A federal appeals court had issued a ruling that would allow patients to get prescriptions for the drug only through an in-person doctor visit — something that’s impossible in states that ban almost all abortions. 

Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro were hoping to have that ruling put on hold until the Supreme Court could consider their appeal.

Two days later, Justice Samuel Alito — hardly a supporter of reproductive rights — granted the companies’ request, issuing what’s known as an "administrative stay.” But he did so unilaterally, acting without concurrence from other justices and with no explanation of his reasoning.

Legal experts say this kind of fast-moving intervention is becoming more and more routine. Recently, the Supreme Court has issued more administrative stays than ever before. 

“The pace has more than doubled just over the last few years,” Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor who studies the federal courts, told Straight Arrow. 

From 2014 to 2022, the court issued 33 such stays, Vladeck said. But in just three and a half years since then, it has already issued 38.

Like the other administrative stays, the one that Alito issued Monday reflects a broader shift as the nation’s highest court increasingly relies on emergency orders, often referred to as its “shadow docket,” to quickly resolve high-stakes disputes with national impact.

The speed comes with a cost, however: transparency. These orders lack reasons for how a justice rules — and offer no hints about how the court might decide cases in the future.

What is an administrative stay?

An administrative stay issued by a single justice has an immediate impact. Whatever a lower court has ruled in a case that’s being appealed to the Supreme Court cannot take effect until the stay is lifted or the full court issues an opinion. That could be weeks or even months.

For instance, when a lower court ruled that President Donald Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a federal trade commissioner, was unlawful, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a stay that is keeping Slaughter off the job. That was last September. The court heard oral arguments in Slaughter’s appeal last December but still has not released a ruling.

Historically, this practice has not been commonplace, said Zachary Shemtob, executive editor at SCOTUSblog.

"Even among the justices it's a bit of a controversial practice, to some extent, and there is a sense these should be used sparingly,” Shemtob, who has covered the Supreme Court for 15 years, told Straight Arrow. “But here we are."

Critics argue that justices need to explain why they issue these orders.

“We expect judges to explain their rulings because the explanations are how they persuade us that they are exercising judicial, rather than political, power — not necessarily so we agree with their principles, but so we at least agree that the rulings are based on principles,” Georgetown’s Vladeck told Straight Arrow. “The more courts are handing down rulings with statewide or nationwide effects with no explanations, the harder it is for judges and justices to earn that trust.”

‘Emergencies’ on the rise

The reason for the increase in stays may be simple, however: More and more, parties in significant litigation are filing motions citing judicial “emergencies.” 

For example, lawyers for one of the mifepristone manufacturers said that a ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions.” Further, the lawyers pleaded, the lower court ruling left patients, pharmacies, doctors and the companies “all to guess at what is allowed and what is not.”

Vladeck said multiple factors are at play.

“As for why, I think some of that is because the court is being asked for such relief a lot more often; some of it is because we're seeing more lower-court rulings producing immediate statewide or nationwide consequences, like last Friday's Fifth Circuit ruling in the mifepristone case,” Vladeck said. “Some of it is because the court is more used to granting this kind of relief — familiarity breeds repetition.”

“This is all part of the ‘shadow docket,’” Vladeck said, “because it's an increasingly important part of how the Supreme Court uses unsigned and typically unexplained orders in ways that can and often do produce massive and immediate real-world effects.”

The ‘shadow docket’

The court is exercising its power to issue quick rulings more frequently during Trump’s second term, often dealing with some of the 252 executive orders he has signed in a little more than 15 months. 

Repeatedly, lower courts have found Trump’s orders to be unlawful. But, repeatedly, the Supreme Court has sided with the administration when it files emergency appeals. It has lifted temporary injunctions while underlying litigation moves through the lower courts. The high court’s emergency orders have dealt with such controversial issues as immigration, federal agency firings, and foreign aid. 

“This emerges from, one, the administration being more aggressive and filing these applications with the court when it loses on these issues,” Shemtob said. “I think the fact that parties have seen so many more of these applications being accepted and decided by the court incentivizes parties in general to file more of them.” 

When he stayed the abortion pill ruling, Alito told Louisiana, which is attempting to outlaw prescribing abortion medication by telemedicine, and the Food and Drug Administration to respond by Thursday. The stay expires next Monday — unless Alito or the full court extends it. 

Either way, an explanation is unlikely. 

“We might like those effects in some cases and dislike them in others,” Vladeck said. “But it is, in the long term, not a healthy way for unelected judges to exercise power.” 

Round out your reading

• First, it was the schools. Now they’re coming for your cellphone at work.
• Why one of America’s top economic forecasters is worried about a recession.
• AI companies may not be adhering to their own guidelines — with potentially deadly outcomes.
• Data centers are a thorny issue for Democrats. Maine shows us why.
• We’re building a new Straight Arrow. Help us shape our future by taking our survey.

A 15-year-old bystander was also struck but did not suffer life-threatening injuries. Quinn said investigators believe the suspect shot him.

The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. near the Washington Monument, just outside the perimeter of the White House complex.

The suspect was taken to a hospital. Quinn said he had no comment on the man’s condition.

Why the location and timing stand out

The gunfire happened just south of the White House in a heavily traveled area used by tourists and official motorcades. Quinn said Vice President JD Vance’s motorcade had passed through the area shortly before the shooting.

The shooting follows closely on the heels of last week's attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where authorities say a gunman specifically targeted members of the administration.

What Quinn said happened

Quinn said plainclothes Secret Service personnel spotted “a suspicious individual that appeared to have a firearm” and called in uniformed Secret Service police to approach him.

“Upon making contact, that individual fled briefly on foot, withdrew a firearm and fired in the direction of our agents and officers,” Quinn said. “They returned fire and engaged.”

Authorities have not announced a motive. Quinn said investigators will determine whether the incident was directed at the president.

However, Chris McDonald, a congressional affairs official with the Secret Service, said there is currently "no known nexus" between the suspect and the White House, according to The New York Times.

Round out your reading

• First, it was the schools. Now they’re coming for your cellphone at work.
• Why one of America’s top economic forecasters is worried about a recession.
• AI companies may not be adhering to their own guidelines — with potentially deadly outcomes.
• Data centers are a thorny issue for Democrats. Maine shows us why.
• We’re building a new Straight Arrow. Help us shape our future by taking our survey.

The decision is expected to significantly limit how states and local jurisdictions draw congressional, legislative and other maps. Some legal experts say it could chill other racially conscious remedies more broadly. 

The decision could have a significant impact on this year’s midterm elections. Several analyses suggest Republicans may gain as many as 12 House seats in Southern states that use the ruling to erase congressional boundaries that previously favored Black candidates in certain districts. Already on Wednesday, the Florida Legislature voted on party lines to adopt a new map that could lead to Republicans picking up four seats in Congress this November.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling came in Louisiana v. Callais. White voters in Louisiana challenged the creation of the state’s second majority-Black congressional district in 2024. The district runs along the Mississippi River north of Baton Rouge.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, said the 2024 map amounted to “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

Alito, however, contended that the ruling did not gut the Voting Rights Act, but merely set a new framework for considering the constitutionality of new voting districts.

Challengers to new maps will not have to prove a state “intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race,” Alito wrote. He said the court will reject challenges that “cannot disentangle race from the state’s race-neutral considerations, including politics.”

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a stinging dissent, forgoing the traditional caveat that she disagreed with the majority “respectfully.”

She described the decision as “this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

“I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote,” Kagan said. “I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”

The decision was the end of a long legal battle that twice made its way to the Supreme Court. In 2024, the court sent the case back to Louisiana, which ended up drawing new districts. But a three-judge panel in U.S. District Court threw out the map on the grounds that it was racially gerrymandered.

'Equal protection'

The Trump administration sided with the white voters who sued to overturn the majority-Black district, and officials welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Extremely gratified to see this decision we’ve been waiting for!” Assistant Attorney General Harmett Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, wrote on X. She called the decision “perhaps one of the most important developments in decades in Voting Rights Act jurisprudence!”

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, said the court issued “a seismic decision reaffirming equal protection under our nation’s laws.”

“The Supreme Court has ended Louisiana’s long-running nightmare of federal courts coercing the state to draw a racially discriminatory map,” Murrill said in a statement.

'A moral indictment'

 But the NAACP, in a post on X, described the decision as “a direct attack on Black voters” that “marks a shameful moment in our democracy.”

“This ruling opens the door to racial gerrymandering that will take us back to Jim Crow,” the organization said. “This ruling is a betrayal of Black voters and the promise of democracy.”

Martin Luther King III, whose father led a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery that built widespread support for passage of the Voting Rights Act, described the court’s decision as “not simply a legal setback, but a moral indictment that reflects a continued retreat from the promise of equal justice.”

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood that voting rights are the foundation of our entire democratic system,” the civil rights leader’s son said in a statement. “Without them, we are a democracy in name only. While future courts may address this ruling, the damage is immediate, and this moment demands that we choose whether to accept the erosion of our democracy or stand together to defend it.”

The analyses, published in JAMA Pediatrics, were conducted by two separate research groups. Both were modeling studies — meaning they used mathematical simulations to estimate outcomes under different scenarios rather than tracking real-world cases.

Why did the CDC change its hepatitis B vaccine guidance for newborns?

Last December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dropped longstanding guidance — first issued in 1991 — that all newborns receive three doses of the hepatitis B vaccine, including a first dose within 24 hours of birth.

The change was based on recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a group of physicians and public health officials that advises the federal government on vaccine policies. The panel recommended that instead of universal vaccination, all pregnant women should be screened for hepatitis B and that only infants born to mothers who test positive be vaccinated at birth. 

Babies born to women not infected with hepatitis B have an “extremely low risk of hepatitis infection during childhood and especially during the first month of life, and therefore do not need to be routinely vaccinated with the hepatitis B vaccine,” Vicky Pebsworth, a committee member and the research director of the National Vaccine Information Center, said at the time.

Rather than blanket vaccination, the panel and the CDC encouraged what it called individualized decision-making, calling for parents to weigh the risks and benefits of vaccination.

READ MORE: How the search for vaccine safety led parents away from the experts

Some ACIP panelists disagreed.

“The hepatitis B vaccine recommendation is very well established. We know it’s safe, and we know it’s very effective,” said Cody Meissner, a former chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center.

Many physicians and health organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics denounced the revised guidance as “irresponsible and purposely misleading” and continue to recommend hepatitis B vaccination for all newborns.

Hepatitis B and screening

There are six FDA-approved hepatitis B vaccines, and clinical trials have reported that both are generally safe. However, the package inserts for the two vaccines most commonly given to infants, RECOMBIVAX HB and ENGERIX-B, do list some side effects, most commonly nausea, vomiting and upper respiratory infections. Post-market surveillance has documented instances of autoimmune, psychiatric and cardiac disorders, among others, though it is unknown how common these outcomes are following vaccination.

