Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger stepped into the original historic House of Burgesses at the head of Colonial Williamsburg's Duke of Gloucester Street to deliver the official Democratic response to the State of the Union, and the irony of the setting was apparently lost on her.
The new governor, elected in November to succeed conservative Gov. Glenn Youngkin, used her national platform to hammer President Trump on tariffs and costs while her own blue legislature back in Richmond moves to enact or raise new taxes in multiple forms. She asked Americans whether the president is "working to make life more affordable" for their families. Virginians watching at home might have the same question for her.
Spanberger structured her response around a simple frame: costs. She blamed Trump's tariff policies for increasing prices on "housing, healthcare, energy, and childcare," warning they would "make your life more expensive," Fox News reported.
Then she offered herself as the contrast:
"But here in Virginia, I am working with our state legislature to lower costs and make the Commonwealth more affordable."
She went further, claiming the effort extends beyond the Old Dominion:
"And it's not just me. Democrats across the country are laser-focused on affordability — in our nation's capital and in state capitals and communities across America."
Laser-focused. On affordability. While supporting the legislative Democrat majority's slew of taxes, from new sales taxes to a levy on fantasy football operators. Virginia Democrats are pushing scores of new taxes, and their governor chose this moment to lecture the country about costs.
That is the kind of contradiction that doesn't need a punchline. It is the punchline.
Spanberger also slammed Trump over his mass deportation operations, a line that tracks perfectly with the Democrat playbook of treating immigration enforcement as something to apologize for rather than execute. The new governor has already drawn criticism from Republicans on immigration policy, with former RNC chairman Reince Priebus among those publicly criticizing her approach.
This is the familiar two-step: oppose enforcement, then blame the consequences of non-enforcement on someone else. Spanberger recounted her 2025 election season traveling around Virginia, apparently hearing concerns about costs and safety, then delivered a response that offered no serious answer on either front beyond blaming the sitting president.
The speech leaned heavily on setting and symbolism. Spanberger invoked the House of Burgesses, where in 1705 the colony first gathered with what she called the "extraordinary task of governing themselves." She referenced George Washington's Farewell Address, quoting his warning about "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" rising to power.
The implication was not subtle.
She also borrowed Washington's language about uniting in "a common cause," pivoting to a call for collective action:
"That is our charge once more. And that is what we are seeing across the country. It is deeply American and patriotic to do so, and it is how we ensure that the State of our Union remains strong, not just this year but for the next 250 years as well."
Meanwhile, inside the actual Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson wielded George Washington's gavel for the first time in State of the Union history. One leader used Washington as a rhetorical device. The other brought his gavel into the room. Draw your own conclusions about who treated the moment with more substance.
In a detail that will likely live online longer than any policy point she attempted, Spanberger appeared to briefly lose her place on the teleprompter during the address. It was a small stumble on a big stage, and while it shouldn't overshadow policy substance, it doesn't inspire confidence from a governor trying to introduce herself as the face of Democratic opposition.
Strip the Colonial Williamsburg backdrop, the Washington quotes, and the rhetorical flourishes, and the speech reduces to a familiar formula: Trump is making things expensive, Democrats care about your wallet, trust us.
The problem is the receipts. Virginia's Democrat legislature isn't cutting costs. It's piling on new taxes. Spanberger isn't vetoing them. She isn't fighting them. She's "working with" the same lawmakers who are reaching deeper into Virginians' pockets while she stands at a national podium and talks about affordability.
Spanberger closed with a lofty appeal:
"Because 'We the people' have the power to make change, the power to stand up for what is right, and the power to demand more of our nation."
Virginians might start by demanding more of their governor. Specifically, they might demand that the woman lecturing the country about affordability explain why her own state government is making their lives more expensive.
The House of Burgesses was built for self-governance. What it got Tuesday night was a campaign speech dressed in colonial linen.
Jordan James Parke, the British cosmetic surgery influencer who branded himself the "Lip King," is dead at 34 after what investigators believe may have been a cosmetic procedure gone wrong. Two people have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
Parke, a native of Dudley, England, and a recurring presence on E!'s Botched, was found unconscious on Wednesday, February 18, at Lincoln Plaza in London's Canary Wharf district. The Metropolitan Police confirmed they were called by the London Ambulance Service regarding an unconscious 34-year-old man. He was declared dead at the scene.
A 43-year-old man and a 52-year-old woman were arrested on Friday, February 20, on suspicion of manslaughter. Both have been granted bail pending further investigation.
Police said his death "is currently being treated as unexplained," with an investigation underway, People magazine reported. Authorities have suggested that Parke may have undergone a cosmetic procedure before his death, though the official cause remains unknown.
Parke had reportedly spent over $150,000 on plastic surgery since beginning his cosmetic journey at age 19. The procedures included multiple nose jobs, filler in his neck, lips, and jawline, a Brazilian butt lift, and a chin implant. He appeared on Botched twice to address complications from his lip filler, liposuction, and the appearance of his nose.
In a 2016 interview on the British daytime show This Morning, Parke said he "never hated" himself but that plastic surgery had become a "hobby."
