Kurdish Iranian dissident groups stationed in northern Iraq say they are moving fighters toward the Iranian border and preparing for potential military operations inside Iran, with Kurdish officials telling the Associated Press that the United States has asked Iraqi Kurdish leaders to support the effort.
Khalil Nadiri, an official with the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), said Wednesday that some PAK forces had relocated to areas near the Iranian border in Sulaymaniyah province and were waiting on standby. An official with Komala, another Kurdish opposition group, said its forces could be ready to cross the border within a week to 10 days. The groups are believed to have thousands of trained fighters between them.
The preparations come after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday, triggering a new phase of conflict in the Middle East.
Three Iraqi Kurdish officials told the AP that a phone call took place Sunday night between President Trump and two of the most powerful figures in Iraqi Kurdistan: Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Bafel Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. One of the officials said Trump asked the Iraqi Kurds to militarily support Iranian Kurdish groups in operations inside Iran and to open the border, according to Newsmax.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan confirmed the call in a statement, saying Trump "provided clarification and vision regarding U.S. objectives in the war." The PUK also added that it "believes that the best solution is a return to the negotiating table."
Spokespeople for Barzani declined to comment.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a more limited characterization of the conversation. Asked about the call and reports that Trump had sought military support for Iranian Kurdish groups, Leavitt said:
"He did speak to Kurdish leaders with respect to our base that we have in northern Iraq."
She denied that Trump had agreed to a specific plan. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, asked Wednesday about reports that the administration was considering arming Iranian Kurdish groups, was similarly careful:
"None of our objectives are premised on the support or the arming of any particular force. So, what other entities may be doing, we're aware of, but our objectives aren't centered on that."
Read those statements closely. Neither is a denial that contact occurred. Neither rules out coordination. What they rule out is dependency. The U.S. is not building its Iran strategy around Kurdish fighters, but it is not discouraging them either.
The Kurdish region has already absorbed a string of drone and missile attacks by Iran and allied Iraqi militias in recent days, targeting U.S. military bases, the U.S. Consulate in Irbil, and the Kurdish groups' own positions. Electricity cuts followed after a key gas field halted operations. The region is feeling the pressure from multiple directions.
Iran, predictably, wants the threat neutralized before it materializes. Iraq's National Security Adviser Qassim al-Araji said in a post on X that Ali Bagheri, deputy secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, had requested:
"that Iraq take the necessary measures to prevent any opposition groups from infiltrating the border between the two countries."
Al-Araji responded by pledging Iraq's commitment to "preventing any groups from infiltrating or crossing the Iranian border or carrying out terrorist acts from Iraqi territory," adding that security reinforcements had been sent to the border. Baghdad is caught between its neighbor to the east and the superpower that still maintains forces on its soil. That is not a comfortable position, and al-Araji's language reflects the tightrope.
The Kurdish opposition to Iran's regime is not new. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran's new theocracy battled Kurdish insurgents in fighting that killed thousands over several months. Under the Shah before that, Kurds were marginalized, repressed, and periodically in revolt. The grievances run deep and predate the current crisis by decades.
In 2023, Iraq reached an agreement with Iran to disarm the Kurdish dissident groups and move them from bases near the border into camps designated by Baghdad. The bases were shut down. Movement within Iraq was restricted. But the groups did not give up their weapons. That detail matters enormously now. The infrastructure was dismantled; the fighting capacity was not.
Reza Pahlavi, the former shah's son, has accused the Kurds of being separatists aiming to carve up Iran. That framing is convenient for anyone who wants to delegitimize an armed opposition without engaging with why that opposition exists in the first place.
The strategic logic here is straightforward. Iran is a regime that rules by coercion, and coercive regimes are uniquely vulnerable to internal pressure. Kurdish fighters with local knowledge, existing grievances, and a willingness to operate inside Iranian territory represent exactly the kind of asymmetric challenge that Tehran has spent years trying to suppress through diplomatic agreements with Baghdad.
Those agreements held when the broader region was relatively stable. That stability evaporated Saturday.
Much of the reporting relies on anonymous Kurdish officials, and the White House is clearly managing the public narrative with precision. That is not unusual when military and intelligence equities are in play. What is clear from the public record is that:
The Kurdish groups themselves are not waiting for permission slips. They have fighters, they have weapons they were supposed to have surrendered, and they have generations of reasons to act. Whether Washington is formally coordinating with them or simply not standing in their way, the effect on Tehran's calculations is the same.