Hepatitis B is a virus that spreads through bodily fluids and can cause liver failure, cancer and premature death. Infections can be acute, meaning they develop and resolve quickly, or lifelong. Infants are especially vulnerable: about 90% of infected babies develop chronic disease — compared with about 5% of adults — and 1 in 4 people infected at birth die prematurely. The Department of Health and Human Services estimated that about 25,000 infants are born to mothers with hepatitis B infections each year, but only about 1,000 become infected with the virus.

While screening pregnant women for hepatitis B can help reduce mom-to-child spread, not all women are routinely tested. A 2023 report from March of Dimes found that 500,000 pregnant women in the U.S. were not screened.

Federal vaccine recommendations are not legally binding. Each state sets its own laws and vaccination schedules, and even then, vaccines are only required for children to attend public school or daycare. (Military personnel are an exception; they are required to receive certain vaccines.)

The consequences 

The new studies are the first to estimate the potential impact of the CDC’s shift in hepatitis B vaccine policy.

In one study, researchers modeled outcomes for more than 3.6 million U.S. births — roughly the number born in 2024 — estimating what would happen if the first hepatitis B vaccine dose was delayed to 2 or 12 months. The analysis factored in maternal infection rates, screening and the risk of transmission at birth and within households. 

In both scenarios, delaying the vaccine led to more infections, deaths and higher costs than administering it at birth. Even assuming that 100% of newborns received the vaccine at 2 months, delaying the first dose resulted in 90 additional acute infections, 76 chronic infections, 29 deaths and $16.4 million in added costs. Delaying the first dose to 12 months led to 190 additional infections, 50 deaths and nearly $30 million in extra healthcare spending.

The authors of the second study used a mathematical model to compare what would happen if all newborns were vaccinated versus a targeted approach where only babies of unscreened or hepatitis B–positive mothers received the vaccine. The researchers found that if 80% of higher-risk infants were vaccinated there would still be 69 additional infections, rising to 628 additional cases if coverage dropped to 10%.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests to comment on the new findings.

Round out your reading

• First, it was the schools. Now they’re coming for your cellphone at work.
• Why one of America’s top economic forecasters is worried about a recession.
• AI companies may not be adhering to their own guidelines — with potentially deadly outcomes.
• Data centers are a thorny issue for Democrats. Maine shows us why.
• We’re building a new Straight Arrow. Help us shape our future by taking our survey.

To reverse that, the Department of Labor launched the “Make America AI-Ready” initiative, a free course to help Americans learn the basics of the new technology.

“The ‘Make America AI-Ready’ initiative is designed to ensure every American worker has the chance to learn foundational skills so they can benefit from the opportunities that the AI economy presents,” then-U.S. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said.

To gauge the program's effectiveness, Straight Arrow spoke to AI learning experts and everyday people who took the program to gather their thoughts.

“The intention is a good one,” Victor Lee, associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, told Straight Arrow. “We do need to broadly increase AI literacy across the board, not only for students, but also people already in the workforce.”

How it works

The entire course functions over text messages. You text a number to get started and the learning begins.

“I think it's a good modality, because it doesn't require internet,” Sri Yash Tadimalla, AI Education Fellow at UNCC Charlotte, told Straight Arrow.

Others agreed that the medium was the right way to do it.

“I think that's a fabulous way to serve information out to people without making you have to open up your computer or open up your email, like all the barriers that would usually keep people from wanting to do something,” Simonne Hooper, a senior account manager at a marketing agency in Los Angeles who said she’s pretty familiar with chatbots, told Straight Arrow. 

Lee didn’t agree that this was the way to go.

“The folks who I think need these basics probably are not as comfortable with this text-based chatbot learning interface,” he said.

Texting that initial number triggers the seven-day course. Each day is a new pillar of instruction, and the DOL estimates it’ll take you about 10 minutes.

But that depends on your level of AI knowledge and how long it takes you to read the prompts and answer the ensuing questions.

“I'm somebody who's fine with texting every day,” Mason Wurzburger, a flight nurse outside of Baltimore who said he has room to learn when it comes to AI, told Straight Arrow. “My dad and mom, maybe not the best for that, but I think they would be able to figure it out.”

It begins by asking for your level of confidence in your AI knowledge on a scale of 1-10.

“You would think that a question like that would be intended to be adaptive,” Lee said.

But it’s not. No matter whether you put a 0 or 10, you get the same course.

“If someone says one or zero, you shouldn't promise them the same seven days as someone who says nine,” Tadimalla said.

Each day comes with a few prompts that include some fun little emojis, a few paragraphs on basic AI education and a multiple-choice trivia question at the end.

The lessons are powered by tech company Arist, which NPR reported offers its services free of charge. How they got that contract has raised some ethical questions.

Does it work?

The answer to that question really depends on what you’re trying to get out of it, but everyone Straight Arrow spoke with agreed this was pretty basic stuff.

“I am not confident that this will be greatly helpful,” Lee said.

“I wish the prompts or the questions and what they taught you was more useful for me,” Hooper added.

But others said it’s not a bad place to start.

“It's a very good start,” Wurzburger said.

“It’s very, very, very basic,” Tadimalla added. “Ten minutes a day is not enough to become AI literate. So, I think it's over-promising a lot, but I think it's a necessary first step.”

The Department of Labor said this is supposed to be just the beginning.

Whether they liked the approach or not, everyone Straight Arrow spoke with agreed that this is all it is, and no one should feel like they’re fully AI-literate once completing the course.

“I wouldn't encourage them to call themselves or put on their resume that they are AI literate,” Tadimalla said.

“I don't think that this alone is sufficient, because a lot of what you do at work is highly situated and is going to have a lot of dependencies,” Lee added. “Whereas [this course] speaks to some pretty broad generalities.”

Essentially, if you’ve never seen an AI chatbot before, this may be a good place to start. However, if you’ve managed to navigate to this article, this course may not be super helpful.

“I think more trainings would be necessary,” Wurzburger, who also said the course abruptly stopped after a few days, said.

Hooper believes this should be the opening page of an AI chatbot.

“ChatGPT, before you start using it, should have something like this,” Hooper said. “Like a quick tutorial that just level-sets what you should expect when you're using it, versus just jumping into it.”

So far, there’s no data on how many people have taken the course or how effective it’s been at teaching people.

Some also felt the text messaging system was a barrier to learning.

“It's also limited by the inability to ask questions or have a conversation,” Tadimalla said.

Who should use it

“It's aimed towards somebody who's either never used it before, somebody who's older and just not as familiar with computers,” Wurzburger said.

“I don't think it's for people who are in today's corporate environment because in most jobs, you do use AI pretty frequently, and it's encouraged to learn more about it,” Hooper added.

The Department of Labor specifically mentioned workers in their announcement.

“To make a meaningful impact on workforce performance or preparation, the information I see here is not going to do as much,” Lee said.

However, there is still more than a quarter of the country, or nearly 92 million Americans, who say they have yet to use an AI tool.

Those people, along with the 70% of people who can’t correctly identify common uses of AI, are likely who would really benefit.

“But there's also a very large segment that is already aware of what might feel like common sense kinds of things for using new technologies,” Lee said. “And this may not necessarily speak to their needs.”

Wurzburger also used that phrase about the course.

“I thought they were common sense, but at least it had the little links where you would take a little test and stuff to just get you a little more hands-on,” he said.

For those who could really use the course, they still need to make the choice to get educated.

“If you are signing up, it means you belong to a certain type of category or group of people who are interested in learning, or who are willing to engage with this type of effort about AI,” Tadimalla said.

What’s not in the course

Nearly 83% of consumers say they’ve seen a video they suspected was an AI creation. AI slop videos also continue to take over the Internet.

However, this course mainly focuses on using chatbots but only scratches the surface of how to detect media that is not real.

“There is a little bit of content I see there that refers to noticing extra fingers or hands or something that looks a bit weird in images,” Lee said. “But again, it's lacking the situativity. It's not really speaking to actual AI use in context and all the different forms that it takes or how it looks.”

“That course would not help with that at all,” Hooper added.

Then, there’s the well-documented societal impacts of AI.

“They don't talk about energy, they don't talk about social impact, they don't talk about surveillance, etcetera,” Tadimalla said. “Things that are really important in a robust AI education needs to have those.”

The importance of AI literacy

“I would say it's the same as if you asked someone 20 or 30 years ago, how important is it to understand how the internet works?” Tadimalla said.

“It's extremely important,” Hooper added.

Use of AI in the workplace only keeps rising.

Nearly a quarter of U.S. companies have already replaced workers with AI, and Goldman Sachs believes some 11 million Americans could be next.

“I think the average white-collar job, if you don't have some type of background in AI, there's a chance you will lose your job to AI in the future,” Wurzburger said. “There's still a chance of blue-collar jobs being taken over as well, but I think we have a little more time before the autonomous robots take everybody's jobs.”

Much of the hearing focused on rising health care costs, budget cuts and Kennedy’s controversial statements on vaccines and autism.

Democratic lawmakers criticized Kennedy for his lack of medical expertise and for promoting what they described as “dangerous conspiracy theories.” Republicans were largely supportive.

But lawmakers from both parties raised concerns about the administration’s uneven approach to addressing waste, fraud and abuse, pointing out that President Donald Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of at least three major perpetrators of fraud in the health care industry.

Health spending, budget cuts, tariffs 

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo, opened the session by outlining several major challenges facing Americans, including rising health care costs and a health care system that incentivizes treating rather than preventing illnesses. Smith applauded the initial disbursement of a $50 billion rural health fund and efforts by the Trump administration to combat fraud, waste and abuse — highlighting the $3.5 billion in Medicare hospice fraud uncovered in Los Angeles County alone.

But Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the ranking Democrat on the panel, criticized the administration’s rhetoric and actions on vaccines and autism, including what he described as baseless claims linking the condition to Tylenol use during pregnancy.

“Nothing has changed about the science of vaccines,” Neal said. “We need people not to be preyed upon by demagoguery, and there should not be a politicization of these issues.” 

Several other lawmakers criticized Kennedy over his remarks about vaccines and recent policy changes at the Department of Health and Human Services, with some warning they threaten American lives.

Kennedy has repeatedly questioned the safety of certain vaccines; raised concerns about a possible link between vaccination and autism and argued that vaccine safety testing and oversight are insufficient. 

In January, Jim O’Neill, then acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced that it removed six vaccines from the national immunization schedule. Prior to that, the CDC revised long-standing guidance on the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns, recommending it only for infants born to mothers who test positive for the virus, rather than universally for all newborns. 