This was not the first time Parke's name appeared alongside a manslaughter investigation. In 2024, he was arrested after Alice Webb, a 33-year-old mother of five, died after becoming unwell following a non-surgical Brazilian butt lift, described as a "Liquid BBL," at a Gloucester clinic run by Parke and Jemma Pawlyszyn, according to the Daily Mail. Parke was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in that case but was never charged. He was due to answer bail this March.
The symmetry is difficult to ignore. A man investigated for a client's death following a cosmetic procedure is himself found dead after what may have been another cosmetic procedure. The two cases may be entirely unrelated in their particulars, but they share a common thread: a largely unregulated corner of the cosmetic industry where the line between practitioner and patient blurs, and where accountability arrives only after someone stops breathing.
Stories like Parke's expose a growing and largely unaddressed problem. The market for non-surgical cosmetic procedures has exploded, fueled by social media influencers who serve simultaneously as walking advertisements and, in some cases, as the practitioners themselves. The regulatory framework has not kept pace. In the UK, non-surgical procedures like injectable fillers exist in a gray zone where oversight is minimal and qualifications are loosely defined.
This is what happens when a culture prizes aesthetics over caution and when governments treat the cosmetic industry as too niche to regulate seriously. Two people are now dead in cases connected to Parke's orbit. Parke himself is dead under circumstances that suggest the same industry claimed him, too.
The question is not whether society should allow adults to make choices about their own bodies. It should. The question is whether an industry where unlicensed or loosely credentialed individuals perform procedures that can kill should continue to operate in a regulatory vacuum. That is not a question of personal freedom. It is a question of basic public safety.
Parke's sister Sharnelle wrote on Instagram that their family is "numb, shocked, and heartbroken" over his death.
Whatever one thinks of the choices Parke made or the industry he helped promote, a family lost someone. A 34-year-old man is dead. And somewhere, the people and systems that enabled the conditions of his death continue operating, waiting for the next client to walk through the door.
C-SPAN stated on Sunday, clarifying that a Friday caller who identified himself as "John Barron" and unleashed a blistering critique of the Supreme Court's tariff ruling was not the president. The network took the unusual step after the clip rocketed across social media, with viewers convinced they recognized a familiar voice on the other end of the line.
The caller, described as a Republican from Virginia, had phoned in to host Greta Brawner's program to discuss the Supreme Court's six-to-three decision to block the president's sweeping tariff policies under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. What followed was a rant so distinctly Trumpian in cadence, vocabulary, and targets that the internet did what the internet does.
"Look, this is the worst decision you ever made in your life, practically. And Jack's going to agree with me, right, but this is a terrible decision."
The caller then moved to his real targets.
"You have Hakeem Jeffries, who... he's a dope. And you have Chuck Schumer, who can't cook a cheeseburger. Of course, these people are happy. But true Americans will not be happy."
If you read those lines without any context and couldn't identify the rhetorical fingerprints, you haven't been paying attention for the last decade.
"John Barron" is not a name plucked from thin air, the Daily Mail noted. It is the alias Trump reportedly used when feeding information to reporters in the 1980s and 90s, per the Washington Post. Trump had to admit to using the fake name under oath in 1990. So when a caller with that exact name dialed into C-SPAN to deliver a monologue that could have been pulled from a Truth Social post, people noticed.
C-SPAN moved to shut the speculation down:
"The call came from a central Virginia phone number and came while the president was in a widely covered, in-person White House meeting with the governors."
The network added a plug for good measure: "Tune into C-SPAN for the actual president at the State of the Union Address on Tuesday night."
Not everyone bought the explanation. One commenter assembled a detailed timeline: the SCOTUS ruling dropped around 10 a.m., the president's briefing ran from 12:45 to 2:06, he was in the Oval Office until 4:34, and "John Barron called C-SPAN at 3:19." The commenter's conclusion: "Caller ID said where the phone was registered, not where it came from. I call BS."
Whether that skepticism is warranted or just the product of people wanting the story to be true is beside the point. The clip is entertaining either way.
The real story underneath the viral moment is the Supreme Court's decision itself. The Court voted six to three against the president's tariff policies, with $175 billion on the line, ruling that the policy was not authorized under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
What stung most: two of the justices who voted against him were his own appointees. Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, John Roberts, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in the majority. The president was hosting the National Governors' Association on Friday ahead of the Governors' Dinner the following evening, a visit that had its own drama after Trump blocked Governors Jared Polis and Wes Moore from attending, only to re-extend their invitations.
But the tariff ruling clearly occupied his attention. Trump fired back on Truth Social shortly after the decision, calling it "very unpatriotic."
"What happened today with the two United States Supreme Court Justices that I appointed against great opposition, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, whether people like it or not, never seems to happen with Democrats."
"They vote against the Republicans, and never against themselves, almost every single time, no matter how good a case we have."
That frustration is shared by millions of conservative voters who watched a Republican-appointed majority hand a win to the institutional resistance. The pattern Trump identifies is real: Democratic appointees vote as a bloc with remarkable consistency. Republican appointees break ranks regularly, sometimes on the most consequential cases. Whether that reflects independent judicial reasoning or a lack of ideological spine depends on which side of the aisle you occupy.