Iran now faces the prospect of fighting on multiple fronts: against the U.S. and Israeli military campaign from the air, and against an indigenous armed opposition crossing its western border. That is precisely the kind of strategic squeeze that changes a regime's willingness to negotiate.
The PUK's statement said the best solution is a return to the negotiating table. Perhaps. But negotiating tables tend to appear only after the alternative becomes unbearable.
Sidney Dorsey, the former DeKalb County sheriff convicted of ordering the assassination of the man who beat him at the ballot box, died Monday night at Augusta State Medical Prison. He was 86. A Georgia Department of Corrections official confirmed Dorsey died of natural causes.
Dorsey was serving a life sentence, plus 23 years on corruption-related convictions, including racketeering and violating his oath of office. He spent more than two decades behind bars for a crime that remains one of the most brazen acts of political violence in modern Georgia history.
On December 15, 2000, DeKalb County Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown was shot outside his Decatur home. Brown was a longtime police veteran who had campaigned on a pledge to root out corruption in the sheriff's department. He never took office.
He left behind his wife, Phyllis, and five children.
According to the local ABC affiliate, prosecutors said Dorsey arranged the slaying after losing a bitter reelection campaign amid allegations of corruption. A jury convicted Dorsey in 2002. Two other men were also convicted in connection with the killing.
At sentencing, Dorsey offered this:
"I do not have the blood of Derwin Brown on my hands."
Five years later, in 2007, he reversed course. Authorities said Dorsey admitted from prison that he orchestrated the killing, telling a prosecutor he had ordered the hit but later claimed he tried to call it off.
Phyllis Brown testified during the sentencing hearing and told Dorsey she did not wish him death.
There is no sugarcoating what happened in DeKalb County. A sitting sheriff, entrusted with the power of law enforcement, used that position to eliminate a political rival. Not through opposition research. Not through a recount challenge. Through murder.
This is the nightmare scenario that makes the public trust in local government so fragile and so essential to protect. Law enforcement authority is among the most consequential powers delegated to any official in America. When someone abuses it, the damage extends far beyond a single crime. It poisons the well for every honest officer and every functioning department in the country.
Brown ran on cleaning up corruption. He won. And for that, he was killed in his own driveway before he could raise his right hand and take the oath.
The justice system did what it was supposed to do in this case. Dorsey was investigated, tried, convicted, and sentenced. He died in a prison cell, not a free man. That matters. In an era when Americans across the political spectrum worry about two-tiered justice, the Dorsey case stands as a reminder that when institutions function, when prosecutors pursue the truth regardless of the defendant's title, the system can deliver.
It took courage to bring a sitting sheriff to trial. It took a jury willing to convict him. It took a sentence that ensured he would never walk free again.
Derwin Brown never got to serve the people who elected him. His five children grew up without their father. No conviction undoes that. But Dorsey's death in prison, after more than two decades, closes a chapter that began with one of the most corrupt acts an American officeholder has ever committed.
The badge is supposed to protect. Brown understood that. It cost him everything.
A United Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner bound for New Jersey turned back to Los Angeles International Airport on Monday after an engine caught fire shortly into the flight, forcing 256 passengers and 12 crew members to evacuate via emergency slides and airstairs.
United Flight 2127 departed LAX around 10:15 a.m. and reversed course roughly an hour later due to what the Federal Aviation Administration described as "a left engine issue." Video footage from the scene showed smoke pouring from one of the engines as firefighters blasted water inside the aircraft.
The FAA confirmed the basics to Fox News Digital:
"United Airlines Flight 2127 took off from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) around 10:15 a.m. before turning around an hour later because of a left engine issue."
The agency did not specify the nature of the engine problem. The FAA said the incident is under investigation.
United Airlines, for its part, kept the language clinical. The airline told Fox News Digital that the flight "safely returned to Los Angeles to address an issue with one of the engines." Customers deplaned via slides and airstairs and were bused to the terminal.
United also praised its crew:
"We are grateful to our pilots and flight attendants for their quick actions to keep our customers safe."