Last month, the CDC voted to create a new diagnostic code — an administrative label used by doctors and insurers to document and track specific medical conditions in patient records and billing systems —  for vaccine-related injury.

Kennedy told lawmakers  he is “pro-safety,” not “anti-vaccine.”

Neal pointed to the department’s proposal to slash $1 trillion from health care funding over several years, warning it could put 440 hospitals at risk of closing “so we can have a tax cut for the wealthiest among us.” 

Health care spending has increased fivefold since 2000. As of 2024, the U.S. spends more than $5 trillion on health each year, accounting for 18% of the country’s GDP. Neal said that while health care costs were already high, soaring prices now have "a lot to do with tariffs and Iran.” 

In the past decade, U.S. pharmaceutical imports have more than doubled in value, from $73 billion in 2014 to over $215 billion in 2024. 

Trump imposed several tariffs on pharmaceutical products, including, most recently, a 100% tariff on certain patented medicines and ingredients, and a 15% tariff on medicines imported from Japan, South Korea and some European countries. He said tariffs would not be collected from companies that agree to “most favored nation” pricing. He also said tariffs would be reduced to 20% for firms that shift manufacturing to the U.S.

It remains unclear whether tariffs have already translated into higher drug prices, as pharmaceutical pricing is typically negotiated through long-term contracts, meaning any impact may be delayed. 

While implementing tariffs, the Trump administration has also engaged in direct negotiations with drugmakers to lower prices for certain drugs; those deals could offset some tariff-related increases, though the effects are likely to vary across drugs and markets. However, industry analysts project that tariffs could significantly raise costs — potentially increasing U.S. drug spending by tens of billions of dollars annually — and warn that higher input prices may exacerbate shortages, forcing providers to rely on more expensive alternatives. 

The left-leaning Center for American Progress reported that several insurers blamed tariffs on drugs for driving up premium costs for 2026. In Oregon, for example, tariffs accounted for 2.7% of a proposed premium increase, according to the center.

There is no clear evidence that Americans are paying more for drugs, medical supplies or health services specifically because of the Iran conflict. 

However, rising energy costs tied to the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz are beginning to ripple through parts of the health care supply chain. BASF Pharma Solutions, a major supplier of chemicals used in drug manufacturing, announced price increases of up to 20% on some products, while shipping costs have climbed as carriers impose surcharges. 

The conflict has also disrupted helium production in the Middle East, raising concerns about potential shortages for U.S. health systems, where MRI machines alone account for roughly 17% of the nation’s helium demand.

House Republicans reportedly are mulling routing $200 billion allocated for health to fund the Iran war. 

Fraud, waste and abuse

In Thursday’s hearing, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers criticized the administration’s uneven approach to rooting out fraud, waste and abuse, which the president has identified as a key priority.

Neal argued that the administration’s efforts appear to disproportionately punish ordinary Americans with minor roles in fraud, while some higher-level perpetrators have received leniency. He noted that Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of several individuals convicted of large-scale fraud.

Last year, Trump commuted the 50-year prison sentence of Lawrence Duran, owner of the mental health care company American Therapeutic Corp., who had been convicted in an $87 million Medicare fraud scheme, to time served. Trump also pardoned nursing home operator Joseph Schwartz, who was convicted in a $39 million employment tax fraud case. Paul Walczak, a former Florida nursing home operator, also received a full presidential pardon 12 days after being sentenced for failing to pay more than $7 million in employment taxes withheld from employee paychecks.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, raised additional concerns, noting that HHS last year reinstated 850 insurance brokers who had been suspended in 2024 for enrolling individuals in Affordable Care Act plans without their knowledge. Kennedy did not know whether those brokers had been investigated prior to reinstatement and did not respond to further questions about whether they faced penalties.

Lawmakers also pressed Kennedy on Medicare reimbursement rates that have failed to keep pace with rising health care costs, warning that the gap is placing growing financial strain on clinics and physician practices, particularly those in rural and underserved areas. 

They also raised concerns about a recent policy allowing insurers to use artificial intelligence to review Medicare claims and incentivize cost reductions. 

The Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) Model, launched in January, introduces prior authorization into traditional Medicare — which has not historically relied on it — using AI to assess the appropriateness of certain services. While the policy is intended to reduce unnecessary care and control spending, Rep. Suzan DeIBene, D-Wash., said it was already forcing patients in her state to be denied medically necessary treatment.

Plus, impeachment talk is back — and expanding. Democrats are now targeting more than just Trump as pressure builds on multiple fronts.

And Ticketmaster and Live Nation take a major hit in court. A jury finds they overcharged fans, with penalties now up to a judge.

These stories and more highlight your Unbiased Updates for Thursday, April 16, 2026.

US prepares new economic strike on Iran with sanctions targeting global banks tied to Tehran

The conflict with Iran is shifting into economic warfare. Iran is now threatening to expand the fight, warning it could target shipping across the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman and the Red Sea if the U.S. keeps its blockade in place at the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. is preparing to escalate its own pressure, planning secondary sanctions on global financial institutions that do business with Iran. Bessent called it the “financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign.

For now, a two-week ceasefire is holding, but the threats are not.

A military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader warned Iran could sink U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz if American forces continue to “police” the waterway.

Israel said it is ready to resume strikes inside Iran if talks collapse. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We are prepared for any scenario.”

Israel has also stepped up its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, with new strikes in the south overnight.

President Donald Trump said on Truth Social late Wednesday night that Israel and Lebanon could hold direct talks for the first time in decades, aimed at a possible ceasefire.

Democrats move to impeach Hegseth, citing war in Iran, Signalgate

House Democrats have filed formal articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, tied to the war in Iran.

The resolution, led by Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., lays out six articles. They include unauthorized war, reckless endangerment of U.S. service members, targeting of civilians and politicization of the armed forces.

It accuses Hegseth of “willful disregard for the constitution,” abusing the powers of his office and acting in a way “grossly incompatible with the rule of law.”

The Pentagon has pushed back. A spokesperson called the effort “just another Democrat trying to make headlines” and “an attempt to distract from the department’s successes.”

With Republicans controlling the House, the measure is unlikely to advance.

Gabbard seeks charges in impeachment case, targeting whistleblower and former inspector general

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has asked the Justice Department to consider criminal charges over the whistleblower complaint that helped trigger Trump's first impeachment.

Gabbard has sent two criminal referrals, one targeting the whistleblower and the other targeting former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Michael Atkinson.

Her office has accused Atkinson of misusing the whistleblower process after a 2019 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That call became the foundation for House Democrats to impeach Trump.

The whistleblower flagged the call as an “urgent concern,” alleging Trump pressed Zelenskyy to investigate political rival former President Joe Biden.

Gabbard claims the complaint relied on secondhand information and what she calls “concocted narratives” from “deep state actors” to push it to Congress.

The whistleblower’s identity has never been made public. The Justice Department will now decide whether to pursue charges.

Atkinson, who was fired by Trump in 2020, has said he acted properly and followed the law. Gabbard, however, argues he put politics ahead of facts.

Sotomayor apologizes to Kavanaugh for ‘inappropriate’ public criticism

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has apologized to fellow Justice Brett Kavanaugh for comments she made during an appearance last week. Sotomayor did not name Kavanaugh directly, but she referred to a vote last year that enabled the Trump administration to conduct broad immigration sweeps.

Kavanaugh was the only justice to explain his reasoning, writing that stops by federal agents to check a person’s legal status would be “temporary” and “reasonable.”

During an appearance at the University of Kansas Law School, Sotomayor appeared to take aim at his perspective, saying the opinion came “from a man whose parents were professionals and probably doesn’t really know anyone who works by the hour.”

In a statement released Wednesday, the court said Sotomayor called the remarks “inappropriate” and that she has since apologized to her colleague.

Jury finds Live Nation ran illegal monopoly in landmark Ticketmaster case

A major loss for Live Nation and Ticketmaster came when a federal jury found the company operated as an illegal monopoly. The verdict came in a civil antitrust case brought by 34 states, which accused Live Nation and its Ticketmaster unit of stifling competition, limiting choice and driving up ticket prices for fans. 

The jury found Live Nation liable for anticompetitive conduct and determined that Ticketmaster overcharged consumers, including concert-goers, for tickets sold from May 2020 through 2024. 

In a statement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, "This verdict shows just how far states can go to protect our residents from big corporations that are using their power to illegally raise prices and rip off Americans.” 

The case now returns to the judge, who will decide on damages, penalties, consumer restitution and any changes the company may be required to make. That could be costly.

The jury found Ticketmaster overcharged by $1.72 per ticket, and with triple damages available under federal law, the total could reach billions of dollars. 

The ruling could open the door to broader changes, including possible divestitures or even a breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster — though any remedy will be contested in a separate proceeding. 

Live Nation has long denied being a monopoly and argued that it competes lawfully in a crowded market. 

Madonna announces new dance album set for July release

Madonna is back, and she’s heading straight for the dance floor. The pop icon announced a new album, “Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II,” set for release on July 3. It's her first full project in seven years.

She broke the news on Instagram, sharing the cover and a quick teaser. For the album, she reunited with producer Stuart Price, the same collaborator behind her 2005 hit record.

That original “Confessions on a Dance Floor” gave us tracks like “Hung Up” and “Sorry.” Now, she’s picking up right where she left off.

Madonna called the dance floor “a ritualistic space,” saying this new project is about connection, escape and pushing limits.

No word yet on a tour, but safe to say she's urging “everybody to get up, dance, do your thing,  everybody c'mon dance and sing.”

More from Straight Arrow News:

What 50 years of oil shocks explain about the future of gas prices

Gas prices go up and down with world events that shake the global oil market. The war in Iran, which led to Iran’s de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, is only the latest such example. 

While refining, distribution and taxes all factor into the price of gasoline, the majority of what Americans pay at the pump is determined by the price of oil. When adjusted for inflation, global events that disrupt oil markets have caused gasoline prices to surge past $5 and even $6 per gallon at various points in recent history. In the video above, Straight Arrow News walks through 50 years of gasoline prices.

Experts told SAN the 2026 attacks on Iran and Iran’s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz have created the biggest disruption in the past 50 years. 

“It is without a doubt the largest supply disruption in the history of global oil markets,” said Christiane Baumeister, an economist at the University of Notre Dame focused on energy markets. “The severity of this event is not fully reflected in prices yet. Oil supplies are much tighter than what the market price currently suggests.” 

Read the full story now>

They aren’t all for him. Once Glenn returns home, he reserves some of the produce and nonperishables for himself and sets aside the rest for an elderly neighbor. He continues to help his neighbor by cooking fresh meals and cleaning the man’s house. In Glenn’s words, it’s “what I can give to him.”

