The Read is back from the Memorial Day break.

Quick note: I launched a new newsletter, Kitchen Sense. Not recipes. The cooking fundamentals behind every dish you already make: when to salt, how heat works, and why one oil and not the other. With dedicated chats to ask questions, swap recipes, and make friends. Lesson 1 dropped on Tuesday on salt, and it's free for everyone. From Lesson 2 forward, the rest is for paying subscribers.

Let’s get into it.

In Today’s Read

• OPM proposed a five-year NDA for every federal worker, covering “any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material.” That phrase covers the whole federal email system.

• Sarah Kellen named three Epstein abusers in closed-door testimony. CNN ran the names. Most legacy outlets buried them.

• Treasury subpoenaed Hasan Piker over his March Cuba trip. On a Sunday Twitch stream, with no prompting, he named CCP-tied tycoon Neville Roy Singham as his funder. About 40 Americans are in the probe.

• Plus: Paxton beat Cornyn in the Texas runoff, Al Green lost his Houston primary, a third firearms incident near Trump, and Garden Grove evacuations lifted.

A Five-Year NDA for Every Federal Worker

The Story

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) posted a draft government-wide non-disclosure agreement to the Federal Register on Tuesday, May 26. The rule would bar federal workers from sharing "confidential government information," including "internal agency operations, personnel matters, procurement processes, or any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material." The term is five years post-employment, retroactive to current hires. The draft text says the NDA does not override the Whistleblower Protection Act. Disclosures of fraud, waste, abuse, corruption, and retaliation to inspectors general, the Office of Special Counsel, or Congress stay protected. Disclosures to the press are not carved out. OPM cited recent press leaks as the trigger, naming the January Venezuela raid and ongoing immigration-enforcement leaks. AFGE, the largest federal union, says agencies will push the form on existing employees and fire those who refuse to sign. Per Bloomberg Law, the proposed rule went up for a 60-day public comment window before any final adoption. WaPo, CNN, and NPR ran identical timelines.

The Left’s read. WaPo, CNN, NPR, and PBS frame this as a press-freedom crackdown and a chilling effect on whistleblowers. Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Lauren Harper said the proposal from “the ‘most transparent administration in history’ that millions of federal employees sign a blanket NDA is not just absurd, it’s unnecessary and dangerously secretive.” Coverage emphasizes the breadth of “pre-decisional” as a category and the retroactive application to current hires.

The Right’s read. Sparse to nonexistent. The right-of-center outlets that covered the story framed it as leak-plumbing. The Venezuela raid is the working example, the IRGC retaliation risk if the leak had landed early enough. Most conservative coverage skipped the rule entirely.

What both sides are skipping. OPM itself admits the NDA "does not create new substantive restrictions on employee speech or disclosure rights." The Espionage Act already criminalizes leaks of classified information. Disclosure of personal information is covered by the Privacy Act of 1974. Federal employees are already barred from disclosing or using nonpublic information for personal benefit under the 1993 Standards of Ethical Conduct. So if the substantive obligations already exist, what's actually new? Contractual enforcement. A signed contract every federal worker has to actively acknowledge. A breach-of-contract claim agencies can pursue without filing a criminal case. A firing pathway that doesn't require an Espionage Act prosecution. Left coverage has gestured at this. Right coverage has skipped it. Neither has led with the OPM admission.

Leaking has always been a problem inside the federal government, and it’s escalated significantly since Trump entered politics. The Venezuela raid is the cleanest example. American operators were in the field. A legacy outlet held the leak only after the White House made the case that publishing would risk service members in action. Leaking is a real issue and a real national security risk. But what happens when competing priorities collide? When is it about national security, and when is it about politics?

The wording matters. “Any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material” is the whole federal email system. Every draft memo, every personnel discussion, every agency back-and-forth before a final decision. That is the entire record. A five-year gag on every federal employee, retroactive to current hires, is extensive. And while the rule keeps IG, OSC, and Congress open as channels, it forecloses the one channel that has actually moved the needle when those failed: the press.

The carve-outs are there because legislation requires them. Without those carve-outs, the rule would be challenged and shut down fast. So is the carve-out out of principle, or out of requirement? I think we can guess. By foreclosing the press route, federal whistleblowers’ only formal options become IG, OSC, and Congress. IG complaints often take many months to move. OSC has its own backlog. The press call lands a story in a day. Think of the cases that have kept the government accountable when the internal channels failed. Dr. Sam Foote spent 24 years at the Phoenix VA before taking the secret-wait-list deaths to CNN in 2014, after years of internal complaints went nowhere. Forty veterans had died waiting for care. Secretary Shinseki resigned within weeks. The story moved because the formal channels had stalled.

Comey’s 2017 memo leak is the counter-example. The memos reached the public through the press and got used to push the now-discredited Russiagate framing for three years. Leaks can be politically weaponized when press bias and source motivation align. The First Amendment doesn’t sort which.

It’s a challenge to balance all of the priorities and still protect the freedom of the press. Which is the entire point of the Bill of Rights.

Watch the 60-day comment-period close date. Watch which agency adopts the form first. Watch the First Amendment challenge that’s coming. The test will be whether courts force a carve-out for the press the same way the Whistleblower Protection Act forced one for IG, OSC, and Congress.

CNN Ran the Epstein Names. Most Outlets Buried Them

The Story

Sarah Kellen, Epstein’s longtime assistant who pleaded the Fifth roughly 700 times in civil depositions over the years, sat for closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, May 21. Chairman James Comer called it “by far the most substantive and productive interview” the panel has conducted on Epstein.

CNN reported Friday that Kellen named three additional alleged abusers in Epstein’s orbit: celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai (who denies it), former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine (who says he met Epstein “only a few times”), and fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier (who died in 2022). Kellen also told the committee she was sexually and psychologically abused by Epstein on a weekly basis for over a decade. Comer now considers her a victim, not a co-conspirator. Bondi testifies on the Epstein files Friday, May 29.

The Left’s read. CNN ran the names. That’s the exception, not the norm. Most other mainstream-left coverage led with procedure (“closed-door testimony,” “victim status determined”) and walked the three names down the page or omitted them. NYT, WaPo, and NPR did not lead with the names. PBS covered the testimony without naming Levine or Fekkai in the headline or first three paragraphs.

The Right’s read. ABC News led with the names. The Gateway Pundit, Just the News, and the Free Press treated the names as the lede. The framing inside that ecosystem: legacy press won’t run the names because two of the three named are Democrat-adjacent or Manhattan-society-adjacent, and the press protects its own.

What both sides are skipping. Kellen's contested status. Multiple Epstein accusers have positioned her as the operations role for years. Virginia Giuffre's 2015 sworn declaration in the Maxwell case: Kellen "kept a list of girls" and "lined up the massages," and was "often the one who brought the girls upstairs" before Epstein entered the room. A 2008 Florida lawsuit by a Jane Doe plaintiff: Kellen gathered the victim's name and phone number, then walked her up a flight of stairs to a bedroom with a massage table. In 2013, a separate lawsuit called Kellen a "lieutenant" in Epstein's organization, "who served as both his scheduler and a recruiter/procurer of the girls." The 2007 federal non-prosecution agreement named her as one of four "potential co-conspirators." Never charged. Comer's "she's a victim now" call is a political determination from an Oversight chair, not a court finding. Both can be true. She could have been abused for a decade and run the logistics of other girls' abuse. The framing on both sides treats it as binary. It isn't.

I can’t imagine the toll a decade of sexual and psychological abuse by a man like Epstein takes on a person. If half of what’s in Kellen’s sworn statement to the committee is true, the harm she carries is real. I understand the legal calculus too. All of her prior depositions where she pled the Fifth happened while Epstein was alive and before Maxwell went to prison. Pleading the Fifth when you’d otherwise be staring down a co-conspirator charge is not silence. It’s competent legal advice.

The opposite can also be true. She had enough sense to take the Fifth when the prosecutor’s view of her was lieutenant, scheduler, recruiter. Now that Epstein is dead, Maxwell is in prison, and the narrative has settled on monster, she can step in as victim. Timing is the question. A witness with this much legal exposure pleads the Fifth across roughly seven hundred questions in a 2016 deposition and then opens the door in May 2026, because the door is finally safest to open. Naming three new abusers strengthens the victim posture and pulls focus from the operations role Giuffre’s 2015 sworn declaration and the 2007 federal non-prosecution agreement put her in. Both motivations can coexist.

Which brings us to the press. They are all too happy to run some names and not others. Three months ago, on February 11, 2026, Rep. Ro Khanna stood on the House floor and read out six redacted names from the Epstein files: an American billionaire (Wexner), a Dubai logistics CEO (bin Sulayem), a former European Parliament member (Caputo), and three names that read Italian, Georgian, and Russian (Nuara, Mikeladze, Leonov). DOJ pushed back within days: Deputy AG Todd Blanche said some of the men were “completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup,” with no actual connection to Epstein. Lineup photos are filler the FBI uses so victims aren’t identifying the only person shown to them. The mainstream press ran the names anyway. CNN had Khanna on Anderson Cooper. PBS NewsHour and The Hill put the names in their headlines. WaPo’s response was an opinion column titled “How Ro Khanna turned Epstein sex trafficking case into campaign stunt.” That headline framed the namer as the problem. Not the named. The names ran because they served the narrative. Foreign nationals and lineup-photo fillers handed the press a clean way to swing at the Trump DOJ with low political and litigation risk. Nobody had to pressure-test. They printed.

Three months later, Kellen testifies behind closed doors. The Republican-led House Oversight panel hands the names of Fekkai, Levine, and Demarchelier to the press. CNN runs them. NYT, WaPo, NPR bury them in paragraph nine. Same outlets, different volume. The Epstein test runs both ways. Either you name the named, or you don’t.

Bondi testifies on the Epstein files Friday. The Kellen names pre-load the questions Garcia and Mace will ask. Watch which networks cover the Bondi hearing live and which ones run summary clips after. Watch whether NYT and WaPo lead with Levine’s name once Bondi gets asked about him under oath. Watch whether the WaPo opinion section runs a “Comer turns Epstein files into political stunt” version of the Khanna column from February. The asymmetric naming pattern will repeat.

IKYMI

Ever Heard of Neville Roy Singham? Hasan Piker Just Named Him

The Story

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control subpoenaed Twitch streamer Hasan Piker in May over his March trip to Cuba, which he took alongside Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin. About 40 Americans are reportedly in the probe; Ilhan Omar’s daughter Isra Hirsi is in the broader scope.

On a Sunday Twitch stream, with no prompting, Piker named CCP-tied tycoon Neville Roy Singham as the financier behind the Cuba trip and as the funder behind the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), the ANSWER Coalition, and Code Pink.

Independent journalist Asra Nomani has tied Singham to a $278 million network of nonprofits seeding U.S. political activism through layered LLCs and 501(c)s. Older Piker clips also surfaced this week showing him acknowledging the Cuban government provided his streaming infrastructure during a prior visit.

The Left’s read. Largely silent. NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, and Politico did not lead with the Piker admission and, in most cases, did not mention the Singham name. Where left coverage exists, the frame is OFAC overreach and the chilling effect on political speech.

The Right’s read. The Post Millennial, Fox, RedState, and the Free Press treated the admission as the lede. The frame: a left-wing influencer with a multi-million-dollar Twitch contract just confirmed on his own broadcast what right-of-center reporters have been chasing for years. Foreign money, layered LLCs, and ostensibly grassroots protest groups.

What both sides are skipping. The legal mechanism. OFAC subpoenas are administrative. They’re not indictments, and they’re not jury-protected. The First Amendment concern is real if Piker is being targeted as a journalist. He’s also not a journalist by his own description. He’s a streamer who took a trip to a sanctioned country with Medea Benjamin and used hardware allegedly provided by the Cuban government. That’s a different category. Both sides are running their pre-set frame on the press question and skipping the actual scope question. What is the $278 million network actually paying for?

Most readers have never heard of Neville Roy Singham. Until Sunday, a lot of the political class hadn’t either. If Piker hadn’t been talking himself in circles on his own stream, the name would still be where Singham wanted it: out of sight. He doesn’t carry the public profile of a George Soros. No press secretary, no foundation everyone recognizes, no name on the side of a building. That opacity is the point. Singham is arguably worse than Soros. Soros funds progressive causes domestically through Open Society. Singham operates a $278 million network with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party and a clear Marxist ideological project, channeled through layered LLCs and U.S. 501(c) nonprofits. One is an American political movement. The other is a foreign-aligned ideological project running under American activist branding.

The most-watched left-wing streamer on Twitch named his own funder on stream. The Treasury subpoena did in two months what every right-of-center investigative reporter has been chasing for the last five years.

Where is the NYT investigative piece? Where is WaPo’s deep-dive on Singham’s $278 million network? The Asra Nomani receipts have been public for years. Stu Smith’s X thread compiled Singham’s own ideological supercut. The clip of Piker acknowledging the Cuban government provided his streaming hardware is on X. None of this is hidden. It just isn’t being covered by the outlets that have spent the last decade hunting for foreign influence in American politics. Except when the foreign hand is Russian, apparently.

Piker streams from a million-dollar mansion, pontificating (if you can call it that) on communism and revolution he would never actually participate in. The moment things get challenging, he flips and rats. This is a weak man, and the progressive Democrats see him as a symbol of the future. That should tell you a lot about them.

The mock defense will be: “You’re cheering Treasury subpoenas of left-wing voices.” No. I’m noticing that the only mechanism that finally got the foreign-funding network named on the record was Treasury, because the press class that’s supposed to do this kind of reporting hasn’t.

He named his own funder on stream. Believe him.

Watch which legacy outlet runs the Singham name in a headline this week. Watch whether NYT files anything on the $278 million network now that Piker has confirmed the wiring on his own broadcast. Watch what happens to the framing if Isra Hirsi’s name turning up in the broader scope draws formal notice and a sitting member of Congress’s adult child gets pulled in.

Paxton wins the Texas Senate runoff. Texas AG Ken Paxton defeated four-term Sen. John Cornyn in Tuesday's Republican primary runoff. The Associated Press called the race shortly after 8 p.m., roughly an hour after most polls closed. Trump's eleventh-hour endorsement, landed seven days before the runoff, did the work. Paxton will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in November. Cornyn's three-decade Senate run is over. Texas Tribune

Al Green loses TX-18 to Christian Menefee. Houston Democrat Al Green, a two-decade incumbent and Trump's most aggressive impeachment antagonist, lost the TX-18 Democratic primary runoff Tuesday to fellow Rep. Christian Menefee. Final count: Menefee 68.6%, Green 31.4%. The incumbent-on-incumbent matchup was forced by GOP-led redistricting that put the two members in the same Houston district. Green introduced articles of impeachment against Trump in both terms and was censured by the House last year for disrupting Trump's joint-session speech. Even Houston Democrats appear to be done with the shenanigans. Texas Tribune

Trump’s redistricting push hits two losses in 24 hours. A three-judge federal panel ruled Tuesday, May 26, that Alabama’s 2023 congressional map intentionally discriminated by race. The state must use the two-majority-Black-district map for the 2026 midterms while AG Steve Marshall appeals to SCOTUS. The same day, the GOP-led South Carolina Senate voted to reject Trump’s redrawn map that would have eliminated Rep. Jim Clyburn’s district. Several Republicans broke with the White House, citing primary-cycle timing. CBS on Alabama | CBS on South Carolina

Third firearms incident near Trump in a month. On Saturday, May 23, around 6 p.m., a 21-year-old man named Nasire Best from Dundalk, MD pulled a gun at the Secret Service checkpoint at 17th and Pennsylvania and opened fire. Best died at the hospital. The wounded bystander is in serious but stable condition after successful surgery. Best had three prior Secret Service encounters in 2025. He blocked a White House entry lane in June, claiming to be Jesus Christ. He was detained on June 26 for making threats and again on July 10 for entering a restricted area. Third firearms incident near Trump in roughly a month, after the WHCD shooter (April 25) and the Washington Monument incident (May 4). Per CBS News

Garden Grove evacuations lifted. All evacuation orders related to the GKN Aerospace chemical incident were lifted Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. The final 16,000 displaced Orange County residents are home. Unified Command (fire, law enforcement, EPA, county health) confirmed no active leak, no fire risk, and no threat to the public. The 34,000-gallon methyl methacrylate tank that off-gassed Thursday May 21 has cooled after a crack let pressure release safely. A limited road closure remains near the GKN site, and the OC DA's probe into the cause is ongoing. ABC7 LA

Vance announces $22B in fraud referrals. On Tuesday, May 26, VP JD Vance posted that the administration’s Anti-Fraud Task Force has clawed back billions and referred roughly $22 billion in fraudulent small-business assistance claims to DOJ in its first two months. The task force was set up earlier this year following Medicaid-fraud audit findings. No formal DOJ filing has been announced yet.

Pentagon vs. DNC over Memorial Day post. The DNC published a Memorial Day post naming 13 U.S. service members killed during the recent Iran operation. The Pentagon called the post “classless,” arguing the political framing politicized the soldiers’ deaths. Pushback from Gold Star families and bipartisan veterans groups followed within hours.

UFC octagon rises on the White House South Lawn. Construction is underway for UFC Freedom 250, the Octagon-on-the-lawn event scheduled for Sunday, June 14. The date is both Flag Day and Trump's 80th birthday. The card headlines Ilia Topuria vs. Justin Gaethje for the unified UFC Lightweight Championship. Capacity: 5,000 invited guests on the lawn, with another 100,000 expected on screens nearby. UFC and TKO Group are covering the $60 million construction tab. The White House covers staffing and security.

• Related: A UFC Fight on the White House Lawn? Yeah, I’m Actually Here for It

That’s the read. See you Friday. Share this with a friend who could use a cross-check on their news.

If The Read is doing the cross-check work for you, send it to a friend who’s still chasing the framing instead of the facts.

Some quick housekeeping.

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Let’s get into the news!

In Today’s Read

• The DNC’s 2024 autopsy came out 192 pages with the exec summary and conclusion literally blank. Gaza doesn’t appear once. The chairman fired the author the same day and told you not to trust what’s inside.

• A managing assistant U.S. attorney in Southern Florida allegedly emailed herself Volume II of Jack Smith’s sealed report, twice, after renaming the file “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf.” She pleaded not guilty Wednesday.

• JD Vance confirmed at a White House briefing that DOJ is probing Ilhan Omar for immigration fraud and family financial ties. ABC, NBC, and CBS evening news ran zero seconds on it. Her March disclosure amendment also revalued her husband’s companies from $30 million to zero.

• Aimee Bock got 500 months and $243 million in restitution for the Feeding Our Future scheme. Same day, DOJ charged 15 more Minnesotans in a $90 million Medicaid fraud sweep.

• The Senate punted ICE and CBP funding past Trump’s June 1 deadline after GOP senators revolted over the DOJ’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The DNC’s autopsy is missing a body

The Story.

The Democratic National Committee released its 2024 election autopsy on May 21 after CNN obtained the document and forced the issue. The report runs 192 pages. The author is Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, who DNC Chair Ken Martin announced was no longer with the committee hours after publication.

Martin’s release statement reads more like a disavowal: “I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it.” The exec summary, the conclusion, and the “Notes for the reader” section are blank. The words “Gaza,” “Israel,” “Palestinians,” and “Walz” do not appear anywhere in 192 pages. Biden’s decision to run again is not analyzed.

What the report does say: identity politics is a crutch, kitchen-table economics is the path forward, the assumption “Trump’s negatives were baked in” was “a major failure of analysis,” and state-party support was cut.

The Left’s read. The Intercept and Common Dreams are furious about the Gaza omission. The Intercept quoted a policy executive who met with Rivera in July 2025 and was told privately, “the data clearly showed Gaza had hurt Biden and Harris.” Then Rivera handed in 192 pages with no Gaza analysis. MaddowBlog and MSNBC are running the autopsy-of-the-autopsy frame: who got to Rivera between July and December?

The Right’s read. The Washington Times is celebrating the identity-politics-as-a-crutch finding and the rural-America critique (“Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate. The math doesn’t work.”). The frame: Democrats just admitted, in their own document, that they do not care about rural America, and the bet that nonwhite voter growth would carry them forever was a fantasy.

What both sides are skipping. The 2028 prospect. Mediaite reported that Martin only released the report after a phone call with an unnamed 2028 Democratic prospect left him “rattled.” Nobody has the name yet. That call is the story under the story, and neither the Intercept frame (Gaza) nor the Washington Times frame (identity politics) is chasing it.

Everyone thought Ken Martin was holding the autopsy back because it was damaging to Harris or Biden. The truth was simpler. It was embarrassing for the DNC because there was no autopsy.

There’s no analysis of the campaigns, no examination of Harris’s coronation, no reckoning with Biden’s debate collapse. Entire sections sit blank. The thing is riddled with spelling errors. The only substantive finding is that the Democrats blew up their own coalition by assuming non-whites would vote Democrat forever. When they didn’t, the Democrats couldn’t tell their donors why.

The Left’s biggest criticism is the Gaza omission. They want it to be THE reason Harris lost. It isn’t. Foreign policy sits at the bottom of voter priority lists cycle after cycle. The Left wants the omitted data to confirm their pro-Palestine, blame-Israel-for-everything trajectory. The likelier read is that Harris lost because she was a bad candidate forced on the electorate. They need Gaza to be the story so they don’t have to confront the harder one: their cultural policies are unpopular.

The 192-page autopsy of a party that lost the White House, the Senate, the House, and the down-ballot map has no substance and no reflection. It exposes their incompetence. The party stays unpopular and keeps getting pulled further left. They have learned nothing. The seeds of antisemitism since October 7 have only grown. Look at the most recent Democratic primary winners. A large portion are Hamas apologists and/or socialists. Harris is still ranking at the top of 2028 Democratic primary polls.

I want to know which 2028 prospect got Martin on the phone. My guess is Kamala. The speculation was that the report was damaging to her, and the play would be to make the DNC and Martin sacrifice themselves by releasing this joke of an autopsy. Whoever takes the stage in August is the one on that rattled call.

Worth flagging. Akela Lacy at The Intercept had the Gaza-omission story first and ran the Rivera-told-us-privately receipts. Credit where due. The left is doing the cross-check on the left’s own party. The right press wasn’t going to.

IKYMI

A fair share of the recent Democratic primary winners I called Hamas apologists or socialists are DSA members or DSA-endorsed. The Democratic Socialists of America is the political machine quietly unseating moderate incumbents and putting people on your city council. Most readers have no idea how the DSA actually operates, who funds it, or how it picks its targets.

Read about it here. 👇

A DOJ prosecutor allegedly emailed herself the Smith report under “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf”

The Story.

On May 20, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida unsealed an indictment against Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, 62, of Port St. Lucie. Lineberger was the managing assistant U.S. attorney in the Fort Pierce branch of the SDFL, the office that handled the Trump classified-documents prosecution. She pleaded not guilty in West Palm Beach on Wednesday.

The charges: one felony count of obstruction, one felony count of concealing public records, and two misdemeanor counts of theft of government property. Prosecutors allege Lineberger received Volume II of Jack Smith’s sealed report, the classified-documents volume Judge Aileen Cannon had blocked from release, and emailed it from her DOJ account to her personal email accounts twice. In fall 2025, she allegedly renamed the file “chocolate cake recipe.” In December, she allegedly renamed it “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf” and sent it to her personal Gmail and her personal Hotmail.

The Left’s read. The Washington Post led procedurally, then pivoted hard to Rep. Jamie Raskin’s statement that the Smith report contains “damning” evidence that Trump retained classified documents tied to his business interests. The angle: the real story isn’t Lineberger, it’s what was in the report she tried to get out. CNN runs the same beat.

The Right’s read. Jonathan Turley at Fox News, under “Recipe for Disaster,” and the Washington Examiner ran the obvious frame: a career DOJ insider tried to exfiltrate a sealed federal document by disguising it as a cake recipe. Trump’s DOJ caught one of its own. The irony lands hard: the office handling Trump’s classified documents case produced an officer charged with mishandling classified documents.

What both sides are skipping. The Cannon gag order itself. Cannon had blocked Volume II from release, and Lineberger’s alleged exfiltration happened while that order was in force. Neither side wants to ask whether sealing a document of high political salience produces the very leak incentive it was meant to prevent. The Post would have to credit the right’s longtime complaint about over-sealing; the right would have to credit the left’s argument that suppression breeds whistleblowing. So neither touches it.

A career DOJ attorney saw Volume II, renamed it after a cake, and emailed it to her personal Hotmail. Also, who still has Hotmail?

Quick context. Volume II is the classified documents half of Jack Smith’s final report. After Cannon dismissed the case in 2024, Smith finalized two volumes. Garland released Volume I, the election-interference half, in January 2025. Volume II got sealed when Cannon barred Garland or any successor AG from releasing it publicly. That order was still in force the day Lineberger allegedly emailed Volume II to her Hotmail.

So we are all on the same page. The DOJ, a sealed report, and dessert filenames, it reads like a bad spy novel. I picture an Angela Lansbury type. But it’s not a joke, the Biden DOJ pursued Trump for mishandling classified documents. Having an insider justifying moving evidence into a personal inbox is a service to the resistance. We have seen similar play repeatedly. The same thing happened with Russiagate, Trump’s tax records, and Carter Page. It’s a pattern. And now Lineberger is emailing herself a report that is under a gag order concealed as a cake recipe?