Note the framing. An engine fire dramatic enough to require emergency slides and a fleet of firefighters hosing down a widebody jet gets reduced to "an issue with one of the engines." That's corporate communications doing exactly what it's designed to do: flatten the severity until the lawyers and investigators finish their work.
A spokesperson for LAX declined to comment entirely, referring all inquiries to United. Fox News Digital reached out to the Los Angeles Fire Department but had not received a response.
Nobody died. That matters, and it should be said plainly before anything else. The pilots executed the emergency return. The crew got passengers off the aircraft. The system, in this instance, worked the way it is supposed to work under pressure.
But "the system worked" is not the same as "there is no problem." The traveling public has watched a steady drumbeat of aviation incidents over the past couple of years: near-misses on runways, doors blowing off fuselages, and mechanical failures forcing diversions. Each one gets its own investigation, its own corporate statement praising the crew, its own quiet fade from the news cycle. The pattern, though, is harder to ignore than any single event.
The aircraft involved was a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, one of Boeing's flagship widebody jets and a workhorse for long-haul routes. The FAA's investigation will determine whether this was an isolated mechanical failure, a maintenance issue, or something with wider implications for the fleet. Until that investigation concludes, speculation is just speculation.
What isn't speculation is that 268 people boarded a routine transcontinental flight Monday morning and ended up evacuating down emergency slides surrounded by fire trucks. They deserve answers, not just gratitude.
The FAA investigation will proceed on its own timeline. The agency has been under scrutiny for its oversight capacity, and incidents like this one only sharpen the focus. Whether this amounts to a one-off mechanical event or feeds into a larger accountability story depends entirely on what investigators find.
For the 256 passengers who started their Monday expecting to land in New Jersey and instead walked down inflatable slides onto a Los Angeles tarmac, the investigation is academic. The experience is not. An engine fire at altitude is the kind of thing that stays with you long after the airline rebooks your flight.
The crew brought them home. Now the question is why they had to.
Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas is staring down what may be the final days of his congressional career. Trailing his primary challenger by 24 points in a recent poll, facing an active congressional ethics probe, and dogged by allegations of an extramarital affair with a staffer who later set herself on fire, the three-term congressman has refused to resign despite calls from more than half a dozen Republican colleagues to step aside.
He and challenger Brandon Herrera face off again Tuesday in a rematch of a razor-thin primary runoff Gonzales won two years ago by roughly 400 votes. This time, the math looks very different.
An internal campaign poll commissioned by Herrera's team in late February showed Gonzales at just 21% support, compared to Herrera's 45%. Another 26% remained undecided, with former Rep. Francisco "Quico" Canseco and construction executive Keith Barton each pulling 4%. If Herrera clears the 50% threshold, there is no runoff. The arrow, as Herrera put it, is already in flight.
At the center of the scandal is the death of Regina Santos-Aviles, a 35-year-old mother of one who served as Gonzales' regional director. Santos-Aviles self-immolated in the backyard of her Uvalde home and died on September 14. First responders reported that she told them she had discovered her husband was cheating on her with her best friend, and that she poured gasoline on herself and set herself on fire. Police records and autopsy notes indicated she had been drinking and taking antidepressants.
Text messages obtained by the New York Post from a May 2024 exchange, some 16 months before her death, reportedly show Santos-Aviles admitting to an "affair." One message attributed to Gonzales reads: "Then send me a sexy pic." Her widower, Adrian Aviles, denied the claim when contacted. A former colleague of Santos-Aviles also denied it.
Whatever the full truth, the human cost here is undeniable. A young mother is dead. A family is shattered. And a sitting congressman's only public response, delivered to CNN's Manu Raju on Capitol Hill, was this:
"What you've seen is not all the facts."
That is not a denial. It is not an explanation. It is the kind of sentence a lawyer approves and a voter sees right through.
The affair allegations accelerated Gonzales' decline, but they did not cause it. His standing with the Republican base in Texas's 23rd Congressional District had been eroding for years. The district stretches roughly 800 miles from San Antonio to El Paso across the border regions of west Texas, and all but a handful of its counties voted heavily for Trump in 2024. The voters there care about border security. Gonzales gave them reasons to doubt he did.
