House Democrats showed up to a pro forma session Thursday and tried to force through a resolution limiting President Trump's authority to conduct military operations against Iran. They failed. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), presiding as speaker pro tempore, gaveled the brief session closed without recognizing the Democrat who sought the floor, and that was that.
The move lasted minutes. The political theater around it will last longer.
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) attempted to win recognition on the House floor to pass a war-powers resolution from Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The measure would have limited Trump's ability to conduct military operations in Iran. Ivey tried to advance it by unanimous consent, a procedural route that requires no objection. Smith simply ended the session before that could happen, as The Hill reported.
Several Democrats present on the floor yelled in objection. Reps. Don Beyer (Va.), Sara Jacobs (Calif.), Mary Gay Scanlon (Pa.), Madeleine Dean (Pa.), James Walkinshaw (Va.), and Suhas Subramanyam (Va.) were among those who protested the gavel.
Pro forma sessions are perfunctory by design. They last mere minutes. Congress was not in full session, and the maneuver had no realistic chance of succeeding. Democrats knew that. They came anyway, and then marched to the House steps to hold a news conference.
The timing tells you everything. On Tuesday, President Trump announced a ceasefire deal. The same day, he posted on Truth Social warning that Iran's "whole civilization" could face elimination if it did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Democrats seized on the post as the predicate for their push.
Rep. Jacobs spoke to reporters after the session and framed the effort in the most dramatic terms available. She said Republicans should demand both impeachment and invocation of the 25th Amendment:
"Our Republican colleagues know, they know that threatening genocide is not acceptable. I urge them to come back. And all options should be on the table. They should come back. They should realize that their president is putting us in harm's way, is making us less safe. And they should also be demanding impeachment. They should also be demanding the 25th Amendment. They should be here with us on behalf of the American people."
Set aside the overheated rhetoric for a moment. A ceasefire was announced the same day as the social-media post Democrats are citing. The resolution Democrats tried to pass would restrict the president's war powers at the very moment diplomacy produced a result. That sequence matters, even if Democrats prefer to ignore it.
More than 70 Democrats in both chambers have now called for Trump's removal through impeachment or the 25th Amendment. Rep. Dean acknowledged the obvious problem with that strategy on the House steps Thursday.
"As you all know, we are in the minority, so bringing forward impeachment right now, while he is guilty of a litany of high crimes and misdemeanors, I don't think it is a best use of our time. Let us get into the majority."
Read that again. Dean declared the president "guilty", her word, and then admitted her party lacks the votes to do anything about it. The candor is useful. It confirms what the exercise really was: a messaging operation aimed at midterm voters, not a serious legislative effort.
Dean also asked reporters: "How much farther into the dark corners of this president's mind must we go before leaders stand up?" It is the kind of line designed for a cable-news clip, not a floor debate.
Democrats have struggled with internal divisions over leadership and strategy for months. Impeachment talk from the minority is cheap. It costs nothing, commits nothing, and changes nothing, except the subject.
This was not the first time Democrats pushed a war-powers resolution on Iran. The House defeated a similar measure in early March. That resolution would have forced Trump to terminate military operations against Iran until the administration obtained congressional approval.
The March vote revealed fractures on both sides. Two Republicans supported the measure. Four Democrats opposed it. Since then, three of those four opposing Democrats have expressed openness to supporting the resolution if it comes up again.
House Democrats are expected to force another vote on the matter. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that the Senate will also vote again on a resolution to limit Trump's war powers. Congressional Democrats in both chambers plan to focus their criticism of Trump's management of the Iran conflict next week.
The narrow GOP majority in the House makes every vote count. Recent shifts in the chamber's composition mean Republican leadership cannot afford many defections on any high-profile measure.
Thursday's gambit fits a broader pattern. Democrats have repeatedly used procedural flashpoints to generate confrontation and media attention, even when the underlying votes are not there. The strategy is familiar: show up, get gaveled down, walk outside, hold a press conference, and let the clips circulate.
Rep. Walkinshaw captured the intended tone in a single line: "End the war. Let us vote." Rep. Ivey added: "The Congress needs to consider this. The time has come."
These are slogans, not arguments. The ceasefire announced Tuesday is either real or it isn't. If it holds, the urgency Democrats claim evaporates. If it doesn't, Congress will have ample opportunity to weigh in. Either way, a pro forma session stunt was never going to change the trajectory of American foreign policy.
The broader dynamic mirrors what Americans have seen in other recent standoffs. Schumer's Senate Democrats have clashed with House Republicans repeatedly over funding and oversight, often choosing confrontation over compromise. The Iran war-powers push is the foreign-policy version of the same playbook.
Rep. Emily Randall (D-Wash.) was also present at the news conference, though no remarks from her were reported. The presence of multiple members from Virginia, Pennsylvania, California, and other states suggests a coordinated effort to project geographic breadth.
Jacobs and others invoked the 25th Amendment, the constitutional provision allowing the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president "unable to discharge the powers and the duties of his office" and transfer authority to the vice president as acting president. The suggestion that Trump's social-media rhetoric warrants removal from office under that standard is a stretch by any honest reading of the text.
The 25th Amendment was designed for incapacity, physical or mental inability to serve, not for policy disagreements or provocative public statements. Using it as a political weapon cheapens the constitutional framework Democrats claim to be defending.
When Democrats have stalled on funding critical government operations, they rarely frame their own obstruction as a constitutional crisis. The standard shifts depending on who holds the gavel.
Democrats say they will keep pushing. Schumer has promised a Senate vote. House Democrats are expected to force another floor vote when Congress returns to full session. The three Democrats who flipped from opposing the March resolution to expressing openness to supporting it could narrow the margin.
But the math still favors Republicans. And the political landscape has shifted since early March. A ceasefire is in place. The president's negotiating posture, however blunt, produced a tangible diplomatic outcome. Democrats now face the awkward task of arguing the president's approach is reckless at the same moment it appears to have worked.
