captured the public mood: "I LITERALLY THOUGHT THIS WAS NANCY GUTHRIE. THE WAY MY HEART JUST DROPPED!" The Post described the backlash as swift and widespread.
A department that spent months coordinating with a TV production crew over camera angles and bodycam release schedules apparently could not manage a single social media post without causing a public uproar.
Meanwhile, the FBI has returned to Guthrie's neighborhood, zeroing in on a vacant property and construction crews in the area, a sign that federal investigators are pressing forward regardless of the jurisdictional friction.
The political fallout has now moved beyond criticism and into action. Republican congressional candidate Daniel Butierez has launched a recall effort against Nanos, telling the New York Post that the sheriff has proved "an embarrassment to Tucson and to Pima County with this Nancy Guthrie case." Butierez must gather roughly 120,000 signatures within about 120 days. He called the Guthrie case "just the straw that broke the camel's back."
That last phrase carries weight. The Washington Examiner noted that Nanos had already received a nearly unanimous no-confidence vote from his own deputies in 2024, well before Nancy Guthrie's name entered the national conversation. The dissatisfaction with his leadership predates this case. The Guthrie investigation has simply made it impossible to ignore.
The PCSD maintains it "remains the lead agency, supported by federal partners" in the Guthrie investigation. That is the department's official position. But the more than 220 pages of internal emails tell a parallel story, one in which a law enforcement agency devoted significant institutional energy to making sure a television crew had everything it needed to produce compelling content.
Fast-tracked bodycam requests. Direct lines to deputies on duty. A captain telling his people to call the producers when something happens. A production company praising the department's cooperation as the best it had ever received from any law enforcement agency in the country.
None of that is illegal. But it reveals a set of institutional priorities that should concern anyone who lives in Pima County and expects their sheriff's department to put public safety first. When a department is spending months building a relationship with a TV crew, the question is not whether it broke any rules. The question is whether it was paying attention to the right things.
Nanos told NBC News that investigators were "operating on the assumption that Guthrie was still alive." That is a hopeful statement, and everyone should want it to be true. But hope is not a strategy. And pressure continues to mount on the suspected kidnapper even as the investigation grinds forward without a public breakthrough.
As of the latest available information, Nancy Guthrie's whereabouts remain unknown. No arrests have been confirmed. No suspect has been formally charged. The department that was supposed to protect her is now fighting for its own credibility.
A sheriff's department that knows how to get on television but cannot find an 84-year-old woman taken from her own home has its priorities exactly backward.
Madison Sheahan, the former deputy ICE director who served under Kristi Noem's Department of Homeland Security, is facing a barrage of anonymous personal allegations just weeks before a Republican primary in Ohio's ninth Congressional District. An unnamed former lover and several unnamed sources have gone to the Daily Mail with claims about a secret two-year relationship and alleged controlling behavior, accusations Sheahan's campaign flatly denies.
Sheahan, who resigned from her ICE post last January to challenge Democratic incumbent Marcy Kaptur, now trails in third place with just 10 percent support among GOP primary voters, according to a JL Partners poll. The May 5 primary is fast approaching, and the timing of these unverified claims raises obvious questions about motive.
Her political adviser, Bob Pudachik, identified as the Ohio campaign manager, did not mince words in response.
"As the Ohio campaign manager, I can speak with authority that no such relationship existed. Madison was not and has never been in a relationship with a subordinate."
That denial stands against a set of allegations sourced entirely to people who refuse to give their names.
The former lover, described only as a woman who was 19 at the time and working as a junior staffer, told the Daily Mail that the relationship began at a gathering of about a dozen Ohio GOP operatives and Trump reelection staff in October 2020. The event took place at a house north of Columbus. The woman claimed Sheahan, then 23, invited her to share a bed that night and that a sexual relationship began by the next morning.
The woman said Sheahan offered to let her move into her house shortly after. She described the relationship as lasting roughly two years, ending in 2022 during a phone call while she was driving from Washington, D.C.
Three unnamed sources told the Daily Mail that in November 2020, Sheahan briefly became the woman's supervisor while their relationship was ongoing. Both were working for the Trump campaign's 2020 political operation at the time.