A former aide who worked for Gonzales from 2021 to 2023 in a border county office told the Post she was "done with Tony," and laid out her reasoning plainly:
"I don't feel he was doing enough for the border crisis to stop that, the red-flag laws, and then the last straw was him voting for all the LGBT stuff, same-sex marriage."
That is not one grievance. It is a list. Red-flag laws. Same-sex marriage. And a perceived lack of urgency on the border, in a district where the border is not an abstraction but a daily reality. When your own former staff is cataloguing your betrayals for reporters, the problem predates any scandal.
At an event in Corpus Christi on Friday, Gonzales was booed by some attendees. The chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Conference and father of six is watching his political coalition disintegrate in real time.
Brandon Herrera, the firearms enthusiast and YouTuber known as "The AK Guy" with more than 4 million online followers, has run a campaign squarely aimed at the district's priorities. His closing message to voters focused on border security, affordability, and veterans' issues. Speaking to the Post on Sunday, Herrera framed the stakes in terms that mirror the broader MAGA agenda:
"Let's help President Trump codify the things that he's done to secure the border; let's work on the massive financial crisis, the debt crisis we're in in this country; let's make sure that veterans get the health care that they deserve and that they were promised, especially in such a veteran-dense district like District 23."
That is a message built for the district: concrete, policy-forward, and aligned with what Republican voters in border country actually want from their representative. Herrera has also argued that Gonzales' refusal to come clean about the alleged affair creates a general election vulnerability, claiming that Gonzales' "lies" could allow Democrats to "flip a reliable Republican seat blue."
With Republicans holding 218 seats to Democrats' 214 heading into the 2026 midterms, that is not a hypothetical concern. It is arithmetic.
House Speaker Mike Johnson called the accusations against Gonzales "very serious" and said he had privately urged the congressman "to address" the matter "directly and head on with his constituents." That is about as far as a Speaker will go publicly against a sitting member of his own conference, but the message was clear enough. Johnson did not vouch for Gonzales. He did not rally to his defense. He told him to face his voters.
The Office of Congressional Conduct began probing the purported affair in November but will not be able to refer findings to the House Ethics Committee for potential punishments until after the primary election. The timeline means voters will render their verdict before the institution does.
This is a race where the outcome may already be determined, and the election is just a formality. Gonzales' support has collapsed among the people who know him best: his former staff, his colleagues, his constituents. The ethics probe hangs overhead. The text messages are public. The woman at the center of the allegations is dead, and his response has been to say the public doesn't have "all the facts" without offering any of his own.
Herrera does not need to be a perfect candidate. He needs to be an acceptable alternative in a district that has already moved on. In a deep-red stretch of border Texas where voters backed Trump by wide margins, the question is not whether the district stays Republican. It is whether the Republican who holds it deserves to.
Tuesday will answer that.
Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old supreme leader of Iran, was killed in an Israeli strike Saturday as part of a massive joint military operation between the United States and Israel. Iranian state media confirmed his death, and the Iranian government announced 40 days of public mourning, declaring his death a "martyrdom."
The strike also killed seven senior defense and intelligence officials, part of a broader operation targeting 30 top military and civilian leaders overall. Israel says its opening strikes decimated the chain of command.
The man who spent 35 years consolidating near-total control over the Iranian state, who held authority over the judiciary, state media, and all security forces, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is gone.
President Trump celebrated Khamenei's death in a post on Truth Social, calling him "one of the most evil people in History" and declaring that his killing represented "justice." He appeared to confirm that U.S. intelligence played a direct role in tracking and targeting Khamenei:
"was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems"
Trump warned that bombing would "continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or as long as necessary," and laid out a vision for what comes after. In an overnight video address, he called for the Iranian people to remain in their homes during the bombing campaign but rise and "take over your government" when it concludes. The stated goal: "peace throughout the Middle East and, indeed, the world."
Trump also claimed that Iranian security forces and IRGC members were already seeking immunity, and urged them to "peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots." That framing matters. This is not just a military strike. It is an invitation to the Iranian people to finish what the bombs started, as Axios reports.
The scale of the decapitation is staggering. Those confirmed killed include:
That is not a leadership reshuffle. That is the elimination of the infrastructure that kept the regime standing. The military. The intelligence apparatus. The nuclear program's brain trust. All in a single operation.
