The Brief | America Had the Worst Best Weekend
A cartel boss is dead, SCOTUS blew up Trump's tariff strategy, an armed man breached Mar-a-Lago — and in the middle of all of it, Team USA brought Johnny Gaudreau's kids onto the ice. Geez!
It’s Monday!
I hope you had a beautiful weekend! And if you were anywhere in the South, I hope you soaked up every second of that completely deceptive 70-degree sunshine, because I am currently staring out my window at flurries and feeling personally betrayed by the atmosphere. Nature giveth, nature taketh away, and apparently, it does it within 48 hours.
For those of you currently buried under an actual blizzard — godspeed. You’re the real ones.
Now. Deep breath. Because the news did not take the weekend off.
Before we get into it — two things. One: if you missed yesterday’s Sunday Desk, go read its a good one. Two: The State of the Union is Tuesday night. Mark it. We’ll be giving our pre-SOTU thoughts on Tuesday and a breakdown on Thursday on the podcast. Something tells me there will be no shortage of material.
Sunday Desk | Pistols, Pegboards, and Hemingway
If you Google “creative office decor ideas,” you’ll be accosted by pegboards and enough color to trigger a juice-box flashback. But I cannot focus in rooms with bright colors, lots of light, white walls, and pegboards. It’s too much. It feels as if the room is trying to bully me into productivity. “How can you not be happy in this room full of pops of c…
In today’s Brief:
SCOTUS Nukes Trump’s Tariffs - Court says no, Trump says watch me, imposes new ones anyway.
Armed Man Breaches Mar-a-Lago - 21-year-old with a shotgun and a gas can. Secret Service ended it. Motive still unknown, Epstein fixation suspected.
El Mencho Is Dead. Mexico Is On Fire. - A U.S.-backed raid killed the CJNG’s cartel boss. His people responded by lighting the country on fire.
America’s Hockey Miracle - Team USA beat Canada for Olympic gold, then brought Johnny Gaudreau’s kids onto the ice. Everyone cried. It was perfect.
Kash Patel Was Also in the Locker Room - FBI Director. Milan. Beer. Toby Keith. It’s less scandalous than it sounds.
Let’s get into the news!
Mexico Killed El Mencho. Then Things Got Worse.
The biggest international story of the weekend: Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes — known as “El Mencho,” the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of Mexico’s most powerful and violent criminal organizations, is dead.
Mexican special forces raided a location in Tapalpa, in Jalisco state, on Sunday. El Mencho was wounded in the operation and died in custody while being transported to Mexico City. According to Reuters, U.S. intelligence support — including from a new U.S. military-led task force — played a role in the operation. Mexico’s defense ministry confirmed it received “complementary information” from the U.S.
The Trump administration praised the kill. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called it a “great development.”
And then, immediately, large swaths of Mexico caught fire.
CJNG gunmen launched coordinated retaliatory attacks across at least seven states, burning vehicles, blockading highways, and shutting down businesses. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico’s fourth-largest tourism destination, became a war zone. Tourists were trapped in hotels as smoke rose over the beach. The U.S. State Department urged Americans to shelter in place. Major airlines — Air Canada, United, American, and Aeromexico — suspended flights in and out of the area. One stranded American described seeing a man wave a gun at a bus full of people and order them back.
A former DEA official noted that “there will definitely be skirmishes between the various factions, and these spasms of violence could last for years.”
While this can be seen as a genuine strategic victory, it has also created an immediate humanitarian mess. El Mencho is gone, and that matters. The CJNG under his leadership pioneered drone attacks on civilians, ran forced labor operations, controlled fentanyl supply chains into the U.S., and expanded into one of the most dangerous cartels in Mexican history. This is not a small thing.
But the fragmentation that follows a leadership decapitation doesn’t automatically mean less violence. It often means more — at least in the short term — as factions fight over territory. And with Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum already walking a tightrope between cooperation with Washington and protecting Mexican sovereignty, the next few months will be critical.
Someone Broke Into Mar-a-Lago With a Shotgun and a Gas Can
While you were sleeping Sunday morning, the Secret Service shot and killed an armed man who had broken through the security perimeter at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
The suspect has been identified as Austin Tucker Martin, 21, of Cameron, North Carolina. Around 1:30 a.m., Martin drove through the north gate of the resort as another vehicle was exiting, essentially tailgating his way past security. He was found carrying a shotgun and a gas can. When federal agents and a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy confronted him and ordered him to drop both items, he put down the gas can and raised the shotgun to a firing position. That’s when they neutralized the threat.
Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago at the time. He and Melania had hosted the Governors’ Dinner at the White House on Saturday night, which Democratic governors appear to have boycotted.
Here’s where this gets strange: Martin’s family had reported him missing the night before. His cousin, Braeden Fields, told the AP that Martin was “afraid of guns,” from a family of “big Trump supporters,” and that he “wouldn’t even hurt an ant.” Investigators believe Martin bought the shotgun on his way south, since the box for the weapon was found in his car. They’re now building a psychological profile, with the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office all working the case jointly.
TMZ obtained a text message Martin sent to a co-worker on February 15 — exactly one week before he showed up at Mar-a-Lago — that read: “I don’t know if you read up on the Epstein Files, but evil is real and unmistakable.” He continued: “The best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have. Tell other people about what you hear about the Epstein files and what the government is doing about it. Raise awareness.” Co-workers at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in North Carolina told TMZ that Martin had become increasingly fixated on the Epstein files following the DOJ’s January 30 release of 3.5 million pages of documents, and regularly talked about powerful people “getting away with it.” Investigators are reportedly exploring whether Martin may have held Trump personally responsible for the pace and scope of those releases.
Here’s what we need to be clear about: law enforcement has not officially confirmed any motive, and the FBI’s investigation remains ongoing. The Epstein fixation angle is sourced from co-workers and a text message obtained by TMZ, worth knowing, but not a confirmed conclusion. The picture that emerges is of a young man who was genuinely troubled: economically frustrated, still living with his parents, describing the cost of living as impossible for young people, trying and failing to organize a union at work, and apparently spiraling into conspiracy rabbit holes in the weeks before he drove to Palm Beach with a shotgun and a gas can. Whether that adds up to a political motive, a mental health crisis, or something else entirely — we don’t know yet.
What we do know: this is the third time the immediate area around Trump has been the scene of a serious threat in under two years. Ryan Routh tried to assassinate Trump at his West Palm Beach golf course in September 2024 and was sentenced to life in prison just earlier this month. Thomas Crooks fired eight shots at Trump during the Butler, Pennsylvania rally in July 2024. And five days before Mar-a-Lago, a Georgia man with a loaded shotgun was arrested sprinting toward the U.S. Capitol.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent summed up the broader concern on Fox News Sunday: “This venom coming from the other side. We don’t know whether this person was a mastermind, unhinged, or what, but they are normalizing this violence. It’s got to stop.”
SCOTUS Takes a Hit to Trump’s Tariffs
Let’s start with Friday, because it sets the tone.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the bulk of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs, the “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs, the baseline 10% global tariff, and the fentanyl-specific tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. Gone. All of it.
The court’s reasoning was straightforward: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the 1977 law Trump used to justify the tariffs, does not give the president authority to unilaterally impose broad-scale tariffs on the entire planet. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that “IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” Full stop.
Three conservative justices — Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito — dissented, arguing that tariffs are a traditional tool to “regulate importation” and that the statute covers it. Kavanaugh also flagged a mess no one wants to touch: the ruling could force the government to refund up to $200 billion in tariff revenue to importers, some of whom already passed the costs to consumers. So businesses might get double-compensated while consumers who actually paid higher prices see nothing. Not great!
Trump was predictably furious, calling the ruling “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution” and accusing the justices of being “swayed by foreign interests.” Democrats, including Gavin Newsom, were gleeful, and as Jonathan Turley noted at The Hill, the same people calling to pack the Supreme Court are now celebrating its independence.
But here’s the part that got less attention: Within hours of the ruling, he announced a 10% global tariff under a different legal authority, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Then by Saturday, he bumped it to 15%. Section 122 allows tariffs up to 15% for up to 150 days to address trade deficits. It’s a temporary fix, but it keeps the pressure on. Meanwhile, the administration is initiating Section 301 investigations — the same authority Trump used successfully against China in his first term — which, when complete, produce legally durable tariffs that have already survived court challenges.
So yes, SCOTUS handed Trump a legal defeat. But the tariff policy isn’t dead. It’s just slower, more procedurally grounded, and — ironically — probably on firmer legal footing.
America Got Its Hockey Miracle. And It Made Everyone Cry.
