Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary, now says Hegseth "needs to go" and is backing a fellow Republican's effort to impeach him.
Tillis told reporters Thursday that he supports removing Hegseth from the Pentagon, whether through impeachment or a simpler path: President Trump replacing him directly. The outgoing senator's remarks came days after Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth in the House, citing the Defense Secretary's handling of the Iran war and an alleged violation of his oath to support and defend the Constitution.
The intra-party revolt is unusual. Two Republicans, one in the Senate, one in the House, are now publicly calling for the removal of a cabinet secretary appointed by a president from their own party. And Tillis is not hedging.
Asked whether Republicans should support Massie's impeachment articles, Tillis stopped short of directing House colleagues but made his own position unmistakable. The Hill reported his response to reporters:
"He needs to go, whether it's impeachment or the most expedient route, just the president to replace him, would be great."
He added: "I'll let the House do what the House is going to do. I think I'm pretty well staked out on my assessment of Mr. Hegseth."
Tillis is not seeking reelection in November, which frees him from the political cost that might silence other GOP senators. But his criticism has been building for months, not days. Earlier this year, he told Politico that Trump firing Hegseth was on "a Christmas wish list" and alleged that Hegseth had misled the president on the dynamics of the war in Iran.
That allegation, that the Defense Secretary gave the commander-in-chief a misleading picture of an active military conflict, is among the most serious charges a senator can level at a Pentagon chief. Tillis has not provided public evidence to support it, and Hegseth has not responded publicly to the claim, at least not in any statement captured in the reporting.
Massie introduced his impeachment resolution on Tuesday. The eight articles center on Hegseth's conduct regarding the Iran war and accuse him of violating his constitutional oath. The full text of the articles has not been reproduced in available reporting, and the specific factual allegations within each article remain unclear.
Massie has previously accused Hegseth of violating the War Powers Resolution over the Iran conflict, a charge that goes to the heart of whether the executive branch overstepped its authority in committing military force without proper congressional authorization.
The impeachment articles' current status in the House, whether they have been referred to committee, whether any other members have co-sponsored them, is not clear from available reporting. No other Republican senator has publicly endorsed or opposed the resolution.
Tillis escalated his rhetoric on the social platform X earlier this month, writing that he had "never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country." He followed that with a direct appeal to the president:
"I urge the President to find a new leader at the Pentagon who will retain and empower our military talent rather than diminish it."
The senator's complaints center on personnel decisions. He has accused Hegseth of pushing out experienced military officials, a pattern that came to a head at the end of August when Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned. Driscoll had clashed with Hegseth over firings of the Army's senior leadership and other changes to the department.
Hegseth has faced a series of controversies during his tenure. He previously rejected reports that the White House was searching for a replacement for his deputy, pushing back on narratives about instability at the top of the Defense Department.
Driscoll's departure is the most concrete example of the internal friction Tillis describes. When a service secretary, the civilian head of an entire military branch, walks away over disagreements with the Defense Secretary about who should lead the force, it raises questions about whether the Pentagon's senior ranks are being managed or simply cleared out.
One fact adds weight to Tillis's criticism: he voted to confirm Hegseth in the first place. This is not a senator who opposed the nomination from the start. He gave Hegseth the benefit of the doubt, watched the results, and concluded the appointment was a mistake.
That trajectory matters. Critics who opposed a nominee before confirmation can be dismissed as partisan. A supporter who reverses course based on what he says he has observed in office is harder to wave away.
Meanwhile, the political environment around Hegseth has grown more hostile from multiple directions. The Pentagon reversed one of Hegseth's own policies regarding flu vaccines for recruits after an outbreak sickened hundreds at a training base, a reversal that undercut his authority on a decision he had personally championed.
Democrats have piled on with their own brand of opposition. One swing-district Democrat told a crowd she wanted to "beat the s*** out of" Hegseth, rhetoric that does nothing to advance serious oversight but illustrates the intensity of feeling on Capitol Hill.
Scrutiny has also extended to Hegseth's family. His wife Jennifer's reported hands-on role at the Pentagon drew fresh questions about influence and access at the highest levels of the Defense Department.
Neither Hegseth nor the White House has responded publicly to Tillis's latest remarks or to Massie's impeachment resolution, at least not in any statement captured in the reporting. That silence leaves a significant gap. A Defense Secretary facing impeachment articles from a member of his own party and a public demand for his firing from a Republican senator would normally create some form of rebuttal.
It also remains unclear how many other Republicans share Tillis's view but have kept quiet. The senator himself acknowledged the political dynamics at play, deferring to the House on impeachment while making his own stance unmistakable. Whether Massie's articles gain co-sponsors or die in committee will say more about the GOP's appetite for this fight than any single senator's remarks.
The deeper question is one Tillis has raised but not fully answered: What exactly did Hegseth tell the president about the Iran war, and was it accurate? If a Defense Secretary misled the commander-in-chief about an active conflict, that is not a management problem. It is a trust problem. And trust, once lost at that level, is not easily rebuilt.
When members of a president's own party start filing impeachment papers and calling for his cabinet secretary's head on the record, the problem is no longer about optics. It is about whether the person running the Pentagon still has the credibility to do the job.
A tearful Savannah Guthrie used a live segment on the Today show to renew her family's desperate appeal for help finding her 84-year-old mother, Nancy, who vanished from her Tucson, Arizona home in January, after actress Allison Janney dedicated her Emmy win backstage to the missing woman.
Guthrie, 54, was filling in for absent co-host Sheinelle Jones on Tuesday's broadcast of Today with Jenna & Sheinelle when the program aired a clip from the 2026 Emmy Awards press room. Janney, 66, had just won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series the night before in Los Angeles. Instead of celebrating her own triumph, she turned the moment toward a family she has never stopped thinking about.
Willie Geist introduced the clip, calling Janney's remarks a "beautiful expression of sympathy." In the footage, Janney told reporters:
"I honestly can say I think about Nancy every day and think about the loss and what Savannah and her family are going through. I don't think I'm alone, I think all of America is thinking about her."
Guthrie broke down on camera. Her voice cracked as she responded.
"I was so touched to see her do that. It's her moment, [after] her triumph, for her to sit and take a moment to think about our family... I never let a moment pass if I get one to talk about my mom and how much we miss her and love her."