One senior official who survived is Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's supreme national security council and former parliament speaker. Larijani, one of Khamenei's closest confidants, has emerged as the most senior civilian official still standing. In a post on X Saturday, he vowed Iran would deliver Israel and the U.S. an "unforgettable lesson."
That's the kind of statement a regime makes when it has nothing else to offer its people. Larijani can promise revenge, but the men who would carry it out are dead.
Mojtaba Khamenei, one of the supreme leader's sons, had been widely discussed as a possible successor. Israeli officials said Israel targeted Khamenei's sons, though intelligence assessments suggest they survived the strikes. Under Iran's constitution, an interim council assumes power while the Assembly of Experts, a body of 88 Islamic clerics, selects a new supreme leader.
The question isn't whether the constitutional process will be followed. It's whether there is a functioning state left to follow it.
Reza Pahlavi, Iran's exiled former crown prince and a leading opposition leader who has organized mass protests against the regime, also called for the Iranian people to take to the streets. He directed a pointed message at Iran's remaining security forces:
"Join the nation and help ensure a stable and secure transition. Otherwise, you will sink with Khamenei's ship and his crumbling regime."
Both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have called for what amounts to a popular opening. Whether the Iranian people seize it depends on what happens in the coming days and whether the regime's remaining enforcers decide their loyalty is worth dying for.
Khamenei took power in 1989 following the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He had ruled Iran for over 36 years. In that time, he consolidated near-total control over every lever of the Iranian state. Thousands of protesters were killed under his watch. He built a network of proxy forces that destabilized the entire Middle East, funded terrorism, and pursued nuclear weapons.
The regime he built was designed to survive any one strike, any one assassination, any one wave of protests. It was not designed to survive all of them at once.
Saturday, that design was tested. It failed.
President Trump reportedly dressed down FBI Director Kash Patel behind closed doors after a video surfaced of Patel chugging a beer and pounding a table inside the U.S. men's hockey team's locker room following their gold medal victory at the Winter Olympics in Milan.
The Daily Mail reported that Trump told Patel he was unhappy with the locker-room celebration and raised concerns about Patel's use of a government aircraft for the trip to Italy, which could cost taxpayers up to $75,000, according to NBC News.
The president, who does not drink alcohol, took issue with both the optics of the celebration and the travel arrangements, per a person familiar with the matter.
The FBI declined to comment on whether Trump expressed frustration with Patel.
Team USA won its first Olympic men's hockey gold since 1980. That's a legitimate historic moment. Patel was filmed enthusiastically drinking from a beer and shouting inside the locker room with the newly crowned champions. ProPublica first posted the video, which circulated widely.
Patel defended himself on X:
"For the very concerned media - yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys- Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth."
The FBI maintained the trip was official in nature, stating simply that "it is not a personal trip." Patel said he met with Italian law enforcement officials and U.S. agencies involved in security during the visit.
Earlier, he had posted pictures from inside the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena during Sunday's final.
There's nothing wrong with celebrating American greatness. There's nothing wrong with an FBI director being proud of Team USA. But government aircraft cost money, and the director of the FBI is not a sports ambassador. Trump understood that distinction immediately.
This is the kind of thing that hands your opponents ammunition for free. And sure enough, Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wasted no time asking the Justice Department's inspector general to "investigate Director Patel's misuse or mismanagement of government resources."
Predictable as sunrise. But predictable doesn't mean unearned when you give them the material.
The $75,000 price tag for a government jet to watch hockey and pound beers in a locker room writes the attack ad itself. It doesn't matter that Patel also conducted official meetings. The video is what people saw. And in politics, what people see is what exists.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson pivoted to the administration's record rather than relitigating the locker room footage. She pointed to the results:
"Crime rates are dropping across the board. This is a direct result of the President's law and order agenda which is being successfully implemented by his law and order team, including FBI Director Kash Patel."
Jackson added that "the President has full confidence in his Administration." That's the standard vote-of-confidence language, and notably, it came after the reported rebuke, not instead of it.
Trump corrected the problem privately and kept the public messaging unified. That's how leadership works: address the issue internally, present a united front externally.
Lost in the beer-chugging discourse is what the FBI was actually doing this week. The bureau fired at least 10 employees connected to the 2022 search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, according to three people familiar with the matter.