The mystery caller, whoever he is, managed to crystallize conservative frustration with the ruling more effectively in ninety seconds of live television than most pundits did all weekend. The language was blunt. The targets were specific. The tone was unmistakable.
C-SPAN says it wasn't the president. The timeline supports that. But the fact that an anonymous caller channeling Trump's exact rhetorical style could dominate a news cycle tells you something about the current moment. The president's voice, real or imitated, still commands the room.
And somewhere in central Virginia, "John Barron" is probably smiling.
Sen. John Fetterman went on "Jesse Watters Primetime" Thursday and did something vanishingly rare for a Democrat: he called out one of his own party's most prominent members for her hostility toward Israel.
The target was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who used the Munich Security Conference stage to accuse the United States of enabling "genocide" in Gaza and to demand that American military aid to Israel be conditioned on human rights benchmarks.
Fetterman was not impressed.
"I think that the most troubling thing for her views is she is just, you know, anti-Israel. I mean, and those views and, you know, so clueless — to sit in Germany and accuse Israel of genocide while you're sitting in Germany — and how ignorant that is."
That line does not need a footnote. The congresswoman stood in the country that perpetrated the actual Holocaust and deployed the word "genocide" against the Jewish state defending itself after the worst massacre of Jews since that very Holocaust. The irony writes itself, as Fox News reports.
Ocasio-Cortez used her appearance at the Feb. 13, 2026, Munich Security Conference to push for conditioning U.S. aid to Israel under the Leahy Laws, legislation introduced in 1997 by former Sen. Patrick Leahy that prohibits the Department of Defense and State Department from funding foreign security force units when there is credible information that a unit has committed a "gross violation of human rights."
In her remarks, the congresswoman framed this as a simple matter of legal compliance:
"And, so, I believe that enforcement of our own laws through the Leahy laws — which requires conditioning aid in any circumstance when you see gross human rights violations — is appropriate."
She went further, claiming that unconditional U.S. support for Israel "enabled a genocide in Gaza" and that "thousands of women and children dead" resulted from a failure to enforce conditions on aid.
This is, of course, a familiar playbook. Wrap a radical position in the language of procedural concern. Don't say you want to abandon America's most important Middle Eastern ally. Say you just want to "enforce our own laws." The framing is designed to make the extraordinary sound routine.
But no amount of legal window dressing changes what Ocasio-Cortez is actually arguing: that Israel's military response to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks constitutes genocide, and that the United States bears moral responsibility for it. That is not a legal argument. It is a political one, and a deeply dishonest one at that.
Fetterman did not stop at criticizing AOC personally. He described her "specifically anti-Israel" stance as representative of a "serious rot" within a subset of the Democratic Party. That phrase carries weight coming from a sitting Democratic senator who has, on other issues, remained firmly in his party's mainstream.
What makes Fetterman's criticism notable is not just that he's willing to say it on Fox News. It's that almost no one else in his caucus will say it anywhere. The Democratic Party's progressive wing has spent the last two years steadily normalizing the "genocide" label for Israel's war against Hamas, a terrorist organization that initiated the conflict by slaughtering civilians. The moderates who know better mostly keep quiet, calculating that silence is cheaper than confrontation.
Fetterman, to his credit, has refused that bargain. He has been one of the only Democrats willing to support Israel publicly and consistently since Oct. 7. His willingness to appear on conservative media and say plainly what many of his colleagues only whisper in private is, at minimum, honest.
That does not make him a conservative. When asked about California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Fetterman acknowledged their disagreements but emphasized the "big tent" nature of the Democratic Party:
"I don't agree with him with some of his, you know, views in certain things. California is a lot different than Pennsylvania, but you know, technically we are just Democrats, and now that's why, you know, the Democratic Party has to be a big tent thing and that's why we can disagree on some things."
A big tent is one thing. But a tent that accommodates both Fetterman's position and AOC's "genocide" rhetoric is not big. It's incoherent.
Beyond her Israel remarks, Ocasio-Cortez's Munich appearance also drew mockery for comments about Taiwan and Venezuela, though the specifics of those flubs circulated more widely on social media than in formal reporting. The congresswoman did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Silence is a choice. When your remarks at a major international security conference spark what the source material describes as "outrage and intense backlash from military and Middle East experts," a serious legislator would clarify or defend. Ocasio-Cortez did neither.
This is the pattern with the progressive left's foreign policy wing. They deploy maximalist moral language on the global stage, accuse allies of the most serious crime in international law, and then treat the predictable blowback as proof that the establishment is afraid of their truth-telling. It is a closed loop. Criticism becomes validation. Backlash becomes branding.
Words matter in international affairs, and "genocide" is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a specific legal designation with specific consequences. Throwing it at Israel while standing in Germany is not bold. It is reckless.
It equates a democratic nation's military campaign against a designated terrorist organization with the systematic extermination of a people. It gives rhetorical ammunition to every bad-faith actor on the global stage who wants to isolate Israel. And it tells Hamas and its sponsors that their strategy of embedding among civilians works, because Western politicians will eventually blame Israel for the carnage that strategy creates.