The woman described the relationship in blunt terms, calling it "toxic," "volatile," and "controlling." She alleged that Sheahan objected to her clothing choices, restricted public displays of affection, and reacted with hostility when she considered taking a job across the country in late 2021.
"It was very defeating. There's no winning. Everyone's losing... So it didn't end well by any means."
A separate unnamed source claimed to have heard Sheahan screaming through hotel walls on a speaker phone call, allegedly connected to a dispute on November 29 in Atlanta over the woman's outfit before a night out. The exact year of that incident is not specified in the reporting.
Beyond the relationship claims, an unnamed senior DHS official made separate allegations about Sheahan's conduct at ICE, where she served as deputy director from March of last year until her January resignation. The official alleged Sheahan targeted female staffers and pushed to have women fired.
"She'd always try to be the alpha in the room. There could never be a stronger woman. Madison was intimidated by strong women. She'd always push to get women fired."
The same official claimed Sheahan acted as though she had Noem's personal backing and threatened to "rip their faces off", though the context and specifics of that remark remain unclear. DHS and ICE were contacted for comment, but no response from either agency is included in the reporting.
Allegations about personal misconduct in political circles have become a recurring feature of modern campaigns, and this case follows that familiar pattern: anonymous accusers, salacious framing, and a candidate left to deny claims she cannot fully confront because her accusers remain hidden.
Every substantive allegation in this story rests on anonymous sources. The former lover is unnamed. The "two independent sources" and "three sources" who corroborated portions of the account are unnamed. The "separate source" who claimed to hear screaming through hotel walls is unnamed. The senior DHS official is unnamed.
None of the claims are supported by documents, recordings, or other physical evidence cited in the reporting. Sheahan herself declined to comment directly.
That does not mean the allegations are false. But it does mean they are unverified in any publicly confirmable way, and they arrive at a politically convenient moment, just before a competitive Republican primary.
Sheahan has raised over $450,000 since announcing her candidacy, a respectable haul for a first-time congressional candidate. But her 10 percent showing in the JL Partners poll suggests she was already struggling to break through in a crowded field before these allegations surfaced.
The broader political landscape has seen no shortage of explosive personal revelations deployed against candidates and officials in recent cycles. Voters have grown accustomed to last-minute opposition research drops, and the question is always the same: who benefits?
Sheahan built her career inside Republican politics. She started working for the Trump reelection campaign and was paid through the 2020 political operation, serving as the state election operations director during that cycle. She worked at the Ohio Republican office in Columbus and later deployed to Georgia for the Senate runoffs, where she was stationed in Buckhead with senior staff.
After the 2020 cycle, she moved into government service, becoming Kristi Noem's political director during Noem's governorship of South Dakota. When Noem took over DHS, Sheahan followed and was named deputy ICE director last March.
She resigned that post last January to run for Congress in Ohio's ninth district, positioning herself as a self-described Trump conservative. The seat is currently held by Marcy Kaptur, one of the longest-serving women in congressional history and a fixture of Ohio Democratic politics.
Whether these allegations derail what was already an uphill campaign remains to be seen. The former lover offered her own theory about the relationship's dysfunction, suggesting Sheahan struggled with her identity.
"I think a lot of the problems with our relationship was that she's not comfortable in her own skin. It's okay to be gay... but I don't think that's something she has accepted."
That framing, an unnamed accuser speculating about a public figure's inner life, is the kind of claim that resists verification by design. It cannot be confirmed or denied. It simply hangs in the air, doing its work.
Several basic questions remain open. No documentation has been produced to confirm or deny the alleged supervisory relationship in November 2020. The DHS official's claims about workplace targeting lack any cited personnel records, complaints, or formal proceedings. The Daily Mail reports that it sought comment from DHS and ICE, but no responses from either agency appear in the published account.
The poll methodology and field dates for the JL Partners survey showing Sheahan at 10 percent are also unspecified, making it difficult to assess how reliable that snapshot of the race actually is.
In an era when explosive claims and alleged hidden evidence regularly reshape political narratives, the standard for taking anonymous allegations seriously ought to be rising, not falling. Sheahan's campaign has issued a categorical denial. Her accusers remain faceless.