Nancy Guthrie was last seen at her home in the Catalina Hills area near Tucson, Arizona, on January 31. FBI-recovered doorbell camera footage showed a masked, armed individual tampering with the camera at 1:47 a.m. on February 1, just hours after Nancy had returned home, National Review reported. Bloodstains confirmed to be Nancy's were found at the scene. A bloodstain pattern analysis expert told Newsweek the evidence showed what is called a "drip trail," meaning blood dripped continuously from a person or object, consistent with someone who was bleeding as they were moved.
Two ransom notes demanding $4 million in Bitcoin followed on February 2 and February 6. The second note claimed Nancy had "perished." Both notes contained details about the crime scene, the location of Nancy's Apple Watch, a smashed backyard floodlight, suggesting the author had direct knowledge of what happened inside the home, Fox News reported.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Heath Yonke of the Phoenix Division acknowledged the ransom demands publicly: "We are aware of a ransom letter that was sent to the local media and then to national outlets. As with every lead, we are taking it seriously." But multiple deadlines set in the notes passed without payment, and at least one demand has been identified as fraudulent.
The case remains unsolved months later. High-profile crimes against elderly victims, and the agonizing limbo families endure when answers never come, have drawn public attention in recent years, much as emotionally charged criminal cases continue to grip the country.
Dr. Kris Mohandie, a forensic psychologist who previously helped convince O.J. Simpson to surrender to authorities, has publicly questioned the legitimacy of both ransom letters. The Pima County Sheriff's Office released the notes, and Mohandie studied them closely.
"Unfortunately, I think this case is a simple matter of a burglary gone wrong and then attempts to cover things up," Mohandie told the New York Post. "There are a lot of things wrong with that ransom note, and it raised a lot of questions for me of veracity."
Authorities released the notes publicly in hopes someone might recognize what they described as the "unique linguistic style" of the author. So far, no arrest has been made.
On the six-month anniversary of her mother's disappearance, Guthrie posted an emotional plea on Instagram. "This is our beautiful Mom," she wrote. "Six months ago, someone took her out of her bed in the dead of night. We have lived every moment, every breath, and every heartbeat in agony and despair ever since." She added: "We are begging for help. We are desperate. We need someone to come forward. Someone knows something."
On Tuesday's broadcast, Guthrie echoed that desperation. "My whole family, my sister and my brother and I and all of our extended family, are just in such pain," she said. "We need help, so thank you to Allison Janney for remembering us and for giving an opportunity for me to renew that call. We just want our mom home and to be able to give her a proper goodbye, that's all."
Geist reminded viewers to contact the FBI with any information. Guthrie added: "You can call anonymously too, our family needs you."
The emotional wave on Tuesday's show did not begin with Nancy Guthrie's case. Earlier in the broadcast, Guthrie and co-host Jenna Bush Hager, 44, discussed Lady Gaga's new motherhood. Gaga, 40, and her husband Michael Polansky, 42, had recently become parents.
That conversation turned personal. Guthrie reflected on having her own children later in life, her daughter Vale, now 12, and her son Charlie, now 9. She had Charlie just two weeks before turning 45.
"I had my babies in my forties, which I think is a great time to have your kids. I didn't plan it that way, but that's how life turned out. It's like anything; there are pluses, and there are minuses, but I think being a little more stable in your career and stuff is wonderful because you're not trying to juggle all the different things you're trying to juggle when you're in your twenties and thirties."
Guthrie paused and added, with a small laugh: "I like to think there's a little wisdom, but also, you get tired more quickly."
Bush Hager's eyes filled. "I know you felt this way, that you were just so delighted that it could happen for you," she told Guthrie. The broadcast world has seen no shortage of major changes among TV news anchors in recent months, but Tuesday's moment stood apart, raw, unscripted, and centered on something far more personal than ratings or career moves.
Guthrie responded: "I'll never be over it. I just feel so profoundly lucky that I got to have my kids, and I was so late in life to do it. I mean, I had Charlie, and I turned 45 two weeks later."
Bush Hager recalled visiting Guthrie when her children were newborns. "I got to come and sit on your couch when you were a brand new mama," she said. Guthrie smiled through tears: "We did all those early toddler years as next door neighbors." The exchange between two women who have spent years side by side on morning television, and who clearly share a bond that extends well beyond the studio, carried a weight that no teleprompter could manufacture.
Sheinelle Jones, the show's regular co-host, was absent Tuesday after attending the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles the night before. Her absence gave Guthrie the co-hosting chair, and, as it turned out, a platform to speak directly to a national audience about her family's ordeal. The Washington Examiner noted that Guthrie declined to comment on reports that one ransom note claimed Nancy had died shortly after the abduction, but expressed her family's desperation for any answers.
In the entertainment world, personal loss and public tribute have long intersected in unexpected ways, from the passing of beloved figures to the quiet gestures that remind audiences these are real people behind the cameras and on the stages.
An 84-year-old woman is still missing. Her daughter asked America for help on live television. The least the rest of us can do is pay attention.
A New York Times, Siena University poll released with less than 50 days before the midterms shows New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani carrying a higher favorable rating than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among likely voters, a gap that should worry Democrats banking on her national star power.
Mamdani, the self-described Democratic socialist who rose from the New York City Council to Gracie Mansion, posted a 38 percent favorable rating against 33 percent unfavorable in the survey of slightly more than 1,500 likely voters conducted September 8, 13. Ocasio-Cortez, the four-term congresswoman from the same ideological lane, managed only 30 percent favorable, and her unfavorable number sat at 41 percent, eight points higher than Mamdani's.
The margin of error was 2.9 percentage points, meaning the eight-point favorability gap between the two progressive figures falls well outside statistical noise. For a congresswoman who has not ruled out a 2028 presidential bid, the numbers amount to a cold reality check delivered by her own party's most respected polling partnership.
The demographic breakdowns, reported by USA TODAY, tell a sharper story than the topline numbers alone. Mamdani drew 41 percent favorable among women and 35 percent among men. His unfavorable rating among women was just 23 percent, nearly half the 43 percent unfavorable he earned from men.
Ocasio-Cortez fared worse on both sides of the ledger. She posted 32 percent favorable among women and 27 percent among men. A majority of male likely voters, 51 percent, viewed her unfavorably, and a third of women did too.
Put plainly: Mamdani is nine points more popular with women than Ocasio-Cortez, and he carries eight points less disapproval from men. For a politician whose brand was built on grassroots energy and viral social-media moments, those are stubborn numbers to spin.