But Glenn’s ability to help could soon change as new requirements for the benefits he receives from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program took effect on March 1.

“It’s been a little difficult for me,” he told Straight Arrow News.

Federal spending bill institutes changes in SNAP

The One Big Beautiful Bill that President Donald Trump signed last July changed how the federal food stamps program operates. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which manages the food assistance program, about 39.5 million people receive benefits. 

The spending law mandated people like Glenn work 80 hours a month to receive benefits. It also increased Michigan’s share of administrative costs by 50%, beginning this July. It’s a significant increase: Michigan will pay $95.7 million more in 2026 than in 2024. 

Glenn is considered an “able-bodied adult without dependents,” since he is single, does not care for a child under the age of 14 and lives in an area with an unemployment rate below 10%. This group of able-bodied adults, sometimes referred to as ABAWD, is larger now than it was pre-July. The age of dependents has been lowered from 18 to 14, and new regulations have been added about how to measure unemployment for waivers. 

The USDA said that, as of Nov. 2, the category of single adults must work or volunteer at least 80 hours a month. Otherwise, they can receive benefits for three months, then not again for another three years, for failing to meet the guidelines.

Implementing the new work requirements is a measured process, with some states complying on Nov. 1, while others, like Michigan, started on March 1. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to SAN’s interview requests. 

"We know that people have lots of great skills and talents," Matthew Dickerson, director of budget policy at the Economic Policy Innovation Center, told SAN. "The whole point of the welfare system should be to be able to transition people back into self-sufficiency and not permanent dependency on government."

Eisha Branner runs E-Community Outreach Services, a Pontiac-based nonprofit focused on helping women and their families access communal support, food, diapers and other essentials. She told SAN that her staff has offered budgeting workshops, apprenticeship programs and other opportunities to help families transition off food stamps. 

Anyone in the U.S. can seek an ABAWD waiver, but prior to the July bill, several states were granted geographical waivers, meaning single adults did not have to meet work requirements in certain areas to receive SNAP benefits. 

A USDA spokesperson told SAN that the changes instituted from the spending bill took effect on July 4, and states must enforce the new three-month time limit rule. The spokesperson added the department is providing technical assistance to states on enforcing new time limit and work requirement rules, and transitioning residents off welfare.

“So Michigan — really for the first time because waivers are no longer as broadly an option for Michigan counties and cities — more people than ever are suddenly going to be experiencing lower food assistance budgets for their families or losing their SNAP benefits if they're completely single altogether,” Elinor “Elly” Jordan, public benefits law attorney at the Michigan Poverty Law Program, told SAN.

Those changes mean Glenn could have less food to share with his neighbor. He uses his food stamps to make some purchases at Meijer, a Midwestern grocery store, and supplements that with items from the Pontiac pantry. 

“I try to help others, I’m just by myself,” he said. 

Thousands likely lost benefits

Work waivers aren’t a foreign concept. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act carved out a path for waivers, which Dickerson said allows states to inform the USDA that certain residents cannot meet work rules.

The law allowed for a USDA secretary to approve geographic waivers based on whether a state, county or city “does not have a sufficient number of jobs to provide employment for the individuals.” The law did not have provisions on how long a waiver could last or the procedures a secretary must follow to terminate waivers. 

“The problem with the law was that it never defined what the term ‘area’ meant and what the term ‘lack of sufficient jobs’ meant,” Dickerson said. 

The 2025 changes make those waivers a temporary tool, allowing the USDA to review unemployment rates over three-month and 12-month periods and judge the rates based on historical numbers. Under the new law, waivers cannot exceed 12 months. 

“These reforms reinforce SNAP’s work expectations and encourage able-bodied adults to move toward employment and self-sufficiency, consistent with the program’s statutory goals,” Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told SAN in an email. 

It is unclear exactly how many food stamp recipients will be affected by the new rules. After ending its waiver on Sept. 1, 2025, Pennsylvania reported 161,000 fewer people received benefits in December 2025 compared with December 2024, according to the state’s Independent Fiscal Office. South Carolina said that 3% of its enrollees fall into the same category as Glenn. The Congressional Budget Office estimated provisions will reduce enrollment by about 2.4 million in an average month from 2025 to 2034.

Tabulating how many households are affected by the change is tricky as states do not report SNAP data in a uniform format. Some states release the total number of individual recipients, while others report the number of households, each of which could represent several recipients. Some states report both. 

An SAN analysis of data from 10 states that instituted work requirements found that the number of households receiving benefits dropped by 408,869 in the first month of the requirement – a 12.6% decline. 

In two states, Massachusetts and New Mexico, the number of households grew by 10,559 and 64, respectively. 

Jordan said that SNAP benefits aren’t meant to help people stock their kitchens, rather to keep people above food-insecurity levels. In some cases, she said people could receive around $100 per person a month. Michigan averaged $184.75 per month for individuals and $343.88 for households so far in fiscal year 2026. 

Unemployment rates force states to apply for exemptions

Counties, states and reservations across the nation are requesting waivers. 

The entire state of Alaska, with the exception of Anchorage, has received such a waiver. The new rules exempt citizens of any federally-recognized tribe and Alaskan Natives from the work requirements. Alaska and Hawaii are automatically granted waivers if unemployment is 150% above the national rate, which was 4.1% in December, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Michigan’s Mackinac County received a waiver due to its 13.3% unemployment rate, the 10th highest in the nation, according to the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget. The city of Pontiac, where Glenn lives, is below the threshold at 8.6%.

Gina Plata-Nino, director of SNAP policy and advocacy at the Food Research and Action Center, told SAN that work requirements weren’t feasible as people are being “punished” for things out of their control, such as a “weak economy, insufficient jobs, lack of transportation and ways for them to be able to have access to resources.” 

Glenn said the 80 hours a month requirement will be difficult for him, as jobs around Pontiac force people to “meet certain standards” to work. He noted there are jobs for people who are willing to take anything to make ends meet, but the time requirement feels high to him. 

“I do more than 80 hours walking around, inquiring about work, than actually getting to work,” he told SAN. 

Dickerson noted that the work requirements equate to being roughly 20 hours a week, which is a part-time job. 

“It’s an incredibly modest requirement that can be easily met simply by going out and contributing to your community,” he said. 

Glenn said in Pontiac, jobs are all around him, but may not always pay well enough. Michigan’s minimum wage is $13.73 per hour and Pontiac’s median income in 2024 was $44,329, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The city is marked by blighted, abandoned buildings as it faced a harsh economic downturn in the early 2000s. 

Pontiac was so well known as an automobile manufacturing hub throughout the 20th century that General Motors named a car brand after the city. Then came the Great Recession: GM ceased operations for the Pontiac brand in 2009 and shuttered its four assembly plants in the city as part of a bankruptcy agreement.

Since then, the city has repurposed historic buildings and remains the marquee city for the annual Woodward Dream Cruise — a live auto showing of classic and original vehicles spanning the entire 27-mile Woodward Avenue connecting Detroit to Pontiac.

Still, Glenn said he’s seen people either leave Pontiac or turn to substance abuse. He said that places around the city are aware of the city’s unemployment level and have offered job training sessions to help people. 

“I do notice that a lot of people don’t want to do anything because they lost a lot of hope,” Glenn said. “I try to stay hopeful and encouraging like, ‘Hey, you can do it. Just take a little step.’”

Dickerson told SAN the work requirements would encourage people to seek higher-paying jobs and break cycles of welfare dependency. If able-bodied adults who don’t support others financially rely less on public assistance, Dickerson said more money could be provided to people who are “truly needy.” 

Jordan told SAN she sees it differently: Most people aren’t cyclical recipients and instead use the program so they don’t go hungry, she said.

Community will be key for many people as they navigate the changes. Glenn said this is now a time for neighbors to help one another.

SNAP needed improvements

Everyone who spoke to SAN agreed that the nation's food assistance program needed to be updated to meet the needs of both recipients and taxpayers, and also account for rising food costs. The disagreement comes in how these changes should be created. 

Jordan envisioned the program being improved to allow for a fully digitized application process used in all states. Jordan said it can be easier to order a pizza from Domino's than it is to apply for benefits. 

"I would say that any fiscal effects are completely secondary to the human effects," Dickerson said. "We want people to be able to go into the workforce and be able to provide for their families."

Glenn’s sights are set on his neighbors, encouraging them to keep asking for help and employment around the city, even if they get rejected.

“Go to the next one,” he said. “Don’t stop asking.”

Freelance Photojournalist Kimberly Todd contributed to this report.

Media Miss by the left: DOJ accuses Biden admin of biased prosecutions 

The Department of Justice has fired at least four federal prosecutors accused of misusing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. 

In a new report, the DOJ says the Biden administration worked with pro-abortion groups to monitor and target pro-life activists.

The report points to aggressive tactics, including the arrest of pro-life activist Mark Houck by 16 armed FBI agents. It also cites sentencing disparities where prosecutors sought an average of 26.8 months for pro-life defendants compared to 12.3 months for pro-abortion defendants.

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Media Miss by the right: US fires immigration judges fired after deportation rulings 

The Trump administration has fired two immigration judges who dismissed deportation cases against two pro-Palestinian international students, according to a New York Times report.

In separate rulings, the judges said the government lacked sufficient grounds for deportation. The Trump administration says they were removed over a lack of impartiality.

The New York Times found both judges granted asylum at nearly twice the national average.

More than 100 immigration judges have resigned or been fired since Trump began his second term in January 2025.

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For more stories missed or minimized by partisan media, visit SAN’s Media Miss archive.

Straight Arrow News identifies Media Misses based on coverage data available at the time of publication. Some outlets may choose to cover a story after our analysis is published. Our methodology prioritizes timely, prominent coverage across a range of sources, but we continually review and refine our approach to ensure balance and accuracy.

Democratic lawmakers plan to introduce six articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Wednesday, most of them connected to the war in Iran, Axios reports. 

Earlier attempts to impeach Cabinet officials failed. But the targets of those efforts have since left the administration: former Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

In a statement to Axios, the Pentagon described the impeachment articles as “just another Democrat trying to make headlines.” The statement claimed the military had “decisively and overwhelmingly achieved the President’s objectives in Iran” and said Hegseth “will continue to protect the homeland and project peace through strength.”

Impeachment articles against Hegseth

With Republicans holding a majority in the House, the impeachment articles are unlikely to pass. Even if they did, a two-thirds vote of the Senate would be required to remove him from office, and Republicans also are in the majority in that chamber.

Still, the impeachment attempt gives Democrats a chance to air their grievances with Hegseth, which have only grown as the Iranian conflict intensified.