Why? Was she keeping it as leverage against the president or to monetize it?

The president is over 2 years into his second term after the first was plagued with institutional opposition. Clearly, the problem still exists. Watch whether DOJ ever surfaces filings showing Lineberger sent Volume II to anyone outside the department. The indictment doesn’t yet allege a third-party recipient. If one surfaces, the cake disguise shifts from internal exfiltration to an active leak. Did anyone else at the SDFL office squirrel away a copy? Will we eventually see Volume II on the front page of WaPo?

Worth flagging. Turley’s column is the cleanest legal walkthrough of the charges I’ve seen. He sticks to what’s in the indictment. Read it.

A sitting VP confirmed a federal probe into a sitting congresswoman. Three networks skipped it.

The Story.

On May 19, at a White House press briefing, Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the Department of Justice is actively investigating Rep. Ilhan Omar for immigration fraud and family financial ties. Vance said “it certainly seems like something fishy is there” about Omar’s 2009 marriage, and added: “If we think that there’s a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime.”

The immigration-fraud allegation is old. It centers on Omar’s marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who multiple investigators have alleged is her biological brother. The financial angle is newer and overlaps with her reported ties to the Feeding Our Future fraud network (see the Quick Rundown for more). The Biden DOJ ran a financial probe in 2024 that closed without charges. Omar denied wrongdoing, called the probe “racist, creepy, and weird,” and said any claim of knowledge of the Feeding Our Future scheme is “flat-out false.”

The financial picture got worse for her in March. Omar amended her 2024 financial disclosure after the original filing valued husband Tim Mynett’s two companies at $6 million to $30 million, a sharp jump from prior years. The amended filing revalued the companies at zero and reported income from them between $102,502 and $1.005 million. Her attorney called the original an accountant’s error. Independent accountants have publicly said the math doesn’t reconcile.

Then NewsBusters audited the May 19 evening news broadcasts. ABC, NBC, and CBS did not lead with the Vance confirmation. None of them mentioned it. Zero seconds across the three of them.

The Left’s read. MaddowBlog framed Vance’s confirmation as “another person Trump doesn’t like” being added to a political-revenge list, and tied it to the administration’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as a single architecture of payback. The frame: the probe is the story, not the substance. Slate and the WaPo opinion section run the same angle.

The Right’s read. Fox 9 Minneapolis, the Daily Caller, and Fox News reported the confirmation straight and pivoted to substance: the brother-marriage receipts, Feeding Our Future donations from defendants, the Minnesota state fraud committee’s parallel suspicion. The frame: the Biden probe was thin because it had to be, the family-finances angle is new, and the only question is whether DOJ produces filings.

What both sides are skipping. The networks. Not the probe itself, the network silence around it. A sitting VP confirming a federal investigation into a sitting member of Congress at a White House briefing is, by any normal news-judgment standard, a national lead. NewsBusters compared it to coverage volume on the Santos investigation. Networds ran Santos investigation non stop, zero on Omar.

Did three of the largest news operations in the country decline to lead with a White House confirmation of a federal probe into a sitting congresswoman? Yes. So which institution is “weaponizing” here? The DOJ, which has to produce filings and meet the burden in court, or the editors who decided viewers shouldn’t know the briefing happened?

The brother-marriage allegations are old. The Biden probe closed without charges. Fine. A news outlet should still report on it, but let’s grant the networks the benefit of the doubt on old news. The Feeding Our Future angle is genuinely new, the sentenced ringleader is named Omar, and the Minnesota state fraud committee is parallel-tracking. The VP of the United States addressed it from the podium, and they reported nothing.

The test: if DOJ produces filings within 90 days, will the networks report? Can they keep ignoring the story? If DOJ produces, Vance’s “fishy” line ages well. My money is they find a fish. The media will run “weaponization” and “retribution” with accusations of racism and xenophobia mixed in. Omar will become the face for Trump’s alleged attacks on all immigrants.

Watch whether MSNBC books Omar for a friendly hit. Watch whether DOJ files anything within 30 days showing actual scope. If the networks still won’t touch it after the Bock sentencing dropped the same day, they’re not going to. They’re just crossing their fingers you won’t notice.

Aimee Bock got 500 months and a $243 million restitution order Thursday for the Feeding Our Future scheme. At least 57 people billed the federal government $250 million for pandemic-era meals never served. Bock told the court “I don’t have the words to express just how horrible I feel.” CBS Minnesota.

DOJ also charged 15 more Minnesotans in a separate $90 million Medicaid fraud sweep across seven state programs. Assistant AG Colin McDonald called the charges “unprecedented,” flanked by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz. Fox News.

The DOJ unsealed a 20-page Miami indictment charging 94-year-old Raúl Castro and five Cuban pilots over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown. Charges include conspiracy, murder, and aircraft destruction. Acting AG Todd Blanche said it was no “show indictment.” CBS News, Daily Wire.

The Senate punted ICE and CBP funding past Trump’s June 1 deadline after GOP senators revolted over the DOJ’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” Grassley and Cotton reportedly erupted at Deputy AG Blanche behind closed doors. The parliamentarian also stripped a $1 billion Secret Service ballroom-security line. CBS News, Fox News, Daily Signal.

Kyle Busch, two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, died Thursday at 41 after a severe illness. Busch holds the all-time wins record across NASCAR’s top three series. Eleven days before he died, he radioed for a “shot” from a doctor at Watkins Glen. CBS News.

Stephen Colbert’s Late Show signs off tonight after CBS canceled the show ahead of the Paramount-Skydance merger. John Oliver and David Letterman appeared on the finale; Letterman delivered an on-air “good night and good luck, motherf---ers” aimed at CBS leadership. The Hill.

That’s the Read! Also, keep your eye on your inbox tomorrow. I got a fun essay/rant headed your way. Free for everyone.

See you Monday.

If The Read is doing the cross-check work for you, send it to a friend who’s still chasing the framing instead of the facts.

Apparently, I am in a mood. 😉 I get a little ranty in some of today’s Reads, and did a little rage baiting on X this morning.

Let’s get into it.

Today’s edition:

• Trump just spent $32 million to take out the one Republican asking the Epstein questions. Plus a primary-night recap callout with prelim results from all six states that voted Tuesday.

• DOJ stood up a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” inside a Trump IRS settlement. Even Republicans are squinting at this one.

• California made a girl share her gold medal with the biological male who beat her. They’re calling it “inclusion.” Her mother isn’t.

Massie Got 14 Years, One Bill, and a Goodbye From His Own Party

The Story

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) lost his GOP primary Tuesday night to retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, the Trump-endorsed challenger the president personally recruited. The final margin (with about 72% of the vote counted): Gallrein 54.4%, Massie 45.6%. An 8.8-point loss. The race cost a combined $32.6 million in ad spending, making it the most expensive House primary in U.S. history. Trump's aligned super PAC dropped $16.4 million on Gallrein. The Massie-aligned side raised about $10.1 million. Massie has held the seat for 14 years.

Trump went scorched-earth on Truth Social in the final week. The greatest hits: “the Worst ‘Republican’ Congressman in the History of our Party.” A “disloyal, ungracious, and sanctimonious FOOL.” A “moron,” a “nut job,” a “major Sleazebag.” On primary morning, the president posted: “Kentucky, get this LOSER out of politics.”

What did Massie actually do to earn it? Three things. He voted against the House GOP budget in February 2025 (the only Republican to do so) and against Trump's big beautiful bill in June. He voted against the administration’s strikes on Iran. And led the House push along with Democrat Ro Khanna to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Massie’s reaction Tuesday night was characteristically dry. “I think that’s going to help my fundraising,” he told The Hill when asked about Trump calling him a moron.

Primary night, in one paragraph. Five other states voted Tuesday. Here’s what’s called and what’s still settling.

Pennsylvania: Reps. Fitzpatrick, Mackenzie, Bresnahan, and Perry all coasted unopposed on the GOP side. Chris Rabb won PA-3 by nearly 15 points, becoming the newest DSA-endorsed member headed to Congress. Summer Lee held off Will Parker in the PA-12 primary; she’ll face Republican James Hayes in November.

Georgia: Big runoffs on the GOP side. The Senate primary ended Mike Collins (41%) vs Derek Dooley (30%), with Buddy Carter knocked out at 25%. The governor primary ended Burt Jones (38%) vs Rick Jackson (33%). Both head to June 16. Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Dem governor primary outright with 56.2%, dodging a runoff.

Alabama: Tommy Tuberville won the GOP governor primary; he’ll face Doug Jones in November, a rematch of their 2020 Senate race. The Senate primary to fill Tuberville’s seat is headed to a runoff, with Trump-endorsed Barry Moore leading and AG Steve Marshall narrowly ahead of Jared Hudson for the second spot.

Idaho: Sen. Jim Risch easily fended off three challengers. Reps. Russ Fulcher (77%) and Mike Simpson (62%) defended their House seats.

Oregon: Christine Drazan won the GOP gubernatorial primary with 44.5%, setting up a 2022 rematch against Gov. Tina Kotek, who cruised on the Dem side. Janelle Bynum took 84% in OR-5; Val Hoyle won the OR-4 Dem primary with 78% and will face Republican Monique DeSpain (87%) in November.

The Left is calling it “Trump’s revenge tour.” Axios used those exact words. The Washington Post calls Massie “the latest casualty of Trump’s wrath.” The ideological-purity-test angle is the spine. They want you to read this as Trump punishing a man for the crime of having his own opinions.

The Right is celebrating it as a purge. Fox News leads with the loser-out-of-politics quote. The Hill calls it a “major victory” for the president. The framing: a RINO got disciplined by the base.

What both sides skipped: Why was this race the most expensive House primary in history? Where did the $16.4 million in super PAC money come from? The Intercept was the only outlet to name AIPAC’s heavy spending against Massie because of his Iran vote. Most of the post-mortems quietly scrubbed the Epstein angle too. Massie was the lone Republican in the House publicly forcing the document release. He’s gone now.

Being principled and being effective are not the same thing. Massie was the first. He was not the second. In Washington, the second gets legislation across the line.

For years Massie cited that he voted with Republicans 90% of the time. Pull the receipts on the 119th, and that number has slid closer to 78. Heritage Action had him at 96% in the 117th. Quick context, because this is the part the cable shows skip. Most of Congress votes bipartisan 90% of the time. The bulk of the House calendar is naming post offices and renewing routine appropriations nobody fights over. The 10% that decides whether a Republican or a Democrat agenda actually moves is where the floor fights happen. That’s the 10% where Massie has been quietly siding with the Democrats.

A congressperson represents their district. Yes. They also have to make legislation move. The way you do that in Washington is by making friends, the kind of friends who pick up the phone when your district needs a favor. Massie didn’t have any.

What did Massie actually pass in 14 years? The Epstein Files Transparency Act. One piece of legislation. And he didn’t pass it through his own conference. He passed it through a discharge petition with Ro Khanna and all 215 House Democrats. The thing he’s most famous for getting through is the thing he had to leave his own party to do.

And about that bill. I have said this on the podcast and I will say it again here. Dumping 100,000 pages of documents on the public with no context, no curation, no understanding of why a name appears in a witness photo lineup versus a flight log is exactly how guilt by association turns into a witch hunt. Khanna stood on the House floor and named six “co-conspirators.” Four turned out to be random men pulled into an FBI photo lineup during the original investigation. Zero connection to Epstein. “This should not be a witch-hunt,” Khanna said after the fact. Cool. Tell that to the four men whose names are sitting on the open internet because two congressmen wanted a headline.

And about Hegseth. Pete Hegseth, the sitting Secretary of War, showed up Monday in Hebron, Kentucky at an America First Works rally to campaign against Massie. "Too much grandstanding, too few great votes," he said about a sitting member of Congress. That's a real break from Pentagon norms. Yes, Massie's exit benefits Hegseth specifically because Massie voted against the Iran strikes. That doesn't make it appropriate. I want my Department of War running operations, not running congressional primaries. Stay in the Pentagon.

And spare me the left-media framing that Tuesday night was “Trump’s loyalty test” against an honest dissenter. As if party discipline were invented in 2024. Pelosi got “strategic genius” coverage for the exact behavior Trump gets “authoritarian” coverage for. The rest of the media is like, cool.

Watch whether Massie runs again in 2028 or pivots to a Senate run or the podcast circuit.

Being a martyr is not the same as being effective. Massie chose the first. Kentucky’s 4th chose the second.

$1.776 Billion. No Oversight. No Cap. No Recipient List

The Story

On Monday, May 18, Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. In the same motion, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order creating a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” inside the Department of Justice. The fund will be financed by the federal Judgment Fund, a permanent Treasury appropriation. A five-member board (four appointed by the Attorney General, one chosen in consultation with congressional leadership) will hear claims from people who allege they were victims of government “weaponization” and issue both formal apologies and monetary awards.

The number, $1.776 billion, is a wink at 1776. Subtle.

Trump is technically not eligible. Blanche told reporters that Trump’s family won’t receive money from the fund. But his orbit can apply. That orbit, per CBS News reporting, reads as the obvious shortlist: the roughly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Trump’s lawyers, and others targeted under Biden-era DOJ. James Comey could apply. So could everyone who has been a victim of lawfare.

Quick context. The Judgment Fund is a real thing. It exists to pay court-ordered settlements against the federal government. It doesn’t normally cut $1.776 billion checks to a board with no judicial review, no defined evidence standard, and no requirement to disclose who gets paid. There is no rule requiring DOJ to tell you who got the money.

Sen. Ron Wyden on X called it a “$1.7 billion slush fund for right-wing political violence.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren called it “an insane level of corruption.” 93 House Democrats filed an amicus brief opposing the settlement on self-dealing grounds.

The Left is calling it a slush fund. Time magazine walks through the structural problem. CBS asks who actually gets paid. WaPo’s editorial board says “bad precedent.” The Democratic talking point is corruption.

The Right is running cover. Fox News headlined it “apologies, cash headed to alleged weaponization victims.” Blanche insists the fund is “not limited to Republicans, not limited to Democrats, not limited to January 6 defendants.” Even Deseret News (Utah, Mormon, Romney-coded but mainstream right) reports congressional Republicans are skeptical.

Restitution funds for government overreach are not new. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 paid out $20,000 each to 82,219 Japanese Americans wrongfully interned in WWII, financed through Treasury and administered by a defined Office of Redress Administration with criteria published in the Federal Register. Pigford v. Glickman put $1.25 billion through Congress in 2010 to compensate Black farmers the USDA had discriminated against, with a two-track claim system and court supervision. The principle that a federal government should pay people back when it crushed them is settled in American law. Start there.

Lawfare against Trump and his orbit was real: the Letitia James prosecution, the Mar-a-Lago raid, the Manhattan DA case run on charges no predecessor ever brought against a former president. And it didn’t stop at the top of the org chart. It went down to grandmothers who walked into the Capitol on January 6 and got plea-bargained into felonies by a DOJ that left half the Antifa docket on the table. The process was the punishment. For ten years. “That’s a slush fund for his circle!” Yeah, his circle. The circle that was specifically targeted by the previous DOJ for ten years. Don’t act surprised that’s where the claims line up.

So I get the impulse. Make people whole, show that it happened, use the resources of the state to acknowledge what the state did. The history says the state can do that without it being corrupt, if the state is honest about how.

Here’s where I’m not loving it.

Where is the oversight? A five-member board appointed by the Attorney General, with no Senate confirmation requirement, no published evidence standard, and no requirement to release the list of who gets paid. Every prior restitution fund of comparable scale in U.S. history had either judicial review or legislative oversight baked into the founding document. This one has a board the AG picks and a Treasury fund that empties whenever the board says yes. No likey.

Where’s the cap? The number $1.776 billion is a wink at 1776. Cute. We are $39 trillion in debt as of today, gas is climbing past four-fifty a gallon, and DOJ just picked $1.776 billion out of the branding department. The fund quantity should be tied to what the country can afford and what the claims actually justify, not to a Founding Father math joke that fits on a Truth Social post. Pick the number from the evidence. Don’t pick it from the branding department.

What’s the process? Who decides what makes a valid claim? Are these board members nonpartisan? Is nonpartisan even possible anymore? The claims themselves are going to be partisan by nature. Picture the room. So what happens when the Democrats run DOJ in 2029, stand up a “Restorative Justice Fund” with $1.776 billion of their own, and decide that everyone harmed by Trump-era DOJ deserves a payout? Conservatives would lose their minds. They would be right to lose their minds. And we would be the ones who set the precedent. The right’s instinct used to be limited government with rule-of-law guardrails. This is the opposite of both.

I am not running cover for Letitia James. The lawfare was real, the victims were real, and the principle of restitution is right. But the implementation is not it. A discretionary fund administered by political appointees with no published criteria is the same mechanism that produced the original problem.

Watch which Republican senators ask for oversight language before this fund cuts a single check. Watch what Judge Williams does at the May 27 hearing in Florida. Watch who the AG names to the board and how many of them have ever drawn a paycheck outside a political appointment. Watch whether DOJ ever tells you the name of the first recipient.

I get the idea, but this is not it.

California Made a Girl Share Her Gold Medal to Save Its Federal Funding

The Story

At the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section finals on Saturday, May 16, AB Hernandez (a biological male, 17, Jurupa Valley High senior) won the girls' high jump, long jump, and triple jump. He beat second-place Gwynneth Mureika in the high jump by two inches. In the long jump, he outperformed Gianna Gonzalez by more than a foot. CIF, anticipating the politics, had pre-baked a workaround: any female athlete finishing behind a "trans athlete" gets bumped one spot up the podium. So Mureika and Hernandez both received gold medals in the high jump and stood next to each other on the top step. Some of Hernandez's female competitors iced him out. Others skipped the medal ceremony entirely.

Riley Gaines went on Fox & Friends Monday and called the shared podium “a public humiliation ritual for the girls. It’s probably one of the most abusive things you can do to a young woman.”

Hernandez’s own mother criticized the policy. She told Breitbart that the shared podium is humiliating for the girls and unfair to her son.

The Left is framing this as Hernandez being forced to share what was rightfully his. PinkNews ran 800 words about Hernandez’s feelings and didn’t quote one girl who lost. The Mirror US ran the same angle. Yahoo Sports called the rule a compromise. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office released a statement Monday saying he “rejects the right wing’s cynical attempt to weaponize this debate as an excuse to vilify individual kids,” and that his position is to “stand with all kids and stand up to bullies.”

The Right is letting the image speak. Fox, Breitbart, Newsbusters, OutKick. The framing is photographic. A 17-year-old biological male next to a 16-year-old girl on a girls’ gold medal podium. Both wearing first-place medals. The argument writes itself.

What got skipped: This isn't a kindness policy. It's a federal-funding workaround. Trump's February 2025 executive order threatened to pull federal education funding from any state allowing biological males in girls' sports. The DOJ sued California in July 2025 for Title IX violations; California countersued first in June to keep state law in place. CIF's shared-podium pilot rolled out in the middle of that active legal fight, with the stated purpose of letting "cisgender female athletes qualify for first place, even if they don't win, while still allowing transgender female athletes to compete." Translation: we will not deny the girl gold, so technically not Title IX, and we will not stop the boy from competing, so technically still California law. The girls on the second step are not props for inclusion. They are props for a federal-funding argument California needs to keep alive in court.

Remember the entire pro-trans-athlete argument? There is no significant biological advantage to being male in women’s sports. That was the line for years. Hormone suppression, estrogen levels, leveled playing field, just let them compete. So somebody tell me why CIF needs a shared-podium workaround at all. If there’s no advantage, just hand the boy the gold and move on. The workaround is the confession. Every shared podium is California’s school board whispering: we know, we know, we know.

Real question I haven’t seen anyone ask. What happens at nationals? If a trans athlete wins a California state qualifier, does CIF send both the boy and the girl to the regional meet? And does whatever federation hosts that meet even allow him to compete with the girls? CIF didn’t think this through past the local press cycle.

And the girls. Gwynneth Mureika cleared that bar. Gianna Gonzalez ran that long jump. They trained for years and showed up to that finals meet to compete against girls because the bracket said girls. A biological male shows up and wins. CIF puts one of those girls on the top step next to him and calls them co-champions. Give me a break!

If California believes this position so passionately, then stand on business and take the consequences. Fight the Title IX lawsuit on the merits, lose the federal funding if that’s what conviction costs, and make the public case that biological males belong in girls’ sports. Instead California built a workaround that contradicts its own argument, still violates Title IX in substance, and is crossing fingers that a court sides with the technicality. That isn’t conviction. That’s a state with a deathgrip on an ideology and a deathgrip on its federal funding spigot trying to keep both. Pick one.

Newsom calls it “cynical” to ask the question and says people raising it are “bullies” trying to “vilify individual kids.” He’s the governor of California telling Gwynneth Mureika her gold medal isn’t worth talking about. Bro, shut up.

Watch which girls’ track team boycotts a meet next. Watch what happens when the first CIF trans-athlete winner advances to a regional event that doesn’t permit it. Watch whether any California Democrat running for governor in 2026 says one honest sentence about this.

The argument was always that there’s no biological advantage. The shared podium is California conceding there is.

Trump called off a “scheduled” attack on Iran at the last minute. The president said Monday he was “an hour away” from striking Tuesday morning when the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE asked him to hold off for two or three days because they think a deal is close. Trump postponed the strike but ordered Hegseth and the Joint Chiefs to be ready to “go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice.” The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. National gas prices sit at $4.52. A U.S. official separately denied Iranian and CNBC reports that Washington had agreed to lift its oil sanctions. CBS News

Trump endorsed Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in the Texas Senate runoff. The endorsement came Tuesday, one week before the May 26 runoff between the four-term incumbent senator and the state attorney general. Cornyn finished the March primary at about 42% to Paxton’s 41%, with neither clearing the 50% threshold. Trump on Truth Social: “Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas.” Senate GOP leadership had been quietly lobbying Trump to back Cornyn. Lindsey Graham warned the endorsement could make the general election “three times more expensive.” Democratic state Rep. James Talarico is the November nominee. Fox News

Three killed at Islamic Center of San Diego in suspected hate crime. Two teenage gunmen, identified as Cain Clark (17) and Caleb Vazquez (18), shot and killed three adult staff members, including a security guard, at the mosque Monday morning before turning their guns on themselves. The security guard was credited with helping contain the attack and saving lives. Police recovered a shotgun and gas can marked with the Nazi SS symbol, plus written hate-speech material and anti-Islamic writings in the suspects’ vehicle. Police are treating the attack as a hate crime. (Note on online rumors: there is no evidence either shooter was transgender. One had long hair worn in cornrows because he was a high school wrestler.) New York Post

TX-35 Democrat Maureen Galindo pledged to convert an ICE facility into an “internment camp for American Zionists.” Galindo, headed to a May 26 Democratic runoff against Johnny Garcia in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, wrote in an Instagram post that she would turn the Karnes County ICE detention center into a prison for “American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” and “a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.” Former primary opponent John Lira rescinded his endorsement. Senate nominee James Talarico said he will not campaign with Galindo even if she wins the runoff: “This antisemitic rhetoric has no place in our politics.” The San Antonio Jewish Federation condemned the remarks. San Antonio Current

VP JD Vance confirmed DOJ is investigating Rep. Ilhan Omar for immigration fraud. Vance, the administration’s designated “fraud czar,” told reporters Tuesday that the Justice Department is actively investigating Omar (D-MN) over the long-standing allegation that her 2009 marriage to British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was a green-card arrangement with her biological brother. Vance: “It certainly seems like something fishy is there. If we think that there’s a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime.” Omar’s husband’s companies reportedly grew from $51,000 in value in 2023 to as much as $30 million in 2024; Omar called it an accounting error. She has denied the brother-marriage allegations as “absurd and offensive.” Just The News

Shein bought Everlane for about $100 million. China's $100 billion fast-fashion giant acquired the San Francisco slow-fashion brand (known for pricing transparency and recycled-material lines like its 2019 DayGlove ReKnit shoes made from recycled plastic bottles), per Puck News reporting Sunday. Shein faces allegations of sweatshop labor, child workers in its supply chain, design theft from independent designers, and is currently under a Texas AG investigation by Ken Paxton over unsafe consumer products and labor practices. American textile manufacturing has declined more than 80% since its 1970s peak; roughly 98% of U.S. apparel is now produced abroad. Daily Wire

That’s The Read! See you Friday. Remember to share it with a friend.

If The Read is doing the cross-check work for you, send it to a friend who’s still chasing the framing instead of the facts.

I know I’m not super excited either.

Random question for you. Did you watch the Ronda Rousey v. Gina Carano “fight” on Saturday night? If you managed to stay away and didn’t blink an eye, it's possible you did. Because it took all of 17 seconds.

I’m not kidding. The commercial for the UFC fight on the White House lawn was longer than the fight. Also, yes. I saw a commercial for the UFC Fight for America 250.

Moving on…

In Today’s Read

• The Supreme Court left mail-order mifepristone in place. Thomas and Alito wrote dissents that look more like a how-to guide than a fume.

• Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in the country, agreed to pay $10 million and stand up a clinic to reverse the procedures it performed. Call it a confession.

• The Washington Post wants ICE blamed for a two-year-old’s murder. Their evidence: she said so.

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Thomas Throws a Lifeline to the Battle Over Mail-Order Abortion

The Story.

On May 14, the Supreme Court left mail-order mifepristone in place while Louisiana’s challenge goes back to the Fifth Circuit on remand. Access stays as-is for now. The actual news is the dissents.

Alito called the order “unreasoned” and “remarkable,” and wrote that “what is at stake is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.” Thomas went further. He pointed at the Comstock Act of 1873, which bans the mailing of any drug “designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion,” and wrote that the Court should enforce it on its face. His line: “mifepristone shipped to Louisiana, which bans abortion, causes nearly 1,000 abortions per month. All of this violates the Comstock Act.”

Quick context. Comstock was a moral crusader. Most of the 1873 law banned mailing obscene material. One clause banned mailing abortion drugs. Never repealed. Sat dead under Roe. After Dobbs, it became a live wire nobody had touched. Until Thursday.

The Left’s read. Slate’s headline was “Samuel Alito fumes over abortion access in red states.” Talking Points Memo led with the justices “seething.” Lawyers, Guns & Money called them “two misogynist septuagenarians.” On the left, the story is that the conservatives lost and are mad. The Comstock argument gets treated as a Thomas quirk, not a roadmap. The Intercept is the rare outlet on that side that flagged the Comstock revival as the next phase.

The Right’s read. The Federalist framed the order as the Court “authorizing mail-order abortion.” The Washington Stand called the stay a procedural punt and treated Thomas’s dissent as the playbook. Right-of-center coverage took the Comstock revival as the signal, not an asterisk.

What both sides are skipping. Two sitting justices, including one writing a full-throated invitation, put a 153-year-old statute back on the table as the mechanism. The next state AG who wants to file a Comstock-revival test case now has the bench’s own language to quote in the opening pages. The question stopped being whether the argument existed. It’s now which case carries it.

Where does the case stand? Currently, the Supreme Court has said, “Hold up, wait a minute,” to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that would have blocked mailing the abortion pill mifepristone or sending it after a telehealth visit. That means people can still get the pill by mail for now, while the case continues in the lower courts. It could all return to the Supreme Court for a final decision, which would determine whether mail‑order access to the pill remains legal nationwide or whether stricter limits take effect. Until then, access is unchanged.

The dissent by Alito, and especially Thomas, provides the State AGs with a pretty solid argument. But expect that line of attack to be that the Right is digging up old and antiquated laws to strip women of the right to control their bodies. “Of course, the Right would dig up laws when women were second-class citizens and weaponize them.”

It’s a played-out strategy to attack a law that is still on the books as “old,” as if the age determines enforcement. You know what else is old? The Constitution.

The Comstock argument has been kicking around law review pages for two years. Now, a sitting justice has named the statute, the conduct, and the remedy in writing. Will the State AGs get the memo?

The rebuttal to Comstock will likely be based on federalism. If Washington enforces the 1873 mail statute, it overrides the abortion policy of every blue state. “Let the states decide” was the post-Dobbs principle. However, if a state has decided on no abortions, what right does another state have to mail a drug for at-home abortions?

See how the law gets messy?

Watch the test. When Louisiana refiles, watch which state AG signs on as amicus. Watch whether the Fifth Circuit cites Thomas verbatim. Watch whether DOJ briefs a position. The point is, mail-order abortion is far from settled.

Texas Children’s Pays $10 Million for Detransition Clinic

The Story.

On May 15, Texas AG Ken Paxton announced a settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in the country. Texas Children’s pays $10 million. Five physicians are fired permanently, and their privileges are revoked. The hospital stops performing gender-transition services on minors. It stands up the country’s first “detransition clinic” to provide five years of free care to kids whose transitions need to be reversed. The state alleged Medicaid fraud through false diagnosis codes. The DOJ signed on.

Paxton called it a “monumental day.” Texas Children’s said it agreed to settle “to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation” after “navigating an unconscionable campaign of mistruths and mischaracterizations.”

Translation of the second half: we paid $10 million and rebuilt our practice on the way out.

The Left’s read. NBC News led with Texas Children’s framing. The hospital settled to avoid prolonged litigation; the detransition clinic is “politically driven,” and the campaign against gender-affirming care is “mistruths.” The Texas Tribune and Houston Public Media ran the same beat. Hospital as victim, state as aggressor, medical evidence suppressed.

The Right’s read. The Daily Caller called it the “infamous sex-change hospital” opening the country’s first reversal clinic. Newsweek and Fox 26 Houston led with the financial concession, the doctor firings, and the policy reversal. The settlement reads as substantive admission, not procedural surrender.

What both sides are missing. The hospital’s own settlement language is the buried lead. “To protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.” It’s about the money. If they thought the standard of care was sound, they had every reason to litigate. Instead, the country's largest pediatric hospital fired the doctors, paid the state, and contracted to open a clinic for patients they say didn’t need fixing. Read that again.

After years of gaslighting parents into transitioning their child or risking a dead child, Texas Children’s Hospital admits it’s all about the money, honey.

The AMA, AAP, AACAP, and APA all signed on to “gender-affirming care” as the standard of care for minors. The whole pediatric establishment closed ranks for a decade. Parents who asked questions were told the medicine was settled and they were the problem.

Did Texas Children’s Hospital put up a fight? Defend their doctors? Point to peer-reviewed studies? No. Instead, they opted to pay $10 million to stop performing those procedures, fired the physicians who performed them, and agreed to build the clinic that will undo them.

There has been significant damage caused to a generation of children, and the media know it. That’s why left-side coverage is focused on the “unconscionable campaign of mistruths” line and not on the key paragraph. The one that says Texas Children’s will “cease providing gender-transition interventions” and will “amend its bylaws to trigger automatic relinquishment of privileges for any physician” who violates Texas’s prohibition. They didn’t agree to that because they were tired. They agreed because the lawsuits would expose the truth.

Here’s why the clinic matters more than the $10 million or the firings. The doctors who transitioned these kids never ran detransition services. Almost nobody did, anywhere. The activist class used that absence as a defense: detransition is rare; look at the literature. Of course, it looked rare. The same protocol that pushed kids into transition never tracked the ones coming back. Now, Texas Children’s is contractually obligated to track them, treat them, and document it.

Watch what happens next. The detransition clinic will develop the country’s first published clinical pathway for puberty-blocker and cross-sex-hormone reversals. Those doctors will see patient outcomes on the record. Every plaintiff’s attorney in the country gets to read them. The institutional class that spent ten years calling concerned parents transphobes has nowhere to stand once those papers hit PubMed.

Texas just made the first hospital pay for the cleanup.

ICYMI

A Two-Year-Old Is Dead. The Washington Post Wants ICE Blamed

The Story.

On May 16, the Washington Post published a long-form piece on Wendy Hernandez Reyes, a Honduran woman in the U.S. illegally. She was pulled over in Baldwin County, Alabama in January, handed to ICE by 287(g) deputies, and deported January 26. Her two-year-old son Orlín, a U.S. citizen, was beaten to death in Florida in March by the uncle the family had arranged to care for him.

The spine of the piece is a contested claim. Hernandez says she repeatedly asked ICE to take Orlín with her and was ignored. ICE says she agreed to leave him with family. WaPo does not produce the tablet logs, the officer notes, or the witness statements from her sister.

The undisputed facts. She had a 2023 final order of removal from a missed asylum hearing. ICE officers at the scene asked her sister what should be done with the children. The sister called the uncle, Maldonado, who agreed to take Orlín and three cousins. Hernandez told the Post she “reasoned it would be best for Orlín to stay with his cousins.” She also told the Post that Maldonado had been violent toward her sister “but never the children.” The uncle then killed Orlín.

The Left’s read. WaPo, Yahoo News, The Mirror, and IBTimes all ran the same headline frame: “ICE blamed her.” The mother’s account anchors the piece. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons becomes the villain for issuing a post-death press release calling her abandonment her choice. The killing is the lead, deportation is the cause.

The Right’s read. The Washington Times and similar outlets framed it as the predictable outcome of a final removal order against someone whose family arranged the caregiver. She had a 2023 order on the books. The family chose the uncle. The uncle is the murderer. The agency enforced a ruling.

What both sides are skipping. The press has no version of this enforcement that it can report fairly. ICE keeps mothers and children together in the same facility; you get “children in cages.” A mother brings her U.S.-citizen child on removal; you get “ICE deported a U.S. citizen.” A parent goes alone after the family arranges the caregiver; you get “ICE blamed her.” Three framings, all bad, applied to the same statutory framework.

It is devastating and horrifying what happened to this baby. The uncle killed him. A two-year-old is dead. Everything else in the WaPo piece is contested.

WaPo built a 4,000-word piece on a “he said, she said” about a tablet conversation between Hernandez and an ICE officer. They didn’t produce the tablet logs. They didn’t produce the officer’s contemporaneous notes. They didn’t interview the sister who called the uncle on her own phone. The reader's acceptance of the mother's story as true determines the piece's emotional impact. WaPo’s own reporting quotes her saying Maldonado had been violent toward her sister, “but never the children.” So the mother knew the caregiver had a violent history, yet opted to leave her child with Maldonado, even though taking the child with her was an option. That detail is in paragraph 27.

I’m not running cover for ICE. Blanche’s press release a week after a child’s murder was a self-inflicted wound. I understand that ICE and the administration would face attacks regardless, but it is possible to show compassion while enforcing immigration laws.

This story is likely to gain traction, and they will bury or omit important details altogether, just like WaPo did. Policy critique is justified. But ICE’s duty is not to track children outside its custody. They were doing what the parent requested. The Biden administration lost track of thousands of children in its custody, and WaPo had little to say about it.

Watch to see if other outlets pick up this story. What is the framing and the lead? Also, what happens at trial? Maldonado will be charged. Discovery will produce the tablet logs. WaPo didn’t obtain. Was the mother prevented from reuniting with her child? When the documents come in, will the Post run the correction at the same length and with the same headline weight? Watch and see.

Cassidy is out. Sen. Bill Cassidy lost his Louisiana Republican primary Saturday, the first GOP senator to lose renomination in nearly a decade. Rep. Julia Letlow (Trump-endorsed) and state Treasurer John Fleming advance to a June 27 runoff. Cassidy finished third at 25%. Trump celebrated on Truth Social: “his political career is OVER!” The 2021 impeachment vote ages well. NBC News

U.S. and Nigerian forces killed the No. 2 of ISIS on Saturday. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, the global director of operations for ISIS, was killed alongside several of his lieutenants in a joint precision strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin. AFRICOM called it a “highly complex precision air-land operation.” No U.S. casualties. Fox News

Israel killed the architect of October 7. Izz al-Din al-Haddad, head of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, was killed in an Israeli airstrike Friday night in Gaza City’s Remal neighborhood. The IDF confirmed Saturday. Al-Haddad personally planned the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and oversaw the breach of the eastern fence. Hamas called it “treacherous and cowardly.” Al Jazeera

Iran is on the clock. Trump sent Tehran a nuclear proposal Saturday and warned of “very bad” consequences if the regime stalls. Sunday he said “there won’t be anything left of them” if Iran doesn’t move. He’s meeting with national security advisers on May 19 to discuss potential military action. The ceasefire he called “life support” last week now has a deadline. NBC News

Voting rights rallies hit Montgomery. Thousands rallied Saturday in Alabama against the Supreme Court’s late-April Callais ruling, which struck down Louisiana’s majority-minority district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Florida’s House approved a new map within an hour of the ruling. The 2026 midterm map is being redrawn live. The Hill

That’s The Read! Thanks for all the positive feedback on this new format. Share it with a friend.

See you on Wednesday!

If The Read is doing the cross-check work for you, send it to a friend who’s still chasing the framing instead of the facts.

Last week, I shared that I launched the newsletter “The Bookie” to document my summer goals to make reading physical books a habit again. Yesterday, I binged the last of my latest read, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

I will be sharing my thoughts on the book in the next edition of “The Bookie” and locking down my summer reading list, which I warn you up front is the antithesis of a summer reading list. But I will explain my reasons. If you are on Fable, follow me there. I am the only “Meseidy” on the platform. LOL

Let’s get into the news!

In today’s Brief:

• Trump lands in Beijing with Musk, Cook, Hannity, and a Rubio tracksuit moment that’s not subtle.

• Marty Makary is out at the FDA. The pro-life camp is throwing a party.

• April inflation hit 3.8%, worst in three years. The president says he doesn’t think about it.

• South Carolina Republicans just told Trump no on redistricting. Missouri’s court said yes.

• Kash Patel and Chris Van Hollen spent a Senate hearing accusing each other of being drunk. We’re not making this up.

Beijing or Bust

Trump landed in Beijing Wednesday morning local time for his long-delayed summit with Xi Jinping. The trip got pushed from March because of the Iran war. Boatloads of Chinese-bound oil sit trapped behind the Hormuz blockade. China buys about 90% of Iran’s oil.

Before he left, Trump told reporters Iran wasn’t a top discussion item because the U.S. has it “very much under control.”

The delegation is the part everyone’s talking about. Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Goldman’s David Solomon, filmmaker Brett Ratner, and Sean Hannity. Eric and Lara Trump were also on board.

Eric Trump is the Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization. So, of course, Democrat talking heads jumped on this, pointing out Hunter Biden’s trips to China with his father to do business, but the Trump Organization swears Eric isn’t doing business. It’s like everyone forgets the concept of optics.

Then there’s Marco Rubio’s Air Force One loungewear. The Secretary of State boarded in a Nike tech tracksuit, and the internet immediately clocked it as a direct nod to the tracksuit Nicolás Maduro was wearing after his arrest. Communications director Steven Cheung shared the photo. The White House social accounts did their thing.

This administration troll game remains on point.

What Trump wants out of Beijing: trade announcements he can post about by tomorrow, movement on fentanyl and rare earths, and Chinese pressure on Iran to reopen Hormuz. What Xi wants: time, stability, and Taiwan eventually. Foreign policy experts say China believes it won the 2025 trade war and walked in confident.

The Makary Era Ends. The Pro-Life Movement Cheers.

Marty Makary resigned Tuesday as FDA commissioner after 13 months. The official trigger was Trump’s frustration over Makary slow-walking flavored vape approvals. The unofficial reason is much more interesting.

Anti-abortion groups have been calling for Makary’s head for months. He was widely viewed as soft on mifepristone. The FDA was sitting on a safety review of the abortion pill that Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America publicly demanded for over a year. Sen. Josh Hawley didn’t mince words:

Worth flagging: Rachael Bade scooped this firing a week ago at her Substack The Inner Circle. Give her a follow. Bade reported the vape angle was the public excuse, but the internal knife was sharpened by Makary’s clashes with the West Wing and his alienation of both MAHA and the pro-life camp. Both wings of Trump’s 2024 coalition wanted him gone. The president obliged.

The Inner Circle with Rachael Bade

SCOOP: Makary's job in jeopardy as WH considers FDA shakeup

CHOPPING BLOCK PART IV? — FDA Commissioner MARTY MAKARY is expected to get the ax in the coming weeks, according to two well-placed individuals familiar with the matter — the latest sign that Trump’s pre-midterm, house-cleaning isn’t over…

Read more

21 days ago · 41 likes · 1 comment · Rachael Bade

Kyle Diamantas, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for food, takes over in an acting capacity. He’s already close to RFK Jr. This is the fourth Cabinet-level exit since January, following Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

Inflation at 3.8% and Trump on Americans’ Finances In Waging Iran War

April’s CPI rose 0.6%, pushing year-over-year inflation to 3.8%. Highest annual reading since May 2023. Energy alone drove 40% of the rise. Gas hit $4.50 a gallon nationally. Beef is up 14.8% year-over-year. Grocery prices climbed 0.7% in a single month. Real wages dropped 0.5%.

The Iran war is the engine. Brent crude sits at $107, up from $62 in February. The Hormuz blockade is closing in on two months.

Then the Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese asked Trump whether Americans’ wallets were motivating him to make a deal with Iran:

“Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

You can read that two ways. Charitable: Iran with a nuke is a worse problem than $5 gas, full stop. The other read: a president who ran on affordability told an inflation-burned electorate he isn’t thinking about them. Six months out from the midterms, that clip is going to get airtime.

South Carolina Just Told Trump No

Five South Carolina Republican state senators tanked the redistricting push Tuesday, voting with Democrats and killing the two-thirds majority needed to extend the legislative session. The map would have unwound Jim Clyburn’s district, the state’s sole Democratic seat. Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey led the charge.

His floor speech was something:

Massey also said he had “too much Southern blood” to surrender to Trump’s demand. A sitting Republican Senate Majority Leader compared presidential pressure to Yankee invasion. On the floor. Out loud.

Trump urged the chamber on Truth Social to “BE BOLD AND COURAGEOUS.” The five Republicans who defied him (Sean Bennett, Chip Campsen, Tom Davis, Greg Hembree, plus Massey) aren’t up until 2028. Last week’s Indiana primaries, where Trump-endorsed challengers crushed five GOP incumbents who’d sunk redistricting there, didn’t move them. Gov. Henry McMaster could call a special session, but he hasn’t.

Related

Better news for the White House: the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously upheld the GOP map carving up Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City district. Louisiana’s Senate is moving on a new map that could erase one or both of its Democratic seats. James Blair, Trump’s midterm strategist, told Politico’s Dasha Burns his strategy is simple: “attack, attack, attack. And when in doubt, attack some more.”

Margaritas, Sobriety Tests, and a Senate Hearing That Got Weird

This story exists. We have to cover it.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen pressed Kash Patel Tuesday on a recent Atlantic piece alleging the FBI director drinks so heavily his security detail has broken into his home to wake him. Patel sued The Atlantic for $250 million over it.

Van Hollen asked if Patel would take a dependency audit. Patel agreed, then pivoted:

“The only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted, gang-banging rapist, was you. The only person that ran up a $7,000 bar tab in Washington, DC, at the Lobby Bar was you.”

The El Salvador reference is Van Hollen’s April 2025 trip to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the deported alleged MS-13 affiliate, where photos showed margaritas on the table. Van Hollen has long insisted the drinks were a “staged hoax” by President Bukele. The $7,128 Lobby Bar tab was real. His campaign paid it at a December 2025 fundraiser. Legal, sure. Still seven grand at the bar.

Both men agreed to take sobriety tests, side by side. The Senate is now operating on a bar-fight standard.

Quick Rundown

• Key Bridge indictment. The DOJ indicted Singapore’s Synergy Marine and its technical superintendent Tuesday over the 2024 Dali crash that killed six workers and took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Eighteen counts, including conspiracy and false statements. Maryland separately landed a $2.25 billion settlement.

• Denver runway death. The Frontier Airlines trespasser sucked into a jet engine was Michael Mott, 41, a career criminal with 20+ arrests, including a 2005 attempted murder conviction. Authorities believe he intended to kill himself. He cleared the 8-foot perimeter fence and reached the runway in two minutes.

• Canvas pays the hackers. Instructure, the parent company of school platform Canvas, struck a deal with ShinyHunters to delete data stolen from 9,000 schools and 275 million students. The company says the hackers sent “digital confirmation” the data was destroyed.

• Massie’s $60K problem. Axios reportedly confirmed a $60,000 settlement and NDA tied to Rep. Thomas Massie, with allegations he threatened a woman named Cynthia West at a Cracker Barrel in Kentucky. His office hasn’t said much. Won’t stay quiet long.

• The Reflecting Pool saga. Trump’s $13 million plan to repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool “American flag blue” is 35% done with 12 days to deadline. Joint-replacement work sits at 0%. Started at $1.8 million. Trump now says he doesn’t know the contractor he originally recommended.

Let’s Talk About It

Trump told a reporter he doesn’t think about Americans’ finances when he thinks about Iran. Is that honest, tone-deaf, or both? Tell me how that quote landed for you.

Margaritas, $7,000 bar tabs, sobriety tests on the Senate floor. Who else is over these performative hearings?

See you Friday.

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The Brief publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Forward to someone who needs to understand what’s actually happening.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, and for the moms, a beautiful Mother’s Day filled with love and relaxation. 💖

ICYMI

In today’s Brief:

• Iran’s response to the U.S. peace plan: full sanctions lifted, frozen assets returned, sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Zero on nuclear.

• Virginia Democrats are reportedly floating a plan to lower the state Supreme Court’s mandatory retirement age to 54. Subtle.

• 115,000 jobs in April, doubling expectations. Despite Iran, tariffs, and $1.50-a-gallon gas hikes.

• Biden is suing to stop the release of the Hur tapes. The “transparency president” speedrun continues.

• Trump lands in Beijing on Wednesday for the first U.S. presidential visit to China since 2017.

Tehran’s “Peace Offer” Reads Like a Ransom Note

Trump told Axios Sunday that Iran’s response to the latest U.S. ceasefire proposal is “inappropriate” and “totally unacceptable.” Then he hit Truth Social with the all-caps version: “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” Cool.

Here’s what Iran demanded in its counter, delivered through Pakistani mediators: full lifting of U.S. sanctions, end to the naval blockade, return of frozen assets, and sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. The same strait where Iranian missiles hit three U.S. destroyers four days ago. Nuclear concessions? Not mentioned. Seems unacceptable to me.

Behind the scenes, Qatar is doing the heavy lifting. Rubio and Witkoff met Qatari PM Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in Miami on Saturday. Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, and the Saudis are coordinating in tandem. Lindsey Graham, predictably, is back to floating Project Freedom Plus and military action. As he does.

Trump’s Truth Social post named the 47-year history: “Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and 1.7 Billion Dollars in green cash, flown into Tehran, was handed to them on a silver platter… They will be laughing no longer!”

You don’t have to love every Trump post to notice that handing Iran the same strait its missiles just lit up four U.S. ships in is not an acceptable peace offer.

Virginia Democrats Want to Retire the Court That Just Ruled Against Them

Last Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the Democrat-drawn congressional map violates the state constitution. The legislature blew through the constitutional amendment timeline. The map dies.

Then it got weirder. The New York Times reports that on a private Saturday call, Hakeem Jeffries and the Virginia House delegation discussed lowering (🎁 link) the state Supreme Court’s mandatory retirement age from 75 down to 54. Translation: clear every sitting justice in one move, then literally pack the bench with friendly Democratic appointees who would reinstate the gerrymander. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, in favor: “Everyone has got to have a strong stomach right now.” Jeffries reportedly called for “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”

The kicker: Former-AG Jason Miyares warned them in October 2025 the whole thing was unconstitutional. They blew through $70 million in taxpayer money anyway. Five million of that on the special election. The rest mostly went to attack ads defending what the court now calls null and void.

Even James Moran, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia, called the court-pack idea “a bridge too far.”

Tim Anderson @AssocAnderson My mailbox is full from many of you concerned that the Democrats may actually try to retire the Virginia Supreme Court to pack it with activists who will reverse the redistricting decision. They will not do that. Primarily even if they wanted to, they are out of time.

Anderson is right that the May 12 deadline kills any same-cycle relief. But the part to file away: the party that spent a decade lecturing the country about “threats to democracy” was on a Saturday call brainstorming how to retire a state Supreme Court because it ruled the wrong way.

115,000 Jobs in April, Despite Everything

April’s BLS report clocked 115,000 jobs added against a 65,000 forecast. Unemployment held at 4.3%. Health care +37K, transportation and warehousing +30K. Retail picked up another 22K. Wages climbed 3.6% year over year to $37.41 an hour. Federal employment dropped another 9,000, bringing the cumulative cut to 348,000 since the October 2024 peak. DOGE math.

Chris Zaccarelli at Northlight put it bluntly to the New York Post: “The economy is so much better than what the doom crew has been saying.”

Don’t ignore the soft underneath. The 3-month average is 48,000 jobs a month, per Politico’s read. Consumer sentiment hit a record low of 48.2. Part-time-for-economic-reasons jumped 445,000 to 4.9 million. Gas is up $1.50 a gallon since the Iran war started. Small and mid-sized businesses are eating margin.

So yes, the labor market is holding. And no, that doesn’t mean grocery aisles feel fine. Both are true.

Biden Is Going to Court to Bury the Hur Tapes

The DOJ told a federal court Friday it plans to hand over the redacted ghostwriter audio and transcripts to Congress and the Heritage Foundation. Roughly 70 hours of Biden talking to his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer. Hur built the “elderly man with a poor memory” case off these recordings. He also concluded Biden read classified material aloud “nearly verbatim” three times.

Biden’s legal team plans to file by Tuesday to block release. If he files, DOJ holds off until June 15.

Spokesman TJ Ducklo’s line: “What’s happening now isn’t about transparency. It’s about politics.”

Biden, who ran on transparency. Now he’s fighting to keep audio recordings of classified notebook passages on lock. Heritage’s filing accused Biden’s lawyers of stonewalling for over a year, including blocking transcript sections that match exact phrases already quoted in the Hur Report.

Many will view this as old news; let’s move on. But the audio is what made Hur drop the case, citing an “elderly man with a poor memory.” We’ve all read the report. Hearing it will bring more color to Biden’s state of mind when he was President. If he were as bad as Hur claims, who was running the country?