Ocasio-Cortez frames her position as compassion for the dead. But compassion that cannot distinguish between the arsonist and the fire department is not compassion. It is confusion, elevated to moral certainty.
Fetterman saw it for what it was. Whether enough of his party agrees with him to matter remains the open question. Based on the silence from the rest of the Democratic caucus, the answer is not encouraging.
The rot Fetterman described is not hiding. It flew to Munich and spoke into a microphone.
U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts, the former two-term Republican governor of Nebraska and one of the more reliable conservative voices in the Senate, is endorsing a Democrat for the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. That Democrat happens to be his wife.
Breitbart reported that Susanne Shore, Nebraska's former first lady, is running for an Omaha-area seat on the Board of Regents to complete the final four years of a term vacated by former Regent Elizabeth O'Connor.
She is running as a Democrat, with her own Democrat political consultant and her own campaign operation. Ricketts, for his part, is not pretending otherwise.
"I usually vote straight Republican, but Susanne will be my one Democrat exception in 2026!"
That's a line designed to charm. Whether it should is another question entirely.
Ricketts called Shore "an outstanding voice for the university" and praised her as "seeking to keep higher education affordable and accessible." He added that her "deep love for Nebraska is clear." Shore herself described Ricketts as "nothing but supportive" of her campaign, even as she acknowledged the two often hold opposing political views at home.
Shore's stated focus is on ensuring students from rural and urban backgrounds receive the academic and social support needed to complete degrees or certificates. She framed her pitch in broadly agreeable terms:
"It's not just about being able to get into school. It's being able to get out without being burdened by a massive debt … work-study programs and internships."
Affordable education. Support for rural students. Reduced debt burdens. None of that sounds controversial on its face. But the Board of Regents doesn't just set tuition rates. It governs the ideological direction of one of the state's most powerful institutions. And on that front, Shore's answers get thinner.
The Nebraska Examiner reported that Shore did not directly answer whether her campaign focus might mean she would advocate for embattled diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which have been political targets in Nebraska and elsewhere. That silence is worth noting. Candidates who intend to oppose DEI rarely struggle to say so.
What makes this endorsement so strange is the man making it. This is the same Pete Ricketts who, as governor in 2021, publicly excoriated the University of Nebraska-Lincoln over its "Journey for Anti-Racism and Racial Equity" plan. He didn't mince words at the time:
"While the University has repeatedly denied that their plan includes Critical Race Theory, their own records reveal that the consultant behind their efforts is a critical race theorist."
He described the plan as reaching "into every corner of campus" and called it "legally questionable, intellectually flawed, and politically charged." In a separate interview with Breitbart News in December 2021, he went further:
"Critical race theory is talking about resegregation. A betrayal of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King."
That same year, Ricketts held town halls across Nebraska to expose what he called "the gender ideology" embedded in proposed sex education standards. He described the content as "crazy stuff" and "sexualization of our children." He told Nebraskans that the path to reform ran through personnel decisions:
"To make real change, we have to replace those people on the school board with people who believe the parents are responsible for a kid's education."
His closing argument at the time was as clear as it gets: "To change the policy, you have to change people."
Now he is asking voters to put a Democrat on the board that governs the very university system he once fought to reform.
Nobody begrudges a man for supporting his wife. Marriage involves compromise, loyalty, and the occasional decision to hold your tongue at Thanksgiving. But a U.S. senator's endorsement is not a private act. It carries institutional weight. It directs voter behavior. It tells conservative Nebraskans that this candidate has been vetted and found acceptable.
And what do those voters actually know about Shore's positions? That she wants college to be affordable. That she supports work-study programs. That she won't say where she stands on DEI.
The Board of Regents race is officially nonpartisan, but Shore chose to run as a Democrat. She hired a Democrat consultant. She is competing in a Democratic primary against at least four other candidates, including Michael Skocz, a University of Nebraska at Omaha employee; Drew Leisy, the current UNO Student Regent; Justin Solomon, a former UNL Student Regent; and Larry Bradley, a perennial candidate. The top two finishers from the May 12 primary advance to the November 3 general election.
Running as a Democrat in a nominally nonpartisan race is itself a signal. It tells a coalition what to expect.
Higher education governance is not a ceremonial post. University boards set the terms for hiring, curriculum review, and the institutional culture that shapes a generation of students.
Conservatives have spent years fighting to reclaim these institutions from ideological capture. Ricketts himself made that case more forcefully than almost any governor in the country.
The question is not whether Susanne Shore is a good person. The question is whether a Democrat candidate who declines to answer questions about DEI will govern the University of Nebraska in a direction that aligns with the values Ricketts spent his governorship defending.
Ricketts told Nebraskans that to change policy, you have to change people. He was right then. The principle doesn't bend because the person is family.
Iranian and Russian naval forces conducted joint exercises Thursday in the Gulf of Oman and Indian Ocean, staging what they dubbed "Maritime Security Belt 2026" as President Trump contemplates airstrikes against Iran and American warships tighten their presence across the region.