The first article of impeachment focuses on Hegseth’s lack of congressional approval before the attack on Iran, calling it an “unauthorized war against Iran and reckless endangerment of United States servicemembers.”

It says the operation in the Middle East knowingly placed members of the armed forces at risk and lacked clear, defined objectives. 

Article two focuses on targeting civilians during the war, citing the attack on a girls’ elementary school that killed more than 175 people. A preliminary investigation found that the U.S. military accidentally targeted the school, although a formal inquiry is not yet complete.

The third article accuses Hegseth of “negligence and reckless handling of sensitive military information.” It details the Singlegate scandal, in which Hegseth reportedly sent messages about airstrikes in Yemen to a group chat on the messaging app Signal. 

The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was accidentally added to the chat. Now, Democrats are calling the episode “a betrayal of the trust placed in him and a dereliction of his duty to safeguard national security.”

The final articles focus on a lack of transparency, accusing Hegseth of obstructing congressional oversight and abusing his power by politicizing the armed forces. 

These articles claim Hegseth failed to “provide timely and complete information regarding military operations” to Congress. 

Previous impeachment efforts against Trump’s cabinet

The impeachment articles are similar to those introduced against Noem and Bondi earlier this year. While those also failed to move through Congress, both Noem and Bondi were inevitably ousted from office when they lost favor with Trump. 

Congress introduced three articles of impeachment against Noem in January, and Trump fired her less than two months later. In Bondi’s case, Congress filed five articles in March, and she was ousted just a couple of weeks later. 

Plus, Rep. Eric Swalwell is out, but the story isn’t slowing down. A new accuser says he drugged and sexually assaulted her, and now she’s going to the police.

And a dramatic return from space playing out on video. New footage shows Navy divers reaching the Artemis II crew — and bringing them safely home.

These stories and more highlight your Unbiased Updates for Wednesday, April 15, 2026.

US, Iran move toward new talks as mediators say ceasefire extension agreed in principle

Momentum is building for new U.S.-Iran talks, even as the U.S. tightens its military grip in the region. Mediators say both sides have, in principle, agreed to extend the current ceasefire, set to expire next week, by at least two more weeks, according to The Associated Press.

It comes as tensions remain high around the Strait of Hormuz.

President Donald Trump said a new round of talks could happen in Pakistan within days. UN Secretary-General António Guterres also said it’s “highly probable” those talks move forward.

In a Fox News interview Wednesday morning, Trump said he believes the war won't go on much longer.

"I think it's close to over, yeah. I mean, I view it as very close to over,” Trump said. “You know what? If I pulled up stakes right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild their country. And we're not finished. We'll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal very badly."

At the same time, the U.S. military said its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is now fully in place.

U.S. Central Command said American forces have achieved “maritime superiority” and claim trade into and out of Iran by sea has been halted. A U.S. official said warships warned six vessels in the first 24 hours. All of them turned around.

Five of those ships were reportedly carrying oil.

New accuser details assault claims, saying Swalwell drugged and attacked her

Former Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., faced new and graphic accusations just hours after he announced his resignation from office.

Model Lonna Drewes came forward Tuesday, accusing Swalwell of drugging and sexually assaulting her during a 2018 meeting at a California hotel. She spoke publicly for the first time at a Beverly Hills news conference.

“On the third occasion, I believe he drugged my drink. I only had one glass of wine,” she said. “When I arrived at his hotel room, I was already incapacitated, and I couldn't move my arms or my body. He raped me, and he choked me. And while he was choking me, I lost consciousness."

Her claims add to a series of allegations against Swalwell that emerged in recent days. Swalwell has denied any sexual misconduct, calling the accusations false.

In a video posted last week, Swalwell rejected the claims and said he would fight them.

"Immediately, we will be filing a police report with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office,” Drewes attorney said Tuesday. "We will be providing all of her evidence there, including text messages, journal entries, photograph, and witness information.”

Swalwell announced his resignation from Congress on Monday, shortly after the accusations became public.

He officially announced his departure on Tuesday by submitting a resignation letter to the House clerk. He is no longer a candidate for California governor after dropping out last weekend. 

Lawmakers expand push for expulsions, saying additional members could face removal votes

The two lawmakers who helped lead the bipartisan push to expel Swalwell, as well as Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, said there could be more to come.

Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., and Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., teamed up to introduce expulsion resolutions, a required step under House rules.

They told CBS News their effort could extend to other members under scrutiny.

Luna said she would support expulsion, if warranted, in cases involving Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., and Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla.

Mills is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of dating violence and campaign finance violations.

A grand jury indicted Cherfilus-McCormick in Florida on charges of stealing FEMA funds and making illegal campaign contributions.

Both have denied any wrongdoing.

Swalwell and Gonzales both stepped down this week rather than face expulsion votes.

DOJ moves to erase Jan. 6 convictions, seeks to vacate cases against Proud Boys, Oath Keepers

The Justice Department is now seeking to erase some of the most serious convictions stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Federal prosecutors asked a court Tuesday to vacate the convictions of a dozen members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, including those found guilty of seditious conspiracy. 

The request targets some of the highest-profile defendants still facing Capitol riot cases. These are defendants whose sentences were commuted last year, but whose convictions remain in place.

The filings, signed by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, ask the appeals courts to permanently erase those convictions.

"In the executive branch's view, it is not in the interests of justice to continue to prosecute this case or the cases of other, similarly situated defendants."

— U.S. Attorney's Office

The move builds on Trump’s earlier actions after he issued pardons for most Jan. 6 defendants and commuted sentences for others. Those included leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, some of whom were sentenced to more than a decade in prison.

Prosecutors had said those groups organized and led breaches of the Capitol, including assaults on police and damage to the building. More than 1,500 people were charged in connection with the attack.

These filings target some of the last remaining cases still on the books.

Federal Reserve turns away prosecutors, criminal probe into Powell stalls in court

Federal prosecutors showed up unannounced Tuesday at the Federal Reserve to try to get inside a multi-billion-dollar renovation project. They were turned away.

The visit by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s team comes as a criminal probe into Fed Chair Jerome Powell has stalled in court.

Last month, Chief Judge James Boasberg blocked subpoenas, writing the government had produced “essentially zero evidence” of a crime and  “no evidence whatsoever” that Powell had done anything wrong beyond "displeasing the president.”

The Fed’s outside counsel then warned prosecutors not to bypass the courts, calling any direct contact with the central bank inappropriate unless legal representation was present. Pirro defended the attempted tour, saying the project’s nearly 80% cost overruns warrant scrutiny.

The standoff is now spilling into Capitol Hill politics.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said he will not advance Trump’s nominee to replace Powell — Kevin Warsh — until the Justice Department completes its investigation.

Navy crews recover Artemis II astronauts: Video

The Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, with U.S. Navy crews ready to move in and receive them. New video of the astronauts' homecoming has surfaced, and it includes plenty of handshakes, cheers and "Welcome home's" as divers reached the capsule.

The Navy crews briefly evaluated the four astronauts, helped them maneuver out of the capsule and onto a raft, and then hoisted them into a helicopter.

From there, the crew was flown to the USS John Murtha for comprehensive medical checks.

The mission lasted 10 days — an around-the-moon flight without a landing — covering roughly 700,000 miles and capturing new lunar images.

Now, NASA shifts to the next step.

Artemis III — set for next year — will keep astronauts in Earth’s orbit as they practice docking the Orion capsule with a commercial lunar lander. That’s a critical step before any return to the moon.

After that, Artemis IV, targeting 2028, could put astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17.

More from Straight Arrow News:

How Waymo is changing the playbook for teens learning to drive

Karly Treacy didn’t want her teenage children driving in Los Angeles traffic, so when her eldest daughter admitted she had no desire to get behind the wheel, Treacy felt immediate relief.

“It’s way too much responsibility for teens whose frontal cortexes aren’t fully developed,” she told Straight Arrow News.

But coordinating the schedules of three children while both she and her husband worked full-time wasn’t easy. At first, Treacy let her oldest children, then 12 and 13, take rideshares, as long as they weren’t alone, but she said they had a few “scary experiences.” They tried public transportation, but that felt unsafe, too. When Waymo became available for kids, Treacy and her husband decided to let the older kids test it out. 

Families have long weighed questions about safety, insurance and fuel prices when determining when to teach teenagers to drive. But as gas prices spike, and autonomous rideshares become more readily available, some parents are adding a new variable to their equation: Waymo. 

Read the full story now>

Across much of the country, states have been cutting income-tax rates or moving toward flatter tax systems to attract and retain residents and businesses. But a handful of other states, led mostly by Democrats, are aggressively moving in the opposite direction: advancing proposals to tax the wealthy to fund housing, education and social programs or plug budget gaps. 

The result is a widening divide between blue- and red-state tax systems just as the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the sweeping tax and spending package signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, reshapes the federal tax landscape. 

Supporters cast the new federal law as a middle-class tax cut and pro-growth package broadly aligned with Republican-led state policies. 

Critics, however, say it gives millionaires and billionaires a huge windfall. They say it’s now up to the states to tax the wealthy and sharpen the fight over who pays for the government in America — and who doesn't.

State tax policies are moving further apart

Today, eight states — Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming — have no state income tax. 

Among the 42 states that levy individual income taxes, the top marginal rates vary widely, from 2.5% in Arizona to 13.3% percent in California.

“There has never been more divergence in state income laws,” said Jared Walczak, senior fellow at the Tax Foundation, a center-right tax policy research group. “At least not in the modern history of the income tax.”

“You have a cluster of high-tax states, and you have a much larger set of low-tax states, and that middle has really been hollowed out,” Walczak told Straight Arrow News. 

Like America’s political split, the country’s tax divide is dramatically widening.

A Tax Foundation analysis found that 26 states have reduced individual income tax rates since 2021, including 23 states that cut their top marginal rate for high earners. 

Over the same period, six states — California, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington, and New Mexico — and Washington D.C., increased the nominal tax rate on high earnings. 

Some of those Democratic-led states are now pushing for new or higher taxes on the wealthy.   

What are the competing arguments over higher taxes on the rich?

Even some wealthy Americans embrace the slogan “Tax the Rich.” 

Morris Pearl is the chair of the advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires, a collection of roughly 200 wealthy Americans who call for higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires. 

Pearl told SAN the current system is unfair because much of the wealth of very rich Americans is held in investments that rise in value without being taxed unless they’re sold. 

As a retired asset manager living in New York, he said he pays a lower tax rate than many average earners who “work for a living.”

The gap has increased during Trump’s second term, some experts say.

“Wealthy Americans are getting enormous tax breaks” in many states and from Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, said Amy Hanauer, the executive director of the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. 

“If you raise rates on the very top, especially at a time of spiking inequality, you raise more revenue for the things your communities need,” Hanauer told SAN.