Trump Heads to Beijing Wednesday

First U.S. presidential visit to China since 2017. Trump arrives Wednesday evening, bilateral with Xi Thursday and Friday, Temple of Heaven tour, state banquet, the whole bit.

Treasury Secretary Bessent already confirmed Iran will dominate the talks. The U.S. wants Beijing to lean on Tehran over Hormuz, which is rich since a Chinese-owned oil tanker just got hit there. Probable deliverables: a Boeing order, soybean and energy purchases, a Board of Trade and Board of Investment framework, and a possible rare-earths truce extension.

The interesting tea leaf is the CEO delegation. Roughly 12 confirmed, including Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser. The 2017 trip had 30-plus CEOs signing $250 billion in deals. USTR Jamieson Greer reportedly pushed to halve this year’s list. China hawks have been nervous since the December Nvidia chip-export deal (the U.S. government took a 25% cut), and one anonymous White House source described Trump himself as “the biggest China dove in the administration.”

Trump has said publicly he will raise Jimmy Lai — the Catholic media tycoon serving 20 years for sedition — and Pastor Ezra Jin of Zion Church. Religious persecution on the official agenda is a genuine win to flag. Whether Beijing budges is a different question.

Quick Rundown

• SCOTUS mifepristone deadline today, 5 PM. Alito’s one-week stay on the Fifth Circuit’s Louisiana v. FDA ruling expires at close of business. Either he extends it, lifts it, or grants cert. Whatever happens, mail-order mifepristone is on the table for the first time in a long time.

• EEOC sues The New York Times over DEI hiring. Trump’s EEOC filed last Tuesday over a 2025 Deputy Real Estate Editor hire. The Times is now defending itself on “merit-based” grounds, which is something to watch from the paper whose opinion section has spent ten years arguing merit is a colonial fiction.

• Violent crime is plunging across major U.S. cities. Per the MCCA Q1 2026 report: homicides down 17.7% nationally, robberies down 20.4%. D.C. down 64.7%, Philadelphia 54%, Aurora 66.7%, NYC 31.7% under Mamdani’s first months. The trend started under Biden and is continuing. Real, even if it complicates the federal-troops narrative.

  

• Senate Democrats moving to repeal Trump’s grad-school loan cap. Merkley, Alsobrooks, and Bonamici are teaming up on a CRA resolution. UC Irvine already cut tuition on two business degrees by 20% in response to the cap. Education Under Sec Nicholas Kent: “It was never about helping students but rather buying votes.”

• Pope Leo XIV signing his first encyclical Friday, May 15. “Magnifica Humanitas,” on AI, peace, and international law. Same date Leo XIII signed Rerum Novarum in 1891. The name choice and the date are both deliberate. Fuller piece Friday.

Let’s Talk About It

Two questions:

The Hur tapes: do you actually want to hear them, or would you rather not know?

Democrats are in full hysteria. If a sitting state Supreme Court can be retired by statute the moment it rules against the majority party, what's left of judicial independence?

Drop your takes in the comments. See you Wednesday.

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The Brief publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Forward to someone who needs to understand what’s actually happening.

What’s the plan this weekend? I want to do yard work but it’s probably raining, so instead I will be reading.

Speaking of reading, I started a new newsletter: The Bookie. It’s not gambling, it’s books. My goal: fall back in love with physical books. The feel, the smell, the dog-eared corners, all of it.

If you love reading, want to talk books, or have been meaning to crack open something that isn’t your phone, come hang. I want to hear what you’re reading too. Drop your picks in the comments. There’ll be exclusive paid subscriber Bookie chats along the way.

ICYM, the first edition is below.

In today’s Brief:

• Tennessee dissolved its lone majority-Black district. The Democrat who held it for 20 years is white.

• Spencer Pratt is gaining traction by pointing at $250,000-per-bed homeless math. The LA debate did him favors.

• Kamala Harris suddenly wants the DNC’s 2024 autopsy released. The DNC has it locked away like the Ark of the Covenant.

• The first batch of UFO files drops today. Inverted teardrops over the UAE. Take from that what you will.

• Twenty-eight cruise crew got hauled off five ships in a child porn sting. Ten were Disney’s.

The Steve Cohen Civil Rights Cosplay

Tennessee Republicans passed a new congressional map Thursday that splits Memphis and Shelby County into three districts and dissolves the state’s only majority-Black district. Gov. Bill Lee signed it the same afternoon, after lawmakers torched their own ban on mid-decade redistricting to make it possible.The new lines cement a 9-0 Republican delegation.

The seat belonged to Rep. Steve Cohen. Twenty years. White Democrat. He went on CNN OutFront and accused Republicans of racist gerrymandering, tearing apart “the work of Dr. King and John Lewis.”

This is the same Steve Cohen who tried to join the Congressional Black Caucus in 2007 because, in his telling, he represented a majority-black district. They told him no.

Meanwhile the Tennessee 9th has been challenged repeatedly by Charlotte Bergmann, a black Republican woman from Memphis. She ran in 2010, 2020, and 2024 (Cohen beat her every time), and is on the 2026 primary ballot. None of which stopped the Congressional Black Caucus from calling Thursday’s map “the theft of fair representation.” The “representation?” A white Democrat, because the black Republican woman trying to represent that same community apparently doesn’t count.

The Tennessee House floor was chaos. Democrats linked arms and blew air horns to drown out the vote. State Sen. Charlane Oliver said Tennessee is “not a red state” but a “gerrymandered” and “suppressed” one. (Trump won it by 30 points in 2024.) The NAACP filed suit Thursday.

Then there was state Rep. Justin Pearson, Memphis Democrat, expelled in 2023 over a Covenant gun-control protest. After the vote, he lit into state troopers: “MOVE THE F*CK BACK! BOY!... You STUPID MOTHERF*CKER!” The caucus elevating him as a civil-rights heir is calling this map a stain on John Lewis.

State Rep. Todd Warner, meanwhile, did a victory lap around the Capitol wearing a MAGA flag like a cape.

The progressive class spent a decade arguing race-conscious districts were a moral imperative. SCOTUS narrowed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act last week, and Republicans are running with it. Democrats can’t argue against partisan gerrymandering after California’s ballot measure. They can’t argue against racial gerrymandering when the white Democrat is the one losing the seat.

Spencer Pratt Walked Into the LA Debate and Started Adult Conversations

Karen Bass, Spencer Pratt, and DSA-aligned councilwoman Nithya Raman sat down Wednesday for the LA mayoral debate. Then Pratt (yes, that Spencer Pratt) set the tone by calling Bass’s signature homeless program a public hazard.

“Inside Safe makes all of us outside, unsafe,” Pratt said. He cited the DEA stat that 93% of LA’s homeless crisis is drug addiction, then dared Raman to walk under the Harbor Freeway with him to offer treatment to the people actually there. “She’s going to get stabbed in the neck.”

Then he hit Bass on the Palisades. The $17 million the fire chief asked for nine weeks ahead, denied. The reservoirs Bass’s DWP head drained that firefighters needed. A thousand firefighters with no engines. Bass was in Africa when LA burned. Pratt’s home was one of the 16,000 that didn’t survive.

Asked whether non-citizens should vote in local LA elections, Pratt said “no” in one syllable. Bass said it depends. Raman started a sentence about school boards and got cut off.

His viral opener was the $16 million for 16 tiny homes housing 64 people ($250,000 per bed). Bass accused him of “exploiting the grief” of fire victims, which is hard to do when you are one. Even the LA Times ran begrudging praise. Prediction markets still favor Raman because LA gonna LA, but Pratt is outraising Bass. Primary is June 2.

The LA political class spent ten years calling Pratt a clown. He’s the only one talking about the math.

Kamala Wants the Autopsy. Now.

Kamala Harris is, per NBC News, telling allies the DNC should release its 200-page autopsy of the 2024 disaster. DNC chairman Ken Martin promised it would come out, then locked it away in December and called any further talk “navel-gazing.” Meanwhile Harris is on a memoir tour, hiring coalition staff and quietly prepping a 2028 run. Timing is not subtle.

The report covers hundreds of interviews, $1.5 billion burned through in 107 days, every battleground lost, internal analytics that allegedly told Harris she was ahead in all seven swing states until election night. Whatever’s in there, the DNC very much does not want anyone reading it. Bernie’s people argue Martin is shielding Harris ahead of the primary.

She read the room. She’s calling for release because not calling for release was costing her more. Interestingly she is throwing Martin under the bus. If the report blames the consultants, Future Forward, and the Biden holdovers, that helps her. If it lands on her, she’s in front of it.

The part that’ll keep me up: $1.5 billion, 107 days, zero swing states. Whatever institutional rot produced that math is still there. Same consultants running the same machine. The bench the DNC is currently boosting for 2028? Newsom, AOC, Shapiro, Wes Moore, Booker. The crew that lost 2024.

The UFO Files Drop Today

A story people are curious about but disclosure: I don’t care.

President Trump’s first batch of UAP files hits today, per Rep. Tim Burchett. Pilot materials. Possibly one video. Not yet the 46 UFO videos Congress demanded. Releases will come in weekly tranches, not one Epstein-style dump.

An inverted teardrop over the UAE the War Department can’t identify. An unresolved UAP over Iraq.

No, this batch isn’t going to reveal little green men. The Pentagon’s been candid about Navy pilot encounters since 2017. The interesting question is what’s been classified, and why. Information control is information control, whether the subject is JFK, Epstein, or a tic-tac off the USS Nimitz.

The Disney Magic and Twenty-Eight Arrests

Between April 23 and 25, US Customs and Border Protection boarded five cruise ships docked in San Diego, including the Disney Magic. They arrested 28 crew members. Ten were Disney’s. CBP said all 28 were involved in possession, distribution, or viewing of child sexual exploitation material. Visas cancelled, removal underway.

Passenger Dharmi Mehta filmed it. Her server was one of those cuffed. Crew dragged off in chef whites and blazers, name tags still on, in front of stunned families. Disney said: “zero-tolerance policy,” they cooperated with law enforcement, the staff “are no longer with the company.”

This is not the first Disney cruise crew member arrested for child porn. Or the second. There’s a running list going back to 2014.

Two things can be true. ICE busting 28 alleged predators is a win for the kids on those ships. Disney’s screening keeps producing this exact headline, on a service marketed at families. “Magical vacation” is doing some work.

Quick Rundown

• FBI raids redistricting Dem’s office and her cannabis shop. Agents searched Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas’s Portsmouth office Wednesday and her marijuana dispensary next door. Lucas, 82, led the Dem gerrymander push that netted Virginia four extra blue seats. The probe involves alleged cannabis-business bribery.

• Epstein’s suicide note got unsealed. A federal judge ordered release of his purported handwritten note, “They investigated for month — found nothing!!!... It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye.” Found by cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione after Epstein’s first failed hanging in July 2019. broke this story first awhile back. The legacy media is just catching on.

• Karoline Leavitt had her baby. The White House press secretary announced on X that daughter Viviana (”Vivi”) was born May 1. Leavitt, 28, was the first pregnant WH press secretary and returns to the briefing room later this year.

• Trump drove a motorcade through the drained Reflecting Pool. A $1.8 million resurfacing he says fixes Obama’s $38 million leak job. Color: “American Flag Blue.” Two-week timeline.

• Rubio announced new Cuba sanctions. The Secretary of State rolled them out Wednesday targeting the Castro regime.

Let’s Talk About It

The Congressional Black Caucus called Thursday’s Tennessee map “theft of fair representation.” A district that’s been challenged by Charlotte Bergmann, a black Republican woman, in cycle after cycle. If a black Republican wins that seat under the new map, are they still going to cry racisim.

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Over the weekend while attending a family wedding Rubio was behind the turntables, with headphones, dropping beats. What does this man not do?

On the other end of the social media viral spectrum was Tucker Carlson’s interview on The NYT podcast The Interiew. I highly recommend giving it a watch. If you already watched it I want to hear your thoughts in the comments. I watch the full episode. Here is my immediate summary.

Okay, let’s get into the news.

In today’s Brief:

• Five Southern governors made moves on their maps in 72 hours. Florida already passed one.

• Pirro has the gun, the bullet, and the vest fiber. The friendly-fire theory is dead.

• 76 days. Three million off SNAP. The longest shutdown in American history is over.

• The Fifth Circuit yanked Mifepristone from the mailbox. Danco ran straight to Alito.

• Spirit Airlines shut down at 2 a.m. Saturday. Bessent has names.

The Map War Just Crossed the Mason-Dixon

Last Wednesday, SCOTUS handed down Louisiana v. Callais, 6-3. Alito wrote that plaintiffs now have to prove intentional discrimination, not just “disparate impact.” In plain English: until last week, courts could throw out a congressional map if the result hurt minority representation, even by accident. Now, plaintiffs have to prove the mapmakers did it on purpose. That’s the standard the Constitution actually calls for. It’s also the one Republican governors have been waiting decades to see enforced.

Florida wasted no time. The state House passed a DeSantis-drafted map 83-28, the Senate followed 21-17, and the new lines pick up four GOP-leaning seats. DeSantis had the special session called before the ruling.

Alabama flipped position twice in 48 hours. Gov. Kay Ivey first told reporters the state was “not in position” for a special session because of a federal court order locking her current maps through 2030. Friday she reversed and called lawmakers in starting today. AG Steve Marshall filed an emergency SCOTUS motion arguing Callais overrides Allen v. Milligan.

Mississippi’s special session was already scheduled for May 20. State Sen. Kevin Blackwell wrote on X, “It’s time to erase Bennie Thompson’s District.” Gov. Tate Reeves on Truth Social: “First Dobbs. Now Callais. Just Mississippi and Louisiana down here saving our country!”

Tennessee's Bill Lee called a session starting Tuesday with Memphis Democrat Steve Cohen in the crosshairs. I want to bring your attention to this wound because it’s gold. The 9th District was drawn as a majority-black seat to elect a black representative. But, Cohen is white. He's the seat since 2007. His Republican challenger, Charlotte Bergmann, is a black woman. So the same party now warning Callais will hollow out black representation in Congress has, for almost two decades, run interference for a white Democrat against a black Republican in a Black-majority district. You can’t make this up.

South Carolina’s Henry McMaster is “looking into it.”

The math: CBS estimates one to nine GOP seats added in 2026 alone. NYT goes higher, up to 12 nationwide. Texas already shifted five right last summer. California countered five left. Virgnia also responded in favor of the Democrats but has been put on ice for now by the court. The battle over redistricting has hit full throttle.

The Democrats spent the last decade calling redistricting “racist gerrymandering” any time Republicans drew a line is now upset that racist gerrymandering is not longer allowed.

The Bullet, the Vest, and One Extra Arrest at Doral

Last week’s hovering question on the WHCD shooting was whether the Secret Service agent who took a hit was struck by friendly fire. Sunday, that question closed. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro told CNN’s Jake Tapper that prosecutors have video of suspect Cole Allen firing at the agent, the agent confirming he was hit, and a pellet from Allen’s pump-action shotgun “intertwined with the fiber” of the agent’s vest.

“It is definitely his bullet,” Pirro said. Secret Service Director Sean Curran told NewsNation last week the suspect shot the officer at “point-blank range” after charging the checkpoint.

Allen, the 31-year-old California teacher who called himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin” in his manifesto, was charged Monday with attempting to assassinate the president. Preliminary hearing’s set for May 11.

Saturday afternoon, exactly one week after the shooting, Secret Service grabbed an “unruly” man at Trump National Doral after he set off the magnetometers, defied orders, and got physical with an agent. Trump wasn’t on site. The man’s now in a Miami jail.

Two attempted breaches at presidential venues in seven days, and 1,006 days to go in Trump’s second term.

76 Days and a Pesticide Shield Stripped

The longest shutdown in U.S. history finally came to an end on Thursday. Trump signed the Senate-passed DHS funding bill after a House voice vote, restoring the Coast Guard, FEMA, TSA, and CISA. ICE and Border Patrol stay carved out, funded through reconciliation Trump wants on his desk by June 1.

Speaker Johnson held the line for 41 days after the Senate’s deal, arguing it caved on immigration. He folded once reconciliation was on the table.

The legislative window the shutdown forced open also handed MAHA its first real win. The House voted 280-142 to strip the pesticide-manufacturer liability shield from the farm bill. The language would have blocked failure-to-warn lawsuits against companies whose labels comply with EPA rules. Anna Paulina Luna threatened to “slaughter” the bill if her amendment didn’t get a vote. Chip Roy backed her. 73 Republicans crossed over with House Democrats. 142 Republicans voted to keep the shield.

The MAHA voters delivered the margin in 2024. They’ve been waiting for a tangible legislative win that wasn’t a press release. They got one.

Mifepristone Lands at Alito’s Desk

Friday, a three-judge Fifth Circuit panel temporarily blocked the Biden-era policy allowing mail-order distribution of Mifepristone. Two Trump appointees, one Bush appointee. Ruling reinstates the in-person dispensing requirement that stood from 2000 until the FDA loosened it during COVID and made the change permanent in 2023.

Saturday, Danco Laboratories, the New York manufacturer of Mifeprex, ran straight to the Supreme Court asking for an emergency stay. The application landed on Justice Alito’s desk; he handles Fifth Circuit emergencies and can act alone or refer it up. Danco’s lawyers called the panel ruling “unprecedented.”

The case originated with a Louisiana woman, Rosalie Markezitch, who said her boyfriend ordered the pill from California and coerced her to take it. Louisiana classified Mifepristone as a controlled and dangerous substance in 2024, the first state to do so. The Fifth Circuit found that the FDA’s mail-order rule allows out-of-state prescribers to run an end run around state law.

Mail-order chemical abortion was never the safety regime its defenders claim. The same outlets warning about “chaos” if the in-person rule returns are the ones who told you to ignore the study finding that one in ten women experienced a serious adverse event. Watch the line on Alito.

17,000 Jobs, 277 Canceled Flights, and Elizabeth Warren’s Greatest Hits

Spirit Airlines, the bright-yellow ultra-low-cost carrier that started life 34 years ago as a Michigan trucking company, posted a wind-down notice at 2 a.m. Saturday. All flights canceled. 17,000 jobs gone. Stranded passengers in front of empty ticket counters at LaGuardia and LAX.

Trump’s $500 million bailout proposal fell apart by Friday. DOT Secretary Sean Duffy went on ABC’s This Week and laid the blame at Pete Buttigieg’s feet: “Spirit tried to merge with JetBlue. The Joe Biden-Pete Buttigieg administration and the DOJ tanked that deal. Immediately after that, they filed for bankruptcy.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent named names on X.

Even Neera Tanden, a Biden senior adviser, wrote Saturday that the Garland DOJ’s decision to block the merger deserves “honest” reassessment given the families now jobless. The Buttigieg camp blamed Trump’s Iran war for fuel costs.

Trump’s relief plan: JetBlue, Southwest, Delta, United, and Frontier are running capped “rescue fares” for stranded customers, plus preferential interview slots for laid-off Spirit staff.

Elizabeth Warren and AOC sent a 2022 letter to Biden’s DOJ helping kill the JetBlue merger as “consolidation” that would hurt consumers. The “consumer-protective” version of this story ends with 17,000 employees clearing out their lockers and customers paying United’s rescue fare. Which is exactly the higher price the merger was supposed to avoid. At-aboy ladies!

Quick Rundown

• Project Freedom in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump announced Sunday that the U.S. will start escorting stranded ships out of the Strait this morning, after Iran’s blockade trapped roughly 20,000 seafarers and a cargo ship took fire near Sirik Saturday. Take it as goodwill, or interference gets “dealt with forcefully.”

• Giuliani hospitalized again. America’s Mayor is in critical-but-stable condition, per spokesman Ted Goodman. This comes about eight months after Giuliani was rear-ended on I-93 in New Hampshire after stopping to help a woman flee a domestic violence incident. Trump on Truth Social: “What a tragedy that he was treated so badly... he was right about everything.”

• May Day did its thing. Friday’s “Workers Over Billionaires” mobilization hit roughly 750 events backed by close to 500 organizations: boycotts of work, school, and shopping in New York, Chicago, LA. University of Maryland economist Peter Morici on whether it’d dent any actual billionaire: “Somebody will go to store B instead of store A.” The local mom-and-pop shops, on the other hand, ate it.

Let’s Talk About It

Five Southern states are redrawing their maps in 72 hours after Callais. How are we feeling about this? Do you worry about escallation or are you full speed ahead?

Warren torched 17,000 Spirit jobs this week. AOC torched 25,000 Amazon HQ2 jobs in Queens back in 2019. If "Democrats for the working class" were a band what’s the band name? Be creative.

Drop your takes in the comments. See you Wednesday. Stay nosy.

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I have a sense that people do have a full understanding of what the DSA is and how it functions, and that they expect their candidates to “co-govern” with their organization on behalf of their constituents' interests. So I wrote about it.

I really encourage you to read it and share it!

In today’s Brief:

• Janet Mills bows out, leaving the Democrats’ Senate hopes in Maine pinned on a Hamas-praising guy with a Totenkopf chest piece.

• The 76-day DHS shutdown is finally over. ICE was never affected.

• The Supreme Court torched Louisiana’s congressional map and the state just yanked its May primaries off the calendar.

• MAHA forced 280 House members on the record over Bayer’s pesticide liability shield. The shield lost.

• Quick Rundown: Iran’s 60-day clock runs out, Trump on the bulletproof vest question, and more.

The Democrats Just Coronated the Nazi Tattoo Guy

Janet Mills, the two-term Maine governor and Schumer’s hand-picked recruit to take down Susan Collins, suspended her Senate campaign Thursday. The reason she gave: she couldn’t raise the money. The real reason: a 41-year-old oyster farmer named Graham Platner was beating her by close to 40 points in the polls and her donor base was bleeding out.

Within an hour, Chuck Schumer and the DSCC announced they’d “work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner.” That nominee, in case you’ve missed the past six months of news, is a man who:

• Walked around Maine until last fall with a Totenkopf SS death’s-head tattoo on his chest. He says he got it drunk in Croatia in 2007 and didn’t know what it was. He covered it with a Celtic knot in November.

• Wrote on Reddit that women worried about sexual assault should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f*cked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.”

• Praised Hamas in 2014 and called himself a “longtime fan” of an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who’s blamed Israel for the JFK and Charlie Kirk assassinations.

• Said this week on camera he wants the Trump administration “not to function” because everyone in the White House should be “hauled under subpoena.”

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ruben Gallego, and Martin Heinrich are all in. Schumer (who is Jewish) is in. The DSCC is in. The party that spent a decade telling you Republicans were Nazis is now spending millions to elect a guy with an actual Nazi tattoo.

Graham Platner for Senate @grahamformaine Thank you all for believing.

Susan Collins, the only Republican senator from a state Kamala Harris won, opened the general with a direct line: “Chuck is trying to cover up Democrats’ bad ideas by attacking others. His approach is like trying to cover up an outrageous tattoo. You can paint over it, but we all know what’s underneath.”

Maine has 965,000 registered voters and 36 percent of them are independents. Platner won the primary with about half the registered Democrats in the state. The general is a different animal. Commentary’s Seth Mandel put it cleanly: “One need not be Jewish to understand that Nazis are bad. The moral failure here is the Democratic Party’s, not a single constituency.”

The class that spent a decade calling every Republican a Nazi can’t find a single Democratic senator willing to denounce a candidate with a Nazi tattoo.

The 76-Day DHS Shutdown Is Over (ICE Was Never Affected)

President Trump signed the bill Thursday afternoon, ending the longest shutdown of a federal department in U.S. history. The House passed it by voice vote less than an hour after leadership announced they’d take it up. Speaker Mike Johnson had been sitting on the Senate’s bipartisan version for over a month, then folded once the White House warned that DHS payroll would dry up by the first week of May.

The bill funds the Coast Guard, TSA, FEMA, Secret Service, and CISA through September 30. It does not fund ICE or Border Patrol. Republicans are running those agencies on a separate three-year reconciliation track, which Trump wants on his desk by June 1.

Here’s what most coverage is burying: ICE and CBP were paid the entire shutdown. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act funded them last year. So the 76 days of “Trump’s shutdown” hammered TSA agents scanning your bags, the Coast Guard pulling people out of the water, and FEMA. Democrats happily defunded those agencies for ten weeks while pretending they were “fighting for the homeland.” Over 1,000 TSA agents quit during the standoff.

Democrats wanted policy concessions on ICE: bans on face masks for agents, warrant requirements for immigration arrests. They got nothing. Schumer collapsed. Hakeem Jeffries called the immigration enforcement work the “violent Republican mass deportation machine.” Save the quote. It’s coming back on a campaign mailer this November.

SCOTUS Killed Louisiana’s Map. Louisiana Killed Its Own Primary.

In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Wednesday that Louisiana's congressional map unconstitutionally relied on race to draw a second majority-Black district. Justice Alito wrote the opinion: "That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs' constitutional rights." The ruling tightens what states can and can't do under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and other Southern states with similar racial-gerrymander cases are paying very close attention.