Age breakdowns reinforce the pattern. Mamdani's strongest support came from voters aged 18, 29, where he hit 51 percent favorable, a majority. He held 49 percent among voters 30, 44, dropped to 37 percent among those 45, 64, and fell to 26 percent among seniors 65 and older.
Ocasio-Cortez's best age group was 30, 44, at 43 percent favorable. Among the youngest voters, the cohort most associated with her political rise, she managed only 35 percent. She matched Mamdani's floor among seniors at 26 percent and scraped 25 percent among voters 45, 64.
The congresswoman who once embodied millennial progressive energy now trails a relatively new mayor among the very voters she claims to champion. That trajectory matters if she intends to mount a serious White House campaign. Her odds in the 2028 Democratic nomination race have been climbing in betting markets, but favorable-unfavorable numbers like these suggest the broader electorate is not keeping pace with the speculation.
Mamdani led among non-White voters broadly, posting 47 percent favorable compared to Ocasio-Cortez's 26 percent in the same category. Among Black likely voters, Mamdani earned 46 percent favorable to her 37 percent. Among White voters, he led 38 percent to 27 percent.
Ocasio-Cortez did hold one demographic advantage: Hispanic likely voters gave her a 49 percent favorable rating, well above Mamdani's 37 percent in the same group. It was her single strongest showing across every demographic slice in the poll.
Still, a Democratic socialist who built her career on multiracial coalition politics should not be trailing a fellow progressive across nearly every racial and ethnic category. Sen. Ted Cruz has warned that Democrats are handing their party to figures like Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani. The poll suggests voters may be sorting between the two on their own terms, and the congresswoman is not winning that contest.
Beyond the head-to-head favorability comparison, the Times-Siena poll found Democrats leading Republicans 51 percent to 43 percent on the generic congressional ballot among likely voters. That eight-point margin, if it holds through Election Day, would represent a significant headwind for Republican candidates in competitive districts.
The poll also tested which party voters trust more on three major issues. Democrats led on health care, 60 percent to 36 percent. They led on immigration, 52 percent to 45 percent. And they led on the cost of living, 51 percent to 43 percent.
Those immigration numbers deserve scrutiny. Republicans have spent years building an advantage on border security and enforcement, and a seven-point deficit on the broader immigration question among likely voters signals either a messaging failure or a polling sample that skews toward blue-state respondents. The poll's geographic scope was not explicitly defined in the reporting, which makes the generic-ballot and issue-trust findings harder to evaluate at face value.
Meanwhile, internal Democratic divisions have not disappeared. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has faced caucus revolts over members breaking ranks, a reminder that the party's apparent polling strength masks real fractures beneath the surface.
The poll found that a majority of likely voters disapprove of Trump's handling of every major issue tested, including tariffs and the war with Iran. The specific disapproval percentages on those individual issues were not detailed in the reporting, leaving the severity of the numbers open to interpretation.
What is clear is that the poll's architects chose to test issues, tariffs, Iran, health care, cost of living, immigration, that cut across both parties' vulnerabilities. The results on the Democratic side of the ledger look strong in the topline. But topline generic-ballot leads have collapsed before, and issue-trust advantages do not always translate into seat gains when individual candidates carry unfavorable ratings as high as Ocasio-Cortez's 41 percent.
Ocasio-Cortez's political setbacks are not limited to polling. Her past public claims have sometimes outrun the facts, contributing to the kind of credibility erosion that shows up in unfavorable numbers over time.
Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez share an ideological label, a city, and a political generation. They do not share a favorability profile. The mayor is above water, 38 percent favorable, 33 percent unfavorable, a net positive of five points. The congresswoman is deeply underwater, 30 percent favorable, 41 percent unfavorable, a net negative of eleven points.
That sixteen-point net-favorability gap between two politicians from the same wing of the same party, measured by the same poll at the same moment, is not a rounding error. It suggests that voters are distinguishing between the person who governs a city and the person who performs on cable news and social media. Executive responsibility, even in a city as chaotic as New York, may be granting Mamdani a credibility that Ocasio-Cortez's congressional tenure has not.
Progressive Democrats watching the 2028 landscape should take note. Progressive candidates have won recent primaries by leaning into cultural fights, but winning a primary and winning broad favorability are different exercises entirely. Ocasio-Cortez's numbers suggest the latter remains elusive.
When more voters dislike you than like you by double digits, the problem is not messaging. It is the product.
Bob Mackie, the nine-time Emmy-winning designer who dressed Cher, Carol Burnett, and a generation of entertainers, has died at 87, closing a career that spanned more than six decades.
Mackie's team confirmed his death Monday in a statement posted to his Instagram page. "He lived his 87 years to the fullest, fulfilling his dream of being a Fashion and Costume Designer, which is all he ever wanted to do," the statement read. Fox News reported that Mackie died of pneumonia. He is survived by his granddaughter Alyssa Townsend, great-granddaughters Kyla and Keira Townsend, and former wife Lulu Porter.
The California native built a career that few in the fashion or entertainment world could match. He won nine Emmy Awards, earned three Oscar nominations, took home a Tony Award in 2019 for his contributions to "The Cher Show," and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2002. In June 2019, the Council of Fashion Designers of America honored him with the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York.
Known as the "Sultan of Sequins," Mackie didn't just make clothes. He made entrances. His designs, heavy with beadwork, feathers, and bright color, turned performers into spectacles and award shows into front-page events. He pioneered the "nude illusion" dress, a form-fitting design layered over sheer fabric that created the appearance of bare skin beneath sequins and embellishment.
Mackie started at the bottom, working as a sketch artist for film costume designers before landing his first major client: actress and singer Mitzi Gaynor, whose Las Vegas revue shows in the 1960s gave him a platform to develop his flamboyant style. That early work led to an eleven-year run designing costumes for "The Carol Burnett Show," a stint he once described as "fabulous."
In a 2024 interview with Good Morning America, Mackie explained the difference between fashion design and costume work. "When you're a costume designer, you better understand what that person does," he said. "'What, as a performer, what kind of timing do they have? How do they move if they're a dancer?' It's all you have to think about that. You don't just send them out in a sweet little dress and hope for the best. It doesn't work that way."