The drills involved units from the Iranian Navy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Russian Navy special units, employing both air and surface craft. Two days earlier, the IRGC, a designated terrorist organization, temporarily shut down the Strait of Hormuz for live-fire drills involving ship- and shore-launched missiles.
Iran also issued warnings to airline pilots operating in the southern part of the country that rockets would be launched during the exercises. None of this is routine, no matter what Tehran claims.
As reported by Breitbart, the Kremlin insisted the drills were "planned exercises and agreed upon in advance," a familiar line from a government that has perfected the art of pre-scheduling provocations. Video published by the Russian military showed the corvette Stoiky arriving at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, presumably before joining the exercises.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov offered the kind of diplomatic language Moscow deploys when it wants to appear above the fray while actively stoking it:
"We are currently witnessing an unprecedented escalation of tensions in the region, but we still expect that political and diplomatic tools will prevail."
He followed that with a call for "restraint and prudence" directed at "our Iranian friends and all parties in the region." The word "friends" is doing considerable work in that sentence. Russia is not a neutral observer counseling calm. It is a participant sailing warships into contested waters alongside a regime that just closed one of the world's most critical shipping lanes to practice firing missiles.
Iranian Navy commander Rear Adm. Shahram Irani dispensed with any pretense of the exercises being defensive or routine. He complained publicly about "threats, noise, propaganda, and the presence of extra-regional fleets in West Asia," then escalated:
"If the extra-regional fleet feels it has come with power, it should know that the Iranian people will confront them with greater power. The faith of the people and missiles are the Islamic Republic of Iran's deterrent weapons against the enemy."
Iranian state media described the drills as "routine" and said they included "the liberation of a hijacked ship," aerial reconnaissance, surface operations, and "the capture of simulated pirates." The gap between "routine anti-piracy exercise" and "we will confront you with missiles and faith" tells you everything about where Tehran's head is.
Iranian spokesman Capt. Hassan Maqsoudlou confirmed that participating units included "special operations units" from both the Iranian Navy and IRGC naval forces, and spoke of strengthening relations between the two countries' navies. China was reportedly supposed to participate, but little information was made publicly available about the presence of any Chinese ships. Whether Beijing quietly pulled back or simply kept its involvement out of the press is an open question worth watching.
The joint drills unfold against a backdrop of significant American force projection. The USS Abraham Lincoln and its battle group are currently within striking distance of Iran. The USS Gerald R. Ford, America's largest and most advanced warship, is headed for the Strait of Gibraltar and could be in position as soon as this weekend. Some 50 additional American combat aircraft have been moved into position this week.
If those figures hold, Iran could be facing one of the largest U.S. aerial deployments since the Cold War.
That is the context in which Tehran chose to close the Strait of Hormuz for missile drills and then stage joint exercises with Russia. These are not the moves of a regime confident in its diplomatic position. They are the moves of a government that sees the board clearly and is scrambling to project strength it may not possess.
There is a pattern with regimes under pressure. They hold military parades. They fire rockets into open water. They invite a fellow pariah state to sail alongside them for the cameras. The spectacle is the point, because the spectacle is all they have.
Russia gets to remind Washington that it has relationships in the region. Iran gets to claim it isn't isolated. Both governments get footage for state television. But none of it changes the correlation of forces. Two carrier strike groups, dozens of advanced combat aircraft, and the full logistical weight of the American military do not become less formidable because a Russian corvette docked at Bandar Abbas.
Tehran's strategy appears to be deterrence through rhetoric and symbolism: missiles and faith, as Rear Adm. Irani put it. That formulation tells you what's missing from the list. Modern air defense systems. A navy capable of contesting blue water. Allies are willing to fight rather than issue press releases about restraint.
Russia will call for calm. Iran will fire rockets at imaginary pirates. And American carrier groups will continue closing the distance. The Gulf of Oman is getting crowded, and only one side chose to be there from a position of strength.
An 18-year-old man armed with a loaded shotgun sprinted toward the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday before officers intercepted him roughly a block from the building. United States Capitol Police challenged the suspect, ordered him to drop the weapon, and took him into custody without incident.
Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan confirmed the details at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. The suspect complied when confronted.
"He laid down the weapon and then laid down on the ground and was taken into custody."
What officers found on and around the suspect paints a picture of someone who came prepared for more than a stroll through the National Mall. The shotgun was loaded. The suspect wore a tactical vest and tactical gloves and carried additional rounds on his person. A Kevlar helmet and gas mask were allegedly recovered from his vehicle, a white Mercedes SUV that was not registered to him.
Sullivan described the suspect as "an 18-year-old who does not live in the area." Capitol Police declined to identify him as of Tuesday. No motive has been established.
Shortly after noon on Tuesday, Axios reported that Capitol Police emailed congressional offices to report they had "just arrested a person with what appears to be a gun near the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Building." Law enforcement shut down several surrounding streets during the investigation. Roughly an hour and a half later, USCP sent an all-clear to staff and reopened that portion of the Capitol campus.
The investigation remains ongoing. No charges have been publicly announced.
This incident occurs against a backdrop that should concern every American who cares about the safety of elected officials and the institutions they work in. Capitol Police opened nearly 15,000 threat assessment cases last year, up from 9,474 in 2024. That is a nearly 60 percent increase in a single year.