The broader pattern of Democratic confrontation and delay on everything from DHS funding to foreign policy has not translated into legislative wins. It has produced press conferences, cable hits, and social-media clips. What it has not produced is results.
When your party's own members admit they can't pass what they're proposing, the exercise isn't governance. It's audition tape.
A New York City mental health nurse lost her job after she recorded herself berating a group of Israeli men in Times Square, calling them "baby-killers" and "terrorists" in a confrontation that ended only when a street performer dressed as Spider-Man stepped in and told her to stop.
Jennifer Koonings, who worked at Manhattan-based Inspire Mental Health Services, shared multiple videos of the encounter on Instagram over the weekend, the New York Post reported. The footage quickly went viral, drawing widespread calls for her termination. By Wednesday, her biography had been scrubbed from Inspire Mental Health Services' website, and Koonings herself bragged on Instagram that she had been fired.
She did not sound particularly sorry about it.
In the clips, Koonings confronted a group of Israeli men at the packed tourist hotspot. After asking where they were from and learning they were Israeli, she launched into a tirade. In one video, she shouted directly at them:
"You guys killed babies in Palestine... Slaughtered babies."
A second clip captured her escalating further, telling the men to their faces:
"We don't want you here, terrorists."
She also referred to the group as "baby-killers" and, in a moment captured on camera, declared: "They're f---ing Israelis." Several other women joined in shouting alongside her, though their identities have not been reported. The Israeli men, for their part, remained calm and did not visibly react to the barrage. One of them responded simply: "Oh, you don't like us now?"
The confrontation only stopped when a panhandler dressed as Spider-Man, a fixture of the Times Square performer scene, intervened. The costumed figure urged Koonings to back off and called for calm.
"You don't need to harass people. You don't know anything about them."
That a stranger in a Spider-Man suit showed more restraint and decency than a licensed mental health professional tells you something about the state of things.
Koonings, who had roughly 141,000 Instagram followers at the time, did not delete the videos or walk back her statements. Instead, she later posted on Instagram that she had been terminated from Inspire Mental Health Services, and appeared to treat the firing as a badge of honor rather than a consequence.
The Post reached out to Inspire Mental Health Services but did not hear back immediately. The facility has not publicly confirmed the termination on its own. What is confirmed is that Koonings' name no longer appears on the company's website as of Wednesday.
It remains unclear what sparked the outburst. The Post noted that investigators and reporters have not identified a triggering event, Koonings apparently walked up to a group of tourists in one of the most crowded intersections on earth and decided to unload on them for being Israeli.
The incident lands in a city already grappling with a surge in antisemitic harassment. New York has seen a steady drumbeat of public confrontations targeting Jewish and Israeli individuals since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, and the Koonings episode fits a pattern that should concern anyone paying attention: ordinary professionals, not fringe activists, carrying out open hostility toward Jews in public spaces, filming it, and posting it for applause.
That Koonings worked in mental health care makes the episode particularly troubling. A nurse entrusted with the psychological well-being of patients demonstrated, on camera, the kind of unhinged hostility that would alarm any employer, and any patient. The fact that she bragged about her termination suggests she views her conduct as righteous rather than reckless.
The broader pattern of anti-Israel hostility spilling into public spaces, from Senate hearing rooms to city sidewalks, has become impossible to ignore.
Koonings lost her job. That much is clear. But the open questions are worth noting. Did Inspire Mental Health Services fire her, or did she resign and spin it? The company has not spoken publicly. No arrest has been reported. No charges have been filed. The Israeli men who endured the tirade have not been publicly identified.
In other words, Koonings faced professional consequences, but whether she faces legal accountability for what many would consider targeted ethnic harassment in a public space remains an open question.
New York's political leadership has spent years talking about hate crimes and bias incidents. When the perpetrator is a progressive-coded activist targeting Israelis on camera, the silence from city officials is telling. Compare that to the swift institutional response when public figures face removal for far less inflammatory conduct.
The episode also raises a question about social media incentives. Koonings didn't stumble into this confrontation and get caught. She filmed it herself. She posted it herself. She had 141,000 followers watching. The performance was the point, and the applause she expected from her audience mattered more to her than the dignity of the people she was screaming at.
That calculation, harassment as content, bigotry as brand, is not unique to Koonings. It has become a recurring feature of left-wing protest culture, where public confrontation is filmed, posted, and monetized in a cycle that rewards escalation.
The most striking detail in the entire episode may be the simplest one. A costumed street performer, someone who makes a living posing for tourist photos in Times Square, saw what was happening and told Koonings to stop. He didn't film it for clout. He didn't join in. He told her she didn't need to harass people and that she didn't know anything about them.
No bystander intervention training. No institutional protocol. Just a man in a Spider-Man suit with more common decency than a licensed nurse with a six-figure Instagram following.
The collapse of basic civic norms, the expectation that you don't scream ethnic slurs at strangers on a public sidewalk, is not a policy failure. It's a cultural one. And it flourishes in cities where leaders treat antisemitism as a second-tier concern, where political consequences fall unevenly depending on who the target is and who is doing the targeting.
Koonings got fired. She seems fine with it. The Israeli tourists who came to see Times Square got screamed at by a stranger and called terrorists for the crime of existing. Nobody in city government has said a word.
When a guy in a Spider-Man costume is the last line of defense against open bigotry in the middle of Manhattan, the adults in charge have already failed.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States would halt its planned bombing campaign against Iran for two weeks, pulling back from a strike deadline of 8 p.m. eastern time after last-minute conversations with Pakistani leaders produced a fragile ceasefire framework. The pause hinges on a single, concrete demand: Iran must agree to the complete, immediate, and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump disclosed the decision in a Truth Social post, calling the arrangement a "double sided CEASEFIRE" and saying the administration had received a 10-point proposal from Iranian officials that he described as "a workable basis on which to negotiate." Israel, Fox News reported, has also agreed to suspend its own bombing campaign in Iran as part of the deal.