That search uncovered classified documents and led to one of two federal criminal cases against Trump, both of which were ultimately dismissed.
This is the real story. Patel has been systematically cleaning house at an agency that spent years weaponizing against the man who appointed him.
He disclosed that his own cellphone "toll" records were obtained during those investigations. The man running the FBI knows firsthand what it looks like when the bureau targets people for political reasons.
Also, while Patel was in Italy, an armed man entered the security perimeter of Trump's Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago. Trump was not present at the time. The incident underscores the constant threat environment in which the administration operates and the seriousness of the security apparatus Patel oversees.
Democrats want this to be a scandal. It isn't. It's a moment of poor judgment that the president caught and corrected. The left would love nothing more than to turn a locker room beer into Patel's undoing, because what Patel is actually doing at the FBI terrifies them.
Every agent fired for the Mar-a-Lago raid, every institutional reform, every step toward accountability for the bureau's years of political overreach represents the thing they fear most: consequences.
Durbin's call for an inspector general investigation is theatrical. The same Democrats who shrugged at the FBI being used as a political weapon against a sitting president now want an audit because the FBI director celebrated a hockey game too enthusiastically. The selective outrage isn't even clever anymore.
Patel should take note. Keep the patriotism, lose the government jet to sporting events. The mission is too important and the enemies too eager for the FBI director to hand them distractions on a silver platter.
There's a bureau to rebuild. That job doesn't happen in a locker room.
Sens. Josh Hawley and Jeff Merkley announced the Homes for American Families Act on Thursday, a bipartisan bill that would prohibit large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, townhouses, and condominiums across the United States. The legislation arrives on the heels of President Trump's State of the Union address this week, where he urged Congress to make his executive order banning the practice permanent.
The bill is simple in its logic: American families should not have to outbid hedge funds for a starter home. That this requires legislation at all tells you how far the housing market has drifted from its original purpose.
During his address, Trump put a face on the problem. He introduced Rachel Wiggins, a mother of two from Houston, who placed bids on 20 homes and lost every single one to institutional investors who bypassed inspections and paid all cash. Trump told the chamber:
"Stories like this are why last month I signed executive order to ban large Wall Street investment firms are buying up in the thousands single family homes. And now I'm asking Congress to make that ban permanent, because homes for people, really that's what we want, we want homes for people, not for corporations. Corporations are doing just fine."
Twenty bids. Not two. Not five. Twenty. Everyone lost to a firm that converted the property into a rental. This is the housing market that millions of Americans now navigate, one where a young family with a mortgage pre-approval letter is competing against entities with bottomless capital and no intention of ever living in the home. Breitbart reported.
Hawley framed the legislation in terms that cut straight to the core of the issue:
"Families deserve to be able to buy their own homes and achieve the American dream without competing with big investment companies that irrevocably drive up housing prices. That's why I am introducing legislation to ban Wall Street from buying single family homes once and for all."
Merkley, the Oregon Democrat, struck a similar tone, calling houses in American communities "homes for families, not profit centers for hedge funds." He also acknowledged the political landscape clearly, noting that the bipartisan support gives the effort "wind in our sails."
The two senators have also updated their previous legislation, known as the HOPE for Homeownership Act, which would incentivize Wall Street firms and hedge funds to divest their existing holdings of single-family homes. Together, the measures represent a two-pronged approach: stop the buying, then unwind what's already been bought.
There is a particular kind of economic dislocation that occurs when the most basic unit of American wealth building, a home, gets absorbed into an institutional portfolio. This isn't a niche libertarian debate about free markets. It is a question about what kind of country we intend to be.
When a hedge fund buys a three-bedroom house in a Houston suburb, it doesn't plant roots there. It doesn't join the PTA. It doesn't maintain the property with the care of someone who watches their kids play in the backyard. It extracts rent, defers maintenance to whatever the spreadsheet allows, and moves on to the next acquisition. Multiply that across thousands of homes in hundreds of communities, and you get neighborhoods that look occupied but feel hollow.
Homeownership has been the primary vehicle for middle-class wealth accumulation in this country for generations. The equity a family builds in a home funds retirements, college educations, and small businesses. Every house that disappears into an institutional portfolio is one fewer rung on that ladder.