Those numbers don't materialize from nowhere. Years of superheated political rhetoric, combined with a media environment that treats every policy disagreement as an existential crisis, produce exactly this kind of escalation. When mainstream voices spend years telling people that democracy itself hangs by a thread every election cycle, some fraction of listeners will decide to act on that hysteria. The temperature of American political discourse has consequences that show up not in polls but in threat assessments.
Sullivan stated the incident "doesn't change" the Capitol Police's security posture for the upcoming State of the Union address. That's reassuring as far as it goes. But the fact that an armed teenager in body armor can drive a vehicle that isn't his to within a block of the Capitol and start running before anyone stops him is the kind of thing that demands more than reassurance.
The most important question remains unanswered: why. Sullivan acknowledged that police are "unaware of a motive at this time." Until that picture develops, speculation serves no one. But the inventory of what this young man brought with him, a loaded weapon, extra ammunition, tactical gear, and protective equipment left staged in the car, suggests this was not impulsive.
Several gaps remain:
Those blanks will fill in over the coming days. When they do, the details will matter far more than the early narratives that inevitably rush in to claim every act of political violence for one team or another.
Capitol security has been a political football since January 6, 2021, invoked selectively depending on who benefits from the conversation. The left discovered an urgent concern for the Capitol's perimeter when it suited a political narrative, then quietly lost interest when the subject shifted to the daily reality of protecting a building full of lawmakers from an ever-growing volume of threats.
Nearly 15,000 threat cases in a single year is not a statistic that belongs to one party. It reflects something broken in how Americans relate to their own government. Securing the Capitol is not a partisan project. It is a basic obligation.
An 18-year-old with a loaded shotgun, a tactical vest, and a car full of gear made it to within a block of the building before anyone stopped him. Officers performed well once they engaged. The question is whether "once they engaged" is good enough.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth directed Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to remove Col. Dave Butler from his position as chief of Army public affairs and senior adviser to the Army Secretary. The order came last week while Driscoll was overseas in Geneva working on negotiations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
Driscoll confirmed that Butler will retire after 28 years of military service, issuing a statement that praised the colonel's career:
"We greatly appreciate COL Dave Butler's lifetime of service in America's Army and to our nation. Dave has been an integral part of the Army's transformation efforts and I sincerely wish him tremendous success in his upcoming retirement after 28 years of service."
Fox News, which first reported the story, indicated that Driscoll initially resisted Hegseth's demands before ultimately complying. The Pentagon directed press inquiries to the Department of the Army, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Butler's removal is the latest in a series of leadership changes Hegseth has driven since taking over the Pentagon in 2025, the New York Post reported. Under President Trump, he has pushed out or forced into retirement several top military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and multiple service chiefs.
The pattern is consistent and deliberate. New leadership. New direction. A military refocused on its core mission rather than the bureaucratic and cultural priorities that defined the previous administration.
Critics familiar with Butler's ouster told the New York Post that the move has more to do with internal administration politics over ridding the Pentagon of the last holdouts from the Biden administration than with any specific failing on Butler's part. That framing is worth examining, but not for the reason those critics intend.
Every incoming administration faces the same challenge: a federal workforce populated by appointees and career officials whose institutional loyalties were shaped under the previous regime. The Pentagon is no exception. If anything, the sheer scale of the defense bureaucracy makes it one of the hardest places to execute a genuine change of direction.
Unnamed critics casting Butler's removal as mere "internal politics" are doing exactly what you'd expect defenders of the status quo to do. They reframe personnel accountability as pettiness. They treat any leadership transition as inherently suspicious rather than inherently necessary. They ignore the simple reality that a War Secretary has every right to install people he trusts in positions that shape how the military communicates with the public.
The chief of Army public affairs isn't a potted plant. The person in that role shapes messaging, manages crises, and serves as a senior adviser to the Army Secretary. That requires alignment with the current leadership's vision, not residual loyalty to the last one.
The reporting that Driscoll initially pushed back on Hegseth's directive before ultimately agreeing deserves context, not breathless interpretation. Cabinet-level officials occasionally disagree on timing, process, or personnel decisions. That's governance, not chaos. Driscoll was in the middle of sensitive diplomatic work in Geneva. Raising concerns about the timing of a personnel move while conducting negotiations is reasonable, not rebellious.
What matters is the outcome: Butler is retiring, Driscoll confirmed it publicly, and the Army moves forward.
Butler served 28 years. That's a long and honorable career by any measure. But the broader significance of his removal lies in what it represents: a Pentagon leadership that is serious about installing its own team at every level that touches public communication and strategic decision-making.
Butler had traveled with Driscoll to Ukraine in late 2025 as part of diplomatic efforts to jump-start peace talks. He was embedded in consequential work. Replacing someone in that position signals that Hegseth isn't content to simply swap out the generals and admirals at the top while leaving the supporting infrastructure untouched.
This is how institutional change actually works. Not through speeches about transformation, but through the unglamorous, often controversial work of putting the right people in the right seats. The left spent four years doing exactly this across every federal agency. They just never got criticized for it.