The announcement marks a dramatic shift from a posture that, just hours earlier, had the U.S. military poised to deliver what Trump himself described as "the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran." That language, and the abruptness of the reversal, underscores how close the two nations came to a far larger escalation before Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir intervened.
In his Truth Social post, Trump framed the pause not as a concession but as a position of strength. He wrote:
"The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East."
He added that "almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran," and that the two-week window would allow the agreement to be "finalized and consummated." The president's framing was unambiguous: this was a pause from a position of dominance, not retreat.
Trump has never been shy about his view of Tehran's leadership. He has previously called Iran's regime serial deceivers who have misled American presidents for decades. That history makes the two-week clock all the more significant. If Iran stalls, the president has left himself a clear on-ramp back to military action.
Iran's Supreme National Security Council issued its own statement, thanking Sharif and Munir for what it called their "tireless efforts" to end the war in the region. The council said it would cease defensive operations, but only if attacks against Iran are halted first.
On the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's language was notably cautious. The council said safe passage through the strait "will be possible via coordination with Iran's Armed Forces" and with "due consideration of technical limitations." What those technical limitations are, exactly, the statement did not say.
That caveat matters. The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil chokepoint. Any ambiguity about what "coordination" and "technical limitations" mean in practice could give Tehran room to slow-walk compliance while claiming good faith. The two-week window will test whether Iran's words translate into open shipping lanes, or into diplomatic stalling.
The most striking diplomatic wrinkle is Pakistan's emergence as the broker. Trump cited conversations with both Sharif and Munir as the basis for his decision to delay the strike. Sharif, in a public statement, said the ceasefire would apply "everywhere," including Lebanon, effective immediately.
Sharif went further, inviting both delegations to Islamabad on Friday, April 10, 2026, for what he called further negotiations toward "a conclusive agreement to settle all disputes." His tone was effusive:
"Both parties have displayed remarkable wisdom and understanding and have remained constructively engaged in furthering the cause of peace and stability. We earnestly hope, that the 'Islamabad Talks' succeed in achieving sustainable peace and wish to share more good news in coming days!"
Whether those talks actually happen remains an open question. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that "there are discussions about in person talks, but nothing is final until announced by the President or the White House." That careful hedge suggests the administration is not yet ready to commit to a specific venue or format, even as Sharif publicly sets a date.
The gap between Islamabad's enthusiasm and Washington's caution is worth watching. Pakistan has its own interests in positioning itself as a regional peacemaker, and Sharif's eagerness to host could outpace what the White House is prepared to deliver. Meanwhile, political reactions at home have already begun. Kamala Harris notably skipped Trump's earlier Iran address, opting instead for a prerecorded video, a choice that drew sharp criticism and raised questions about whether Democratic leaders are prepared to engage seriously with the administration's Middle East strategy.
Trump's stated condition is straightforward: the complete, immediate, and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's response accepts the general idea but wraps it in qualifications. The distance between "complete and immediate" and "via coordination with due consideration of technical limitations" is the distance between a deal and a delay tactic.
The 10-point proposal Iran reportedly submitted to the administration has not been made public. Trump said officials "believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate," but neither the White House nor Fox News disclosed the substance of those ten points. Without knowing what Iran has actually offered, it is impossible to judge how close the two sides truly are.
Several other questions remain unanswered. What specific military objectives did the U.S. meet and exceed before the ceasefire? What are the exact terms of Israel's agreement to suspend its own bombing campaign? And what enforcement mechanism exists if Iran fails to open the strait as promised?
These are not trivial gaps. The broader foreign policy landscape has already tested alliances in ways that make the stakes of any Middle East deal even higher. Recent clashes over NATO's future have shown that even within the Republican coalition, there are sharp disagreements about how far the U.S. should go in reshaping its global commitments. A deal with Iran that holds would strengthen Trump's hand considerably. A deal that collapses would hand his critics fresh ammunition.
The two-week ceasefire window is, by design, short. Trump has structured it so that the pressure stays on Tehran. If Iran opens the strait, allows verifiable passage, and shows up in Islamabad ready to finalize terms, the president can claim a historic diplomatic achievement. If Iran hedges, delays, or exploits the "technical limitations" language to restrict shipping, Trump has already laid the rhetorical groundwork to resume strikes.
Trump closed his Truth Social post with a note of ceremony, writing:
"On behalf of the United States of America, as President, and also representing the Countries of the Middle East, it is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution."
That is a bold claim. Iran has been a destabilizing force in the Middle East for decades, and no American president, from either party, has managed to produce a durable agreement that changes Tehran's behavior. Trump's willingness to bring the country to the brink of a full-scale bombing campaign and then pivot to diplomacy is either a masterstroke of leverage or a gamble that Iran will exploit. The next two weeks will tell.
The security environment around these decisions is itself a reminder of the pressure this president operates under. Just recently, the Secret Service investigated gunfire near the White House while Trump was inside, a stark illustration that the commander-in-chief faces risks at home even as he manages a potential war abroad.
Diplomacy built on deadlines only works if the deadline means something. Iran has spent decades running out the clock on American presidents. This one has two weeks to prove he's different.
Amanda Lynn Tully, 37, hasn't made a single repayment on her $65,000 in federal student loans in seven years. Not because she lost her job. Not because she faced a medical crisis. Not because some catastrophe wiped out her savings. She moved to Prague.
Tully, who holds a master's degree in historic preservation and a bachelor's in art history from the University of Oregon, relocated to the Czech capital just months after graduating in 2017. She couldn't find a job with her credentials, so she left the country and the debt behind.
Her repayment was just $60 a month.
The New York Times profiled Tully's situation, and the reaction was swift and merciless. Tully told the Times she had been on an income-based repayment plan, which would have allowed her to have the remaining debt forgiven after 20 years of making qualifying payments. Instead of making those payments, she stopped entirely.
"I was never financially stable because I was never taught to be financially stable."