That philosophy, designing for the performer, not just the body, defined his work across every medium. He created looks for Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, and Dolly Parton. He designed costumes for Carol Channing in the 1974 Broadway production "Lorelei" and for Liza Minnelli in 1999's "Minnelli On Minnelli." In 1982, he launched his own ready-to-wear Mackie label, and he later collaborated with Mattel to design outfits for Barbie dolls.
The entertainment world has lost several beloved figures in recent months, including sitcom director James Burrows, whose own career helped define an era of American television.
No collaboration defined Mackie's career more than his work with Cher. The two met in 1971, and by Cher's own telling, the connection was instant. She previously told People magazine about the encounter:
"I see this guy over my shoulder walking in the door and he's beautiful. I turned around and there's this tall, kind of Adonis-looking guy with curly blonde hair and a suntan. And I went, 'Oh my God, you're so much younger than I thought you'd be.' He said, 'You're so much thinner than I thought you'd be.' And it was kind of like that from then on."
Cher called the partnership "a match made in heaven." Over the following decades, Mackie designed for her television shows, concert tours, and award-show appearances, including the now-famous looks that turned red carpets into cultural events. As recently as 2021, the two appeared together at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Gala in Los Angeles.
On Monday, Cher posted a tribute on social media. "My dear Bob has gone up to heaven," she wrote. "Knowing him, he's bringing Sequins, Beads, & his sketch pad. Good nite sweet Prince."
The loss echoes a broader pattern of the entertainment industry saying goodbye to figures who shaped its identity. Singer Lauren Bennett, known for "Party Rock Anthem," also died recently, a reminder that the industry's losses cut across generations.
Carol Burnett, whose variety show gave Mackie one of his longest and most visible creative homes, posted her own tribute Monday. "Sadness doesn't come close to how I feel," she wrote.
"I loved him very much. As for his genius, there are fashion designers who don't do costumes and there are costume designers who don't do fashion. Bob did it all. There was no one like him."
Burnett's distinction captures what set Mackie apart. He moved between Hollywood, Broadway, television, Las Vegas, and the fashion runway without losing a step. His costumes were not just worn, they performed. They were built for movement, for timing, for the specific way a singer held a note or a comedian landed a punchline.
His influence reached younger performers as well. Breitbart reported that Mackie created looks for some of the biggest names in entertainment across multiple decades, and Fox News noted that stars like Sabrina Carpenter and Miley Cyrus had recently worn his archival designs. Carpenter posted her own tribute: "Terribly devastated. I feel so lucky to have met Bob."
Mackie's costumes remained on public display as recently as January 2026 at the Palm Springs Art Museum in California, near the desert home where he had lived and continued sketching designs. In 2024, he sat for an interview about his documentary, "Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion," a title that nodded to the signature illusion dresses that made him famous.
Celebrity news continues to draw national attention across the spectrum, from serious personal matters involving public figures to the passing of artists whose work shaped American culture.
The statement on Mackie's Instagram page offered a fitting summary: "His genius and extraordinary designs will live on forever, continuing to bring beauty into this world." The cause of death, pneumonia, and the names of his surviving family were confirmed separately, but no details about where he died or the exact circumstances have been made public.
What remains is a body of work that defined American glamour for more than sixty years, nine Emmys, three Oscar nominations, a Tony, a lifetime achievement award, and a client list that reads like a roll call of twentieth-century entertainment royalty. Mackie didn't chase trends. He built them, one sequin at a time, for performers who understood that the costume was part of the act.
Bob Mackie spent six decades proving that real craftsmanship, knowing your performer, knowing your fabric, knowing the moment, never goes out of style. Hollywood could use more of that kind of discipline.
Céline Dion performed her first full concert in more than six years Saturday night in Paris, delivering a two-hour set before 30,000 fans after a grueling recovery from a rare neurological disorder that at times left her unable to walk or sing.
The 58-year-old Quebec-born singer opened with "On ne change pas" and broke down in tears within the first few minutes at Plenitude Arena in Nanterre, just west of Paris, one of Europe's largest indoor concert venues. She told the crowd the road back had been "rocky and longer than it should have been," then spent the next two hours proving she had made the trip anyway. NBC News reported that Dion performed for more than two hours, closing with the signature ballad "All by Myself."
The concert marked the start of a two-part, 26-show residency, 16 dates running through October, with 10 more scheduled for spring 2027. Nine million people entered a presale ticket lottery in April. Some American fans paid $1,200 per ticket on the resale market just to be in the building.
Dion was diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome in late 2022, a rare progressive autoimmune condition that affects roughly one in a million people. The disease stiffens muscles and triggers violent spasms, cramps so intense they have broken her ribs, Breitbart reported. It attacks the larynx, and Dion herself has said singing with the condition feels like being strangled.
Her last full concert before Saturday was March 8, 2020, a gap of 2,379 days, AP News reported. She spent those years largely out of the spotlight, enduring physical therapy, vocal rehabilitation, ballet, Pilates, and what she described as training "like an athlete" several times a week. At times the illness prevented her from singing at all. At times it prevented her from walking.
The only public performance during that stretch came at the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, when Dion sang from the Eiffel Tower before a television audience of hundreds of millions. That appearance became a milestone in her recovery, proof that her voice could still carry on the world's biggest stage.
Saturday's concert went well beyond a single song on a landmark. Dion performed 25 songs over two hours and fifteen minutes, according to AP News. She addressed the crowd directly, framing the night as the fulfillment of a commitment she had made during the worst of her illness.
Fox News reported Dion's words to the arena:
"I made a promise to come back, to be back on stage. So here I am, singing for you and singing for me, singing life!"
She also told the crowd simply: "Je vais bien", "I'm doing fine."
Breitbart quoted another passage from her remarks onstage:
"The path was rockier than expected. But I held on to a faint ray of light in the distance, deep in the mountains."
At one point she asked the arena a single question: "Can you hear my heartbeat?" Thirty thousand people could.
The crowd that packed Plenitude Arena traveled from across the globe. Francesca Pezzulo, 31, came from Los Angeles. Ashley Hammond, 42, flew from Miami and called it a "bucket-list moment." Pirkir Gutlausson, a 53-year-old mechanic from Iceland, offered a simpler verdict.
NBC News spoke to Pezzulo after the show:
"It was a victory lap. I think her belief is renewed, I think her spirit is renewed."
Hammond described the experience in five words:
"It gave you chills. It was everything we dreamed of."