Meanwhile, political figures across both parties continue to discover that the rules of engagement in modern campaigns leave little room for the presumption of innocence, especially when the accusations are designed to be impossible to fully rebut.
Conservative voters in Ohio's ninth district will have to decide what weight to give anonymous allegations against a candidate who has denied them outright. The primary is May 5. The clock is ticking, and the accusers have the luxury of anonymity while Sheahan does not.
That asymmetry is the oldest trick in opposition politics. And it works best when nobody asks who's pulling the strings.
A 78-year-old woman from Redwood Valley, California, is dead after a venomous snake bit her three times while she walked through a rural area of Mendocino County on April 8. Her family rushed her to a hospital, but she was pronounced dead two days later, on April 10.
The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office confirmed the death to USA TODAY on Thursday, April 23. A forensic pathologist performed a post-mortem examination on April 15 and determined the death was accidental.
The sheriff's office offered a grim clinical summary of what took the woman's life:
"The preliminary cause of death was determined to be disseminated intravascular coagulopathy and snake envenomation from snake bites."
Disseminated intravascular coagulopathy is a severe blood-clotting disorder. In this case, it was triggered by the venom entering her system from three separate bites. The woman's name has not been released, and the sheriff's office did not identify the species of snake involved. Rattlesnakes are the only venomous snakes native to California, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Mendocino County death marks the third fatal snakebite incident in the state in 2026, a striking number given how rare such deaths typically are. The CDC and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County report that roughly 7,000 to 8,000 Americans are bitten by venomous snakes each year, but only about five to six of those incidents prove fatal nationwide.
Three of those deaths have now occurred in a single state in fewer than three months.
The first came on February 1, when 25-year-old Julian Hernandez was mountain biking with his father at the Quail Hill Trailhead in Irvine. KABC reported that Hernandez was bitten in the leg after stepping aside to let other trail users pass. He was taken to the hospital immediately but died on March 4, more than a month later. The Irvine Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Department told KABC that the coroner ruled his death was caused by an animal bite.
A GoFundMe page set up for Hernandez's family described the ordeal in wrenching terms:
"His whole family was there at the ICU, advocating for him every step of the way. He was progressing through recovery and his own strength for over a month. With immense sorrow and grief, Julian did not survive."
The second fatality struck on March 19, when a 46-year-old woman died from a rattlesnake bite, as reported by the Ventura County Star. The Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office determined her cause of death to be rattlesnake venom toxicity.
Confirmed deaths from wildlife encounters often draw public attention, as seen in a recent case where the University of Minnesota was fined after a wind turbine killed a bald eagle, but three fatal snakebites in one state within weeks is another matter entirely.
The fatalities are only part of the picture. Ventura County alone had received at least four reports of people bitten by rattlesnakes as of March 20, the Ventura County Star reported. Among the victims: a 14-year-old girl hospitalized for multiple days after she fell and stepped on a snake.
In Montecito, at least two snakebite-related incidents were documented on a hiking trail this month, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reported. On April 12, the Montecito Fire Protection District responded to a report of a woman bitten by a rattlesnake on the Buena Vista Trail. Authorities said she was about three-quarters of a mile up the trail when the snake struck her ankle.
These are not freak events happening in remote wilderness. They are occurring on popular trails and in areas where Californians walk, bike, and hike regularly.
Rattlesnake season in California typically runs from April through October, according to Cal Poly biological sciences professor Emily Taylor. But Brian Stark, administrator at the Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency, said recent hot temperatures have made rattlesnakes more active than usual for this time of year. A record-breaking heatwave hit the state in March, well before the traditional start of snake season.
That means snakes are emerging earlier, and in greater numbers, than many hikers and rural residents expect. The California Poison Control System identifies the most common rattlesnake species in the state as Mojave, Northern Pacific, red, sidewinder, speckled, and western diamondback. Nearly 50 snake species are native to California overall, including seven rattlesnake species.
Their range covers much of the state. Mojave rattlesnakes inhabit the Mojave Desert. Northern Pacific rattlesnakes range through the Central Valley. Red rattlesnakes extend into the southwestern region and the Baja Peninsula. Sidewinder, speckled, and western diamondback rattlesnakes occupy the southeastern deserts.