That was Tully's explanation. She also complained that even the $60-a-month payment was "psychologically burdensome," according to the Times. The payments, she said, weren't covering the interest.
"The payments weren't even paying off the interest, so it was frustrating."
So she chose a different path: flee the country, stop paying, and hope the problem resolves itself. She has been working in Prague as an "E-learning content developer" for various companies since 2019 and currently describes herself as "open to work" on her LinkedIn profile. She did not respond to requests for comment.
Social media users on X shredded the Times piece and its subject with the kind of precision that only genuine public frustration produces. One user put it plainly:
"This is just Whole Foods shoplifting. They fancy it a better kind of theft bc they're educated elites and their reasons for doing it are more therapized than the average thief."
Another cut deeper:
"But if you move to another country to escape a $60 a month payment, you're a loser and a whiny b—h."
The Times itself took collateral damage for choosing Tully as a sympathetic figure. One user noted the paper's habit of selecting protagonists who generate the opposite of the intended response:
"The NYT has an uncanny ability to illustrate a 'hardship' story with people who are so unsympathetic that I end up actively rooting against them."
Another user noticed that Tully appeared to be wearing designer headphones in her photoshoot for the Times, prompting the observation: "She couldn't afford $60 a month but could afford Beats by Dre."
Perhaps the most telling response came from a user who captured the political effect perfectly:
"I was already opposed to student loan forgiveness and now I'm radicalized all over again."
Tully is not an outlier. She is a mascot. Recently released figures from the Education Department show that almost 8 million of the 40 million borrowers with federal student debt have defaulted on their loans. That's one in five. The scale of the problem is enormous, and it raises a question the student loan forgiveness movement would rather not answer: how many of those defaults look like Amanda Tully's?
The standard progressive framing presents student debt as an unbearable structural burden imposed on helpless young people by a predatory system. And for some borrowers, that framing contains a kernel of truth. But Tully's case exposes what the movement actually protects in practice: people who borrowed money for degrees of questionable market value, declined to make even minimal payments, and now expect the public to absorb the cost.
A master's in historic preservation is a fine thing to study if you understand what you're buying. It is not a vocational credential. It does not command a salary that justifies $65,000 in debt. Tully apparently discovered this after graduation, which means either she didn't research her field's earning potential before borrowing, or she did and borrowed anyway. Neither version supports the narrative that she was victimized.
The income-based repayment plan Tully was enrolled in already represented a significant concession by taxpayers. It capped her payments at $60 a month and promised full forgiveness after 20 years. The system bent over backward to accommodate her. She walked away from even that.
This is the part of the student loan debate that never gets honest airtime. Forgiveness advocates talk about crushing debt, unaffordable payments, and a generation locked out of homeownership. Those problems are real for some people. But the poster children the media selects keep turning out to be people who borrowed for unmarketable degrees, made no effort to repay what they owed, and treat the obligation itself as an injustice.
The progressive position requires you to believe two contradictory things at once: that these borrowers are sophisticated enough to deserve advanced degrees but too helpless to understand a loan agreement. That they are capable adults who should be trusted with the franchise, a mortgage, and a career, but not with the consequences of their own financial choices.
Tully told the Times she was never taught to be financially stable. She has a master's degree. At some point, the expectation that other people will teach you basic adult responsibility expires. For most Americans, that point arrives long before age 37.
There is something almost poetic about the specifics. Not a border town. Not a developing country where the cost of living might genuinely prevent someone from scraping together $60. Prague. A European capital with craft beer, Instagram-worthy architecture, and a thriving expat scene. The decision wasn't survival. It was a lifestyle.
Almost 8 million borrowers are in default. Taxpayers are on the hook. And somewhere in the Czech Republic, a woman with a master's degree in historic preservation is open to work, hasn't paid a dime in seven years, and wants you to know that $60 a month was just too psychologically burdensome to bear.
A 57-year-old man drove his car into a crowd of parade-goers during a Lao New Year Festival celebration in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, on Saturday afternoon, striking multiple pedestrians and sending victims to area hospitals with injuries that officials described as critical.
Todd Landry was arrested and booked into the Iberia Parish jail after Louisiana State Police troopers determined he was impaired. His breath sample registered a blood alcohol concentration of 0.137g%, well above Louisiana's legal limit. He now faces charges of Driving While Impaired (first offense), First-Degree Negligent Injuring on 18 counts, Careless Operation, and Open Container.
Eighteen counts. That means at least 18 people were struck by a man who allegedly got behind the wheel drunk, in broad daylight, and aimed his vehicle into a festive crowd.
The parade was underway near Savannaket Street and Melancon Road in Broussard when Landry's vehicle approached. A young man who witnessed the crash described the moments before impact, according to Breitbart:
"I just simply thought that he was coming to join the parade because the car was kind of nice. He inched closer and closer, revs his engine again, and just plows through everybody. In that moment, my brain just stopped. I just thought, 'Is this actually happening?'"
That account is harrowing. A community gathered to celebrate a cultural tradition, families lining a parade route on a Saturday afternoon, and a man with a BAC nearly twice the legal limit drove straight into them.
The Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office is leading the investigation into the crash and has moved quickly to address public concern about the motive. In a social media post, the office stated that "based on the preliminary investigation, this does not appear to be an intentional act." The investigation remains active, and officials said further information would be released as it becomes available.
Louisiana State Police confirmed the details in a news release, noting that Landry "showed signs of impairment" during the investigation and that troopers ultimately processed the arrest. LSP also asked anyone with photos or videos of the crash to share them with officials.
The distinction between intentional and negligent matters legally, but it offers cold comfort to the families now sitting in hospital waiting rooms. A man too drunk to operate a vehicle killed no one's intention but destroyed an afternoon, and possibly lives, all the same.
The Louisiana Lao New Year Festival released a statement expressing grief over the incident:
"We are profoundly saddened by the news of the incident near the festival grounds."