Louisiana is doing what the Court told it to do: stop using a map the justices declared unconstitutional. Within 24 hours, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed an executive order suspending the May 16 House primaries until July 15 or until the legislature passes a new, compliant map. Senate primaries still go forward. Absentee ballots have already been cast in the suspended races; Secretary of State Nancy Landry says those won’t be counted.

Democrat activist attorney Marc Elias has already filed suit calling the suspension voter disenfranchisement. A federal appeals panel issued an order suspending the primaries until new maps are drawn, which the AP’s legal experts called premature.

The math the legacy press won’t print: under the post-2020 map, Louisiana sent five Republicans and one Democrat to D.C. Under the Callais-rejected map, it sent four Republicans and two Democrats. Florida just approved a new GOP-friendly map this week on its own track. The midterm map is shifting under everyone’s feet, and Callais hands Republicans a sharper tool the next time a Section 2 case lands in front of these justices.

MAHA Just Forced 142 Republicans on the Record for Bayer

The House passed the 2026 farm bill Thursday morning 224-200. Before that, Anna Paulina Luna ran an amendment to strip a provision that would have shielded Bayer/Monsanto from lawsuits over Roundup’s glyphosate. The amendment passed 280-142, with 73 Republicans crossing over.

The killed provision would have blocked states and courts from holding pesticide companies liable for failing to warn about cancer risks the EPA doesn’t formally recognize. Bayer is currently paying $7.2 billion in settlements over Roundup-cancer claims. The Trump White House argued for Bayer at the Supreme Court this week in Monsanto v. Durnell. RFK Jr., the supposed MAHA standard-bearer, defended the administration’s pro-glyphosate position earlier this year.

The mom caucus and the House Freedom Caucus split with chemical-industry Republicans, and 142 Republicans went on the record voting to protect Bayer over American families. Luna pulled no punches: “I have a little boy, and the amount of articles I have seen on pesticides and herbicides popping up in children’s products (to include organic) is very bad.”

The Supreme Court could still hand Bayer the same shield through Monsanto v. Durnell. But the legislative version is dead, and 142 Republicans now own that vote. Pull the names if your district fits the issue.

Quick Rundown

• Iran war “terminated” before the 60-day clock. The Trump administration told reporters Friday the Iran war is officially over before hitting the War Powers Act deadline. Quiet exit. Don’t expect a victory parade. Oil markets are still rattled.

• Trump on the bulletproof vest question. After the attempted assassination at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (yes, that happened), a reporter asked the president if he’d start wearing one. Trump: “I don’t know if I can handle looking 20 pounds heavier.” Vanity, even now.

• Cassidy in the crosshairs over Trump’s surgeon general pick. Bill Cassidy is taking MAHA fire over the surgeon general swap. He’s up in 2026. Watch this one.

• Nebraska becomes the first state to impose Medicaid work requirements under last summer’s GOP bill. The Hill reports the rollout is rocky. Other red states are watching closely before they pull the trigger.

• Trump fumes as Powell plots a Fed future. Jerome Powell is signaling he won’t go quietly when his term ends, and Trump is publicly furious. The Fed independence fight has another round to go.

Let’s Talk About It

The DSCC just made a guy with a literal Nazi tattoo and a Hamas fan history their Senate nominee, and Chuck Schumer (who is Jewish) is funding him. If this isn’t the line, where is it?

Trump on the bulletproof vest: “I don’t know if I can handle looking 20 pounds heavier.” Most on-brand presidential quote of the year so far. Agree or disagree?

Drop your takes in the comments. See you Monday. Stay nosy.

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I had a meltdown in my stories yesterday over the price of blinds. My office window is east-facing, and the sun is blinding in the morning. But my Instagram friend came through with some recommendations, so hopefully in the very near future, my retinas will be grateful for the assistance.

I’ll keep you updated.

Also, ICYMI

In today’s Brief:

• Fauci’s right hand just got indicted on five counts. Wuhan grant, personal Gmail, wine subplot.

• Comey got indicted again. This time over a beach photo of seashells.

• FBI raids 22 Minnesota daycares. Walz tries to take credit. Kash Patel says no.

• The FCC pulled Disney’s ABC license renewals forward by three years. Kimmel still won’t apologize.

• King Charles addressed Congress, then roasted the East Wing demolition over dinner.

• Quick Rundown: a Cuba war-powers fight, the Trump passport, a Special Forces sergeant’s $400K Polymarket bet, and DeSantis’s redistricting math.

Let’s get into the news!

The ‘FOIA Lady’ Just Caught Up With Fauci’s Top Adviser

Dr. David Morens, 78, served as senior adviser inside Fauci’s NIAID office from 2006 to 2022. On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted him on five counts: conspiracy, destruction of federal records, concealment of records, and aiding and abetting.

It’s the first criminal indictment alleging a COVID-era cover-up. The DOJ’s claim: Morens and two unindicted co-conspirators (House records identify one as EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak) agreed in writing to route pandemic communications through Morens’s personal Gmail to dodge FOIA. The grant at the center: “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” subgranted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. NIH terminated it in April 2020 over lab-leak concerns. Morens and the co-conspirators allegedly worked to restore the funding and counter the lab-leak narrative.

There’s a wine subplot. Daszak allegedly sent two bottles in June 2020 thanking Morens for “behind-the-scenes shenanigans in my battle against your bosses boss, his boss, and the ultimate boss on the hill.” Morens then allegedly authored a medical-journal commentary arguing for natural origins, which prosecutors call the act he performed to “deserve” the gift.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer, took a victory lap: “We caught Dr. Morens red-handed as he boasted in emails about how the ‘FOIA lady’ coached him on how to hide records and cover-up information.”

Fauci himself is untouchable. Biden preemptively pardoned him on the way out in January. Whatever happened at the top of NIAID, the case lands on the adviser.

Reminder: Every parent who got called a conspiracy theorist for asking about Wuhan, gain-of-function, or Fauci’s emails just got receipts. Five years late and one pardon short. But receipts.

Comey Got Indicted Again. Over Seashells.

A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina indicted James Comey on two counts Tuesday: threatening to kill the president and transmitting that threat across state lines. The “threat” is a beach photo from May 2025 showing seashells arranged to spell “86 47.” Comey deleted it the same day, said he hadn’t realized people read the numbers as violent, and called it a “totally innocent” political message.

Acting AG Todd Blanche announced it:

The first Comey indictment, in September for allegedly lying to Congress, was dismissed in November after the prosecutor was found to have been unlawfully appointed. Pam Bondi was ousted as AG earlier this month; Blanche took over.

Comey posted a Substack video: “I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid. So let’s go.” His lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, said they’ll contest the charges and “vindicate Mr. Comey and the First Amendment.” Both counts carry up to 10 years.

I will not pretend Comey is sympathetic. The man leaked memos through a friend and gave inconsistent testimony. But the indictment hangs on whether “a reasonable recipient” would read seashells as a kill threat. That’s a thin reed, but also a lot of people have been literally gunning for the president.

Walz Wants Credit for the FBI Raids He Once Called “White Supremacy”

The FBI hit 22 Minnesota locations Tuesday, most of them daycares tied to the Somali-American community. The infamous “Quality Learing Center” (misspelled sign, 95 state violations) was on the list. Agents used a battering ram on at least one site. The Trump administration estimates Minnesota fraud at $19 billion.

Then came the X post that aged poorly inside an hour:

Same Walz who four months ago called federal scrutiny of Somali-owned businesses “vile, racist lies and slander.”

FBI Director Kash Patel was not having it:

Walz dropped his reelection bid in January. The fraud he waved off as a smear keeps producing federal indictments. Asking for a friend: when does the press stop letting this man rebrand?

Disney’s License Renewal Just Got Yanked Forward by Three Years

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered Disney to file early renewal applications for eight ABC-owned stations. The previous window was 2028 through 2031. Disney now has 30 days. The official rationale is a DEI investigation from March 2025. The unofficial rationale is Jimmy Kimmel.

Kimmel did a parody bit on Thursday of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He looked at Melania and said, "Our First Lady is here. Mrs. Trump… you have a glow like an expectant widow." This is after Trump has faced two assassination attempts.

Two days later, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen rushed the Washington Hilton checkpoint with a shotgun, a handgun, and several knives, charged with attempting to assassinate the president.

Melania did not let it sit:

Kimmel doubled down Monday, “It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80.” He apologized for nothing.

Carr’s letter doesn’t mention Kimmel by name, but the timing is difficult to ignore.

King Charles, a British Remodel, and the HMS Trump

Only the second British monarch ever to address Congress (his mother was first, in 1991), Charles spent 30 minutes Tuesday on US-UK relations, NATO, Ukraine, and climate. Both sides stood for the line about executive limits.

A George Washington reenactor (Texas pastor Mark Collins) watched from the gallery as a guest of Rep. Michael Cloud.

Rep. Michael Cloud @RepMichaelCloud Who better to attend King Charles III’s address to Congress than the man who led us to independence? Thank you, General George Washington.

Then came the state dinner. Charles looked around the construction zone and threw a soft jab at the East Wing remodel:

CSPAN @cspan King Charles III at White House State Dinner: “I cannot help noticing the ‘readjustments’ to the East Wing, Mr. President…we British, of course, made our own small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814.”

But the big question is, what do you give the man who has everything and is President of the United States?

A bell. Off the HMS Trump, a Royal Navy submarine that ran the Pacific, engraved with Trump’s name and 1944. Charles handed it over with: “May this stand as a testimony to our nation’s shared history and shining future. And should you ever need to get hold of us, just give us a ring.”

Diplomatic dad joke of the year.

And because I know you will ask. The HMS Trump was a Royal Navy T-class submarine named as part of a predetermined wartime naming pattern, not for Donald Trump. The name was simply one of the “T” names chosen for that class of boats.

The big question is, will this bell make an appearance in the Oval Office? My money is on the mantel.

First Lady Highlights

Quick Rundown

• Senate Republicans blocked Kaine’s Cuba war-powers vote. Rick Scott called it “moot.” Kaine pointed to the Trump oil blockade and said the US would call that an act of war if the tables were turned. Trump in March: “We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished.” Quiet story. Give it a minute.

• Trump’s face is going on a passport. Limited-edition America250 booklet with Trump’s portrait and signature over the Declaration of Independence. Washington Passport Agency only, no extra fee. The man is becoming his own gift shop.

• Special Forces master sergeant pleads not guilty to a $400K Polymarket payout. Gannon Van Dyke, 38, of Fort Bragg, placed $33,000 in bets last December that Maduro would soon be out. He helped plan the January 3 raid that captured him. First DOJ insider-trading case against a prediction-market trade.

• DeSantis dropped a Florida congressional map that adds four GOP seats. Hakeem Jeffries said Florida Republicans should “F around and find out.” DeSantis offered to fly Jeffries down personally: “I’ll put you up in the Florida governor’s mansion. We will take you fishing.” Map wars are now national.

Let’s Talk About It

The Morens indictment is the first criminal accountability for the COVID-era cover-up. With Fauci pardoned and other co-conspirators still unnamed, what does real accountability actually look like from here?

Lightning round: Do you carry the Trump-face passport on principle, refuse it on principle, or just see what the customs agent in Paris does? I need a new passport. Should I get one?

See you Friday. Stay nosy.

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Another wild weekend, a third assassination attempt on the President, and a pivot of denial from the left.

Also, this morning I realized I forgot the Sunday Brief yesterday. I stayed up late covering the THIRD assassination attempt on Trump and forgot to queue up the Sunday Brief. Apologies.

Let’s get into the news.

In today’s Brief:

• A Caltech grad with a Kamala donation history opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. We have his manifesto.

• Cole Allen mailed his “Friendly Federal Assassin” letter to his family ten minutes before pulling the trigger.

• His Bluesky timeline reads like every blue-check post you’ve muted this year.

• King Charles and Queen Camilla still land in D.C. today. State dinner Tuesday. The show goes on.

• One guy at the dinner kept eating during the lockdown. Folk hero status.

Assassination Attempt At The WHCA Dinner

Saturday night, a third assassination attempt was made on President Trump. The President, Vice President, and most of the Cabinet were seated for the WHCA Dinner at the Washington Hilton. A 31-year-old man from Torrance, California, charged through the metal detectors outside the ballroom and started firing.

CBS’s frame-by-frame timeline clocks the chaos at 8:34 p.m.: shots fired, Secret Service grabs Vance four seconds before pulling Trump from the dais, Stephen Miller throws himself in front of his pregnant wife, RFK Jr.’s detail swarms the table. Trump posted on Truth Social by 9:17. The dinner was canceled by 9:39. By midnight, the suspect had a name.

A Secret Service officer was hit. The vest stopped the round. He's expected to be okay. He also hasn't been paid in 72 days, because Senate Democrats are still blocking the DHS funding bill and the Secret Service runs through DHS. Worth remembering.

Yashar Ali @yashar Getty Images’ @andyharnik captures the moment the Vice President and President were evacuated from the dais at the White House Correspondents Dinner. You can see the Secret Service grabbing Vance by his jacket to pull him away.

Trump wanted to keep going. Law enforcement said no. Protocol required clearing the room. Dinner canceled. 30 minutes later, he was in the White House Briefing Room, fielding questions from the same press corps that had just been evacuated from the Hilton.

Sunday morning, Trump told reporters the silver lining was Democrats waving to him on the way out. He wants to reschedule inside 30 days.

Cole Allen is being arraigned in federal court today on at least two charges to start: using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon. More are expected. The prosecutor on the case is U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. Yes, that Jeanine Pirro. The universe has a sense of humor.

Don’t Get Between A Man and His Dinner

You’ve already seen the clip. While Secret Service agents had their guns drawn and guests dove under tablecloths, one guy at the table reached up, scooped his food, and kept eating.

Gunz @TheGunzShow Shout out to THIS guy who decided to take a spoonful of his mashed potatoes while ducking and covering after tonight’s WHCD shooting. No way he was passing up on that free food, even with Secret Service having their guns drawn out.

His name is Michael Glantz. He’s a talent agent at Creative Artists Agency, and his client list includes Wolf Blitzer, who got knocked over in the chaos and was apparently the only thing Glantz was actually worried about. Everything else was burrata salad.

Glantz told the New York Times he didn’t dive for the floor because he has a bad back and is “a hygiene freak.” His exact words: “There was no freaking way I was getting in my new tux on the dirty Hilton floor.”

Folk hero confirmed. Get this man a plate to go.

Who Is Cole Allen

The biographical detail will not match the narrative the press is reaching for. Cole Thomas Allen, 31. Caltech graduate, mechanical engineering, class of 2017. Master’s in computer science from Cal State Dominguez Hills, 2025. C2 Education tutor. Named “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024. A classmate told the Wall Street Journal he was “even more nerdy” than the average Caltech kid. “Always nice and kind to people.”

He also donated to Kamala Harris, attended at least one No Kings protest, and was affiliated with a group called The Wide Awakes. He bought the Maverick 12-gauge from Turner’s Outdoorsman in Torrance last August. The Armscor pistol came from a shop in Lawndale the prior October. He stored both at his parents’ house and trained at a range.

He took a train across the country with his weapons. He was reportedly a guest at the Hilton where the dinner was held, having checked in the day before.

By Sunday morning, Barack Obama was on X telling the country we “don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting.” The manifesto had been public for half a day by then. The shooter’s own brother had already handed the email to Connecticut police before the gunfire ever started.

The motive isn’t unclear. It’s inconvenient, Barry.

Democrats spent ten years calling Trump an existential threat to the Republic and comparing him to Hitler. A Caltech-grad Kamala donor with a Bluesky timeline took the rhetoric at face value, then mailed his family a manifesto on his way to kill the Cabinet. And the most recent Democratic president still wants you to believe the motive is a mystery.

The Manifesto Reads Like a Bluesky Timeline

Ten minutes before opening fire, Allen emailed a 1,052-word manifesto to his family. He signed it Cole “coldForce” “Friendly Federal Assassin” Allen. His brother called Connecticut police as soon as he opened it. Why Connecticut is unclear.

The document named Trump administration officials as targets, ranked highest to lowest. FBI Director Kash Patel was excluded from the list. Allen wrote that he chose buckshot to keep the casualty count down, but if he had to take everyone, he would, because they were “complicit.” He invoked Christian faith to justify the killing. He preemptively rebutted the predictable objections about race and theology. He mocked Secret Service for “incompetent” hotel security.

His Bluesky account under the handle coldforce.bsky.social was active from November 2024 until the morning of the attack. The Free Beacon pulled what he was boosting:

“the president of the united states is personally looting the treasury to the tune of literally billions of dollars and that he is not being immediately removed from office and tried for high crimes against this country is a devastating indictment of every part of our political system.”

He boosted “Abolish ICE” posts. He called an immigration facility a “concentration camp.” Elon Musk got the standard Nazi treatment. Jake Tapper’s First Amendment pocket square was apparently fascist accessorizing. The account was suspended after the shooting.

The manifesto was every anti-Trump social media narrative come to life. Hard to argue.

Robert Sterling pulled the relevant polling and posted it Saturday:

Robert Sterling @RobertMSterling 25% of very liberal people say political violence can “sometimes be justified.” Among very conservative people it’s just 3%. In other words, the far left is 8x more likely to support political violence as the far right. Stop pretending this is a “both sides” problem. It’s not.

Save that one for the next “stochastic terrorism” lecture.

King Charles Lands Today Anyway

The royals are still coming. Buckingham Palace confirmed Sunday the visit will proceed. King Charles and Queen Camilla touch down in D.C. today for a four-day swing built around the 250th anniversary of American independence.

The itinerary: private tea and a garden party with the Trumps tonight, white-tie state dinner Tuesday at the White House. Charles addresses a joint session of Congress Tuesday morning, the first time a sitting British monarch has done that. Then up to New York Wednesday for a 9/11 Memorial visit with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former Mayor Bloomberg. Closing in Virginia for Appalachian cultural performances and a climate roundtable with indigenous groups before flying out to Barbados.

The backdrop is uglier than the curtsies suggest. Trump and PM Keir Starmer are openly feuding over Iran. Trump called the British aircraft carriers “toys” earlier this month. A handful of House members are publicly demanding Prince Andrew testify about Epstein. Awkward small talk to come.

But the show goes on. After watching the President of the United States get evacuated from a podium 36 hours earlier, the optics of a state dinner this week land different. The man at the metal detector wanted the Cabinet dead. The Cabinet is hosting the King.

Quick Rundown

• The SPLC just got federally indicted. Wire fraud, false statements, money laundering. Prosecutors say the Southern Poverty Law Center funneled more than $3 million in donor cash to people tied to violent extremist groups (KKK, neo-Nazi outfits) through shell companies between 2014 and 2023. One informant they paid helped plan the 2017 Charlottesville rally. Jim Jordan also wants their internal documents by April 30. The FBI cited SPLC in at least 13 documents, including the Richmond memo flagging traditional Catholics as extremists. Quiet story for now. Give it a minute.

• Iran talks stall, Pakistan trip canceled. Trump pulled the plug on the U.S. delegation’s Pakistan trip Friday after telling Tehran they can call him if they want to talk. Within ten minutes of the announcement, Iran sent over an improved proposal. He’s still saying no.

• The White House ballroom pitch returns. Within 24 hours of the shooting, the President pointed to the security failure at the Hilton as the case for his proposed White House ballroom. Read that as you will.

Let’s Talk About It

If the WHCA shooter had been a MAGA voter who’d attended a Trump rally and posted right-wing memes, how long would the wall-to-wall coverage last? Be honest.

Can you really blame the burrata salad guy? If that’s potentially your last meal on earth, you could do a lot worse than burrata.

Drop your takes in the comments. See you Wednesday. Stay nosy.

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Is everybody ready for the weekend? (attempted earwig implantation)

What do you have planned? There’s this cute little pastry shop that just opened in town, and I’ve been dying to try it. Legit pastries. Croissants. Tarts. Not to dog on donuts or cookies, but there’s something special about the airy layers of a warm butter croissant.

Makes me wonder what your favorite baked treat is?

Anyway, let’s get down to business.

In today’s Brief:

• The NYT Opinion podcast spent Wednesday explaining which crimes are acceptable now. Murder made the list.

• A Special Forces soldier involved in Maduro’s capture bet $33K on Polymarket the week before the raid, walked with $409K, now facing 60 years.

• The DOJ just filed more denaturalization cases in one year than Biden’s DOJ filed in four.

• The FBI flew a DOJ jet to Havana to retrieve a 10-year-old boy whose parent allegedly took him for gender-transition surgery.

• Plus marijuana rescheduling, a Regeneron price deal, the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire extended, and missing scientists on Congress’s radar.

Microlooting, “Cool Crimes,” and the Rotating List

On Wednesday, the NYT Opinion desk ran an episode titled The Rich Don't Play By The Rules, So Why Should I? Guests: self-described communist Hasan Piker and New Yorker anti-capitalism writer Jia Tolentino. — Can we acknowledge the irony of Condé Nast paying someone to write about anti-capitalism? What are we doing?! — Host: NYT culture editor Nadja Spiegelman. Topic: "microlooting," which is apparently what we're calling petty theft. Progressives love making things up to validate their subjective morality.

Fifteen minutes in, Tolentino casually admitted she’d stolen lemons from her Brooklyn Whole Foods “on several occasions.” Miss Nancy needs lemons. Organic ones are $1.29 each. Tolentino, who posts her fab NYC life on IG, walks back in and pockets them. Piker: she “should go to prison.” Wink.

Related

Rivera and Reeves

R&R Ep. 226 | SPLC Indicted for Paying Nazis — And That's Just the First 20 Minutes

The Southern Poverty Law Center just got indicted by a federal grand jury — and the details are wild. Meseidy and Rachel break down the charges, the shell companies, the payments that allegedly went straight to a Klan leader and the guy who helped organize Charlottesville. If you’ve been wondering why the “Nazi” narrative against half the country never seemed to die, this episode connects some uncomfortable dots…

Listen now

a month ago · 17 likes · 1 comment · Meseidy and Rachel Reeves

They built a philosophy around it. Fine to steal from Whole Foods. Not from a small business. Fine to pirate movies, bypass paywalls, rob a bank. Fine, to steal from the Louvre. Piker said he’d “pirate a car” if he could figure out how. Whatever that means.

Piker’s logic: corporations budget for theft, so theft is a subscription fee you pay yourself. It's payback for the self-checkout, which put the cashier out of a job. Seattle is this at scale. Half the downtown Target shelves are behind plexiglass or gone.

Then Spiegelman asked the real question. 41% of Gen Z told pollsters the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was morally justified. How do we sit with that?

Piker’s answer: “Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare C.E.O., was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder.” (For the unaware: Engels was Marx’s homie, co-author of the Communist Manifesto.) Hasan kept going. Structural violence. For-profit paywall. Because of that, he argues, people understood why Thompson had to die.

Same move as the lemons, applied to a man’s life. The act doesn’t matter. The target does. Whoever’s bad enough this week is fair game. Assassinated in the process? Understandable. According to Hasan.

A rotating list. Today, insurance executives. Yesterday, landlords. Last week, the Louvre. Pick the character, the method follows.

anya @anyaxmar you’d think this i-just-want-healthcare socialist would want a high trust a la nordic society but he just dreams of being soviet union party elite...

Your life and property here aren’t contingent on anyone else’s approval. Strip that out, you don’t have a society. You have a seating chart.

The part that’ll keep me up: this isn’t a Twitch stream. The NYT gave him the mic. Bernie and AOC appear with him. Ro Khanna said he’d sit down. This is the adult table.

Republicans need to run Piker clips on a loop through November.

The $33,000 Bet on a Classified Raid

January 3, U.S. Special Forces captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. A week before, Fort Bragg Master Sergeant Gannon “Ken” Van Dyke, directly involved in the planning, placed $33,000 in Polymarket bets on Maduro’s removal. He won roughly $409,000 and tried the foreign crypto shuffle on his way out. Apparently Fort Bragg doesn’t teach Money Laundering 101. The DOJ charged him with Commodity Exchange Act violations, wire fraud, and insider trading. Max: 60 years.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Two Florida Republicans want Van Dyke to walk. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna wants a full pardon. Rep. Jimmy Patronis was plainer: “If the DOJ isn’t prepared to go after every member of Congress profiting off insider trading, this feels like selective enforcement, not justice.”

They aren’t off base. Members of Congress do this every quarter, sometimes betting against American interests. Their fig leaf: the intel was “technically public” by a day when they trade. The argument is that Van Dyke should give the money back, get a reprimand, and go home. The man served his country. More than you can say for most of Congress. Go after Pelosi’s next tech position and every member who beats the S&P by ten.

Trump got asked Thursday and reached for Pete Rose: this was “Pete Rose betting on his own team.” Pressed on Iran war patterns, he shrugged: the world has become “somewhat of a casino.” Harvard estimates $143M of Polymarket profits may trace to nonpublic info.

How about no one cheats or steals, and if you do, everyone faces a consequence.

If a Master Sergeant pulled this off, how many others did? Polymarket is a public ledger. Someone at the CFTC is staring at that chart.