Karine Teixeira Bourgogne, 58, traveled from elsewhere in France. Her assessment of Dion cut to character: "She has class, she's humane and she's a fighter."
Élodie Marchand, a 42-year-old fan, told AP News what happened when Dion hit the famous high note in "All by Myself":
"When she hit that note, I grabbed my friend's arm. I'd been holding my breath without realizing. Then I started crying. She's back. She's really back."
The residency is already reshaping the commercial landscape around it. MKG, a hospitality and tourism consultancy, projected that the 26-show run will draw hundreds of thousands of fans who will spend millions of dollars, an economic impact the firm compared to Taylor Swift's Paris concerts.
Galeries Lafayette, the iconic Parisian fashion boutique, opened a Céline Dion pop-up store. Some T-shirts carry a $145 price tag. Le Royal Monceau, the luxury hotel where Dion has been staying, became the focal point of what NBC News called "Céline mania", fans waiting outside day and night for a glimpse of the singer. Dion has reportedly stopped outside the hotel on multiple occasions, even after midnight rehearsals, to sing and dance with the waiting crowds.
Stiff-person syndrome remains incurable. There is no public physician's statement about Dion's current medical status, and no guarantee that the remaining 25 shows will go as smoothly as the first. The disease is progressive. The spasms can return without warning.
But Saturday night, none of that stopped her. Dion walked onto a stage she had been absent from for more than six years, sang 25 songs, and walked off to 30,000 people who had bet real money, some of them $1,200, that she could still do it.
In a culture that celebrates quitting as self-care, a woman who trained like an athlete through an incurable disease just to sing again is a reminder that grit still matters, and that some promises are worth keeping.
Atlantic Council fellow and author Max Brooks told an HBO audience that Western Europe's inability to manage immigration stems from the same self-imposed guilt he sees crippling policy in the United States, a blunt diagnosis that cuts against the left's preferred framing on both continents.
Brooks made the remarks during the online "Overtime" segment of HBO's "Real Time," where he drew a sharp line between how Western and Eastern European nations handle immigration, and why. The core of his argument: Western elites, weighed down by the legacy of colonialism, refuse to put their own citizens first, while Eastern European countries that were themselves colonized feel no such obligation to open their doors.
His language was not diplomatic. Breitbart News reported Brooks' comments in full, including his claim that the root problem in both Western Europe and America is what he called "guilty honkies", white elites paralyzed by historical shame into adopting immigration policies that ignore the interests of their own populations.
Brooks, who holds a nonresident senior fellowship at the Atlantic Council, said his assessment came from firsthand experience traveling through both halves of the continent for think tank work. He framed the divide in starkly simple terms: Western European nations colonized the developing world and now feel they owe something. Eastern European nations were themselves colonized, and feel they owe nothing.
His punchline landed on the Czech Republic. As Brooks put it:
"At no point in history, in a tropical country, did someone say, oh, God, run, here comes the Czech. So, therefore, they have no guilt. They say, we take care of our poor people first before we open up. And that's a huge difference in Western Europe and Eastern Europe."
That distinction matters because it reframes the immigration debate away from economics or security and toward psychology, specifically, the psychology of Western ruling classes. Brooks was not describing a policy failure rooted in incompetence. He was describing one rooted in ideology: the belief that historical wrongs committed by prior generations obligate today's taxpayers to accept open-ended immigration regardless of cost.
It is worth noting that Eastern European governments, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, have faced years of condemnation from Brussels and Western media for refusing to accept EU migrant quotas. Brooks' framing suggests those nations are not heartless. They simply lack the guilt reflex that Western elites treat as a moral baseline.
Brooks did not limit his critique to Europe. He told the panel the "guilty honkies" problem is "the same problem here", meaning the United States. The implication is direct: American elites, like their Western European counterparts, let guilt over historical injustices shape immigration policy in ways that ignore the practical consequences for ordinary citizens.
That argument will sound familiar to anyone who has watched the federal government struggle to enforce basic immigration law while progressive politicians treat enforcement itself as morally suspect. The pattern Brooks identified, guilt replacing governance, has played out in sanctuary city policies, in the refusal to fund border security, and in the rhetorical gymnastics used to avoid calling illegal immigration what it is.
Brooks also drew a distinction between how immigrants integrate in the U.S. versus Europe. He said American immigrants assimilate because they work, while in Europe, generous welfare states reduce that pressure. In his telling, European immigration policy combines guilt-driven open doors with a social safety net that removes the economic incentive to integrate, a combination that produces resentment on both sides.
Brooks added a warning: Europe moving to the right on immigration is dangerous because, in his words, "Europe tends to go far to the right when it goes to the right." He described the immigration situation in Europe as "very different" from America's because European nations are made up of indigenous peoples whose identity is tied to their homeland in ways that American identity is not.
That caution is fair enough on its own terms. But it sits awkwardly next to his own diagnosis. If Western European elites have spent decades ignoring their citizens' concerns about immigration because of ideological guilt, the political backlash Brooks fears is not some irrational eruption. It is the predictable result of democratic populations being told their objections are illegitimate.
The same dynamic has shaped American politics. Voters who raised concerns about border security, about the cost of illegal immigration to local schools and hospitals, about the rule of law itself, were dismissed for years as nativists or worse. The political realignment that followed was not a mystery. It was cause and effect.
Brooks' willingness to name the problem, elite guilt overriding democratic accountability, is notable precisely because he is not a right-wing commentator. He is an Atlantic Council fellow speaking on an HBO program hosted by Bill Maher. When someone from that world says the word "guilt" instead of "compassion," it suggests the left's preferred framing is losing its grip even in friendly territory.
The broader question Brooks raised, whether Western democracies can have honest immigration debates when their elites treat any restriction as a moral failing, is one that continues to fracture the Democratic coalition in the United States. Progressive activists push for fewer restrictions. Working-class voters in both parties push back. The tension is not theoretical, it shows up in primaries, in polling, and in the tightening races that Democratic leaders once took for granted.
Meanwhile, the practical consequences of guilt-driven policy keep piling up. Communities absorb the costs. Public services strain. And when enforcement does happen, when federal agencies act to remove criminals who should never have been here, the same elites Brooks described often fight it.
Brooks gave the problem a name most commentators on his side of the aisle would never use. Whether his fellow travelers listen is another matter entirely. Guilt is a poor substitute for governance, and voters on both sides of the Atlantic have started sending that message at the ballot box.