The organization canceled its music programs Saturday evening. It indicated that if security resources were restored, it would reopen Sunday for religious services only, with vendors remaining open. The festival's cautious, measured response reflects a community trying to hold something together after a senseless act tore through it.
These are the kinds of events that bind communities. Families attend. Children watch parades. Elders gather. The Lao New Year celebration is a cultural and religious tradition, and 18 people paid the price for one man's decision to drink and drive.
There is no policy debate here. No partisan angle to spin. Drunk driving is one of the clearest moral failures a person can commit: a conscious choice to endanger everyone around you. Todd Landry allegedly made that choice on a Saturday afternoon in a parish full of families.
The charges he faces, 18 counts of First-Degree Negligent Injuring among them, suggest the scope of damage was enormous. Some of those struck had critical injuries. The full toll remains unknown as the investigation continues.
Conservatives have long argued that the foundation of a functioning society is personal responsibility. Not government programs. Not awareness campaigns. The individual decision to do the right thing, or the catastrophic consequences when someone refuses. This is what refusal looks like: 18 people on the ground, a festival silenced, and a community asking how a celebration turned into a crime scene.
Landry is charged with DWI as a first offense. Whether that means he has never driven impaired before or simply never been caught before is a question worth asking. The justice system will determine what comes next. But the people of Iberia Parish already know what happened: a man chose a bottle over basic human decency, and 18 of their neighbors are paying for it.
HuffPost published a report claiming the Pentagon "invited more than 3,500 employees to attend a Good Friday service at its in-house chapel," but that "it's only for Protestants, not Catholics." The outlet's senior politics reporter, Jennifer Bendery, cited a memo from Air Force leadership that read: "Just a friendly reminder: There will be a Protestant Service (No Catholic Mass) for Good Friday today at the Pentagon Chapel."
The implication was clear. The Pentagon, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, had deliberately excluded Catholics from worship on one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar. Bendery wrote that Hegseth, whom she called "a far-right evangelical Christian, has tried to infuse his religious views into Pentagon activities.
There was just one problem. Catholics don't celebrate Mass on Good Friday. They never have.
The correction came swiftly, and from every direction. Washington Examiner reporter Salena Zito addressed Bendery directly:
"Catholic here ... we do not celebrate Mass on Good Friday. It is the only day of the year without a Mass, as the church commemorates Jesus' death."
National Review senior editor Charles C.W. Cook was less patient:
"Yes. It says that there is no Catholic Mass on Good Friday because Catholics do not do Catholic Mass on Good Friday. Is there literally nobody you could have asked? Not one person? Not even Google?"
"Fox & Friends Weekend" co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy offered a more detailed explanation of what actually happens in Catholic churches on Good Friday. Catholics hold a service, not a Mass, because there is no consecration of the Eucharist on that day. Communion is distributed using hosts consecrated the day before, on Holy Thursday. Worshippers read the Gospel of the Passion of Christ and venerate the cross, as Fox News reports.
Hot Air managing editor Ed Morrissey made the same point, noting that what HuffPost framed as exclusion was simply a matter of terminology:
"FYI: Catholics do not have Mass on Good Friday. It's a service, as there is no transubstantiation. Where communion is offered, it's with previously consecrated hosts. This sounds like a misunderstanding of terms by the sources or the reporters."
"Misunderstanding" may be generous.
A Department of War official told Fox News Digital that Catholic Masses are held on a daily basis at the Pentagon and that religious services are open to all Pentagon employees. In other words, the Pentagon wasn't excluding Catholics from anything. The memo simply noted that the Good Friday service would be Protestant in form, which is exactly what you'd expect when the Catholic Church itself does not hold Mass on that day.
The phrase "No Catholic Mass" wasn't a prohibition. It was a description.
But HuffPost ran with it anyway, constructing an entire narrative around the idea that Hegseth was weaponizing religion inside the Defense Department. The framing required its audience to know nothing about Catholic liturgical practice, and apparently required the same of its reporters and editors.
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson pointed to a pattern:
"This person continues to write about Christianity and keeps proving to be completely ignorant of Christianity. Catholics do not celebrate Mass on Good Friday."
Townhall editor Larry O'Connor widened the lens beyond Bendery herself:
"Anybody here surprised that Jennifer doesn't have a good working understanding of Catholicism? Me neither. But, It IS extraordinary that not one person in the editorial chain has even the slightest knowledge of Catholics."
That's the real indictment. This wasn't a tweet fired off in haste. It was a published report from a senior politics reporter at a national outlet, presumably reviewed by at least one editor. Not a single person in that chain caught the error or bothered to check. A ten-second search would have killed the story before it was written.
RedState writer Bonchie cut to the political motive:
"Catholics do not do Mass on Good Friday. It would be offensive to them to try to hold one. Just incredible how hard the left is trying to cause divisions that don't actually exist."
What followed was arguably worse than the original mistake. Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham noted that despite being corrected by thousands of Catholics online, Bendery refused to acknowledge the error:
"What's wild about the hubris of journalists like this lady at @HuffPost is she has literally THOUSANDS of Catholics correcting her that there is no Catholic mass on Good Friday."
Basham added that Bendery continued to suggest Catholics would be barred from attending the Pentagon's Good Friday service entirely, a claim Basham said she was "quite certain is not true."
HuffPost's parent company BuzzFeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This episode is small in scale but revealing in kind. It shows what happens when a newsroom's animating purpose is opposition rather than information. If your goal is to catch the Defense Secretary doing something sinister, you'll find sinister things everywhere, including in a routine chapel memo describing a liturgical reality that predates the Pentagon by roughly two thousand years.
The irony is thick. A story meant to expose religious intolerance inside the military was built entirely on religious illiteracy inside a newsroom. The reporters who positioned themselves as defenders of Catholic inclusion didn't understand the first thing about Catholic worship.
Every Catholic in America who has ever attended a Good Friday service knew immediately that this story was nonsense. Every editor at HuffPost apparently did not. The gap between those two groups tells you everything about who these outlets are actually writing for, and it isn't the faithful.