The DOJ’s Record Denaturalization Push

The DOJ confirmed Thursday it’s moving denaturalization cases to all 93 U.S. attorney offices. Targets: naturalized citizens who got citizenship through fraud, sham marriages, or concealed criminal histories. Will this include “brother-lover” Ilhan Omar? Asking for a friend.

DOJ deputy Matthew Tragesser: “The Department is pursuing the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history.” The year’s 384 cases already exceed Biden’s four years combined. The media will frame it as the administration targeting immigrants. For context: the U.S. brought 305 denaturalization cases total between 1990 and 2018.

Denaturalization used to be rare enough that one case made national news. Now it’s industrial. Cases are moving out of the specialized immigration unit to 93 U.S. attorney offices in parallel.

Blanche is betting, not incorrectly, that a chunk of the naturalization backlog is fraudulent. USCIS approved hundreds of thousands a year for a decade. Built for volume, not scrutiny.

Quiet story for now. Give it a minute.

The Justice Department Jet That Flew to Havana

The FBI flew a DOJ plane to Cuba this week to retrieve a 10-year-old American boy. His biological father is Rose Inessa-Ethington, a 42-year-old male who pretends to be a woman. Rose and partner Blue Inessa-Ethington took him to Havana from Cache County, Utah. Shared custody. They told the boy's mother they were going camping in Calgary.

Per the USAO Utah and the federal complaint, the child is “a biological male who identifies as a female.” Family members told investigators Rose had been manipulating him that way. The FBI cited concerns he was taken “for gender reassignment surgery prior to puberty.” Not legal there. Not legal here. The trip ran past the April 3 custody return. The mother got one phone call March 28 saying they’d “arrived in Canada.”

So, a man who convinced himself he was a woman then convinced his 10-year-old son of the same, and allegedly tried to move him to a communist island to make it permanent.

The aviation internet noticed first. Flight trackers spotted a DOJ jet on a rare Richmond-to-Havana route Monday. Answer: a kidnapping complaint unsealed days earlier in Utah. Both defendants arrested on arrival. The boy is home.

A DOJ jet to Havana to retrieve an American child is unprecedented. The White House made the call anyway. This is the clearest sign, yet this administration will use the full federal apparatus to keep kids out of the medical transition pipeline. A boy is home with his mom because of it. The class that spent a decade defending “gender-affirming care for minors” has nowhere to stand.

Quick Rundown

• Marijuana rescheduled. The DOJ moved marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III Thursday, out of the same class as heroin. Only took 50 years and half the country legalizing it anyway. Broader reclassification is expedited.

• Regeneron drug price deal. Trump announced a voluntary price cut with Regeneron Thursday. Praluent drops $537 to $225 on TrumpRx, per Newsweek. Future Regeneron drugs hit at Most Favored Nation rates. Covers 86% of branded drugs. Also: a two-year-old named Travis Smith stole the press conference while Trump announced Regeneron’s gene therapy for a rare hearing disorder. Watch the clip.

• Israel-Lebanon ceasefire extended. Trump added three weeks to the truce. Iran ceasefire also holds, for now.

• Missing scientists. Axios has a quietly alarming report on Congress investigating missing U.S. scientists connected to space and nuclear programs. Thin on details. Worth watching.

Let’s Talk About It

If the New York Times ran a podcast where a conservative guest defended political assassination as “justified response” to bad actors, what do you think the week would have looked like? Be honest.

Wrong answers only. What’s the most on-brand thing Hasan Piker could steal next?

Drop your takes in the comments. I’ll see you Monday.

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The Brief publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Forward to someone who needs to understand what’s actually happening.

A lot is happening at once, and with the Iran conflict dominating the headlines a lot is slipping past the morning scroll.

So, let’s get into it!

In today’s Brief:

• SPLC got indicted on 11 counts for allegedly funneling $3M to actual Klansmen.

• Two Americans died on a cliff road in Chihuahua. Mexico’s president had no idea they were there. They were CIA.

• Kash Patel filed a $250M suit against The Atlantic. The legal bar is a wall.

• Virginia voters passed a 10-1 Democratic gerrymander by three points. Half the state is locked out of the House map. Lawsuits pending.

• Three House members resigned in a week; Mace and Mills are drafting expulsion resolutions against each other.

• Plus Iran threatens to break the blockade by force, Ilhan Omar’s vanishing $30M, and a Michigan Dem convention that shows where the base is going.

The DOJ Drops an 11-Count Indictment on the SPLC

Tuesday afternoon, a grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama returned an 11-count indictment against the SPLC: six counts of wire fraud, four of bank fraud, one of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Acting AG Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced it together.

Between 2014 and 2023, SPLC allegedly paid $3M to eight individuals tied to the KKK, the National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations, and the American Front. One ~$270,000 payment went to a leader who helped plan the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville which lead to the death of Heather Danielle Heyer. DOJ says SPLC routed the money through shell companies and prepaid cards to hide the source.

SPLC interim CEO Bryan Fair announced the probe himself in a Tuesday YouTube video, framing it as Trump-administration weaponization.

What does this actually mean?

The SPLC is charged as an entity, not any individual leaders. The corporation faces 11 federal felonies and, if convicted, potentially millions in fines, court-ordered oversight of its finances, restitution to donors, and a real fight over its tax-exempt status. Corporations can’t go to prison, so the penalties are financial and structural. But Blanche and Patel made clear Tuesday that the investigation is ongoing and “individuals who are responsible will be brought to justice.”

Translation: anyone who authorized the payments or helped hide them could still get hit with their own charges, and federal fraud and money-laundering convictions carry real prison time. Next up is arraignment (expect a not-guilty plea), then discovery, motions, and either a plea deal or a jury trial. DOJ has also already filed actions to claw back the alleged proceeds.

Patel cut FBI ties with SPLC last October after it labeled Turning Point USA a hate group. On September 9, one day before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, SPLC published a hostile newsletter about him. Kirk’s producer Andrew Kolvet has publicly asked whether it contributed to the shooter’s motive.

The "hate group" label isn't rhetorical. It carries financial teeth. Fundraising platforms, credit card processors, and Big Tech companies quietly use the SPLC's hate map to decide who they'll do business with. The Ruth Institute, a pro-family Christian nonprofit in Louisiana, got dropped by its credit card processor in 2017, then refused by fundraising platform Salsa Labs in 2021 after SPLC flagged them "anti-LGBTQ." The Salsa Labs employee handling the account wrote back privately that it was "absolutely RIDICULOUS that the SPLC gets to pick and choose who is a hate group." His CEO agreed, but the board wouldn't budge.

The SPLC built a career calling mainstream conservative organizations like Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty, and parents’ rights groups “hate groups.” Well, now they are charged with bankrolling actual Klansmen. “SPLC-designated hate group” is going to read differently going forward.

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Two CIA Officers Just Died on a Mountain Road in Mexico

Sunday morning, a convoy of six wound down a mountain road in northern Chihuahua. One vehicle skidded off, plunged 600 feet into a ravine, and exploded. Four dead: two Mexican state investigators, two Americans.

For 24 hours, the U.S. Embassy called them “embassy personnel.” Turns out they were CIA. They’d just come from the destruction of what Chihuahua’s AG called “perhaps one of the largest” clandestine meth labs ever located in Mexico.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said flatly, “It was not an operation the security cabinet was aware of. We were not informed.” She’s opening a federal investigation into possible national security law violations. The State AG of Chihuahua spent Monday contradicting himself about whether the Americans participated, before settling on: they taught a drone class nearby and hitched a ride back.

Okay.

Under CIA Director John Ratcliffe, the agency has quietly expanded its counternarcotics role: intel sharing, training, unarmed MQ-9 Reapers over Mexico. Ambassador Ronald Johnson is himself a 20-year CIA vet. Same week: visa restrictions on Sinaloa cartel family members.

Two Americans died running an operation most Americans had no idea was happening. Ask why the Embassy tried to call them “embassy personnel” first.

The FBI Director Sues For $250 Million

Friday, The Atlantic published a two-dozen-source piece on FBI Director Kash Patel. Rough allegations: conspicuous intoxication in front of White House staff, a security detail that couldn’t wake him, a request for “breaching equipment” to get him out of a locked room, meetings rescheduled around alcohol-fueled nights, firing an Iran-focused counterintel squad days before the Iran war started.

Monday, Patel filed a $250M defamation suit in D.C. federal court.

FBI Director Kash Patel @FBIDirectorKash see you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court... actual malice standard is now what some would call a legal lay up.

Reuters couldn't verify a single claim in The Atlantic's piece. The magazine quietly changed the headline from "Kash Patel's Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job" to "The FBI Director Is MIA" after publication, with no public explanation. Every allegation ran on anonymous sourcing. On the record?

Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino told Reuters he never once found Patel unreachable, adding, "You reach out to the deputy, and that's me." Patel's comms strategist Erica Knight called it a story "every real DC reporter chased, couldn't verify, and passed on." This is also the same magazine that ran stories on Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth both with unnamed sources, zero people willing to sign their name meanwhile many publically disputed their reporting. Wash and repeat for Patel with a quiet headline swap after the piece went live. At some point it stops looking like journalism.

“Actual malice” is not a legal lay-up. It’s one of the highest bars in law, set by NYT v. Sullivan. Public officials must prove a publisher knew a claim was false or acted with reckless disregard. Media lawyers are openly skeptical. Trump has lost similar suits against CNN, the NYT, and the WSJ.

Patel’s stronger card: The Atlantic sent him 19 detailed questions Friday at 4 p.m. His lawyer asked for more time. The magazine published at 6:20 p.m. That’s the cleanest evidence for recklessness.

Also: a DOJ watchdog has now requested Patel’s calendars and security detail messages. Suing for $250M while an IG is pulling your schedule is a choice.

Virginia Just Approved the Country’s Most Aggressive Gerrymander by Three Points

Tuesday, Virginia voters narrowly approved a redistricting referendum handing the Democratic General Assembly the keys to redraw every congressional line until 2030. Final margin: 51% to 48%. Three points, in a state Kamala Harris won by just under 52% in 2024.

The delegation flips from 6-5 Democratic to a projected 10-1 split. Four new Democratic House seats. Virginia approved a bipartisan redistricting commission in 2020 by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Tuesday’s vote suspends it so Democrats can draw the maps themselves.

The disenfranchisement case is real. CBS noted rural voters “said the new map disenfranchises them.” Former GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin called the process “unconstitutional” and said it “will disenfranchise millions.” Argue the math however you want: in a state Harris won 52-48, Republicans get one of eleven seats.

Nearly $100M poured into the race, 95% from dark money. Pro: $64M. Anti: ~$20M.

The legal fight is teed up. Lower courts blocked the referendum twice before the Virginia Supreme Court let it proceed while considering the underlying challenges. GOP lawsuits are still pending. Eric Cantor and Jason Miyares, who ran the opposition, said it plainly: “Virginians disenfranchised by today’s vote will have their day in court.”

One last note. Gov. Abigail Spanberger said during her 2025 campaign, “I have no plans to redistrict Virginia.” Six months later, Virgina gets hosed.

Congress Is Imploding in Real Time, UGH

Three resignations in a week. Two sitting members drafting expulsion resolutions against each other. Bipartisan dirtbag energy.

Florida Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned Tuesday moments before her Ethics hearing. The committee had found 25 of 27 violations “proven by clear and convincing evidence.” Shopping list: FEMA fraud, a 3-carat yellow diamond, a Tesla, Tiffany jewelry, cruises. She called it a “witch hunt.” Third resignation this week, joining Eric Swalwell (D-CA) over sexual misconduct and Tony Gonzales (R-TX) over an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.

Then the Mace-Mills speedrun. Mace filed a resolution Monday to expel Mills over domestic violence, sexual misconduct, and stolen valor, calling him “a woman beater and a fraud.” Mills is drafting one right back. Both are under separate Ethics probes.

But the WaPo’s body-cam story is the damning piece for Mills. A D.C. officer wanted to arrest Mills in February 2025 after a woman showed him bruises. A lieutenant overruled it. Mills said allegations would be “weaponized because of my party” and tried to call AG Bondi mid-interview.

Neither party has clean hands. That’s the point. They are all trash.

Quick Rundown

• Iran ceasefire extended, Pakistan talks stalled. Trump extended the ceasefire indefinitely Tuesday with the blockade staying put. Vance's Pakistan trip is postponed indefinitely after Iran refused to commit to the Islamabad meeting. Tehran threatens to break the blockade "by force, if necessary." Buried detail: Adm. Paparo told Congress it'll take one to two years to scale Tomahawk and Patriot production.

• Ilhan Omar’s vanishing $30 million. Her financial disclosure swung from $6M–$30M down to $18K–$95K after the Office of Congressional Conduct came asking questions. Her lawyer blamed the accountant. Whip Tom Emmer joked the accountant must have trained at Minnesota’s Learning Center, the daycare in the Nick Shirley fraud video.

• Senate GOP goes nuclear on ICE funding. A 52-46 party-line vote Tuesday kicked off reconciliation to fund ICE and CBP for 3.5 years, up to $140B authorized. DHS has been shut since Feb. 14. Trump wants it signed by June 1.

• Michigan Dems show their cards. Progressive Amir Makled upset incumbent Jordan Acker for the UMich Board of Regents nomination Sunday, despite old retweets praising Hezbollah leaders. Acker was caught in sexually degrading Slack messages which he claimed were fake. Pro-Israel Senate candidate Haley Stevens got booed off the stage. That’s where the base is going.

Let’s Talk About It

Virginia passed a 10-1 Democratic map by barely three points in a state Harris won by four. If this stands in court, what does “fair representation” even mean going forward? Are any of you in VA? How are you feeling today?

Wrong answers only: Ilhan Omar’s accountant made a $29.9 million arithmetic error. What’s the worst math mistake you’ve ever made in your own life?

Drop your takes in the comments. See you Friday.

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The Brief publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Forward to someone who needs to understand what’s actually happening.

That means a new week and new news. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and is recharged to take on the week ahead.

I had a wonderful weekend outside in the yard and enjoyed a baseball game. Let’s hope it was enough to get me through the week. LOL

ICYMI

In today’s Brief:

• The FISA 702 stopgap, the hardliners who forced it, and what warrantless spying on Americans actually means

• The USS Spruance boards the TOUSKA, the Strait of Hormuz closes again, and a Beverly Hills businesswoman gets flagged at LAX

• Shreveport: a dad, his own children, and why calling this a “mass shooting” misses the point

• Trump, Rogan, and an executive order that fast-tracks psychedelics for vets

• Quick Rundown: the Callais slow-walk, the NYT SCOTUS leak, blue-state wealth taxes, and gas above $3

Surveillance powers on life support

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was set to lapse today. That’s the law letting the NSA and FBI sweep up communications of foreigners overseas, with the side effect of also catching every American those foreigners happen to email, call, or text. No warrant required.

Speaker Mike Johnson wanted a clean five-year reauthorization. Then an 18-month version. Then a year. Each one died on the House floor. A small faction of privacy hawks, led by Thomas Massie, Tim Burchett, and Lauren Boebert, held the line and refused to extend the authority without warrant requirements for U.S. person queries.

By late Friday night, Johnson was out of options. Per the Washington Examiner, it was “an overnight defeat” for the Speaker. The Senate then passed a ten-day stopgap by unanimous consent, kicking the real fight to April 30. Just the News has the play-by-play.

The White House is furious. Trump has pushed hard for a clean reauth since January, and he’s running out of Republicans willing to hand him one. Trump argues that it is vital to national security right now, as we face attacks from adversaries.

Massie has been the loudest holdout, arguing that the FBI already has a miserable track record of abusing 702 to snoop on Americans. He’s right about that. The 2023 DOJ audit documented 278,000 improper queries in a single year.

Here’s the honest question. Privacy hawks want to strip a tool the intelligence community swears it needs. The IC wants warrant-free queries because they’d rather not ask permission. Neither side trusts the other. Neither should.

Ten days until round two.

The Navy just rappelled onto an Iranian ship

At dawn local time today, the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance (DDG 111) disabled the propulsion of M/V TOUSKA, an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel making a run for Bandar Abbas at 17 knots. According to CENTCOM, six hours of warnings were ignored. The Spruance put several rounds from its 5-inch MK 45 gun into TOUSKA’s engine room. Marines from the 31st MEU rappelled onboard and took the ship into U.S. custody.

Here’s the CENTCOM footage:

Trump declared a naval blockade on April 12 after Iranian gunboats fired on a UK tanker in the Strait. His Truth Social post was blunt: any ship paying the Iranian transit toll in Chinese yuan or crypto would be intercepted. TOUSKA is the first real test.

VP Vance is on a plane to Islamabad right now, leading the US delegation with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. That's the White House line after a chaotic Sunday: Trump told ABC News that Vance would skip the trip over security concerns, and officials walked it back within hours.

The 20-plus-hour flight means Vance hasn't landed yet. Round one, on April 11, ended in marathon talks with no deal and produced the fragile ceasefire now on fumes. Tehran state media is already hinting that round two may be off after the Spruance boarding.

Oh, and on Saturday, federal agents arrested Shamim Mafi at LAX. She’s an Iranian businesswoman with Beverly Hills ties, accused of brokering more than $70 million in drone sales to Sudan, destined for Iran’s proxy network.

Iran is simultaneously claiming 3,500 of its people have died in the war against the U.S. Whether that number is real or regime theater to TBD, but Iran is posturing, and Tehran is escalating.

The Supreme Court may have already decided the Voting Rights Act

Sean Spicer went on the DC Huddle podcast last week and dropped a grenade. His claim: the Supreme Court has already decided Louisiana v. Callais internally, and the liberal justices are slow-walking their dissent on purpose.

The quote, verbatim: “I have been told by reliable sources that the decision is done and the minority is slow walking the dissent so that states do not have time to redistrict.”

Callais is the case testing whether Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the rule that forces states to draw majority-minority districts where practicable, still holds up under the 14th and 15th Amendments. If the Court guts Section 2, Louisiana’s congressional map flips. So does Alabama’s. Georgia. Mississippi. South Carolina.

Per Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern on Bluesky, he predicted that this slow-walk would happen back in January. This is a rare moment where a right-leaning pundit and a progressive SCOTUS beat reporter are telling the same story from opposite ends of the political table.

Why the calendar matters: states need weeks, sometimes months, to redraw maps and defend them in court. A June ruling might let southern states reconfigure for November. A September ruling almost certainly doesn’t. The NYT is projecting up to twelve southern congressional seats could swing Republican if the ruling lands early enough.

If Spicer’s sources are right, this is one of the more aggressive procedural games the Court’s minority has run in memory. If they’re wrong, he just burned a lot of credibility. Watch the June hand-down calendar.

Shreveport — 8 Children Murdered by Their Own Father

Early Sunday morning, across three homes in Shreveport, Louisiana, Shamar Elkins shot and killed eight children. Seven were his. The youngest was one. The oldest, fourteen. He also shot the mother of his children, who survived, and another woman, who is in critical condition. Then he fled, carjacked a vehicle, and led police on a chase into Bossier Parish, where officers shot and killed him.

The headlines are calling it a “mass shooting.” It’s not. This is a familicide. A domestic annihilator. A father who targeted his own descendants.

The distinction matters because policy follows framing. “Mass shooting” invites gun control arguments. Familicide invites an honest reckoning with what we tolerate in domestic violence intervention, what warning signs get ignored, and how custody and restraining orders work in practice. Elkins served in the Louisiana National Guard from 2013 to 2020. Never deployed. He wasn’t some shadowy stranger. He was someone’s partner, someone’s dad.

Governor Jeff Landry and Speaker Johnson both issued statements on Sunday. I read ten versions of this story yesterday and could not shake the ages. One. Two. Three. Five. Seven. Nine. Twelve. Fourteen. Hug your kids today.

Trump signs psychedelics into the mainstream

Saturday afternoon in the Oval, Trump signed an executive order called “Accelerating Medical Treatments For Serious Mental Illnesses.” The room was a sight: Joe Rogan, RFK Jr., FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, former Gov. Rick Perry, former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, and Bryan Hubbard of Americans for Ibogaine.

The order directs the FDA to fast-track review of any psychedelic already designated a breakthrough therapy. That includes MDMA, psilocybin, and the big one: ibogaine, still Schedule I. It opens data-sharing pipes between the FDA and the VA and sets up automatic rescheduling once anything gets approved. Roughly $50 million in research funding is attached.

Trump cited a Stanford study showing 30 special operations vets with traumatic brain injuries reported an 80 to 90 percent drop in depression and anxiety symptoms within a month of ibogaine treatment.

The counter. Ibogaine has killed at least 27 people documented in clinical and retreat settings since the early 2000s, mostly via cardiac events. It’s not aspirin. The whole point of the FDA track is to run it through the same safety process as any other serious drug. Doctors are split. Some call this overdue. Others warn Trump is moving faster than the data.

Veterans have been crossing the border to Mexico and Costa Rica for this treatment for years. The order doesn’t legalize anything overnight. It stops the federal government from pretending these drugs don’t work while 22 vets a day take their own lives.

Quick Rundown

• The NYT’s SCOTUS Shadow Docket leak. The Times published memos from the 2016 Clean Power Plan internal deliberations last week, citing “people familiar.” Chief Justice Roberts is reportedly livid about the sourcing. No named leaker yet, and the Court’s internal investigation is underway.

• Blue-state wealth tax contagion. The WSJ reports that Maine is floating a 2 percent tax on assets over $50 million. Washington and Massachusetts are considering 4 percent. Mamdani’s NYC proposal is already in committee. Maine is not a wealthy state. The math will go the way it always does, which is that the targets move and the middle class eventually gets the bill.

• Gas prices above $3 through 2027. Axios broke the EIA forecast. The Hormuz closure and the blockade are the main drivers. If you’re budgeting for summer travel or a midterm campaign, plan accordingly.

• Tomorrow: the full House Ethics Committee takes up the adjudicatory subcommittee’s sanctions recommendation on Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), who was found to have committed 25 of 27 alleged ethics violations, including funneling FEMA disaster money through family-linked businesses. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has a privileged expulsion motion queued: “Either resign or be expelled.” Speaker Johnson publicly endorsed expulsion Friday. Two-thirds threshold means Democrats have to decide whether they own the cover.

Let’s Talk About It

Section 702 is the question of the week. Clean reauthorization so the intelligence community keeps its current tool, or a warrant requirement for U.S. person queries even if it slows down terror investigations? Where do you land, and has your position changed since the 2023 DOJ audit? Hit reply.

Lightning round: what’s your heavy-news-weekend decompression move? Long walk, trash TV, church, call your mom, clean the kitchen like a psychopath? Anything special with the warmer days? I’m taking new recommendations.

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@chattlookoutsLooie new fit 👀 #looie #lookouts #fitcheck

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It’s opening week at the Chattanooga Lookouts’ brand new stadium. The air was fresh. That stretch of spring where it’s warm but you can sit outside all day without the heat wringing you out. And while baseball ranks roughly second-to-last on my list of sports to watch live, there’s no better way to shake off winter than a night at the ballpark.

We made the obligatory stop for hot dogs and beer and found our seats — front row, behind home plate. The away team was the Montgomery Biscuits. Their logo is a fluffy biscuit with a pat of butter in its mouth. Or maybe that’s its tongue. I’m still not sure.

I settled in, balancing a hot dog, fries, and a shandy, ready for the game — and realized the real show had nothing to do with the field. Five young guys in the row at our backs, and one of them had taken up the noble sport of heckling the players loud enough to crack up everyone within three sections.

I caught some of it for you. Listen close.

The Kids Are Showing Up

A few years ago, if you’d told me young men were about to be the ones quietly filling the pews, I would have likely laughed. We were told that Gen Z was supposed to be the generation that buried organized religion for good. Every graph pointed down. Every headline about church closures read like an obituary.

Gallup dropped a poll this week that has a lot of people doing a double-take.

Forty-two percent of American men between 18 and 29 now say religion is “very important” in their lives. Two years ago, that number was 28%. That’s a fourteen-point jump, the biggest Gallup has recorded for any age or gender group in that window. It’s also the first time in a quarter-century that young men have outpaced young women on the question. Attendance is up, too. Four in ten young men now show up at a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple at least once a month. That’s the highest it’s been in over a decade.

Something’s happening.

I want to be careful here, because it is too soon to say “America is approaching a revival.” It’s not. At least not yet, we can pray. Overall religiosity is still near historic lows. Tens of thousands of churches are expected to close in the coming years. Axios pointed out that this isn’t the Third Great Awakening. PRRI’s CEO told them the decline among Gen Z may just be flattening out, not reversing.

But here’s the good news. A generation that was written off as lost to faith is, in at least one corner, walking back toward it. Not because anyone told them to. Not because their parents dragged them. A lot of them, frankly, are walking back without their parents. That’s not nothing.

The Gallup senior scientist running the numbers, Frank Newport, put it plainly: the decline among young people is starting to stop. In his words, that’s significant.

There are a few ways to read this. The cynical one — the one the media loves to tell — is that young men are finding religion because the manosphere told them to. The Gallup data show that most of the growth is occurring among young Republicans. What the media doesn’t know or won’t acknowledge is that you also can’t reduce a person walking into a sanctuary on a Sunday morning to a political demographic. Something pulls them through the door. A question they can’t shake. A tether that they seek. A friend who invited them. A feeling that the algorithm isn’t feeding them anything real.