But others, like Walczak, disagree. He argued that aggressive state efforts to tax the rich would drive affluent households and companies away and impede investment and economic growth, particularly for small businesses. 

He criticized what he sees as the “punitive nature” of blue-state tax hikes: “In some states you see antagonism toward high earners and high net worth individuals. They’re seen as a problem to be solved, instead of a solution.”

Why is Washington state’s historic “millionaire’s tax” under legal attack? 

When Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a bill widely known as the “millionaire’s tax” into law on March 30, 2026, he made history. 

Washington has not had a traditional personal income tax in more than 90 years, since the state Supreme Court ruled in 1933 that income is property and cannot be taxed nonuniformly under the state constitution.

The new law takes effect on Jan. 1, 2028, and imposes a 9.9% tax on annual household incomes above $1 million. 

Washington currently relies heavily on sales and business taxes instead of personal income taxes, making it one of the most regressive tax systems in the country.

“Less than one half of one percent of Washingtonians will pay the tax, but it will make life more affordable for millions,” Ferguson said when he signed the bill.

The governor’s office said the revenue would support tax credits for working families, tax relief for some households and businesses and funding for public services. 

Within weeks of passage, a group of small business owners with household incomes above $1 million, along with several trade groups, filed a lawsuit in Klickitat County, Washington, along the Oregon border, claiming the new tax violates the state constitution. 

Ben Petter, a home and office builder, and his wife, Lauren Petter, are among the plaintiffs.

"We love this state and have built our lives and businesses here, this is why it matters to us,” the Petters wrote in a statement to SAN. 

“Through our work," they wrote, "we’re already seeing investment slow and projects pause as uncertainty increases, which has real implications for jobs and long-term growth.”

Jackson Maynard, a lawyer for the couple, told SAN that lawmakers were playing a dishonest game of semantics.

“Calling an income tax a ‘millionaire’s tax” doesn’t make it constitutional,” he said.

In their complaint, the couple also argued that Washington voters have repeatedly rejected statewide income tax proposals. 

The legal battle over Washington’s tax law could serve as a test case for similar efforts nationwide.

Other Democratic-run states are moving to raise taxes on the wealthy

Washington joins other Democratic-run states in moving toward higher taxes on the affluent.

In California, proponents are pushing for a ballot initiative for the November 2026 election that would impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on Californians with a net worth of at least $1 billion who resided in the state on Jan. 1, 2026. 

Even if it makes it on the ballot and passes, the measure would almost certainly face major legal challenges. 

California, home to an estimated 200 billionaires, already has the nation’s top state income tax rate at 13.3%, according to the Tax Foundation.

A handful of prominent billionaires — including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick — already have established residency outside the state to avoid this potential tax, according to Fortune.

In New York, the Democratic-led state Senate advanced a proposal for a surcharge on top tax brackets and higher taxes on income over $5 million a year. 

Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a self-described Democratic socialist, has proposed raising the personal income tax rate by 2 percentage points for New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year, along with higher corporate taxes. 

But those measures would require state approval and would likely face resistance from legislators. 

Do high state taxes drive out the wealthy?

Despite some high-profile examples, experts are divided over whether higher state taxes drive away wealthy residents.

Walczak, of the Tax Foundation, said taxpayers seeking lower-tax states now have far more options than they once did, as more states offer tax cuts, top rates below 5% or no state income tax at all.

“The motivation to move is stronger when that is contrasted with rates pushing double digits,” he said. 

Patriotic Millionaires’ Pearl, by contrast, does not believe the ultra-rich would move away over taxes.

“Most people who are extraordinarily wealthy live wherever they want to live,” he said. “That's the whole point of being rich.”

The Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific, and Navy rescuers moved in. The video shows plenty of handshakes, “Welcome home,” and a few cheers as divers reached the capsule.

They helped the four astronauts out, moved them onto a raft, then hoisted them into a helicopter.

From there, the crew was flown to the USS John Murtha for medical checks.

The mission lasted ten days — an around-the-moon flight without a landing — covering roughly 700-thousand miles and capturing new lunar images.

What comes next for space travel?

Now, NASA shifts to the next step.

Artemis III — set for next year — will keep astronauts in Earth’s orbit as they practice docking the Orion capsule with a commercial lunar lander.

That’s a critical step before any return to the moon.

And after that, Artemis IV, targeting 2028, could put astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17.

Filings seek to permanently dismiss cases

Federal prosecutors are asking appeals courts to vacate those convictions with prejudice, which would prevent the charges from being brought again. The filings were submitted Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

In one filing, prosecutors wrote that continuing to pursue these cases “is not in the interests of justice to continue to prosecute this case or the cases of other, similarly situated defendants."

Defendants include leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy

The group includes senior figures from both organizations, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and members of the Proud Boys leadership. Several were convicted of seditious conspiracy and received sentences of more than a decade in prison.

Prosecutors had argued at trial that members of the two groups organized and directed key breaches of the Capitol, including confrontations with police and the destruction of property.

Move follows earlier clemency actions

The defendants named in the filings were part of a smaller group that did not receive full pardons and instead had their sentences reduced to time served. Those commutations allowed them to leave prison while leaving the convictions intact.

The new filings would remove those remaining convictions entirely and formally end the cases.

Focused effort on remaining group leaders

More than 1,500 people were charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Most of those cases have already been resolved through guilty pleas, trial convictions or completed sentences.

The current filings focus on a limited group of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers defendants whose sentences have already been commuted.

“It’s way too much responsibility for teens whose frontal cortexes aren’t fully developed,” she told Straight Arrow News.

But coordinating the schedules of three children while both she and her husband worked full-time wasn’t easy. At first, Treacy let her oldest children, then 12 and 13, take rideshares, as long as they weren’t alone, but she said they had a few “scary experiences.” They tried public transportation, but that felt unsafe, too. When Waymo became available for kids, Treacy and her husband decided to let the older kids test it out. 

Families have long weighed questions about safety, insurance and fuel prices when determining when to teach teenagers to drive. But as gas prices spike, and autonomous rideshares become more readily available, some parents are adding a new variable to their equation: Waymo. 

Are automated ride services like Waymo safer than teen drivers?

Motor vehicle accidents were the leading cause of death among U.S. teens in 2023. Among teens 16 or older, the fatal crash rate was three times higher than for drivers over 20. 

Waymo’s most recent data shows that its automated vehicles — what the company calls its “Waymo Drivers” — were involved in 92% fewer serious injury-or-worse crashes than human drivers traveling the same distances in the same cities.

“The juxtaposition is pretty significant between these two classes of drivers,” said Shawn DuBravac, Ph.D, a technologist with Avrio Institute, an organization that helps clients discern technological trends and transformations. “We are comparing arguably the safest drivers on the road with the least safe.”

But that doesn’t mean Waymo Drivers don’t make mistakes. 

During an active police stand-off in downtown Los Angeles a few months ago, a Waymo Driver cruised slowly through the scene, taking a left-hand turn feet away from the suspect.

“The computer sees people. And it’s like, ‘OK, I’m going to slow down. I’m going to avoid the people,” DuBravac told SAN. In this case, it misread the context of the situation. Still, DuBravac said, the vehicles have been well tested, exposed to a wide range of real-world experiences.

One Phoenix resident, Karen Bell-Zinn, described watching two Waymos get stuck in an awkward face-off at a Circle K parking lot. Another told SAN a Waymo once took her to her destination but kept circling the parking lot and wouldn’t let her out.

“We are committed to continuous improvement and take several steps to ensure our technology operates appropriately on public roads,” Chris Bonelli, a Waymo spokesperson, told SAN. Those efforts include constant software updates, a measured approach to expansion and partnerships with regulators and emergency officials, he said. 

Waymo as a dependable carpool choice 

Treacy and her family have heard the stories. But they also heard reports from their own social circle, as her kids’ friends took the autonomous rideshares everywhere — the beach, school and sports practices. 

When Treacy’s eldest daughter began attending an arts-centered high school in downtown Los Angeles, about 90 minutes from their home, Treacy formed a carpool with other nearby parents. She spent nine hours a week covering three drop-offs or pick-ups.

Eventually, the three carpool families decided to split a Waymo most days to get to and from school. In her eyes, it beat giving a high schooler car keys to drive through city traffic, which she described as “a house on fire.” 

In the time since, her family “never had any of the issues that people talk about,” she told SAN. “If Waymo said that it was dropping them off at a spot, it did.”

Is it cheaper to drive or use an automated ride service? 

Treacy’s solution came at a cost. 

Waymo rides to and from school for Treacy’s daughter usually cost between $45 and $50 each way — a manageable expense, she said, when split three ways between parents. 

In Phoenix, Christina Harvey and her husband relied on Waymo to shuttle their 14-year-old to basketball practice and to hang out with friends. Each ride costs about $20, for a roundtrip cost of about $40 a day. 

“It is pretty expensive to use Waymo,” Harvey told SAN.

But adding a teenager to your car insurance policy is expensive, too. Rates vary by state, but the national average cost of a full-coverage insurance policy with a teen driver is around $500 a month, said Maya Afilalo, an insurance analyst at AutoInsurance.com. Rates don’t tend to drop until 19 and 21, before evening out at 25. 

It would take a teen about 12 to 13 outings a month to hit that $500 threshold. But that’s just one line item: There are other hidden costs of insurance, like what happens if a teen is involved in an accident, said Daniel Setareh, a managing partner and personal injury attorney at Setareh Law Firm.

“All it takes is one serious crash with several other vehicles to go far beyond the cap of that policy,” Setareh told SAN. 

If a teen is involved in a serious car accident, the parents holding the policy could end up paying for others’ bodily injury and damages. And Afilalo said after an accident, teen premiums typically rise about 45% to 50%.

With a service like Waymo, the accident is on the company. 

“That's a different world to be in, and one that's more important to families in more urban areas where the probability of a problem is already greater,” Setareh said.

Maintaining a car can come with many surprising costs, too 

Cars have costs beyond insurance. Routine maintenance like shocks, tires and fluids can add up fast, Glen Hayward, owner of Good Works Auto Repair, told SAN. 

“I think most families underestimate the true cost of maintaining a teenage driver’s vehicle,” said Hayward, who is a member of Neighborhood Auto Repair Professionals. 

And with a teen behind the wheel, certain parts may wear out sooner.

“Sometimes even a minor bump against a curb can damage tires, shock absorbers, struts or suspension parts, leading to hundreds of dollars in damage,” Hayward said.

On top of these potential maintenance expenses, gas prices are soaring — eclipsing $4 per gallon in recent weeks.

“At the very most, I feel like you're breaking even with what you have to pay for your car and for gas and for insurance to just pop in a Waymo,” said Treacy. 