Los Angeles police arrested a 12-year-old on suspicion of murder Thursday in connection with the death of Khimberly Zavaleta Chuquipa, a classmate who was struck in the head with a metal water bottle during an alleged bullying incident at a Reseda school campus in February. The arrest came more than five weeks after Khimberly died, and her family says the tragedy was preventable.
LAPD Officer Charles Miller confirmed the arrest but said he could not release additional information because both the victim and the suspect are juveniles, the Associated Press reported. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office said Friday that the case remains under investigation. No formal charges had been announced at the time of the report.
The family's account, laid out in a wrongful-death claim filed last month against the Los Angeles Unified School District, paints a grim picture of institutional failure. Khimberly was walking in a hallway at Reseda Charter High School, which also houses a middle school, on Feb. 17 when she stepped in to defend her older sister, Sharon Zavaleta, from a group of students who had been bullying her. Another student struck Khimberly in the head with a metal water bottle.
What followed was an eight-day ordeal that ended with a child's death.
The family said Khimberly was taken to Valley Presbyterian Hospital after the Feb. 17 attack, where she was evaluated and released the same day. Three days later, her condition deteriorated sharply. She was rushed to UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital, where doctors discovered a severe brain hemorrhage. Khimberly was placed in a medically induced coma and underwent emergency brain surgery.
She did not recover. Khimberly Zavaleta Chuquipa died on Feb. 25. She was 12 years old.
Her mother, Elma Chuquipa, described the final hours in an interview with a local television station. Fox News reported that Chuquipa told KABC: "My daughter goes and pulls her away, so they don't hit her sister, and that's when [Khimberly] gets hit in the head." She also told the station: "We took her to the emergency room, where she arrived with no vitals."
The family has also raised questions about whether Valley Presbyterian Hospital missed warning signs during the initial evaluation. Robert Glassman, the family's attorney, said the family has not ruled out legal action against the hospital.
The arrest of a single student does not close the book on this case, and the family's attorney has made clear he intends to keep it open. Glassman said in an email Friday that the sisters had been "bullied, harassed and physically attacked for months" at the school and that their mother had reported the incidents to school officials, who he says failed to stop the abuse.
That claim sits at the center of the wrongful-death filing against LAUSD. The district, for its part, offered no defense and no explanation. A spokesperson said only that the district does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation.
Glassman framed the arrest as necessary but insufficient. As AP News reported, he stated:
"This arrest is an important step toward accountability, but an arrest alone does not equal justice and does not answer the larger question of how this was allowed to happen in the first place."
He followed that with a pointed demand directed at the adults who were supposed to be in charge of these children's safety:
"The focus cannot stop with one student, there must be a hard look at what the adults in charge knew, when they knew it, and why meaningful action wasn't taken sooner."
Those are questions that deserve answers. A mother says she warned the school. The school apparently did nothing effective. A child is dead. And the district's only public response is a boilerplate refusal to comment.
The Zavaleta Chuquipa family set up a GoFundMe page to help cover expenses. Just The News reported that the family wrote on the page: "As the baby of our family, she brought a special light and joy into our lives."
Khimberly's mother told NBC Los Angeles, as the New York Post reported: "I'm devastated. I'm full of pain, thinking about how I will never see my daughter again."
Meanwhile, the DA's office has said only that the case is under investigation. Whether formal murder charges will be filed against the juvenile suspect, and what form those charges might take given the suspect's age, remains unclear. The Washington Times confirmed the arrest occurred on April 2.
Cases involving children accused of killing other children are mercifully rare, but they raise some of the hardest questions the justice system faces. An eleven-year-old in Pennsylvania was recently charged as an adult in the shooting death of his adoptive father, illustrating just how varied and difficult the legal responses can be when the accused is barely old enough for middle school.
In this case, the family is pursuing accountability on multiple fronts. The wrongful-death claim targets LAUSD directly. Glassman has signaled that Valley Presbyterian Hospital could face legal action as well. And the criminal case against the juvenile suspect is just beginning.
The core failure here is not complicated. A family says it reported months of bullying, harassment, and physical attacks to school officials. Those officials, by the family's account, did not stop it. The earlier reporting on Khimberly's death laid out the same pattern: warnings ignored, a child left vulnerable, and a preventable tragedy.
LAUSD is the second-largest school district in the country. It has layers of administrators, counselors, and safety staff. Yet a 12-year-old girl walked into a school hallway, tried to protect her sister from known bullies, and ended up dead eight days later.
Fox News reported that the family is also pushing for new pediatric head-injury protocols through a proposed measure they call "Khimberly's Act." The details of that proposal were not fully described, but the impulse behind it is clear: the family believes the medical system, like the school system, failed their daughter.
Across the country, communities are grappling with youth violence that seems to outpace the institutions meant to prevent it. In Washington, D.C., the mayor has pushed for a permanent youth curfew in response to rising juvenile crime. The approaches differ, but the underlying problem is the same: adults in positions of authority failing to keep children safe.
The AP noted a separate recent case in Georgia, where a sixth grader named Jada West died after a fight with another student from Mason Creek Middle School broke out at an intersection near her home. The details differ, but the pattern is familiar, school-age children, unresolved conflict, and a fatal outcome.
In Los Angeles, the open questions remain stark. What did Reseda Charter High School officials know about the bullying of the Zavaleta sisters? When did they learn about it? What, if anything, did they do? And why wasn't it enough?
LAUSD has chosen silence. The DA's office has chosen caution. The family has chosen to fight. And Khimberly Zavaleta Chuquipa, the 12-year-old girl who stepped into a hallway to protect her sister, is gone.
When officials in other states have faced similar failures to protect children, the political consequences have been swift and direct. Whether anyone in Los Angeles faces real accountability, beyond a single juvenile arrest, will say a great deal about how seriously this city's leaders take the safety of the children in their care.