Somewhere in the middle of one of the ugliest news weekends in recent memory, the U.S. Men’s Hockey team went out to Milan, Italy, and gave this country something it desperately needed: a reason to feel good.
Team USA defeated Canada 2-1 in overtime Sunday at the Milano Cortina Olympics to win the gold medal. The game was tense, physical, and everything a U.S.-Canada hockey final should be. But the moment everyone will remember had nothing to do with the scoreboard.
After the final buzzer, Auston Matthews, Zach Werenski, and Matthew Tkachuk skated around the ice holding up the No. 13 jersey of the late Johnny Gaudreau. And then, as the team gathered for their gold medal photo, two of Gaudreau’s children — his daughter Noa and son Johnny Jr. — were brought out onto the ice to pose with the squad while their father’s jersey was displayed for the world to see.
If you don’t know the story: Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew were killed on August 29, 2024, when they were struck by a vehicle near their childhood home in Salem County, New Jersey, the night before their sister’s wedding. Johnny was one of the best American-born players of his generation. He almost certainly would have been on this team.
Gaudreau’s widow, Meredith, and his parents, Guy and Jane, were in the stands at Milan’s Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena to watch the gold medal game. When it was over, Meredith told NHL.com: “We wished we were a part of it, so when we got the call to come out, it felt like maybe he did make the team.”
Dylan Larkin — Team USA’s captain and one of Gaudreau’s close friends — got it exactly right in the locker room afterward. “Johnny and Matty should be here, and that is the biggest loss that all of us at USA Hockey, their family, our family, has gone through,” Larkin said. “And to have Johnny Jr. and Noa out there, it just felt right.”
He even managed to find some laughter in it. “I think part of the puck not going in our net was somehow him standing there doing something, laughing with Matty,” Larkin said. “And ironic on the defensive side — he would’ve never been back there.”
Throughout the entire Olympic tournament, Team USA hung Gaudreau’s jersey in its locker room before every game, a tradition carried over from last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off. This wasn’t a last-minute PR move. It was a team that carried a ghost with them all the way to the top of the podium and decided he deserved to be in the photo.
It’s been 46 years since the United States won Olympic gold in men’s hockey. A lot of people are comparing this to the 1980 “Miracle on Ice,” and look, I get it. Both are USA beating a dominant hockey nation in a pressure-cooker moment on the biggest stage in the world. Both captured the country’s attention at a moment when Americans needed something to cheer for. And beating Canada, which treats hockey the way Americans treat football, is no small thing.
But it was a little different; the 1980 team was a scrappy group of college kids who went up against the Soviet Union’s professional machine in the middle of the Cold War, a win that felt like more than just hockey. This 2026 team is full of NHL superstars, playing against another NHL superstar-stacked team. The stakes are different. The context is different.
While the rivalry between Canada and the U.S. adds to the story, what makes 2026 its own miracle is the heart of this game. It’s a team that played an entire Olympic tournament for a man who couldn’t be there, and then made sure his children got to stand on the ice and hold a gold medal their father helped earn from wherever he is now. That’s not a sports story. That’s a human one.
Meanwhile, Kash Patel Was Also in the Locker Room
The internet spent Sunday losing its mind over FBI Director Kash Patel — who was also in Milan, also in the Team USA locker room, and was very much caught on video chugging beer, spraying it on players, wearing a gold medal that Matthew Tkachuk draped around his neck, and belting out Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.”
The video went viral in roughly 45 minutes. Critics called it embarrassing, irresponsible, and taxpayer-funded party-crashing. Supporters called it the most patriotic thing they’d seen all year. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, the actual facts got completely buried, which is pretty on-brand for 2026.
Here’s what actually happened: Patel traveled to Milan on a DOJ aircraft on February 19 for official business, meetings with Italian law enforcement about interagency cooperation and Olympic security. The FBI says the trip was planned months in advance, with Italian officials inviting him back in July 2025 to visit the Milan Joint Operations Center responsible for protecting U.S. athletes and visitors. He posted on X that nearly 100 U.S. government personnel had been “surged to support the Olympics since the start of 2026.” That part of the story? Largely missing from the outrage posts.