What’s at stake if teens rely on automated ride services? 

All states have their own version of a “Graduated Driver Licensing” program (GDL) that includes three stages: a learner’s permit; an intermediate license; and, finally, an unrestricted license.

These programs are designed to help teens gain confidence and often restrict higher-risk driving, such as nighttime driving or carrying other teen passengers. Some teens wait to learn until they are older. That can lower short-term crash risks, but once they do begin, they remain novice drivers, now without the safety guardrails designed for new teen drivers.

And teens who don’t build a driving history will pay higher premiums as young adults, said Afilalo. A 2022 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that people who secure a driver’s license in their teens were more likely to report better health, higher educational attainment and greater employment as young adults.

But that study was published before autonomous rideshares became a legitimate option. Both Treacy and Harvey said Waymo has given their kids a sense of independence similar to what a license might provide, raising questions about whether the long-term trade-offs may look different in cities with autonomous transportation. 

DuBravac can think of one key tradeoff worth considering: family connection. When his children were younger, he said, car rides became the go-to time to open up about their day. If families increasingly rely on autonomous vehicles to shuttle teens, parents may need to be intentional about preserving time for connection. 

Depending solely on autonomous vehicles can have downsides in times of crisis or change

In cities that offer autonomous vehicles, it can be tempting to assume they can replace driving entirely. 

Don’t, said Michael Okubajo, a transportation consultant and founder of Capital Transport Planning. This kind of “mobility dependency,” he said, “creates reliance on a single mode with limited reach.” 

If teens leave the service area, relocate to a more car-dependent region or encounter situations where on-demand services are unavailable, they’ll need another option. 

In emergency situations such as mass evacuations, flooding or infrastructure damage, DuBravac said it remains unknown whether autonomous vehicles can function as a reliable, large-scale mobility solution. 

“If the infrastructure is damaged, it's not yet clear if self-driving vehicles will be a viable solution in those types of situations,” he said. 

This isn’t just hypothetical: Waymo temporarily pulled its fleet from pockets of Los Angeles last year after several cars were damaged in protests. 

“We have a robust event response team to prepare for and react to dynamic changes in traffic conditions,” said Bonelli, from Waymo. These “changes” include times of civil unrest and extreme weather, he said. 

Some parents might want to choose a happy medium approach

“Driving is still a critical life skill in most of America and will be for many decades to come,” said DuBravac.

In 2025, the Treacys moved to a small town outside of Nashville, where the speed limit on most roads is 35 miles per hour. The kids are now 13, 15 and 17. 

“Here, they’re going to be able to take it slow and learn,” Treacy said.

All three kids will take driver’s ed classes and go for their licenses; had they stayed in Los Angeles, Treacy said she would have waited until the kids were in their early 20s. 

Harvey and her husband want their son to get his permit next year, when he’s 15, so he can learn independence. But she believes he will continue to use Waymo even after he has his license, especially if she and her husband do not buy him a car — another substantial cost, with the average ticket price for used cars at around $25,000, and new cars double that.

Driving decisions don’t have to be all-or-nothing. 

“A teen holding a permit — without being fully licensed — can give them a chance to hone driving skills that will serve them in adulthood,” Afilalo told SAN. In some states and insurance cases, she added, some rates don’t increase with permitted drivers. 

Another lower-risk approach: Allow teens to get their licenses but lean on rideshares in riskier situations, like nighttime driving and driving other teens.

The future of autonomous vehicles 

Waymo isn’t the only game in town. Or at least, not in every town. Tesla’s Robotaxi rides are currently available in Austin, Texas, and Uber has launched a partnerships to commercialize autonomous vehicles. 

“It will take a long time before we see wide adoption, general deployment, especially in northern states where there’s more adverse weather,” said DuBravac.

While driving remains a useful skill, that doesn’t mean it will always be seen that way. It may become an atrophied skill — one that eventually turns obsolete.

“Does that matter?” DuBravac asked. “Is this a skill that people really need?”

Juan Sebastián Carvajal-Muñoz was driving to work in January when federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security stopped and detained him in downtown Portland. Agents drove him to a processing facility in Massachusetts before releasing him, he said in court papers. 

Carvajal-Muñoz did not have a criminal record.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit on Carvajal-Muñoz’s behalf, said in a release that the Jan. 22 arrest was an “abduction” and agents disregarded the engineer’s REAL ID. According to the Maine Secretary of State, noncitizens can get a REAL ID if they prove legal residence in the U.S., which can include a visa or Form I-94. Carvajal-Muñoz showed agents his I-94 arrival/departure letter, which U.S. Customs and Border Patrol certifies. 

The lawsuit, filed in federal court, claimed agents stopped Carvajal-Muñoz without probable cause, arrested him without a warrant, used excessive force and racially profiled the man. DHS didn’t immediately respond to Straight Arrow News’ request for comment.

“The abduction of Mr. Carvajal-Muñoz has made the weight of our Constitutional rights clear: no one is safe when federal agents can harm people without consequence,” Scott Michelman, legal director for the ACLU’s Washington, D.C., office, said in the release. 

The lawsuit follows a Monday announcement from Ramsey County Prosecutor John Choi that his St. Paul office is reviewing several cases against DHS agents for actions exhibited during Operation Metro Surge. One particular case involved a Hmong-American citizen who was detained wearing only underwear and a blanket in January.  

Carvajal-Muñoz said in a Tuesday release that he immigrated to Maine in 2021 to pursue a master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Maine. He currently holds an H1B work visa for a civil engineering job focused on bridge construction in Maine. 

The engineer isn’t suing DHS as an entity. Rather, in agents’ individual capacities, which is permitted under Maine’s Civil Rights Act. The law allows Mainers who believe a government official violated their constitutional rights to seek legal recourse. He named Jack Cory Ravencamp, one Jane Doe, and three John Does in the lawsuit, all of whom he assumed to work in some capacity with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or DHS. 

“The law should provide a remedy for what happened to Mr. Carvajal-Muñoz,” Matthew Segal, co-director of the ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, said in a statement. “If federal law doesn’t, state law still can. And in Maine, it does.”

Man detained in Maine, released in Massachusetts

According to court papers, Carvajal-Muñoz was on his way to work on Jan. 22 when federal officers surrounded his car and demanded to see his immigration documents. 

An agent allegedly smashed Carvajal-Muñoz’s window with a crowbar, and another masked agent dragged him out of his car. At that point, according to the lawsuit, an officer pointed a Taser at the man before formally arresting him. 

“At the time the agents stopped Sebastián, the only information they had about him was his physical appearance and the fact that the vehicle was registered to a Hispanic-sounding name, ‘Juan Sebastián Carvajal-Muñoz,’” according to the lawsuit. “The agents had no basis to stop Sebastián other than his apparent race, skin color or ethnicity.” 

No information was immediately available on what agents knew about Carvajal-Muñoz leading up to the arrest. Neither DHS nor ICE has made public statements about the man’s arrest. 

Carvajal-Muñoz recalled the agents driving around the city for an hour before stopping at Home Depot, where they checked his immigration status and another agent took the man’s photograph for a “Catch of the Day” form. 

The engineer told agents he travels with his I-94 form in his wallet. 

“The agents told Sebastián that his H1-B visa would be revoked and he would be taken to an immigration judge in Massachusetts,” according to the lawsuit. “Sebastián felt powerless and helpless. He knew he had all his paperwork and had done nothing wrong, and yet this meant nothing to the agent.”

Despite telling Carvajal-Muñoz he’d be picked up by someone else, agents drove around Portland for an hour before taking him to a suburb about 15 miles southwest of the city, the lawsuit alleges. Hours later, agents drove Carvajal-Munoz and other detainees to a Burlington, Massachusetts, ICE facility. 

He was released nearly 12 hours after his initial detention and took a bus back to Portland.

Minnesota investigating DHS for kidnapping, other charges

Choi told reporters Monday his office is pursuing several investigations linked to DHS agents’ actions during Operation Metro Surge. He noted that tips from Ramsey County residents, which includes Minnesota’s state capital of St. Paul, have helped his office. 

He only spoke about one case — ChongLy “Scott” Thao. In his case, Choi said agents are being actively investigated for felonious kidnapping, illegal detainment and false imprisonment. 

Thao was arrested in January and photographed walking out of his home wearing only blue underwear and a plaid blanket. Images of his arrest spread quickly online and drew sharp condemnation from the public and St. Paul officials. 

DHS has said agents were investigating two sex offenders who lived at Thao’s address. County officials said Monday they couldn’t see how Thao could be considered a match.

Choi and Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said agents didn’t have a warrant to enter the home, and Thao has been a naturalized citizen for several decades.

The two said Monday that they are still accepting tips from residents and said accountability from the federal government could involve more criminal cases, civil lawsuits or a jury trial.

Trump said that former President Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was too lenient with lifting Iran’s economic sanctions for “very weak limits on the regime's nuclear activity.” The White House has said it initiated the current conflict in Iran because nuclear negotiations broke down.

"We thought we had a deal, but then they backed out, and then they came back, and we thought we had a deal, and they backed out. I said, 'You can't deal with these people. You got to do it the right way.'" Trump said during a March 2 Medal of Honor award ceremony.

What did the 2015 JCPOA do?

The JCPOA was a complex agreement between the U.S. and Iran forbidding the Middle Eastern country from enriching uranium to levels high enough for weapons and other obligations regarding the country’s nuclear program. 

By following these rules, countries that had imposed sanctions because of Iran’s nuclear weapons program agreed to lift them once the International Atomic Energy Agency verified Iran's nuclear commitments. Obama and other supporters said this was the best deal they could make and said it was better than the other option to pause Iran’s nuclear program. 

"So let's not mince words,” Obama said in 2015. “The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war — maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.”

Critics, like Trump, said the deal was weak and panned the deal’s sunset provisions. These provisions stated that limits on nuclear centrifuges would expire in a decade and that reduced enrichment restrictions would last only 15 years. Trump’s previous secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, called the provisions a “very concerning shortcoming” of the JCPOA.

“One can almost set the countdown clock to when Iran can resume its nuclear weapons programs, its nuclear activities,” Tillerson said at a press conference in 2017. “That’s something that the president simply finds unacceptable.”

US pulls out and compliance ends

When the U.S. pulled out of the deal, Iran was still in compliance. From the deal's beginning in 2016 to the U.S. ending its involvement in 2018, the IAEA issued more than a dozen compliance reports. None of those reports found any evidence of major violations by Iran. 

Weeks before the Trump administration withdrew, the State Department’s own report said Iran was "transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the JCPOA,” according to the Center for International Policy. 