The push by Trump was reportedly one of the few moments at his State of the Union address that saw both Republicans and left-wing Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, stand and cheer. That alone signals how deeply this issue resonates across ideological lines.
And it should. The conservative case here is straightforward: families and communities are the building blocks of a stable society, and a financial system that systematically prices families out of ownership in favor of institutional landlords undermines both. This isn't hostility toward capitalism. It's a recognition that capital without guardrails can hollow out the very institutions that make free markets worth defending.
Trump signed the executive order last month. Congress now has the chance to write it into law. The bipartisan support exists. The public anger is real. The only question is whether Washington can move at a pace that matches the urgency families like the Wiggins family feel every time they lose another bid.
Rachel Wiggins lost twenty times. The country shouldn't have to lose once more.
President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union address since his 2024 election victory on Tuesday night, and CNN's own numbers told the story the network didn't want to hear. A CNN Instant Poll taken in the immediate aftermath found that 64 percent of viewers said Trump is moving the country in the right direction.
Before the speech even started, only 54 percent of watchers said he was moving the country to their liking. By the time he finished, that number had jumped ten points. The audience watched, they listened, and they were persuaded.
Trump's address clocked in at 108 minutes, beginning at 9:11 p.m. ET and concluding at 10:59 p.m. ET. That shattered the record for the longest State of the Union speech ever delivered. Trump had already set the mark earlier with his 2025 joint address to Congress at 100 minutes on the dot. For 25 years before that, former President Bill Clinton's 2000 address held the record at 89 minutes.
According to Breitbart, the speech was long. The audience stayed. And the numbers climbed.
That combination matters more than any pundit's post-game breakdown. A president who can hold a room and a nation watching at home for nearly two hours, and come out with stronger approval than when he started, is a president who is connecting. Critics have spent years insisting that Trump's appeal is shallow, that it evaporates the moment he goes long-form. The CNN poll suggests the opposite: the more people heard, the more they agreed.
Not everyone at CNN took the numbers gracefully. The network's own Abby Phillip sneered at the president, calling Trump's bestowing of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, two Medals of Honor, two Purple Hearts, and the Legion of Merit "gameshow type moments" that "he had to do" because his other messages are a "hard pill for Americans to swallow."
Think about what that framing reveals. A president honors military heroes and distinguished Americans with the nation's highest recognitions, and CNN's analysis is that it was a distraction technique. The medals weren't earned. The moments weren't genuine. They were props, apparently, in a production designed to make bad medicine go down easier.
This is the instinct that keeps eroding media credibility. A normal person watches a Purple Heart ceremony and feels something. A cable news commentator watches the same ceremony and reaches for cynicism. Then the poll results come in, and the commentator cannot fathom why the audience responded the way it did.
The ten-point swing during the speech deserves attention. Pre-speech, viewers were already a somewhat favorable audience, as is typical of State of the Union viewership. But moving from 54 percent to 64 percent means Trump didn't just play to his base. He expanded his support in real time, with people watching every word.
That's not something you accomplish with "gameshow type moments." You accomplish it with a message that resonates. You accomplish it by talking about things people actually care about, and talking about them for long enough that the substance lands.
The media class has a persistent theory that Trump succeeds despite his speeches, that his support exists in some parallel universe disconnected from what he actually says. CNN's own data contradicts that theory every time they bother to measure it. The speech didn't hurt him. It helped him. Considerably.
Instant polls have their limitations. The sample skews toward people who chose to watch, which naturally tilts toward a more favorable audience. CNN has acknowledged this dynamic in past cycles. But the relevant comparison isn't between the poll sample and the general population. It's the movement within the sample itself.
The people who tuned in on Tuesday night were more supportive of Trump's direction after listening to him than they were before. That's the signal. And it's a signal that 108 minutes of direct presidential communication, unfiltered by chyrons and panel discussions, moved opinion in a direction CNN spends most of its airtime trying to reverse.
There's a lesson in that for every network that will refuse to learn it. When Americans hear the president speak for himself, at length, without interruption, they tend to like what they hear. The middlemen lose their power. The framing dissolves. And the polls move.
CNN published the numbers. Their own anchors spent the rest of the night explaining why the numbers didn't mean what they plainly meant. That gap between the data and the narrative is the whole story of modern political media, captured in a single evening.
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.