A little-known fact is that Patel grew up playing hockey in his hometown of Garden City, New York, and has been on the ice since childhood. At 45, he’s still playing. Before becoming FBI Director, he coached a youth hockey team. He currently plays for The Dons, a D.C.-area men’s recreational league team known for serious competition. The bulk of the roster is made up of former college players, there’s a lengthy waitlist to join, and The Dons won the Lake Placid CAN/AM Challenge Cup in 2019, in the same arena where the U.S. defeated the Soviet Union in 1980. Patel plays defense, described by teammates as “scrappy” and “gritty,” not the most skilled guy on the ice, but someone who blocks shots, takes hits, and doesn’t expect a thank you. When he tore his biceps playing in the league, he publicly chalked the injury up to “kicking the sh-- out of The Deep State.” So. He’s committed to the bit on multiple levels.
The lifelong hockey player also held up his phone in the locker room so Trump could call in to congratulate the players and invite them to his State of the Union address on Tuesday. “We’ll get Kash or we’ll get the military to get you guys,” Trump told them. Which is honestly a great sentence.
Now, did Patel also attend the hockey games beyond official duties? Yes. Did he end up in the locker room dancing? Also yes. Is that a little awkward when the FBI is simultaneously managing an active Mar-a-Lago investigation on the same day? Sure. Around the time the game went to overtime, Patel posted on X that the FBI was dedicating “all necessary resources” to the shooting. So at least he was multitasking.
But here’s what the critics are conveniently leaving out: FBI Directors are required to use government aircraft for all air travel — official and personal — in order to maintain access to secure communications. Congressional Democrats have questioned Patel’s use of the plane, but the policy — expanded by the Obama administration — is mandatory regardless of who holds the job. They reimburse the government for personal portions at commercial coach rates. This isn’t Patel chartering a party plane. This is how the job works, for everyone, across administrations.
Patel’s response on X was characteristically not subtle: “For the very concerned media — yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends invited me into the locker room.”
Was the locker room celebration the most dignified optics for a sitting FBI Director? Probably not. Was it a scandal? Not even close. The man is a lifelong hockey player who coached kids in the sport, flew to Italy on official business, watched America win its first men’s hockey gold in 46 years, got invited into the room by the players, and sang a Toby Keith song about it.
Genuinely unsure what the correct FBI Director behavior is supposed to be in that situation. But “politely decline and go review case files alone in a hotel room” doesn’t seem like it should be the answer.
Quick Rundown
EU says a deal is a deal. After Trump moved to reimpose 15% tariffs under a new legal authority following the SCOTUS ruling, the European Union pushed back hard, saying it won’t accept the increase and considering the existing trade framework binding. The tariff saga has a long way to go.
NYC bracing for a historic blizzard. Up to 28 inches of snow are forecast for New York City, with forecasters calling it potentially one of the worst storms in the city’s history. New Yorkers are doing what they do: panic-buying and complaining.
Bessent won’t commit to tariff refunds. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dodged questions Sunday about whether the administration will refund the $175–200 billion in IEEPA tariffs, signaling the administration is in no rush to cut anyone a check while they rebuild the tariff framework under new legal authority.
A suspected Russian spy taunted her FBI handler. A woman identified as Nomma Zarubina, suspected of being a Russian intelligence asset operating in New York City, reportedly told an FBI agent “Catch me, baby” — shortly before being jailed. She did not finish winning that game.
Capitol shotgun arrest, five days before Mar-a-Lago. This didn’t get nearly enough play: just five days before the Mar-a-Lago incident, a Georgia man armed with a loaded shotgun was arrested sprinting toward the U.S. Capitol building while wearing a tactical vest. Two shotgun incidents in under a week. The political temperature in this country is not normal.
Let’s Talk About It
Two questions this week:
The FBI Director flew to Italy on official business, coached youth hockey, still plays recreationally, got invited into the locker room by the players, and celebrated America winning gold. At what point does this become a scandal and not just a vibe check on how much you like Kash Patel?
Martin’s cousin described him as a quiet Trump supporter who was afraid of guns. The motive is completely unknown. Does the frequency of these incidents — three in under two years — tell us something about political polarization, security gaps, or something else entirely?
Drop your thoughts in the comments!
See you on Wednesday!
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As an inveterate proofreader who can’t help myself … it was 46 years not 26 years since the USA beat the Soviets.
If Kash didn’t celebrate with the team after being invited, people would have accused him of being a Russian asset. Being normal people is why most of us like those in this administration. I think it was awesome!
The next outrage will be Trump saying he’s going to have to invite the women’s team too. 😂