Indonesian authorities deported a 27-year-old Australian man and banned him from the country for a decade after CCTV footage allegedly captured him having sex on a resident's driveway in Bali, a case that prompted locals to hold a cleansing ceremony at the site.
Billy Aspinall, from Australia's Sunshine Coast, was put on a Batik Air flight from Denpasar to Brisbane on Tuesday night after spending roughly two weeks in immigration detention, Muhamad Novyandri, head of the Ngurah Rai Immigration Office, confirmed Wednesday. The deportation followed Aspinall's arrest at Bali's I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport on Aug. 25, when he tried to board a flight home.
The alleged incident occurred three days earlier. On Aug. 22, security cameras at a home in the village of Tibubeneng, in Bali's North Kuta district, reportedly recorded Aspinall and an unidentified woman engaged in a sex act on a resident's driveway. The footage showed the encounter lasting roughly 15 minutes before the pair walked away, the New York Post reported.
A local woman on her way to prayer stumbled across the pair during the act and reportedly shouted at them to stop. The CCTV footage went viral late last month, drawing public outrage and putting pressure on local authorities to act.
North Kuta's chief police commander, Ketut Sukadana, said the alleged indecency risked real harm to the community. He warned that such acts have the potential to cause public concern:
"Particularly among the residents of Tibubeneng, and may negatively affect the image of security and tourism in the North Kuta area if the matter is not addressed and handled seriously by taking firm action against the perpetrators, whether under local customary law or national law."
Balinese locals did not wait for authorities to finish their process. Residents held a cleansing ceremony at the driveway where the alleged act took place, a ritual meant to purify the site of bad energy. Bali is predominantly Hindu, and such ceremonies carry deep cultural weight on the island, even as it sits within Muslim-majority Indonesia.
Novyandri framed the deportation as a cooperative effort between immigration officials and local police, and cast it as consistent with the Immigration Directorate General's "Immigration for the People" approach, which he described as emphasizing professional, humane, and firm enforcement.
He confirmed the 10-year ban in a public statement:
"The deportation of BA was carried out on Tuesday night using a Batik Air flight on the Denpasar-Brisbane route."
Novyandri added that authorities would continue to strengthen immigration oversight and coordinate with law enforcement, pledging firm action against future violations.
Aspinall's case lands against the backdrop of Indonesia's new Criminal Code, formally implemented on Jan. 2, a sweeping legal overhaul that criminalized premarital sex, cohabitation between unmarried couples, and public drunkenness. Penalties for adultery, premarital sex, and cohabitation range from six months to one year in jail.
But the law comes with a significant procedural catch. Retno Murni, a legal expert and founder of the People's Law Center, explained to news.com.au that certain offenses under the new code cannot move forward without a specific complaint from a narrow set of people:
"These alleged crimes cannot be processed by the police without a complaint which can only be filed by the legal husband or wife, parents or children of the perpetrator."
That requirement effectively limits criminal prosecution for sex-related offenses to cases where a family member files a formal complaint. Murni spelled out the practical consequence for visitors:
"Therefore, foreign tourists cannot be arrested, raided, or prosecuted simply for staying or residing with a partner, unless there is a valid complaint from these parties."
Murni urged tourists not to panic over the new code, saying that as long as visitors "behave appropriately, respect local norms, and use official documents," they have nothing to worry about while in Indonesia.
Authorities have not publicly identified the woman seen with Aspinall in the CCTV footage. She is believed to be a foreign citizen who had been drinking with him before the alleged act, but it remains unclear whether she has faced any legal consequences or immigration action.
It is also unclear whether Aspinall faced criminal charges under Indonesian law in addition to the immigration violations that led to his deportation and ban. Indonesian authorities cited immigration regulations as the basis for the enforcement action, but have not specified which provisions applied. Aspinall himself has not made any public statement about the incident, his detention, or his removal from the country.
Whether he was trying to leave the country before authorities could act, or simply catching a scheduled flight home, has not been addressed by officials.
Countries that depend on tourism have every right to set standards for the visitors who fill their hotels and crowd their temples. Indonesia enforced its laws, protected its residents, and sent a clear message. The only surprise is that anyone would need to be told.
A 32-year-old California man will spend the rest of his life behind bars after a jury convicted him of killing five passengers in a 101-mph drunk-driving crash, and then carjacking a bystander's vehicle to flee the scene.
Cameron Garcia received a 188-year prison sentence last Friday in Sacramento County after a jury found him guilty on five counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and one count of carjacking. The five people who died in the 2023 wreck were all passengers in the 2007 Cadillac Escalade Garcia was convicted of driving: Monte Nunn, 29; Faith Samuel, 18; Izabelle Salaz-Stephens, 19; Curvontay Swygert, 16; and Aahliya Garcia, 17.
Three of the five were teenagers. The youngest was sixteen years old.
Prosecutors said Garcia spent the day drinking along the Sacramento River before getting behind the wheel of the Escalade. He was traveling at 101 miles per hour on a stretch of road south of the Freeport Bridge, between the small Sacramento County communities of Clarksburg and Freeport, when the SUV slammed into a tree. The New York Post reported that Garcia never applied the brakes and that his foot was on the accelerator at the moment of impact.
The collision flipped the Escalade 180 degrees. The entire right side and most of the roof were torn off. All five passengers died. Garcia survived with multiple injuries.
A blood test administered roughly 90 minutes after the crash measured Garcia's blood-alcohol concentration at 0.11 percent, above the legal threshold. Active marijuana was also detected in his system.
What Garcia did next turned a catastrophic DUI into something worse.
Rather than stay at the scene where five people lay dead, Garcia tried to run. Prosecutors said he attempted to take several vehicles from the crash site. When an unnamed woman drove to the scene, Garcia got into her car and shoved her out of the driver's seat.
He then drove the stolen car to Elk Grove, about fifteen miles south of Sacramento's downtown, sparking a pursuit involving patrol vehicles and a law enforcement helicopter. Garcia crashed the stolen car in Elk Grove, tried to flee on foot, and was apprehended by officers. The jury later cited his attempts to escape as grounds for enhancing his punishment.
In an era when lawmakers are moving to impose tougher consequences on violent offenders, the 188-year sentence stands out even by California standards. It amounts to a life sentence many times over for a man who is 32 years old.