Even for those who survive a venomous snakebite, the consequences can be severe. The CDC has been direct on this point:
"Although most people do not die from snake bites, there can be lasting effects."
The agency estimates that 10 to 44 percent of rattlesnake bite victims suffer lasting injuries, including the loss of a finger or permanent loss of function in a limb. The CDC stresses the importance of reaching a hospital quickly to receive antivenom, if needed, and "stop irreversible damage."
In the Mendocino County case, the woman's family transported her to the hospital themselves. The sheriff's office did not say how much time elapsed between the bites and her arrival at the emergency room, nor did it identify which hospital treated her. What is known is that her condition deteriorated, and she was dead within 48 hours of the encounter.
Several questions linger. The species of snake that bit the 78-year-old woman has not been confirmed. The precise rural location where the attack occurred has not been disclosed. And while the sheriff's office called the death accidental, there has been no public discussion of whether warning signs were posted in the area or whether local authorities had taken any steps to alert residents about heightened snake activity following the early heatwave.
The California Poison Control System recommends specific steps if bitten by a rattlesnake, but public awareness campaigns are only useful if they reach people before they step outside. Three Californians are now dead this year from snakebites. Dozens more have been bitten. The season is just getting started.
Nature does not negotiate. It does not care about your hiking plans or your afternoon walk. When the government that manages public lands and public safety cannot even keep pace with a predictable seasonal hazard, ordinary people pay the price, sometimes with their lives.
A federal grand jury in Alabama indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 criminal counts Tuesday, charging the storied nonprofit with defrauding donors through a concealed program that funneled roughly $3 million to members of the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist organizations over nearly a decade. The charges, six counts of wire fraud, four counts of making false statements to a federally insured bank, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, land squarely on an institution that built its brand as America's premier watchdog against hate.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the case at a Justice Department news conference, framing the indictment as proof that the Montgomery, Alabama-based organization did the opposite of what it told supporters it was doing. Acting U.S. Attorney Kevin P. Davidson signed the charging document, which was returned in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
The indictment names only the organization, not individual employees or officers, though Patel said individuals remain under investigation. No arraignment date has been set.
Prosecutors allege the SPLC paid approximately $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to eight people tied to named extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America, the Aryan Nations-linked Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, and America First. The payments allegedly moved through at least five sham entities, Center Investigative Agency, Fox Photography, North West Technologies, Tech Writers Group, and Rare Books Warehouse, before being loaded onto prepaid debit cards, as Newsmax reported.
That laundering mechanism is what prosecutors say concealed the payments from donors and from banking institutions. The false-statement counts stem from allegedly misleading information provided to a federally insured bank in connection with those transactions.
Blanche did not mince words at the news conference. He told reporters:
"The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred."
He also said the group failed to disclose the informant program to donors, the core of the wire-fraud theory. The New York Post reported that Blanche added: "There is nothing political about this indictment or this investigation."
One of the most striking allegations ties the SPLC's informant payments directly to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, an event that became a national flashpoint over racial violence. Blanche described one payment recipient as a leader of the group that organized the rally. That individual was allegedly paid about $270,000 over eight years.
National Review reported that prosecutors allege this SPLC field source was in the leadership chat planning the rally and attended the event at the SPLC's direction, all while on the nonprofit's payroll. If the allegation holds, it means a group that publicly condemned Charlottesville was simultaneously paying someone who helped organize it.
That is not a peripheral detail. Charlottesville reshaped American politics. It drove media coverage, legislative proposals, and a presidential campaign message. The possibility that one of the country's most prominent civil-rights organizations was funding a figure inside the event's planning apparatus raises questions that go well beyond fraud statutes.
SPLC interim CEO Bryan Fair disclosed the criminal probe earlier Tuesday, before the indictment was formally announced. After the charges dropped, Fair denied wrongdoing and said the organization would fight the case.
"We will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work."
Fair described the now-discontinued program as an intelligence-gathering operation aimed at violent groups, and said the information it produced was frequently shared with law enforcement, including the FBI. He traced the program's origins to threats dating back to the 1983 firebombing of the SPLC's Montgomery offices, casting it as a security measure born from real danger.