The generous read — and the one I’m choosing today — is that a bunch of young people are looking around at a world that feels thin and trying to find something with weight. Community. Ritual. A place where your phone doesn’t work and someone older than you knows your name. You don’t have to be religious yourself to see why that would be appealing right now.

A rabbi in Los Angeles told the AP her congregation has been growing steadily since the pandemic. She put it simply: people are looking for a sense of belonging in dark times.

It’s not just the boys. Young Republican women’s attendance is up eight points over the same period. Democratic women under 30 are the one group that hasn’t budged, and there are real reasons for that worth taking seriously, from abortion politics to a loss of trust in institutions.

But I see a light. Young people are showing up somewhere that isn’t a screen. They’re sitting in rooms with other humans. They’re singing. They are making friends. Some of them are having the first quiet hour of their week. They are reacquainting themselves with God.

This is a good thing. The kids are showing up. Let’s pray it continues.

Someone Pick Up the Phone

Somewhere on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, there is a bright yellow payphone sitting outside a coffee shop. No coin slot. No instructions. Simply bold, bright blue letters that beckon you to just pick it up and CALL A BOOMER.

On the other end, 2,500 miles away in Reno, Nevada, a phone rings in the recreation room of a senior living facility. Whoever is nearest answers. And just like that, two strangers — separated by decades and a continent — are talking.

It’s called “Call a Boomer,” a social experiment by a biotech startup called Matter Neuroscience. The payphone in Boston connects to a matching one at the senior facility that reads, on that end, “Call a Zoomer.”

Maria Jaynes is 73. She grew up a small-town girl in Texas, met her husband Chris when he was stationed nearby with the Army, and married him when she was 18. He was 21. They spent the next forty years building a life together, Texas to California to Nevada, where Jaynes cried the first time she saw the mountains. Chris passed away in March of 2011, and she still lights a candle for him at mass.

When a BU student called her recently and asked how she managed to fall in love and make it last, Jaynes didn’t hesitate. She gave a list. Four things. Get to know someone slowly. Keep communicating. Hold hands and never stop. And live a life outside your partner.

She also, in the gentlest possible way, offered her opinion on dating apps. “Maybe meet someone in town that you know of,” she suggested.

How great is that?

So what’s with the phone? The startup behind it describes itself as a “happiness company” focused on neuroscience and feel-good brain chemistry, which sounds like the kind of thing that belongs on a hippie wellness podcast you listen to while doing something you don’t enjoy. But their actual intervention — the thing they built to make people feel better — was a payphone. A dial-age technology planted on a college campus, designed to do nothing but make two lonely people talk to each other.

Because that’s the thing they identified as the gap. Not a new app, not a subscription, not a curated digital experience, not another text message. A conversation with a stranger that goes well. That’s the whole formula.

The company noted that Gen Z and seniors are two of the loneliest demographics in the country. The ones on opposite ends of a life. And somehow, a yellow payphone on a random street in Boston is quietly bridging that gap, one half-hour conversation at a time.

Maria Jaynes told the student who called her: “I’m not just learning from you, you’re learning from me.”

That feels right. That feels like something we used to know and forgot.

I think about the things that are likely to be asked, while standing at that payphone with the wind in my face and a stranger’s soft voice coming through the line. What did a marriage look like before you had to perform it online? What did it feel like to see a mountain for the first time? What do you do with grief when there’s no algorithm to distract you from it?

Pick up the phone.

The Man Who Decided Only 400 People Mattered

There is something almost poetic about a man who spent his entire life deciding who belonged — and died alone because of it.

Ward McAllister was not born rich, not born famous, and not born into the kind of New York society he would eventually come to rule. He was a short, pudgy lawyer from Savannah, Georgia, who studied the mannerisms of the European elite the way some people study a second language, obsessively, with the desperate hope that fluency might pass for native speech. He married a wealthy woman, bought a farm in Newport, and set about constructing the most elaborate social scaffolding in American history.

It worked. Alongside Caroline Astor — the Mrs. Astor, the undisputed queen of Gilded Age New York — McAllister became the gatekeeper of the city’s most exclusive circles. He organized the famous Patriarch Balls, decided which new-money families were acceptable and which were not, and in 1892 coined the phrase that would define an era: The Four Hundred. According to McAllister, there were exactly 400 people in New York who truly mattered in society. Coincidentally — or perhaps not so coincidentally — that was precisely the number of guests who could fit inside Mrs. Astor’s ballroom.

For decades, an invitation to one of his carefully orchestrated evenings determined whether you existed or didn’t, in the only world that McAllister considered worth inhabiting. He called Mrs. Astor his “Mystic Rose.” He could spend ten minutes deliberating over the wording of a single invitation. He was, by all accounts, entirely humorless about the whole enterprise, which is, if you think about it, the funniest thing about him.

Then he wrote a book.

In 1890, McAllister published Society As I Have Found It, a memoir of his years at the center of New York’s elite. He was careful, technically. He didn’t name names outright. He used initials. He thought that was enough. It was not. Everyone knew exactly who he was talking about, and the people he had spent his life cultivating stopped inviting him anywhere. Slowly, then all at once, the doors closed.

He spent the next five years fading from the only world he had ever wanted. And on January 31, 1895, Ward McAllister — the man who had decided only 400 people mattered — died while dining alone at New York’s Union Club.

Mrs. Astor did not attend his funeral. She had a prior engagement.

There is a lesson buried in there somewhere about the difference between access and belonging, between influence and love, between being at the center of every room and actually being wanted in one. McAllister built a world and then discovered, too late, that he had never really lived in it; he had only been allowed to manage it.

The Four Hundred moved on without him. They always do.

But in today’s Brief, let’s bring it back domestically.

In today’s Brief:

• The Biden DOJ partnered with Planned Parenthood and abortion groups to build dossiers on pro-life activists before ever charging them

• A D.C. appeals court shut down Judge Boasberg’s contempt probe into Trump officials over deportation flights

• Eric Swalwell officially resigned from Congress as a fifth accuser came forward with rape allegations

• California Democrats advanced a bill critics are calling the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” to shield immigrant NGOs from investigative journalism

• Someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house and had a hit list of AI executives

Let’s get into the news!

The Biden DOJ Was Running Surveillance on Pro-Lifers With Help From Planned Parenthood

An 882-page report from the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group dropped Tuesday, and the details are worse than the headline. This isn’t just about selective prosecution. It’s about a federal agency coordinating with private abortion advocacy groups to track, surveil, and build cases against American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

The report alleges that after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, then-AG Merrick Garland stood up a national task force to pursue FACE Act cases against pro-lifers. The task force was run by Civil Rights Division trial attorney Sanjay Patel, who was, per internal emails, on texting terms with the National Abortion Federation’s security director. He called her an “MVP” for flagging incidents that “usually result in investigation/prosecution.”

It gets worse. Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, and the Feminist Majority Foundation were supplying the DOJ with full dossiers on pro-life activists. Personal addresses. Family photos. Drivers’ license numbers. Travel plans. All before any charges were filed.

One activist, Calvin Zastrow, was monitored for years. Patel emailed the NAF in 2021 asking about Zastrow’s travel to Montana. He wasn’t charged until October 2022. His daughter Eva was flagged in a 136-page DOJ dossier that cataloged her associations, physical description, and missionary work.

Then there’s the Mark Houck case. Houck, a Catholic father of seven, was arrested by 16 FBI agents at his home in rural Pennsylvania over a shoving incident at a clinic. A federal jury acquitted him. The Trump administration later settled with him for over $1 million.

The sentencing numbers tell the story. Biden prosecutors sought an average of 26.8 months for pro-life defendants. For pro-abortion defendants? 12.3 months. Actual sentences: 14 months versus 3 months.

Internal emails also showed prosecutors trying to screen out Christian jurors, referring to pro-lifers as “culty,” and complaining about getting assigned a “very Catholic magistrate.” One prosecutor griped the judge was “very particular about the bond conditions and not infringing on their first amendment rights.” Imagine being annoyed that a judge cares about constitutional rights.

Four prosecutors were fired Monday, including Patel. Acting AG Todd Blanche said the department “will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice.” Trump had already pardoned 23 pro-life defendants convicted under Biden’s FACE Act push.

The Washington Post predictably downplayed the findings, noting that most Biden-era cases ended in convictions. Sure. The question was never whether prosecutors could win cases. It was whether the government selectively weaponized a federal law against one side of a political debate. Eight hundred eighty-two pages say yes.

Appeals Court Shuts Down Boasberg’s Contempt Probe

The D.C. Circuit told Judge James Boasberg to stand down. In a 2-1 ruling Tuesday, the appeals court ordered him to end his criminal contempt investigation into Trump administration officials over the Venezuelan migrant deportation flights to El Salvador last March.

Judge Neomi Rao, writing for the majority, called the proceedings “a clear abuse of discretion” and a “legal dead end.” The court found Boasberg’s contempt probe encroached on executive branch autonomy over matters of national security and diplomacy. The government had already named then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as the responsible official, making further judicial digging “unnecessary and therefore improper.”

Judge J. Michelle Childs, a Biden appointee, dissented with an 80-page opinion arguing the ruling “stymied the district court’s inherent and statutory powers.”

The White House didn’t mince words. “We have long known that Judge Boasberg is a far-left judicial activist trying to undermine the President’s lawful authority,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson.

Boasberg issued an oral order last March demanding the government turn around planes bound for El Salvador. He later said the administration defied it. The administration said the order never mentioned transferring custody. The appeals court agreed.

Boasberg already had a DOJ misconduct complaint filed against him, and Trump has called for his impeachment. Tuesday’s ruling doesn’t end the broader Alien Enemies Act legal battle, but it puts a lid on the contempt theater.

Swalwell Resigns as New Rape Allegation Surfaces

Eric Swalwell’s political career ended on Tuesday. Not with a press conference. With a paper resignation filed hours after a fifth accuser came forward at a press conference in Beverly Hills.

Lonna Drewes, a former model and entrepreneur, alleged that Swalwell drugged her drink and raped her at a West Hollywood hotel in 2018. She said she’d only had one glass of wine. “When I arrived at his hotel room, I was already incapacitated, and I couldn’t move my arms or my body,” Drewes said. “He raped me and he choked me. And while he was choking me, I lost consciousness. I thought I died.”

Drewes appeared alongside attorney Lisa Bloom and said she planned to file a police report with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. She said she disclosed the assault at the time to people close to her and later discussed it in therapy. Her delay in going public, she said, was “driven by fear, not doubt.”

Swalwell, through attorney Sara Azari, called the allegations “false, fabricated, and deeply offensive” and a “political hit job.” He denies all claims of nonconsensual contact.

At least four women have now accused him of sexual misconduct, according to CNN, including a former staffer who alleges he raped her in 2024. The Manhattan DA’s office confirmed it is investigating. The House Ethics Committee had opened a probe. An expulsion resolution was being drafted. Pelosi pulled her endorsement.

Sen. Ruben Gallego has also been facing significant scrutiny over his close friendship with Swalwell. Gallego onfirmed he’d heard Swalwell rumors “for years.” When pressed by reporters, Gallego got visibly flustered and tried to characterize what he’d heard as Swalwell being “flirty.” The reporter pushed back, “That wasn’t the issue.”

A special election for California’s 14th District is expected on August 18, 2026. Also, on Tuesday, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) resigned after it was revealed he sent sexually explicit texts to a staffer who later died by suicide. His departure, combined with Swalwell’s, leaves the GOP House majority at 216-213.

TMZ On The Hill

It’s about to get more interesting in D.C.

Agreed Meghan!

California’s “Stop Nick Shirley Act” Moves Forward

California Democrats advanced AB 2624, a bill that would expand privacy protections for “immigrant services providers” and allow them to demand the removal of videos, even those recorded in public. Violators face up to a $10,000 fine and a year in county jail. If someone gets hurt as a result of shared information, penalties jump to $50,000 and felony imprisonment.

Assemblyman Carl DeMaio (R) dubbed it the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” after the YouTuber and citizen journalist whose viral investigations exposed millions in fraud at Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota and fake hospice operations in California.

The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D), says it protects people facing “targeted harassment” and mirrors Safe-at-Home protections for domestic violence survivors. DeMaio pressed her on a double standard: California Democrats are simultaneously trying to strip privacy protections from law enforcement officers. Bonta said her bill was unrelated.

The bill is now awaiting its next committee hearing. Lawmakers have until the end of August to send it to the governor. Translation: this fight is just getting started.

Quick Rundown

• Molotov cocktail thrown at Sam Altman’s home. Suspect Daniel Moreno-Gama, 20, faces attempted murder and arson charges after allegedly traveling from Texas to San Francisco to attack the OpenAI CEO’s house and later target OpenAI headquarters. He reportedly carried a manifesto advocating violence against AI executives and a list of other names and addresses. No injuries reported, but the domestic terrorism implications are serious.

• “Baby Jessica” arrested in Texas. Jessica McClure Morales, the woman the world watched get rescued from a well as an 18-month-old in 1987, was arrested Saturday in Midland County on a charge of assault causing bodily injury involving family violence. She was released on bond. Limited details available.

• House Democrats filed a 25th Amendment bill targeting Trump. Rep. Jamie Raskin introduced the long-shot measure, the latest in a string of Democratic efforts to remove Trump from office amid tensions over his Iran policy. It has zero chance of advancing in a Republican-controlled House, but it keeps the "unfit for office" drumbeat alive heading into midterm season.

Let’s Talk About It

The Biden DOJ was building dossiers with Planned Parenthood on people who hadn’t been charged with anything. Be honest: if this had been any other group being surveilled like this, would the reaction be different?

Lots of scandals on the hill and more are likely on the way with TMZ in town. How do we feel about TMZ in D.C.? Is Meghan right? Should they get a WH press pass?

Drop your takes in the comments. I’ll see you Friday.

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That’s all….

In today’s Brief:

• Trump announces a full naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz after 21-hour talks with Iran collapse over nukes

• Eric Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign implodes in real time after a former staffer accuses him of sexual assault

• New forensic evidence and a handwritten confession letter surface in the Charlie Kirk assassination case

• The Artemis II crew splashes down after traveling farther from Earth than any human in history

Let’s get into the news.

The Blockade Begins at 10 a.m.

After Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner flew to Islamabad for 21 hours of direct talks with Iranian negotiators (the first U.S.-Iran face-to-face since 1979), there was no deal. The sticking point was nuclear; Iran refused to make an “affirmative commitment” not to seek a nuclear weapon. Vance was blunt: “That is the core goal of the president.” Everything else was largely agreed to. That one thing killed it.

Trump responded Sunday morning on Truth Social and then on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, announcing a sweeping “all or nothing” blockade effective today. CENTCOM begins enforcement at 10 a.m. ET. No selective access for China, India, or Pakistan. The U.S. Navy will intercept any vessel that paid Iran’s $1-per-barrel toll in Chinese yuan or crypto, and will begin destroying mines Iran laid in the strait.

About those mines: Iran admitted it placed them but can’t locate all of them. The U.S. is deploying underwater drones plus destroyers USS Frank E. Peterson and USS Michael Murphy, which already became the first U.S. warships to transit the Strait since Feb. 28. The UK quietly retired its minesweeper fleet before replacements were ready. Great timing.

Trump is pitching the blockade as a market opportunity, telling China to buy American instead. Reality check: the U.S. exports roughly 4.2 million barrels a day. The Strait normally carries 20 million. We can ease the crunch. We can’t replace it.

Vance left what he called “a final and best offer” on the table. Trump predicts Iran comes back. Whether Iran’s fast attack boats test the Navy in the next 48 hours will tell us a lot more than any diplomatic statement.

The Party That Built ‘Believe All Women’ Now Has to Explain Eric Swalwell

A former staffer, hired at 21, went on record with the San Francisco Chronicle. She alleged pursuit via Snapchat, pressure for explicit photos, sexual exposure while driving, and two incidents of assault while she was blacked out drunk. She texted a friend at the time: she told him to stop and he didn’t. A 2024 incident at a New York hotel is now the subject of a Manhattan DA criminal investigation. Three additional women told CNN about unsolicited explicit messages and nude photos.

The collapse was immediate. All 21 congressional endorsements gone. Pelosi personally told him to drop out. Schiff withdrew. Gallego publicly ate crow after defending him days earlier. SEIU California (750,000 members), the California Teachers Association, and California Professional Firefighters all pulled out. Both campaign co-chairs resigned. His ActBlue page went dark. Ad buys pulled.

By Saturday, Swalwell suspended his gubernatorial campaign, saying he was “deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment” while still denying the assault allegations. DHS is separately investigating him for allegedly employing an unauthorized Brazilian nanny paid with campaign funds.

Here’s the part that stings for the party: In 2025, Swalwell publicly said the criminal justice system should “throw the book” at people who commit violent or sexual crimes. His behavior was reportedly known by local Democratic officials and the Alameda County Democratic Party since 2013. Before the Chronicle published, Swalwell’s lawyers sent cease-and-desist letters to advocates in the dead of night.

The bigger question now is whether Democrats will call on Swalwell to resign from Congress entirely. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna already has. So has Democrat Ro Khanna. But will those calls grow louder, or will the party quietly move on? And if local Democrats knew about this since 2013, why is it surfacing now, in the middle of a governor's race? The timing isn't coincidental. Swalwell was seen as the easiest to sacrifice. The suspicion among California political insiders is that fellow Democrats orchestrated the leak to thin the field. Here's why that matters: California runs a top-two open primary. Every candidate, regardless of party, competes on one ballot. The top two advance to the general election. With a crowded Democratic field splitting the vote and Republicans consolidating behind fewer candidates, there is a real possibility that two Republicans make the top two and no Democrat appears on the general election ballot at all. Knocking Swalwell out doesn't just punish a bad actor. It clears a lane. The question is for whom.

Trump Does Stupid Stuff, I Cannot Process This Early on a Monday

He posted the following after criticizing Pope Leo XIV, which, for the record, I do not have an issue with, even if it is incredibly unproductive.

I hate everything.

The Note Under the Keyboard: New Details in the Charlie Kirk Murder Case

According to a search warrant affidavit obtained by KSL. Tyler Robinson left a confession letter for his trans-identified partner, Lance Twiggs (”Luna”), hidden under Twiggs’ keyboard. “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I took it.” Robinson planned the attack for over a week, pre-programmed an auto-text to Twiggs to find the note, and had hoped to flee and live with his partner afterward.

Investigators in September subpoenaed records from Discord servers named “Craftopia,” “Gamin,” and “The Corruption.” A group chat member posted, “Tyler killed Charlie!!!!” Robinson confirmed in the group: “It was me at UVU yesterday. I’m surrendering in a few moments.”

Forensic evidence includes fingerprints and a smeared palm print at the rooftop edge where Robinson dropped to the ground, a Google Maps route to UVU on his phone, and surveillance footage capturing his distinctive gait with the rifle concealed in his jeans as he crouched into a prone shooting position.

Robinson is back in court April 17. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. The defense wants to restrict press recording at trial.

Kirk was assassinated for his political views by someone who, per court documents, became “more political and left-leaning” in the year before the shooting. Political violence has a face. And it’s going to trial.

Artemis II is Home.

The Artemis II crew splashed down off San Diego on Friday, capping a nearly 10-day mission that took them 252,756 miles from Earth. That’s farther than any humans in history, surpassing Apollo 13’s record by over 4,000 miles.

The mission’s defining image: the first-ever “Earthset” photograph, Earth setting behind the moon from the far side. NASA called it the new “Earthrise.” And for 54 minutes, the crew witnessed a solar totality physically impossible to see from Earth’s surface, the moon completely covering the sun. Victor Glover’s reaction: “Humans probably have not evolved to see what we’re seeing.”

Commander Reid Wiseman named a crater “Carroll” for his late wife, who passed in 2020. He’ll formally submit the name to the International Astronomical Union.

In a week where diplomacy failed, and a congressman hid from rape allegations in a billionaire’s mansion, four astronauts came home from the moon. We all need a moment like this.

Quick Rundown

• DHS shutdown drags on. TSA workers got back pay after Trump signed an executive order, but DHS warned the April 10 check may be the last until Congress acts. House Freedom Caucus is blocking the Senate deal. Lawmakers return to DC this week.

• Orbán loses in Hungary. His 15-year reign ended Saturday as opposition leader Péter Magyar’s Tisza party won in a landslide, potentially taking a two-thirds supermajority. Notably, given Trump’s very public embrace of Orbán. Magyar immediately pledged closer EU and NATO ties.

• NJ Chick-fil-A shooting. Masked gunmen stormed a Union Township location Friday night, killing one and injuring six. Police say it appears targeted, not random. No arrests yet.

• "Screaming Mary's" son loses his LA life. ICE arrested the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, the infamous Iran hostage crisis spokeswoman, along with his wife and their son in Los Angeles. Secretary Rubio revoked their green cards. They entered on Obama-era visas in 2014. The pampered LA life is over.

Let’s Talk About It

Did you expect the Iran talks to produce a deal, or did you see the blockade coming from a mile away?

The “Believe All Women” party knew about Swalwell since 2013. What’s your take on that?

Drop your answers in the comments. I’ll see you Wednesday.

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The weekend has arrived, and I could not be more grateful!

It’s been 41 days of war coverage, and your girl needs a break. My plans this weekend are to put the decorative finishing touches on my office and spend some time outside cleaning up the yard. I am literally touching grass this weekend.

If the president could be chill this weekend, that would be awesome, but Vance and crew are headed to Islamabad to pow-pow with Iran, so my hopes are slim.

ICYMI

Rivera and Reeves are now LIVE Tuesday and Thursday at 12:30 pm EST exclusively on Substack for R&R paying subscribers!

Rivera and Reeves

Ep. 222 | Iran Ceasefire Chaos: Conflicting Plans, Missing Info & What's Really Happening

The ceasefire with Iran has a very big asterisk on it—and the media isn't helping anyone figure out what's actually in it. This week, Meseidy and Rachel break down the chaotic reporting surrounding the Iran negotiations: conflicting 10-point plans, a White House pushing back on its own president's statements, a mysteriously revived Ayatollah, and China quietly pulling strings behind the curtain. They also get into NATO's stunning refusal to open airspace during the conflict, why European allies are playing a dangerous game of ingratitude, and what the political consequences could look like heading into the midterms. Plus: the podcast class revolt, Lawrence O'Donnell's latest brain melt, summer grilling recommendations, and a cat who brought home a snake. It's the episode that covers everything—because everything is happening at once…

Listen now

2 months ago · 5 likes · Meseidy and Rachel Reeves

In today’s Brief:

• Melania steps to a microphone in the Cross Hall and resurrects the Epstein story on purpose.

• Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner land in Islamabad Saturday for the highest-level U.S.–Iran meeting since 1979.

• A former Army employee who exposed harassment inside Delta Force just got charged under the Espionage Act.

• Anthropic says its newest model is so good at hacking that only eleven companies on Earth are allowed to touch it.

• Plus: a judge accuses the Pentagon of acting like an autocracy, and Trump goes nuclear on Tucker.

Let’s get into the news!

“Epstein was not alone.” Melania breaks her silence and demands a hearing.

Thursday afternoon, Melania Trump walked into the Cross Hall, spoke for six minutes, took zero questions, and single-handedly resurrected a story her husband’s team has spent months trying to move past.

She denied being an Epstein victim. She denied friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell. She dismissed the 2002 “Dear GI” email as “trivial,” noting the Daily Beast, Carville, and HarperCollins UK have all retracted. Then she did the part nobody saw coming. She demanded a public, sworn-testimony congressional hearing for Epstein’s survivors.

“Now is the time for Congress to act,” she said. “Epstein was not alone.”

So the First Lady, whose husband pushed against the bipartisan transparency law that forced the FBI file release, just endorsed the exact hearings House Oversight Democrats have demanded since January. The beltway was stunned. The President told MS NOW he didn’t “know anything about” it beforehand.

This is stunning from a First Lady who is famously private. So why this week, with Iran peace talks two days away? Had she had enough, or is something about to drop, and she’s setting the terms first?

The real line wasn’t what she said about herself. It was what she said about everyone else. “Several prominent male executives resigned from their powerful positions after this matter became widely politicized.” Every wealthy man who flew on that plane just got put on notice. By the First Lady. From the Cross Hall.

Then came the pushback. Within hours, Jim Acosta published a statement from Epstein’s survivors threading a fascinating needle. They’ve told their stories, they say, and being asked to tell them under oath in front of Congress is a “deflection.”

Let me get this straight. Melania offered them a microphone, a hearing room, and subpoena power. They called testifying a “burden.”

These are the same survivors whose advocates have spent years demanding accountability on TV, in op-eds, and in documentaries that carried zero perjury risk. The moment someone says, “Okay, say it under oath,” it becomes, sorry, I can’t, too retraumatizing. Maybe it’s easier to workshop the story in friendly media than say it where Jim Jordan gets to cross-examine.

Update after Publishing:

Vance to Islamabad: the highest-level U.S.–Iran sit-down since 1979

Saturday morning local time, VP JD Vance, envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner meet Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Islamabad. It’s the highest-level U.S.–Iran engagement since the 1979 revolution. Vance, now Trump’s designated “closer”, warned in Budapest that if Tehran doesn’t negotiate in good faith they’ll “find out that President Trump is not one to mess around with.”