Garcia was convicted on each of the five gross vehicular manslaughter counts, one for every passenger killed, plus the carjacking charge. The Sacramento County District Attorney's office prosecuted the case. No named spokesperson from the office provided public comment in the available reporting, but the factual account presented at trial, the speed, the alcohol, the marijuana, the flight, painted a picture the jury evidently found damning.
The sentence dwarfs what many drunk drivers receive, even those who kill. But the combination of five deaths, a BAC above the legal limit, drugs in the defendant's system, a carjacking, and a police chase gave prosecutors and the court ample basis to stack the penalties.
Cases involving sentences of this magnitude remain rare, though not unprecedented. An Arizona man recently received life plus 102 years for the murder of an elderly pastor, another case where the sheer scale of the sentence reflected the gravity of the crime.
Garcia's family has launched a Change.org petition seeking a review of his conviction. The petition claims Faith Samuel, the 18-year-old passenger who died, was actually behind the wheel and had "lost control" of the vehicle. It also alleges Garcia was asleep at the time of the crash.
The petition states:
"The only survivor, Cameron was thrown from the vehicle in a manner that, he desperately insists, proves he was not driving."
It adds:
"Despite the context and evidence, he was sentenced to 188 years for a crime he did not commit."
The family's claims are disputed. A jury weighed the evidence, including the blood-alcohol results, the speed data, and Garcia's conduct after the crash, and concluded he was the driver. Whether any appeal has been filed is not clear from the available record.
It is worth noting what the family's petition does not address: why a man who was supposedly asleep and innocent immediately tried to steal multiple cars and flee the scene. That behavior is not consistent with someone who just woke up in a wrecked vehicle and had nothing to hide.
The Garcia case is a reminder that the justice system can still deliver serious consequences when prosecutors pursue them and juries are allowed to do their jobs. That stands in sharp contrast to jurisdictions where officials have intervened to soften outcomes for convicted offenders, or where progressive policies have reduced charges and shortened sentences for violent conduct.
Sacramento County chose the opposite path. Five families lost someone, a brother, a daughter, a friend, a teenager who had not yet turned twenty. The youngest passenger, Curvontay Swygert, was sixteen. Aahliya Garcia was seventeen. Faith Samuel was eighteen. These were not statistics. They were people whose lives ended because a grown man got behind the wheel drunk, high, and doing 101 miles per hour on a two-lane road.
And when the crash was over, Garcia did not call for help. He did not check on the passengers. He tried to run. He shoved a woman out of her own car. He led police on a chase through Elk Grove. Only after crashing a second vehicle and failing to escape on foot did his flight end.
The public has grown accustomed to watching serious offenders face real consequences only after extraordinary effort. In this case, the system worked the way it is supposed to. A man killed five people through reckless, intoxicated driving, fled the scene, committed another violent crime in the process, and a jury held him fully accountable.
One hundred eighty-eight years. Cameron Garcia will never drive again, never sit by the Sacramento River with a drink in his hand and car keys in his pocket. For Monte Nunn, Faith Samuel, Izabelle Salaz-Stephens, Curvontay Swygert, and Aahliya Garcia, no sentence restores what was taken. But this one, at least, makes clear that their lives counted.
When the system treats every life lost as a reason for consequence rather than an excuse for leniency, justice still has a pulse.
A sitting Michigan Democratic state lawmaker is urging Black voters to reject candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, accusing the party's far-left socialist wing of treating Black communities like property rather than people.
State Rep. Karen Whitsett, a Detroit-area Democrat who plans to retire at the end of her term this year, told Fox News Digital that El-Sayed's candidacy "doesn't line up biblically" and "doesn't line up with common sense." She went further, saying the far-left faction of her own party poses a deeper threat to Black Americans than the Ku Klux Klan.
Whitsett did not hold back. She accused socialist Democrats, and "especially the white women" within the movement, of a racism she considers more dangerous because it operates under the cover of progressive politics rather than white hoods.
"You can see the serious divide of the crazy socialist far-left and especially the white women. They are the worst and the most racist that there possibly ever could be. They're, I think, they're more racist than the KKK."
El-Sayed's campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment before publication.
Whitsett's broadside was not limited to El-Sayed. She named prominent Black activist Al Sharpton and Detroit pastor Horace Sheffield III, who has worked with El-Sayed's campaign, accusing both of "keep[ing] the knee on [Black voters'] neck" rather than empowering the communities they claim to serve.
Her language carried a deliberate historical edge. She compared the Democratic Party's relationship with Black voters to slavery, arguing that the faces at the top change but the dynamic does not.
"It doesn't change, it's just different slave owners."
She pressed the point with a series of blunt questions aimed at the party establishment:
"Are you trying to help the black community or are you trying to kill it? Are you trying to keep people stupid and ill-informed or what? Because right now I can't tell, right? Is this voter education or are you just trying to make sure you count your slaves on the plantation."
Those are not the words of a Republican operative or a cable-news provocateur. They come from a sitting Democratic lawmaker describing her own party, a distinction that makes them far harder for party leaders to dismiss.
Whitsett framed her opposition to El-Sayed and the broader socialist wing as rooted in faith and practical judgment. She described herself as someone who refuses to fall in line.
"I always try to be a voice of reason, and I'm not a go-along, get-along. So, my whole thing is it has to make sense, and I am definitely family over party. God over party is of the utmost importance."
On policy, Whitsett said she believes everyone should have medical insurance but accused El-Sayed of failing to explain how his signature Medicare for All proposal would actually work in practice. She treated his platform as aspiration without substance, a promise designed to attract votes, not solve problems.
Her skepticism of the party she belongs to is not new. Fox News reported that Whitsett announced she would not seek re-election, calling it a "spiritual decision." She said she "cannot support the Democratic Party" as it exists today, citing conflicts over abortion and LGBTQ policies that she views as incompatible with Scripture. She was formally censured by her own party after publicly thanking President Trump and crediting hydroxychloroquine for her COVID-19 recovery.
That censure is worth pausing on. The Democratic Party did not censure Whitsett for corruption, misconduct, or dereliction. It censured her for publicly thanking a sitting president and sharing her own medical experience. The message to other Black Democrats who might step out of line was plain enough.
Whitsett's departure adds to a pattern of Michigan Democrats abandoning ship as the party's internal fractures widen. The exits are not all coming from the same ideological corner, which makes the trend harder for party leaders to explain away as a single faction's grievance.