That defense will face a steep climb. Prosecutors are not alleging that intelligence-gathering is itself illegal. They are alleging that the SPLC hid the program from its donors and used shell companies and fraudulent bank statements to do it. The question is not whether the SPLC had reasons to monitor extremist groups. The question is whether it lied about how it spent donor money, and whether the people it paid were doing more harm than good.
FBI Director Kash Patel had already severed the bureau's ties with the SPLC last October, months before the indictment. At the news conference, he described the organization as a "partisan smear machine" and said it "lied to their donors." He went further on X, posting that SPLC-funded activity in at least one case was "used to facilitate the commission of state and federal offenses."
The FBI's decision to cut ties with a group it once relied on for extremism data is itself significant. For years, the SPLC's designations, particularly its "hate map", carried weight with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. That influence is now under a cloud.
The pattern of government institutions reconsidering relationships with figures and organizations that previously enjoyed official credibility has accelerated in recent months. The SPLC case may be the most dramatic example yet.
The indictment has prompted a wave of responses from organizations that have long accused the SPLC of using its "hate map" as a political weapon against mainstream conservative groups. Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty, PragerU, ACT for America, and the Center for Immigration Studies all pushed back publicly, as Fox News reported.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins tied the SPLC's labeling practices to real-world violence:
"For years, the SPLC has used its platform to label and target organizations with whom it disagrees, often blurring the line between legitimate concern and ideological attack."
Perkins referenced the 2012 shooting at Family Research Council's headquarters, arguing the SPLC's hate-group designation contributed to the climate around the attack. Moms for Liberty cofounder Tina Descovich said the SPLC's hate map had been "weaponized against us countless times, including by law enforcement where training manuals labeled us as an extremist group by citing the SPLC."
For years, critics who raised these concerns were dismissed. The SPLC's defenders in media and government treated its designations as authoritative, even as the organization swept up immigration-restriction advocates, religious-liberty groups, and parent-rights organizations alongside genuine extremists. The indictment does not settle that debate, but it strips the SPLC of the moral authority it used to shut it down.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not hold back. She called the SPLC a "criminal organization" and said the indictment should be front-page news everywhere, as Breitbart reported.
"It's a criminal organization, clearly, and that's not our DOJ saying that, or Todd Blanche saying that, that's a grand jury indictment saying that."
FBI Director Patel echoed the point in a statement carried by the same outlet: "The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public."
The White House's willingness to label the SPLC so directly signals that this case will not be treated as a routine fraud prosecution. The administration views it as a vindication of long-standing conservative complaints, and as evidence that institutions once shielded by political alignment are now facing real accountability.
The indictment did not arrive in a vacuum. House Republicans held a hearing in December accusing the SPLC of coordinating with the Biden administration to target conservatives. The details of that hearing remain sparse, but the timeline matters: congressional scrutiny preceded the grand jury's action by months.
The broader pattern of revisiting the conduct of institutions and officials that operated with wide latitude during the prior administration continues to produce consequential results. Whether one views that as overdue accountability or political retribution depends largely on where one sits. But the SPLC's case is unusual in that the alleged conduct, paying Klan members through shell companies while soliciting donations to fight the Klan, is difficult to explain away on any political grounds.
The SPLC has not yet been arraigned. Patel's statement that individuals remain under investigation suggests the case may expand. The organization's defense, that the informant program served a legitimate intelligence purpose, will be tested against the specific fraud and money-laundering allegations in the indictment.
Several open questions remain. The indictment names eight payment recipients but their identities have not been publicly disclosed. The specific bank statements underlying the false-statement counts have not been detailed. And the question of whether any SPLC employees or officers will face individual charges hangs over the case.
The broader fallout may matter more than the courtroom outcome. For decades, the SPLC operated as a gatekeeper, deciding which organizations were legitimate and which were beyond the pale. Media outlets cited its designations. Tech companies used them to justify deplatforming. Government agencies embedded them in training materials. That entire infrastructure now rests on the credibility of an organization facing serious federal criminal charges.
When the people who appoint themselves to police hate turn out to have been funding it, the rest of us are entitled to ask who was really being protected, and who was being played.