The question now is who fills Butler's role, and whether the broader leadership overhaul begins producing measurable results in military readiness, recruitment, and strategic posture. Personnel moves are means, not ends. They matter only insofar as they enable a different kind of Pentagon.
Hegseth has made his theory of the case clear through action: the military's senior ranks needed a reset. Whether the reset achieves its aims will be judged by outcomes, not op-eds.
Twenty-eight years of service earn respect. But no single career outweighs the prerogative of civilian leadership to shape the force it commands.
President Trump declared Monday that the federal government will not cover a single dollar in cost overruns on the Gateway tunnel project, the massive rail infrastructure undertaking connecting Newark and New York City. The announcement, posted on Truth Social, put state and local officials on notice that Washington's checkbook has a limit.
Trump compared the project to California's infamous high-speed rail debacle, warning that without serious oversight, Gateway could follow the same trajectory into financial oblivion.
"I am opposed to the future boondoggle known as 'Gateway,' in New York/New Jersey, because it will cost many BILLIONS OF DOLLARS more than projected or anticipated, much like Gavin Newscum's 'Railroad' to nowhere, which is many times over budget, with no end in sight."
The president followed that shot with a clear ultimatum:
"Under no circumstances, will the Federal Government be responsible for ANY COST OVERRUNS – NOT ONE DOLLAR!"
He did, however, leave the door open to negotiation, saying the federal government "is willing to meet" to ensure fiscal discipline on the project.
Gateway has been a political football for over a decade. The Obama administration deemed it one of the most important infrastructure projects in America, and local politicians have long touted the federal funding they secured for it. The existing tunnels between New York and New Jersey are more than a century old and took serious damage from Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Nobody disputes that the tunnels need work.
What's disputed is whether this project can be delivered without ballooning into another open-ended fiscal catastrophe. And that's a fair question. The history of large-scale public infrastructure in the Northeast is a history of cost overruns treated as inevitable, then forgiven, then repeated. Trump is signaling that the cycle ends here.
The project spans five work sites across New York and New Jersey and carries $16 billion in federal funding, the New York Post reported. This past fall, during the government shutdown fight, the administration froze those federal funds after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries pushed for a suspension of operations. On February 6, a Manhattan federal judge ordered the $16 billion restored, the same day the project's line of credit ran out.
Gov. Kathy Hochul's spokesperson, Sean Butler, responded with a statement that tried to frame Trump's warning as unnecessary:
"Great news for President Trump: the federal government is already off the hook for any cost overruns on Gateway and before funding was illegally suspended, this project had been a tremendous success, moving perfectly on time and on budget."
There's a lot packed into that sentence, and most of it deserves scrutiny. Butler's claim that the project was "perfectly on time and on budget" before federal funds were frozen is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting. Major infrastructure projects do not simply pause and resume without consequence. If the project were truly running so smoothly, the insistence that federal money flow without conditions should raise fewer hackles, not more.
And the phrase "illegally suspended" is a legal conclusion Butler drops without citation. A federal judge did order funding restored, but the spokesperson's framing conveniently skips past the political gamesmanship that led to the freeze in the first place. Schumer and Jeffries pushed for a government shutdown. The funds got frozen. Cause and effect are not mysterious here.
Trump also addressed reports that he wanted to rename Penn Station after himself. He rejected the idea that it was his initiative:
"The naming of PENN Station (I LOVE Pennsylvania, but it is a direct competitor to New York, and 'eating New York's lunch!') to TRUMP STATION, was brought up by certain politicians and construction union heads, not me."
Reports had surfaced that during a private discussion about unlocking Gateway funds last month, the topic of renaming both Penn Station and Dulles International Airport after the president came up between Trump and Schumer. Schumer reportedly rejected the idea. During his second term, Trump has had marquee federal buildings renamed after him, including the Kennedy Center and the Institute of Peace, so the idea was hardly implausible. But Trump's point stands: floating the concept and demanding it are different things, and the media's eagerness to turn a sidebar into the headline tells you everything about their priorities.
This isn't an isolated stand. Trump has shown a consistent willingness to use federal leverage on infrastructure projects that lack fiscal accountability:
You can debate the wisdom of any individual decision, but the throughline is unmistakable. The administration is treating federal infrastructure dollars as leverage, not entitlements. That's a posture Washington hasn't seen in a long time, and it's clearly making the people who've grown comfortable with unlimited federal generosity deeply uncomfortable.
Here's what the Gateway fight actually comes down to: Who bears the risk? For decades, the answer has been the federal taxpayer. Projects get approved with optimistic budgets, costs spiral, and Congress quietly backfills the difference. The people who green-lit the estimates never face consequences. The contractors get paid regardless. The only losers are taxpayers in states that will never ride the train.
Trump is forcing a different answer. If New York and New Jersey want this tunnel, they can have it. But they own the budget. They own the overruns. They own the accountability.
That's not obstruction. That's how adults manage money.
President Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday to torch television host Bill Maher, calling a prior White House dinner with the Real Time host a waste of time and lumping him in with the rest of late-night television's anti-Trump lineup.