Whitsett's case is distinct because she is not leaving quietly. She is leaving loudly, publicly warning Black voters that the party claiming to represent them is, in her view, exploiting them. She plans to work with the Trump administration after leaving office, a move that will only deepen the rift.
The broader Democratic coalition has been struggling with exactly the kind of tension Whitsett describes. Donna Brazile, the former interim DNC chair, has warned her party to define itself or risk drowning in a socialist wave. When a party veteran like Brazile and a sitting state legislator like Whitsett are both sounding the same alarm from different vantage points, the problem is structural, not personal.
Intra-party conflict has surfaced in other states as well. In Texas, a Democratic lawmaker refused to back a fellow Democrat in a high-profile Senate race. At the national level, the DNC itself has been roiled by internal turmoil, with chairman Ken Martin's volatile behavior during a deepening financial crisis raising questions about whether anyone is steering the ship.
El-Sayed's campaign offered no response to Whitsett's accusations. That silence may be strategic, engaging a retiring lawmaker from his own party risks amplifying her message, but it also leaves her charges unanswered on the public record. She questioned his fitness for office on grounds of faith, policy substance, and basic common sense, and his campaign had nothing to say.
Whitsett's critique of El-Sayed is not ideological abstraction. She asked a concrete question about Medicare for All, how would it work?, and said he has not provided a concrete answer. For voters being asked to trust a candidate with their healthcare, that gap between promise and plan matters more than any endorsement from a Detroit pastor or a national activist.
Whether Whitsett's warning moves voters remains to be seen. She is a retiring lawmaker with limited institutional power. But her willingness to say publicly what many Black Democrats have said privately, that the party takes their votes for granted, that progressive elites treat Black communities as a captive constituency, and that socialist policies are sold with slogans rather than substance, gives voice to a frustration the Democratic establishment has spent years refusing to address.
When a Democrat calls her own party's far-left wing more racist than the Klan, the party can dismiss her, censure her again, or listen. So far, the track record suggests they will choose the first two, and wonder, once more, why the voters keep walking away.
The Trump administration permanently installed four senior leaders at the Food and Drug Administration and created a first-of-its-kind deputy commissioner role for artificial intelligence, a move aimed at stabilizing an agency that has suffered months of turnover and internal friction.
Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas announced the appointments on Tuesday, naming a psychiatrist, a former pharmaceutical executive, a longtime agency attorney, and a tech entrepreneur to run key divisions that oversee drug approvals, biologics, tobacco regulation, and emerging technology. The picks transition several acting leaders into permanent roles and signal the administration's intent to lock in its regulatory direction before a new commissioner is confirmed.
The shakeup follows the resignation of Marty Makary, President Trump's first FDA commissioner of his second term, who stepped down in May. Makary's tenure was marked by clashes with career staff, disputes with the biotechnology industry, and review decisions that drew accusations of political interference. His departure left the agency adrift at a moment when drug-approval backlogs and workforce losses had already rattled the pharmaceutical sector.
Michael Davis, a psychiatrist who had been serving in an acting capacity, will permanently lead the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the FDA's largest division and the gateway for most prescription drug approvals in the United States. The Hill reported that Davis is one of several acting leaders now transitioning into the jobs on a permanent basis.
Karim Mikhail, a former Merck official, takes over the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the division responsible for vaccines, blood products, and gene therapies. Unnamed industry groups have called Mikhail "a stabilizing force," a label that carries weight given what happened under his predecessor.
Vinay Prasad, who previously ran the biologics center, oversaw a period in which hundreds of workers left the division, morale dropped, and at least five drugs that advocates and the FDA itself had previously considered promising were rejected. Mikhail inherits a division that needs rebuilding, and the industry's early praise suggests the private sector sees his appointment as a course correction.
Bret Koplow, an attorney who has worked at the FDA since 2011, will lead the Center for Tobacco Products. Koplow's fifteen-year tenure inside the agency makes him the most institutionally rooted of the four picks, a contrast to the outsider-heavy staffing choices that defined the early months of the administration's FDA overhaul.
The administration's broadest structural move is the creation of a brand-new deputy commissioner role for technology and artificial intelligence. Jared Seehafer, an entrepreneur who founded a life science software company and first joined the FDA in 2025 as an adviser, will fill the position. The Department of Health and Human Services said the new role reflects the administration's commitment to speeding up AI adoption and building a regulatory framework for emerging technologies. That effort fits a broader pattern of the Trump White House asserting executive authority to reshape how federal agencies operate.
Diamantas, who has led the FDA in an acting capacity since Makary's exit, cast the appointments as more than administrative housekeeping.
"These selections are not just about filling leadership roles, they signal the direction we are heading."
He also said the new leaders will help the agency "attract and retain best-in-class talent" and build a workforce capable of accelerating innovation across the FDA's centers. For an agency that watched hundreds of employees walk out the door under previous leadership, the retention pitch matters as much as the policy agenda.
The administration has also nominated Heidi Overton to serve as the permanent FDA commissioner. If confirmed, she would take charge of an agency that critics across the political spectrum have described as less trustworthy and more politicized than at any point in recent memory. Her confirmation timeline remains unclear.
Makary's resignation in May capped a turbulent stretch. His clashes with career FDA staff and disagreements with the biotech industry left the agency without a stable chain of command during a period when drug companies, patient advocates, and congressional overseers all wanted answers about delayed approvals and shifting review standards. The administration's decision to move quickly on permanent appointments, rather than let acting leaders linger indefinitely, suggests the White House recognized the cost of that vacuum.
The broader Trump administration has not been shy about making permanent, consequential moves across the federal government. The president has pursued sweeping deals on energy and foreign policy, and the health arena has seen its own wave of lasting changes, including a push by the administration's allies to remove artificial additives from the American food supply.
Still, open questions remain. It is unclear whether any of the four permanent appointees require Senate confirmation, or whether the newly created deputy commissioner role carries the same confirmation requirements as other senior FDA positions. The specific drugs Prasad rejected, and whether any of those decisions will be revisited under new leadership, also remain unanswered.
And the FDA's credibility problem did not start with Makary. Years of pandemic-era controversies, shifting guidance, and perceived institutional arrogance eroded public trust long before the current administration arrived. Rebuilding that trust requires more than new names on office doors. It requires leaders willing to make tough calls and accept accountability for the results.
Permanent leadership is a start. Whether these four deliver the competence and transparency the FDA owes the public is the only test that matters.