A child tried to defend her sister. The adults who should have prevented that moment failed before it ever arrived. An arrest is a start. It is not an answer.
Democrats filed suit against the Trump administration on Wednesday, aiming to kill an executive order that would require the U.S. Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to verified American citizens. The lawsuit, backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer(D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the Democratic National Committee, and other party organizations, treats the most basic election integrity measure imaginable as an existential constitutional crisis.
The order's mechanism is straightforward. President Trump announced earlier this week that he directed Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, along with the Social Security Administration, to create a list of verified U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. The Postal Service would then send ballots only to those people.
That's the proposition Democrats are calling tyranny: confirming that voters are who they say they are before mailing them a ballot.
According to The Hill, prominent Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias wrote the complaint, and his language tells you everything about the strategy. This isn't a narrow legal challenge. It's a messaging vehicle dressed in constitutional clothing.
"Our Constitution's Framers anticipated this kind of desire for absolute power. They recognized the menace it would pose to ordered liberty and the ways in which it would corrode self-government like an acid."
Absolute power. Menace. Acid corroding self-government. All because the federal government wants to verify that people receiving ballots are, in fact, eligible to vote. Elias also argued in the complaint that the order "seeks to impose radical changes to the manner and conditions under which citizens may cast absentee or mail-in ballots" and that these changes "plainly exceed the President's lawful authority."
Schumer called the executive order "outlandish" and promised a courtroom victory:
"Senate Democrats have led the fight against Donald Trump's voter suppression efforts before and won. We will see him in court and we will beat him again."
Jeffries, for his part, declared that Trump's "unhinged efforts to rip away our rights will not prevail."
Ripping away rights. Voter suppression. Unhinged. The rhetorical escalation is as predictable as it is revealing. None of these statements engages with the substance of the order. Not one Democratic leader quoted in the complaint or in public statements explained why verifying citizenship before mailing a ballot is unreasonable. They skipped the argument entirely and went straight to apocalyptic framing.
Strip away the hysteria, and the executive order does something that most Americans, when asked plainly, would consider common sense. It directs federal agencies to compile a list of verified citizens eligible to vote and limits the Postal Service to sending ballots to those individuals.
This is not a poll tax. It is not a literacy test. It does not prevent a single eligible American from casting a ballot. It prevents ballots from being mailed to people who aren't eligible to receive them. The distinction matters, and Democrats know it, which is why they refuse to engage with it directly.
The left's position on voter verification has become genuinely difficult to articulate without exposing the contradiction at its core. They claim to support secure elections. They claim to oppose fraud. But every single mechanism proposed to verify that voters are citizens, that ballots reach the right people, that rolls are accurate, gets branded as suppression. At some point, the pattern speaks for itself.
Democrats have reason for confidence in the court, and conservatives should be clear-eyed about the terrain. After the president issued an executive order last year seeking to overhaul elections, federal judges ruled it was likely unconstitutional. That history gives the left both a legal precedent and a talking point.
But prior judicial skepticism toward one order does not automatically invalidate a differently constructed one. The question before the courts will be whether the federal government can use existing agency infrastructure to verify citizenship for ballot distribution. That is a narrower and more defensible proposition than a wholesale election overhaul, and it deserves to be adjudicated on its own merits rather than dismissed by reference to a prior ruling.
Democrats and their allies in the press have spent years noting that Trump himself votes by mail. He cast his ballot that way in a Florida special election last month. The implication is supposed to be hypocrisy: he votes by mail but wants to restrict it.
The argument collapses on contact. Trump is a verified U.S. citizen casting a ballot in his state of residence. His executive order would not prevent him, or anyone like him, from voting by mail. It would ensure that the system sending out those ballots knows who is eligible to receive one. The fact that Trump uses mail-in voting and still wants the process verified is not a contradiction. It is the entire point.
Every election cycle, the same dynamic plays out. Republicans propose verification. Democrats call it suppression. The media amplifies the suppression framing. Courts weigh in. And the underlying question never gets answered honestly: why would anyone oppose confirming that ballots go only to eligible voters?
The arguments offered are always procedural or constitutional, never substantive. It's always about executive overreach, or disenfranchisement in the abstract, or the specter of eligible voters somehow falling through the cracks. What it never is, curiously, is a straightforward defense of mailing ballots to unverified recipients.
Because that argument can't survive daylight.
Schumer promises a court victory. Jeffries promises resistance. Elias promises constitutional grandeur. What none of them promise is a better system for making sure that only eligible citizens receive and cast ballots. That silence is the tell. They are not fighting for voting rights. They are fighting against verification. Those are not the same thing, no matter how many times they pretend otherwise.
Lindsey Buckingham, the 76-year-old rock guitarist best known for his decades with Fleetwood Mac, was attacked while arriving for an appointment in Santa Monica on Wednesday. A woman hurled an unidentified substance at Buckingham as he entered the building, then fled the scene.
Buckingham is said not to have been injured in the attack. The LAPD's Threat Management Unit confirmed it is investigating, and law enforcement sources indicate an arrest is expected soon, with a suspect already identified.
The incident is alarming on its own. It becomes something else entirely when you learn what Buckingham has been dealing with for years.
More than a year before Wednesday's attack, Buckingham was granted a five-year permanent restraining order against a 53-year-old woman identified only as Michelle. A judge extended a previous temporary order, requiring Michelle to remain at least 100 yards away from Buckingham, his wife Kristen, and their son William, and to refrain from threatening, harassing, or contacting the musician in any way.
According to Buckingham's court testimony, the harassment began around 2021, when Michelle allegedly acquired the business phone number of his wife, Kristen, and began calling her. The messages escalated. Buckingham told the court Michelle was "leaving long drawn-out messages that included the claim that she was my child and threats to kill my family and me."
Buckingham insisted in his testimony that he was not Michelle's father and that she was not known to him personally at all. He said Michelle blamed him for facial deformities she apparently suffered as a child and demanded money.