Even after the withdrawal, Iran continued to comply with the JCPOA until 2019, but later began enriching uranium to higher levels as the effects of the economic sanctions began setting in. By the beginning of 2020, Tehran announced it had dropped all JCPOA restrictions. The country’s nuclear enrichment program increased after the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who many regard as the father of Iran’s nuclear program, according to Iran Watch. 

Iran justified their actions by saying it was the U.S. that went back on their word first. 

"The US has announced that it doesn't respect its commitments,” Iran’s then-President Hassan Rouhani said in 2018. 

What’s now on the table?

Vice President JD Vance is leading the negotiations to end the war, but talks have paused, with some reports that they could resume sometime this week. Following his trip to Pakistan for the talks, he discussed his main goal.

"The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” he said. 

The main goal Vance laid out is similar to what Trump pulled out of in 2018, which also called for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Some analysts have said that Trump pulling out of the deal nearly a decade ago has also allowed Iran to amass a large amount of enriched uranium, something that has become another issue in talks.

Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, a man involved in the negotiations, said Iran had just agreed to major concessions a day before the attacks began, despite reports that negotiations had fallen apart.

“There would be zero accumulation, zero stockpiling, and full verification. That is also equally important achievement, I think,” Al Busaidi said.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff, who was leading the American side of the negotiations, had a different take on the talks. He said Iran emphasized that “they would not give up diplomatically what we could not win militarily.”

Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, told CNN that Witkoff may have been unprepared for the negotiations and didn’t understand what Iran was giving to the U.S.

“Witkoff was too — I’m going to say a strong word: incompetent — and technically ill-informed to understand the significance of what was on the table,” Kimball said.

That’s especially true after frontrunner and soon-to-be former congressman Eric Swalwell pulled out of the race following serious allegations of sexual misconduct, a move that experts say will ripple into different parts of this campaign.

While Swalwell led the latest polling, “frontrunner” was still a strong word given how split the vote is among the many Democrats attempting to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom. Swalwell had also received several important endorsements that have since been pulled.

What comes next in this complicated contest?

“I think that's the big question,” Christian Grose, professor of political science at USC, said to Straight Arrow News.

“It’s really hard to say,” Mark Baldassare, director of the Public Policy Institute of California, told SAN.

Swalwell pulls out

At least five women have now accused Swalwell of sexual assault, including at least one staffer.

That led him to drop out of the race. He made that announcement on social media, where he also apologized for “mistakes” but still denied the allegations.

He also announced he would resign from Congress. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is now investigating sexual assault allegations.

“It's not the 1990s,” Grose said. “It's the era where the candidate would push back against it, which he was trying to do at first. And then, especially as a Democratic candidate, Democratic voters and Democratic women voters, this is completely damaging him, obviously, to the point where he's dropped out.”

While Swalwell will no longer be out on the campaign trail, his name will still be on the ballot for the primary vote on June 2, which adds more uncertainty to the race.

“There have been times in California where candidates have dropped out of races and the name’s on the ballot, and for a variety of reasons we don't really know from exit polls or things like that, they still get a sizable share of the vote,” Baldassare said.

Who benefits?

There’s no shortage of candidates who will look to take that 17% of the polling Swalwell had.

Both experts SAN spoke with named the same two candidates as the ones most likely to benefit.

“Katie Porter, who started out very strong, and maybe she will pick up support again, or Tom Steyer, who had, like Eric Swalwell, been gaining some traction among Democratic voters,” Baldassare said.

Steyer was the only other Democrat with more than 10% support in the latest polling, while Porter is the third Democratic candidate to reach that threshold but has since dropped under.

“If you look at the polling that has been done on second choices, both some internal polls that Steyer and Porter released, but also some external polls that Berkeley had done several months ago, Swalwell voters second choices tend to be Porter or Steyer,” Grose said.

Both Baldassare and Grose also mentioned San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who has not done well in polling but has raised a lot of money from Silicon Valley.

He recently called the race “wide open.”

What’s next?

How can any of these candidates break away from the pack over the next two months?

“In terms of strategy, it’s ‘don't have messed up in the past and have it be found out,’” Grose said. “That's not much of a strategy, but I do feel like that’s a little bit of just what will happen next, and it's a little bit unpredictable on the Democratic side.”

Baldassare said they need to stick to the major issues amongst their voting base,

“Those include the federal immigration enforcement, the tariffs that have been taking place, and generally where we're going in terms of support for health care programs,” he said.

Both Steyer and Porter have solid financial standing as well with Porter’s history of fundraising as a congresswoman and Steyer’s bank account balance.

His estimated net worth is more than $2 billion.

One thing that’s likely to come next is a reshuffling of some key endorsements from Democratic leaders and powerful California unions.

That includes many who endorsed Swalwell then pulled back like Sens. Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego and the California Teachers Association.

“The candidates will be seeking their endorsements because not just the funding but signaling that these are candidates who have met the test for those Democratic and liberal voters,” Baldassare said.

Following what happened with Swalwell, who’d been in California politics for nearly 15 years, some candidates may not be as keen on some of those endorsements.

“There's a few of the Democratic party elected officials who endorsed Swalwell, who were very close to him,” Grose said. “Their endorsements may not be wanted immediately, because there's a little bit of a question about how much people knew and when.”

One person who’s unlikely to weigh in on this is Newsom. He’s made it fairly clear he has no plans to endorse anyone to be his successor.

The Swalwell shakeup may have also reinforced that decision for Newsom, with his eyes on the White House in 2028.

“I don't see how he would benefit from getting involved,” Grose said. “Imagine if he'd endorsed Swalwell, and didn't know about all these things, and then this came out. It would just be something that he could get tagged with.”

GOP frontrunners

The other two who may benefit from Swalwell’s exit are the two major Republicans, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton.

“I do think there's a little bit of a benefit for the Republicans, because it's just another narrative of the Democratic Party in California, in terms of its gubernatorial candidates, just being a big mess,” Grose said.

There has been some concern within the Democratic party of a scenario where Hilton and Bianco could be the two on the general election ballot come November.

While that fear could cause the party to unite and rally around one candidate, the impact of the Swalwell scandal again has an impact.

“A lot of Democratic elected officials were lining up behind one candidate, and then these revelations came out, and they probably regret doing that,” Grose said.

President Donald Trump has finally weighed in on the race, endorsing Hilton.

There’s a chance that could push Hilton ahead on the GOP side, although some Republicans are staying out of it.

“We also saw the Republican Party Convention in California, like the Democratic Party Convention, decide that they weren't going to endorse anyone for the gubernatorial primary," Baldassare said. "So, kind of a mixed message there.”

Even if a Trump endorsement does help Hilton in the primary amongst the friendly GOP voters, it may really hurt him if he gets to the general election.

The president has only a 27% approval rating in heavily blue California.

“The Hilton Trump endorsement helps in the primary, but it's just completely toxic in the general,” Grose said.

Now, the local paper will operate as a nonprofit, thanks to a deal between the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism and the paper’s current owner, Block Communications. 

Under the new deal, the newsroom and local leadership will remain the same, but some functions, like technology and business operations, will combine with teams at the Venetoulis Institute, the Post-Gazette reports. 

The name of the paper will remain the same, and it will continue to publish print editions on Thursdays and Sundays along with continual updates to its website.

“The Block family has worked to find the best possible source for responsible local journalism for the Pittsburgh region and we believe we have succeeded,” Karen Johnese, chair of Block Communications, said in a statement. “We are excited to hand our treasured paper over to such a committed and creative organization.” 

The Venetoulis Institute

The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism operates The Baltimore Banner, a nonprofit all-digital news organization that launched in 2022. The institute is financed by hotel magnate Stewart W. Bainum Jr.

It aims to bolster local journalism, crafting a model that also establishes economic stability for local media. 

“We aspire to build a culture that’s transparent, collaborative and ambitious and has a sense of urgency and respects everybody,” Bainum told the Post-Gazette. “The test is not whether you’re for-profit or nonprofit, but whether you’re providing high-quality journalism to communities that need it most.”

A struggling industry

The news out of Pittsburgh is a rare glimpse of positivity for the newspaper industry, which has seen a rise in closures and downsizing in recent years. 

Earlier this year, The Washington Post announced significant layoffs and department closures, calling it a “broad strategic reset.”

And last year, Northwestern University released a report that found more than 130 papers had shut down in 2024 alone. 

In the last 25 years, “close to 3,500 newspapers have vanished, leaving one in every four Americans with limited access to a local print newspaper,” the university found.

If the Post-Gazette had closed, Pittsburgh would have been the largest metro area in the U.S. without a daily newspaper. Atlanta became the first major U.S. city without a print newspaper when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution went all-digital early this year.

News organizations across the country, and on both sides of the aisle, covered the delivery, but many missed key facts behind the viral moment. 

How the media framed the story

Much of the media took the story at face value: the president placed a DoorDash order to promote the “no tax on tips” provision in his One Big Beautiful Bill, which Congress enacted last year.

The DoorDash driver who delivered the order, identified as Sharon Simmons of Arkansas, handed the food directly to Trump, who thanked her, invited her to speak to reporters and tipped her $100. 

Simmons praised the “no tax on tips” policy, saying it’s “good” and helped my family out immensely.” 

When covering the interaction, ABC News headlined its story, “Trump gets McDonald's delivered to White House to tout 'no tax on tips' policy,” while CBS reported, “DoorDasher joins Trump for White House press event after delivering McDonald's.”

Fox News’ headline read, “Trump’s McDonald’s order comes with cash surprise for ‘DoorDash Grandma’ outside White House.”

While these headlines are correct, they’re missing some key background information. 

Missing context

For one, the entire DoorDash delivery was staged, something DoorDash confirmed in a statement, saying the delivery was to “commemorate the first anniversary of the No Tax on Tips policy.”

The president even acknowledged the optics, saying to reporters Monday, “This doesn’t look staged, does it?”

The delivery appears even less spontaneous when you consider the level of security checks needed to get so close to the president, or even onto the White House grounds. 

Another fact missing from much of the media coverage is that Simmons testified at a field hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee last July in Nevada. She praised the One Big Beautiful Bill, saying it would provide relief for her and her family, as her husband battles Stage 3 cancer. 

“Freeing up this extra money means quite a bit to my family,” Simmons told the committee. 

Was the media manipulated?

While the nature of the story remains the same — the president ordered DoorDash to promote the tax policy — the planning behind the scenes left some wondering if this was all White House manipulation. 

One social media user called Simmons a MAGA “paid prop,” saying “everything they do is a con.”

While the president hinted at the planning by joking about whether the event seemed staged, the context behind who the delivery driver was not disclosed. Whether that was intentional or not remains to be seen. 

What also remains to be seen? Whether the moment would have gone just as viral had Americans known the history behind the Dasher and the White House’s planning.