The ceasefire is held together with duct tape and Truth Social posts. Per The Hill, Israel just launched its largest barrage on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran calls it a breach. Ghalibaf says three of ten clauses are violated. Trump told Netanyahu to “low-key it.” Meanwhile Iran is demanding $1-per-barrel in crypto to let tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. About 20,000 mariners are stranded in the Persian Gulf. Oil is flirting with $100 again.

The nuclear question is the only one that matters, and the press is treating it like an afterthought. The minimum for this war to end as anything but a failure: remove the 60% enriched uranium from Iran, dilute the 20% stockpile, suspend enrichment for years. If Iran keeps the capability, this “ceasefire” is just halftime. Mike Pence publicly warned Vance this week not to sign an “Obama-style” deal. No pressure.

The big question is, will this meeting happen, and will there ever be a deal?

A Delta Force whistleblower gets the Espionage Act

Courtney Williams, 40, held top secret clearance at Fort Bragg from 2010 to 2016. She was the on-the-record main character of a 2025 Politico Magazine feature adapted from Seth Harp’s book The Fort Bragg Cartel, which alleged rampant sexual harassment inside Delta Force.

Tuesday, the FBI arrested her. Wednesday, the complaint was unsealed in Raleigh federal court. She’s charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly transmitting national defense information to Harp across “more than 10 hours of phone calls” and “over 180 messages” between 2022 and 2025. Up to 10 years in prison. FBI Director Kash Patel went on X to tell other would-be leakers that more arrests are coming.

Harp’s response, per the Washington Post: “Former Delta Force operators disclose ‘national defense information’ on podcasts and YouTube shows every day, but the government is going after Courtney for the sole reason that she exposed sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the unit. This is a vindictive act of retaliation, plain and simple.”

DOJ’s theory is clean. NDA signed, classification understood, ten batches of documents handed over. The defense theory is also clean and uglier. Prosecute the woman who said “harassment” out loud while the guys cashing consulting fees off Zero Dark Thirty walk around Austin doing podcast rounds. Both can be true. Right now, the scoreboard reads: harassment whistleblower in jail, Pete Hegseth’s Department of War trying to lock reporters out of the Pentagon entirely.

Anthropic to the world: “Our new AI is too dangerous for you to use”

Anthropic announced this week that it will not release its new model, Claude Mythos Preview, to the public because it can already find and exploit software vulnerabilities better than nearly every human on Earth.

A major AI lab looked at what it built and said “nope, not for you.” Instead, Mythos Preview is being locked inside Project Glasswing. The eleven companies with access: AWS, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorgan Chase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palo Alto Networks. Anthropic is throwing in $100 million in usage credits and $4 million to open-source security groups.

Per PCMag, the model has already found “thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities,” including a 27-year-old flaw in OpenBSD. Early versions were capable of “hiding their reasoning” and exhibited “strategic thinking and situational awareness, at times in service of unwanted actions.” Translation: it can hack your bank, your hospital, your power grid, and it knows how to lie about why.

Anthropic frames this as responsibility. Maybe it is. But offensive cyber capability just got privatized behind a velvet rope. Eleven tech and finance giants get a hacking god. The open-source maintainer working on FFmpeg in his spare bedroom gets a newsletter. Chinese state-backed attackers already have an autonomous version running on DeepSeek. That’s not a guardrail. That’s a moat.

Welcome to the new arms race.

Quick Rundown

• Judge checks the Pentagon. Judge Paul Friedman ruled Thursday that the “Department of War” violated his March order restoring NYT press access, writing that “suppression of political speech is the mark of an autocracy, not a democracy.” Pentagon has until April 16 to file a compliance declaration.

• White House: stop betting on the war, staff. After $760 million in oil futures changed hands in the two minutes before Trump paused the Iran strikes — and three Polymarket accounts cleared $600,000 on the ceasefire timing — the White House sent staff a federal-ethics “refresher.” Blumenthal and Kim have a bill to ban war-related prediction markets.

• Trump goes thermonuclear on Tucker, Megyn, Candace, and Alex Jones. In a 500-word Truth Social tirade, Trump called them “NUT JOBS” and “TROUBLEMAKERS” after Carlson urged troops to refuse Iran orders and Owens called for Trump’s removal under the 25th. MAGA’s Iran civil war is no longer subtext.

• 70+ Democrats intensify 25th Amendment calls. House Dems are publicly calling for Trump’s removal over his Iran rhetoric. They don’t have the votes. Jeffries and Schumer are pushing war powers resolutions instead.

• Swalwell’s misconduct cloud. Eric Swalwell is facing unverified sexual misconduct allegations ahead of California’s June gubernatorial primary, with Villaraigosa and Porter circling. Campaign calls it “outrageous.”

• Planned Parenthood lost $29.3 million on $2.14 billion in revenue while performing a record 434,450 abortions. Taxpayer funding still grew by $39.8 million. Pap tests and cancer screenings fell.

Let’s Talk About It

Two questions before I let you go:

Be honest: what do you think Melania is getting ahead of, or is she just fed up? Drop your best theory, wrong answers encouraged.

Lightning round: Which of the eleven Project Glasswing companies would you trust LEAST with a hacking supermodel? Apple? JPMorgan? Microsoft? Amazon?

Reply in the comments.

See you Monday. Stay nosy.

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The Brief publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Forward to someone who needs to understand what’s actually happening.

Congratulations, we made it through another day without any civilization being totally annihilated. If we don’t laugh, we cry.

As for what's on the schedule today — the President is at the White House with no travel planned, meeting with the Secretary of Agriculture, sitting for an interview, and then hosting NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office at 3:30 — because managing a ceasefire that may or may not be holding wasn't enough for one week.

Karoline Leavitt briefs the press at 1:00, which should be fun. Meanwhile, VP Vance is in Budapest, wrapping up a two-day visit with Viktor Orbán — bilateral meetings, remarks on the U.S.-Hungary partnership, and a very visible show of support four days before Hungary's election. The man went from possibly heading to Pakistan for nuclear talks to rallying with Europe's most controversial conservative. Full plate all around.

Waking up this morning, trying to decode what is going on with this “ceasefire” has my head spinning and chugging my third cup of coffee.

In today’s Brief:

• Iran accepted a two-week ceasefire — then launched missiles at Israel minutes later. Everyone’s telling a different story about what was agreed to.

• Iran’s 10-point “peace plan” demands we accept their nuclear program, pay them war damages, and leave the region. Sure.

• The Strait of Hormuz is “open” — if you pay Iran $2 million per ship in yuan or crypto. That’s not freedom of navigation, it’s a toll booth.

• Eight U.S. scientists tied to NASA, the Air Force, and Los Alamos are dead or missing, and nobody’s connecting the cases

• Artemis II broke the Apollo 13 distance record and named a crater after a commander’s late wife

• Georgia chose MTG’s replacement — and the margin tells you something about where voters stand on the war

Let’s get into the news!

The Ceasefire Happened. Then Iran Kept Firing. So What Exactly Did We Agree To?

Here’s the problem with this story: every player involved is telling a different version of what happened, what was agreed to, and who won. So let’s walk through it.

Trump set an 8 p.m. Tuesday deadline. Two hours before it hit, he announced a “double-sided ceasefire” brokered by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif — whose army chief was on the phone all night with Vance, Witkoff, and Iran’s Foreign Minister. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council confirmed acceptance. Talks begin in Islamabad on April 10. Markets rallied. The S&P 500 swung from a 1.2% loss to a slight gain.

And then — minutes after Trump posted on Truth Social — Iran launched another barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel. Sirens across Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar all activated air defenses. Meanwhile, Israel said it was continuing strikes inside Iran despite the announcement. So. That’s the “ceasefire.”

Now here’s where it gets interesting — and messy. Trump posted a statement from Iran’s Foreign Minister confirming acceptance and promising “safe passage” through the Strait of Hormuz. But Iran’s Supreme National Security Council released a very different statement — bombastic, defiant, claiming this “does not signify the termination of the war” and that “our hands remain upon the trigger.” And here’s the kicker: Iran is now claiming the U.S. accepted their 10-point plan as the basis for negotiations. Pakistan reportedly communicated this to Tehran.

Let’s talk about what’s in that 10-point plan, because it reads like a wishlist drafted by someone who thinks they won this war. Iran’s demands include: a U.S. commitment to no further aggression, continued Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of Iran’s nuclear enrichment rights, lifting of all U.S. primary and secondary sanctions, termination of all UN Security Council and IAEA resolutions targeting Iran, payment of war damages to Iran, withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region, and cessation of hostilities on all fronts including Lebanon.

I’m sorry — we’re paying them damages? They want us to accept their nuclear program and leave? There is zero chance the U.S. agreed to this in principle. But the fact that Iran is selling that narrative to their people — and to the world — we’re negotiating with people who lie as a strategy.

Now, let’s talk about the Strait “opening.” Yes, the Strait of Hormuz will technically be open during the ceasefire. But Iran and Oman are charging a toll — an estimated $2 million per vessel, payable in Chinese yuan or cryptocurrency, with passage coordinated by Iran’s armed forces. At that rate, Iran could pull in $600–800 million a month — during a ceasefire — while the world’s oil supply runs through their toll booth. So everyone else pays more for oil, Iran collects a fortune, and they get a two-week break to resupply. Not a bad deal — for them. (Reports indicate Oman has been named in the arrangement, though Oman’s posture on accepting its share of the revenue remains unclear.)

Who exactly is negotiating? Vance will lead the U.S. delegation in Islamabad. Iran’s delegation will be led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. But here’s the question that keeps hanging over everything: Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — who’d been reported unconscious and in a coma — suddenly gained consciousness and issued a written order for the ceasefire via runners passing handwritten notes. State TV read out his declaration. Reports also indicate China applied significant pressure, with Wang Yi personally making 26 phone calls to parties in the region. No surprise since China gets a significant amount of oil from the Strait. So the Supreme Leader rose from the dead — or at least from a coma — just in time. How convenient.

Now the part I want to keep in front of you. Before the ceasefire, the left and the podcast genius class — Tucker, Candace, Dave Smith, Greenwald, etc. — were screaming that Trump was an unhinged maniac about to destroy civilization. The moment he agreed to talk, the left pivoted to “he chickened out.” You cannot have it both ways. Anyone who was panicking last night needs to take a breath. The U.S. had already struck roughly 50 military targets on Kharg Island — bunkers, radar, ammunition storage — while deliberately sparing the oil loading docks. Kharg handles 90–96% of Iran’s crude exports. You don’t bomb what you might want to seize or use as a bargaining chip. That leverage is now formally on the table in Islamabad.

But am I confident this is over? No. I’m not sure we’re in a better negotiating position than we were before, because the Iranian regime are professional liars — and they’re already spinning this as a victory. Two weeks is a long time for a regime that fires missiles during a ceasefire.

“Our hands remain upon the trigger.” They told you who they are.

Eight Scientists. Three Agencies. No Arrests. No Answers. And No One’s Asking Why.

Eight researchers connected to the most sensitive programs in American defense and space are dead or missing. Fox News’ Will Cain spotlighted the cases, and it’s weird.

The short version: Monica Reza (NASA/JPL rocket scientist) — vanished hiking in California, no trace. Gen. William McCasland (Air Force Research Lab, professional connection to Reza) — missing since February. Melissa Casias and Anthony Chavez (both Los Alamos) — disappeared separately, both left behind phones, wallets, keys. Carl Grillmair (Caltech/NASA astrophysicist) — shot dead on his porch, suspect charged, no motive, they didn’t know each other. Frank Maiwald (NASA/JPL) — died July 2024, cause of death never disclosed, no autopsy.

Authorities have not connected these cases. The Bernalillo County Sheriff told Newsweek they’re “looking into” possible connections. Congressman Burlison has requested FBI involvement. Some will dismiss this as a conspiracy theory. But there is a pattern — NASA, Air Force Research, Los Alamos — and the question is why nobody with a badge seems to be asking.

Artemis II Is Coming Home — and Someone Watched a Solar Eclipse From the Moon

In a week of wall-to-wall dread, here’s something good. The Artemis II crew broke the Apollo 13 distance record, the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen are heading home after a lunar flyby that produced the first-ever “Earthset” photo and a 54-minute solar eclipse visible only from their position, never seen by a human before.

NASA released the photos on Tuesday, and they are stunning. The “Earthset” — Earth dipping behind the moon with Australia visible — was captured at 6:41 p.m. ET Monday. The lunar surface shots show ridged craters and long shadows along the boundary between day and night. Victor Glover said the sun’s corona created “a halo almost around the entire moon” and that “humans probably have not evolved to see what we’re seeing.” He’s not wrong.

The crew named two craters. Integrity, after their spacecraft. And Carroll, after Commander Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who passed in 2020. Splashdown is Friday near San Diego. Trump called the crew “modern-day pioneers.” For one moment this week, the country felt something together that wasn’t fear.

Georgia Picked MTG’s Replacement — and the Margin Matters

Trump-endorsed Republican Clay Fuller defeated Democrat Shawn Harris 56% to 43% to claim MTG’s old GA-14 seat. Fuller was always favored — this district went for Trump by 37 points in 2024. But Harris outraised Fuller nearly 5-to-1 ($6.5M to $1.3M), ran hard against the Iran war calling it “a war of choice,” and still lost by 13. Fuller’s message — “our country is safer” — held. A 37-point Trump district producing a 13-point margin in a special election isn’t a red alarm. But it’s a yellow light heading into midterms.

For Fun:

Quick Rundown

• Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah released American journalist Shelly Kittleson after a week in captivity in Baghdad. She was kidnapped March 31, appeared in a video reading from a script praising her captors, and was released Tuesday. The militia said this “initiative will not be repeated in future.” Chilling phrasing.

• Federal authorities warn pro-Iran hackers breached U.S. infrastructure. FBI, NSA, and CISA issued a joint warning Tuesday: hackers allied with Iran exploited vulnerabilities in industrial control systems. Ports and water plants flagged as potential targets.

• Upper middle class is now the largest income group in America — 31% of U.S. households, up from ~10% in 1979, according to AEI. The middle class is shrinking upward, not downward. Good news that no one will report because it doesn’t fit the narrative.

• Jennifer Siebel Newsom is making Gavin’s 2028 problem worse. Scolded reporters at a press conference, went on Instagram calling Bondi and Noem’s exits proof of a “war on women.” Gavin now polls behind Kamala in a 2028 primary. Miranda Devine: “Gavin’s first partner is a ‘New’sance.”

• New Nancy Guthrie ransom notes sent to TMZ — sender claims to know where her body is, demands half a bitcoin. The second note says she was last seen in Sonora, Mexico. Savannah returned to the Today show the same day without mentioning her mother.

Let’s Talk About It

Be honest, do you trust this ceasefire? Iran fired missiles during the announcement and is already claiming we agreed to their terms. What’s your read?

On something lighter: what do you name a crater on the Moon? Wiseman named one after his late wife, and I’m not over it. Wrong answers welcome.

Drop your takes in the comments. I’ll see you Friday.

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The Brief publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Forward to someone who needs to understand what’s actually happening.

I hope your Easter weekend was filled with more peace than the news cycle and the President’s Truth Social feed, which got a little colorful.

Also, can we take a moment to appreciate the current pinned post on Sec. Rubio’s X profile.

It has riled up a few left-wing outlets, and I am here for it.

IKYMI

We’ve got a lot to cover today, so grab your coffee and let’s get into it.

In today’s Brief:

• A wounded American colonel hid in an Iranian mountain crevice for 36 hours with nothing but a handgun and a prayer — and the rescue mission that brought him home is one for the history books.

• Trump dropped an Easter Sunday f-bomb on Iran and gave them until Tuesday at 8 p.m. to open the Strait of Hormuz or watch their power plants disappear.

• Marco Rubio revoked the green cards of Soleimani’s niece and her daughter, who were living their best Instagram life in LA while calling America the “Great Satan.”

• Artemis II flies by the Moon today — the first crewed lunar mission since 1972 — and you can watch it on literally every streaming platform.
  

The Rescue of “Dude 44”: An American Colonel, a Mountain Crevice, and One of the Most Daring Missions in U.S. History

It’s Good Friday. An F-15E Strike Eagle with the call sign “Dude 44” is conducting combat operations over southwestern Iran when it gets hit. Both crew members eject. The pilot is recovered quickly. But the weapons systems officer — a highly respected Air Force colonel whose name still hasn’t been released — lands deep in the Zagros Mountains, 200 miles inside enemy territory. He’s seriously wounded. And he’s alone.

The following story is destined to be a movie script, and it all played out on Easter weekend.

Despite his injuries, this man climbed a 7,000-foot ridge and wedged himself into a mountain crevice. He had a handgun. That’s it. Meanwhile, Iranian state television was broadcasting a $60,000 bounty for his capture and urging civilians and tribesmen to hunt him down. “Thousands of these savages were hunting him down,” Trump told Axios.

Then came the radio message that almost derailed everything. From his hiding spot, the colonel transmitted: “God is good.” Officials in Washington initially feared it was a trap; the phrase sounded too close to “Allahu Akbar,” and they worried Iran had captured him and was sending false signals to lure more Americans into an ambush. Turns out, the man is simply a man of deep faith. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth later posted the same phrase on X.

Once the CIA confirmed his identity and location — described as finding “a needle in a haystack” — they launched a deception campaign, spreading false intel inside Iran that U.S. forces already had the airman and were moving him overland. While Iran chased a ghost, 100 special operations forces led by SEAL Team 6 moved in. Delta Force and Army Rangers were on standby. Four B-1 bombers dropped nearly 100 satellite-guided bombs. MQ-9 Reaper drones struck anyone who got within kilometers of the colonel’s position.

The extraction wasn’t clean. Two MC-130J transport planes got stuck in the terrain of a makeshift airstrip inside Iran. Rather than let $200 million worth of sensitive military equipment fall into enemy hands, commanders ordered them destroyed, along with two MH-6 Little Bird helicopters. Three replacement aircraft were sent in to complete the exfil.

Just before midnight Saturday, the colonel was out of Iranian airspace and on his way to Kuwait for medical treatment. At 12:08 a.m. Easter Sunday, Trump posted two words that said everything: “WE GOT HIM!”

You cannot write this stuff! Down and trapped behind enemy lines on Good Friday, saved by Easter Sunday.

No American rescuers were killed. The colonel sustained serious injuries but is expected to recover. Trump will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. today from the White House to discuss the operation.

Here’s what you won’t hear on most networks: this was the first time a U.S. fighter jet was shot down in hostile territory in over 20 years. The media would love to frame that as a failure. But this is a story of American dedication, excellence, and grit. The fact that we sent 100 operators 200 miles into enemy territory, fought our way to a wounded man hiding in a crevice, and brought him home alive — destroying $200 million in equipment rather than leave a screw behind — is not a failure. It’s a statement.

We do not leave Americans behind.

Side Note: How was the Left doing while all of this was happening?

Trump — who typically flies to Mar-a-Lago every weekend — stayed in Washington. The White House called a lid at 11:08 a.m. Saturday, locking out the press pool as the president received constant in-person briefings from Secretary Hegseth on the rescue operation.

So naturally, the geniuses on Bluesky and left-wing social media did what they do best: they started a viral rumor that Trump was at Walter Reed because he was sick or in critical condition. Anonymous posts claimed roads near the hospital were blocked. It trended for hours. White House communications director Steven Cheung eventually had to go on X to shut it down, confirming Trump had been working nonstop in the Oval Office. Because apparently, the idea that the Commander-in-Chief might be quietly managing the rescue of a wounded American airman trapped behind enemy lines in Iran was just too boring a theory.

No — must be a health crisis. These people are unserious.

Trump’s Easter F-Bomb: “Open the F*in’ Strait, You Crazy Bastards”**

Look, I’ll be the first to say that dropping f-bombs on Easter Sunday is not exactly what Emily Post would recommend. But let’s be real — I’ll take a president who curses at a terrorist regime over one who spent Easter 2024 declaring Trans Day of Visibility. Priorities.

Here’s what Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday morning:

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Yes, he signed off with “Praise be to Allah.” CNN’s Jake Tapper had to read the whole thing on air with a parental warning. The man is a content machine.

The substance behind the showmanship: Trump has given Iran until Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — through which 20% of the world’s oil flows — or he starts hitting power plants and bridges. He told Fox News’ Trey Yingst there’s a chance for a deal by Monday. He told Axios that the U.S. is in “deep negotiations” with envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who are leading talks through Pakistani, Egyptian, and Turkish mediators. But he also made it crystal clear: “If they don’t make a deal and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking the oil.”

Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, fired back on X, accusing Trump of “following Netanyahu’s commands” and dragging America into “a living HELL for every single family.” Which is rich coming from the guy whose regime just offered a bounty to civilians to hunt down a wounded American airman.

The question now: is Tuesday a real deadline, or is it leverage? With mediators still working and no breakthrough in sight, we’ll know soon enough. Either way, the pause on energy strikes expires today, and the clock is ticking.

Soleimani’s Niece Was Living Her Best LA Life While Calling America “The Great Satan.” Rubio Said: Not Anymore.

On Friday, ICE agents in Los Angeles arrested Hamideh Soleimani Afshar — the niece of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian terror mastermind Trump turned into a crater and “died like a dog” in January 2020 — along with her 25-year-old daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny. Rubio had revoked both of their green cards.

The State Department’s case against her reads like a parody. While living in the United States, Afshar promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers, praised the new Supreme Leader, and called America the “Great Satan,” all while posting photos of her lavish LA lifestyle on Instagram. Louis Vuitton hoodies. Champagne in the desert next to a helicopter. Bikini photos. Her daughter was clubbing in Miami and partying in Las Vegas.

Here’s the kicker: Afshar entered the U.S. on a tourist visa in 2015, was granted asylum in 2019, and got her green card in 2021, under the Biden administration. She then traveled back to Iran at least four times. DHS called her asylum claim “fraudulent.” You think?

Meanwhile, women in Iran are being sentenced to death for showing too much hair. But sure, the niece of their top terror general needed asylum in America, where she could sip champagne and trash our country from the comfort of her $740,000 Tujunga home.

Rubio said it plainly on X: “The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes.”

Good riddance.

Artemis II Flies By the Moon Today — Here’s How to Watch

In news that has nothing to do with war, cursing, or deportations, humans are going back to the Moon today.

NASA’s Artemis II mission, which launched on April 1st carrying astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will make its historic lunar flyby today. This is the first crewed mission to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Let that sink in — over 50 years.

Here’s the schedule (all times ET):

• 12:41 a.m.: Orion enters the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence

• 1:00 p.m.: Live coverage begins on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Hulu, HBO Max, Roku, NASA+, and YouTube

• 1:56 p.m.: The crew is expected to break Apollo 13’s record for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth

• 2:45 p.m.: Lunar observations begin

• 6:44 p.m.: Communications blackout as Orion passes behind the Moon (~40 minutes)

• 7:02 p.m.: Closest approach to the Moon — just 4,070 miles above the surface

• 7:07 p.m.: Maximum distance from Earth: 252,760 miles

• 7:25 p.m.: “Earthrise” — Earth comes back into view

• 8:35–9:32 p.m.: Solar eclipse as seen from Orion

Watch it. Show your kids. This is the kind of thing that reminds you what this country is capable of when we’re reaching for something bigger than ourselves.

Quick Rundown

• March jobs report crushed expectations: The economy added 178,000 jobs in March — triple the 59,000 predicted — and unemployment dipped to 4.3%. Healthcare led the way with 76,000 new positions, while federal government employment fell by 18,000. Good news, but rising energy prices from the Iran war could cool things off.

• White House Easter Egg Roll is today: First Lady Melania Trump’s 2026 edition features a patriotic theme for America’s 250th birthday, 40,000 hand-dyed eggs, 150 live baby chicks (a first), a sensory-friendly egg hunt, an AI Creation Station from Meta, a NASA Lunar Exploration activity, and storytime with the First Lady, Second Lady Usha Vance, and Karoline Leavitt.

• Trump’s 1 p.m. press conference: The president will address the nation from the White House press room today to provide details on the F-15E rescue mission and answer questions from reporters. Expect fireworks.

• Iran deal deadline looms: With negotiations ongoing through Pakistani, Egyptian, and Turkish mediators, Trump’s Tuesday 8 p.m. deadline approaches. Witkoff and Kushner are reportedly exchanging texts directly with Iran’s foreign minister. If no deal is reached, Trump has promised power plants and bridges start falling.

• IDF struck a mobile ballistic missile launcher in Tabriz over the weekend, continuing joint U.S.-Israeli operations to degrade Iran’s missile capabilities as the war enters its sixth week.

Let’s Talk About It

That rescue story is absolutely unreal. A wounded man, alone in enemy mountains for 36 hours with a handgun, while thousands hunt him — and we brought him home. What part of the rescue mission hit you the hardest?

Are you watching the Artemis II flyby today? Be honest: did you even know we had astronauts headed to the Moon right now?

Drop your takes in the comments. I’ll see you on Wednesday.

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