Police instructed Michelle to cease contacting the Buckingham family in 2022. She reportedly returned in 2024, leaving a collage outside his house. At a hearing in December 2024, Buckingham showed the judge a picture Michelle had taken outside his home and played an unmarked audio clip.
The stalking campaign allegedly included a fabricated emergency. Buckingham testified that police arrived at his home, woke him, and handcuffed him after a 911 call warned that his son William "was at the house intending to hurt himself." Officers reportedly searched the property for 20 minutes before uncuffing Buckingham.
Buckingham told the court the call was a weapon aimed at his family:
"I now know that the 911 call was traced to [Michelle's] phone and was the latest in an unabated pattern of harassment and threatening acts against my family and me."
The court apparently agreed. The permanent restraining order was granted. And yet, here we are.
There has been no public indication from authorities that Michelle was the woman who assaulted Buckingham on Wednesday. The LAPD stated it "is working with the Santa Monica Police Department to investigate this incident" and declined further comment to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.
But the broader picture is hard to ignore. A man obtained a restraining order. A court set clear boundaries. Law enforcement was involved at multiple stages. And someone still walked up to Buckingham and doused him with an unknown substance in broad daylight.
This is the reality that restraining orders, by their nature, cannot fully solve. They are pieces of paper that rely on compliance from people who have already demonstrated they will not comply. Courts issue them. Judges sign them. And the person on the receiving end is left hoping the document carries more weight than obsession.
Celebrity stalking cases get attention. Buckingham does because of his stature as one of rock's most recognizable guitarists, the man who joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975 and enlisted his then-lover Stevie Nicks to the band, helping propel them into one of the best-selling acts in music history. But the dynamic he describes, escalating contact, false claims of kinship, threats against family members, weaponized emergency calls, plays out in courtrooms across the country for people who will never make a headline.
Law enforcement sources say an arrest is expected soon. That would be welcome, and overdue if the suspect turns out to be someone already bound by a court order to stay away.
Buckingham, born in California's Bay Area in 1949, has navigated a career defined by turbulence: his split with Nicks in 1976, his departure from Fleetwood Mac in 1987, his return a decade later, and his firing in 2018. He has survived all of it. He survived Wednesday, too, physically unharmed.
But no one should have to survive an appointment in Santa Monica.
Francis J. Kearse III, a 43-year-old emergency medicine specialist in Ohio, was found dead from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound just before 6 p.m. on March 27 in the 5400 block of Howe Road in Trenton, a rural city halfway between Dayton and Cincinnati. He was due in court for his arraignment in Hamilton County on Tuesday.
He never made it. The charges he was facing tell you why.
The doctor had been indicted by a grand jury on charges including compelling prostitution, compelling prostitution involving a minor, trafficking in persons, and importuning. The accusations centered on his alleged exploitation of a 16-year-old girl, whom he reportedly paid with two vape pens and $15 in exchange for sex.
According to the investigation reported by the New York Post, Kearse used Snapchat to talk to young girls, marketing himself as a "sugar daddy." He sent gift cards to at least one 16-year-old before urging "some kinda payback," leading to the two meeting up in October in what officials called "sexual activity for hire."
Let that sit for a moment. A licensed physician, entrusted with emergency medical care, allegedly spent his off-hours trolling social media for minors. The currency of the transaction tells its own story. Vape pens. Fifteen dollars. Gift cards. This wasn't some ambiguous situation. It was a grown man leveraging the most trivial goods imaginable to exploit a child.
The age of consent in Ohio is 16, but the charges Kearse faced went well beyond the question of statutory age. Compelling prostitution, trafficking in persons: these are among the most serious offenses in Ohio's criminal code, and they exist precisely because the law recognizes that exchanging money or goods for sex with a minor is predatory regardless of consent thresholds.
Kearse was arrested on March 11 but released on his own recognizance bond. He was ordered to stay off social media as part of his bond conditions, and he remained free up to his death.
A man indicted on human trafficking and prostitution charges involving a minor walked out of custody without posting a dime. Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Christopher McDowell, upon learning of the cashless bond, ordered Kearse to be re-arrested. By then, it was too late.
McDowell addressed the court Tuesday morning after Kearse's death was announced:
"(He) escaped justice the hard way."
That is one way to describe it. Another is that the system gave a man accused of trafficking a teenager every opportunity to avoid accountability, and he took the most permanent one available.
The decision to release Kearse on his own recognizance deserves real scrutiny. This was not a low-level offense. The charges included trafficking in persons. The victim was a child. And the mechanism of the alleged crime, social media, meant the defendant's access to future victims was as close as his phone.
Ordering him off social media while releasing him without bail is the judicial equivalent of telling a bank robber to please avoid banks. The restriction only works if someone enforces it, and between March 11 and March 27, no one did in any way that mattered.
Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser confirmed the timeline was razor-thin:
"We had just received the investigation from law enforcement to proceed and were almost immediately notified of the death."
Kearse was also facing charges in Butler County at the time of his death, meaning multiple jurisdictions were closing in simultaneously. The walls were coming in. He chose not to face them.
There is no satisfying ending here. The victim, a 16-year-old girl whose name has been kept out of public reporting, will never see her alleged abuser answer for what he did. There will be no trial, no verdict, no sentence. Whatever closure the legal process might have offered has been erased.
That absence matters. It matters for the victim. It matters for any other girls Kearse may have contacted through Snapchat whose stories haven't surfaced yet. And it matters for a justice system that, at the critical moment, chose leniency for a man accused of buying a child's body for the price of a gas station transaction.
Judges across the country continue to treat bond decisions as administrative formalities rather than public safety determinations. The default posture of release, even for defendants facing trafficking charges, reflects a system more concerned with appearing fair to the accused than with protecting the people they are accused of harming.
Francis Kearse is beyond the reach of any courtroom now. The question worth asking isn't about him anymore. It's about the next defendant facing charges this serious who walks out on a handshake. And whether anyone will fix the gap before it costs someone else.