The post came in direct response to Maher's Friday broadcast, where the host criticized Trump over a Truth Social post about China, Canada, and ice hockey. Trump wasn't having it.
"Sometimes in life you waste time! T.V. Host Bill Maher asked to have dinner with me through one of his friends, also a friend of mine, and I agreed. He came into the famed Oval Office much different than I thought he would be."
What followed was a detailed — and characteristically vivid — account of a dinner that took place at the White House at the end of March 2025, one that Maher himself had requested through a mutual friend.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Trump painted a picture of Maher as a man utterly out of his element in the Oval Office. According to the president, Maher was rattled from the moment he walked in — asking for a vodka tonic within seconds of arriving.
"He was extremely nervous, had ZERO confidence in himself and, to soothe his nerves, immediately, within seconds, asked for a 'Vodka Tonic.' He said to me, 'I've never felt like this before, I'm actually scared.' In one respect, it was somewhat endearing!"
Trump acknowledged the dinner itself went well — quick, easy, even pleasant. And he noted that Maher's first show after the meeting reflected that.
"Anyway, we had a great dinner, it was quick, easy, and he seemed to be a nice guy and, for his first show after our dinner, he was very respectful about our meeting — But with everything I have done in bringing our Country back from 'OBLIVION,' why wouldn't he be?"
That's the part worth paying attention to. Maher left the White House and told his audience exactly what he saw. On the April 11 episode of Real Time, he described Trump as "gracious and measured" — someone entirely different from the caricature cable news constructs nightly.
"Trump was gracious and measured and why he isn't that in other settings, I don't know and I can't answer, and it's not my place to answer. I'm just telling you what I saw and I wasn't high."
Maher even acknowledged the disconnect between the man he met and the online persona, noting that Trump had posted negative comments about him the night before the dinner — then welcomed him warmly in person.
"The guy I met is not the person who the night before the dinner shit tweeted a bunch of nasty crap about how he thought this was a bad idea and what a deranged asshole I was."
"But when I got there, that guy wasn't living there."
So Maher saw the real thing. Said so publicly. And then — like clockwork — drifted right back to the script.
This is the part that matters more than any dinner anecdote. Maher had a firsthand experience that contradicted the dominant media narrative about the president. He admitted it on air. He told his audience he wasn't lying.
And then he went right back to mocking the president on the next convenient pretext — in this case, Trump's Monday Truth Social post joking that China would terminate all ice hockey in Canada and eliminate the Stanley Cup.
Trump made clear the hockey comment was a joke. He said so explicitly in his response:
"I jokingly stated in a TRUTH that, 'The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup.' Well, he went on and on about the Hockey statement, like 'What kind of a person would say such a foolish thing as this,' as though I were being serious when I said it"
This is the cycle. A media figure encounters Trump in person, finds him nothing like the monster they've been selling their audiences, says so — and within months is right back to treating every post as a psychiatric exhibit. The gravitational pull of the entertainment-media ecosystem is stronger than any single honest moment.
Maher himself said it best in April: "You can hate me for it, but I'm not a liar." The problem isn't that he lied then. It's that honesty had a shelf life.
Trump's sharpest line landed at the end. After recounting the dinner, the hockey joke, and Maher's apparent desire to return to the White House — even requesting an invite to the Christmas Party — Trump delivered the verdict:
"Fortunately, his Television Ratings are so low that nobody will learn about his various Fake News statements about me. He is no different than Kimmel, Fallon, or Colbert but, I must admit, slightly more talented!"
For years, Maher cultivated a brand as the liberal who would say what other liberals wouldn't. The one who pushed back on progressive orthodoxy, who called out wokeness, who occasionally gave conservatives a fair hearing. That brand earned him a White House dinner. It earned him a level of respect from people across the political spectrum who were tired of the monoculture of late-night television.
Trump just revoked the distinction. In one sentence, he collapsed the space Maher spent years carving out — reducing him to just another member of the late-night chorus. Kimmel. Fallon. Colbert. Maher. Same product, slightly better packaging.
Whether that's entirely fair is beside the point. What matters is that Maher had an opportunity almost no media figure gets: a private dinner with the president, a genuine human interaction that he publicly acknowledged shattered his expectations. He could have built on that. He could have used it to model something different — a media figure capable of disagreeing with a president without defaulting to the same exhausted contempt.
Instead, he went back to the greenroom and picked up right where he left off.
Trump called the dinner a waste of time. He's probably right — but not for the reason he thinks. The waste isn't that Maher reverted to form. That was predictable. The waste is that Maher proved, on camera, that the media's Trump caricature doesn't survive contact with the actual man — and then decided it didn't matter.
That tells you everything about the incentive structure of modern political entertainment. Honesty about Trump doesn't get clips shared. It doesn't trend. It makes your audience uncomfortable and your bookers nervous. So you tell the truth once, collect your credibility points, and quietly shelve it.
Trump, meanwhile, moves on to the next negotiation, the next policy fight, the next rally. He doesn't need Bill Maher's validation. He said as much:
"I'd much rather spend my time MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN than wasting it on him."
The dinner happened. The truth came out. And then the machine swallowed it whole.