David Edwards

A war among conservatives erupted into open accusations on Friday after an ICE arrest at a Louisiana airport of a far-right former MAGA ally who credited himself with getting President Donald Trump elected.

Agents took British right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos into custody on Aug. 27 at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement posted Friday afternoon.

An immigration judge had ordered him removed from the country on July 22 after he failed to appear at his hearing, the department said.

TMZ broke the arrest at 1:06 p.m. Eastern. Nine minutes later, far-right activist Laura Loomer claimed it as her own work, saying she had reported Yiannopoulos to ICE and the FBI.

"Milo is getting deported, but more importantly, Milo is getting LOOMERED," she wrote on X hours before the DHS broke the news.

Homeland Security confirmed the arrest nearly three hours later and, when it did, quoted TMZ's story. Loomer answered the government's own announcement within three minutes.

"We asked for more deportations, and ICE is delivering," Loomer wrote, referring to her influence with federal agencies.

The White House fired at least four National Security Council staffers in 2025, along with National Security Agency Director Gen. Timothy Haugh, after Loomer handed President Donald Trump a list of officials she called disloyal, CNN reported.

She spent Friday afternoon aiming that leverage at three conservatives, asking Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate them for sheltering Yiannopoulos. Before long, she was calling for more heads to roll.

"Tucker, MTG, and Candace all need to be investigated for allegedly harboring a known illegal alien," Loomer wrote.

Soon after that, the Daily Caller, a publication founded by Carlson, posed the question: "Did Laura Loomer Get Milo Yiannopoulos Deported?"

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, both estranged from Trump, announced a new political movement on Aug. 1, accompanied by a photograph from a dinner at Carlson's Maine studio.

"But he's betrayed us all," Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote. "The movement has begun."

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent sat at that table, HuffPost reported. Loomer replied 36 minutes after the photograph went up.

"Every person in this photo is a traitor to America and an anti-Trump operative amplified by foreign adversaries," she wrote, saying all of them belonged on a government watch list.

Marjorie Taylor Greene's daughter, Lauren Greene Sanders, responded directly to Friday's demand, tagging Blanche and the FBI in her reply.

"Milo NEVER lived there, I am a witness," Lauren Greene Sanders responded, saying she had lived at her mother's house in Rome, Georgia.

Yiannopoulos turned on Trump years before any of them did, telling supporters in 2020 that backing the president had destroyed his career, LGBTQ Nation reported.

"I lost everything helping to put Trump in office," he said.

Until his arrest, he had been demanding that federal agents be allowed to deport anyone who could not prove legal status on the spot, according to The Telegraph.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tried to avoid swearing under oath about his redactions in the Epstein files case by slipping in a six-month-old letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) into government records overnight and then telling a judge that it was something it wasn't.

Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan had ordered the Justice Department to respond by Thursday, after ruling in June that it was violating the Epstein files transparency law, which required an explanation for redactions. That explanation was never published in the Federal Register even though the law set a deadline of Dec. 19, 2025.

Earlier this year, journalist Katie Phang sued Blanche demanding answers. Sullivan tried to force Blanche's hand in June with a preliminary injunction, but the attorney general continued to stall. The judge eventually threatened to hold DOJ attorneys in contempt and gave Blanche until Thursday to respond.

That response came Thursday night, but not from Blanche. Andrew Block, senior counsel to the associate attorney general, filed a motion on his behalf.

Phang had asked the judge to have Blanche, or someone in the department who knew how redactions were done, swear to it under penalty of perjury. Thursday night's filing insisted that the declaration was no longer needed because the DOJ had met the requirement at the last minute by publishing it into the Federal Register.

"Therefore, no declaration, or any further action, is needed," the filing states, pointing to the notice published in that morning's Federal Register.

Phang revealed in a video on Friday that the document Blanche had inserted into the Federal Register did not meet the requirements of the Epstein law at all. In fact, the Feb. 14 letter Blanche had inserted was labeled as a response to an entirely different section of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

"Oh, but Todd, we know how to read, and I guess you guys don't," Phang said.

The notice runs seven pages, and its appendix is a scanned letter headed "Epstein Files Transparency Act – Section 3 Report to Congress."

The two sections of the law ask for unambiguously different things.

Section 2 requires a written reason for every single redaction. Section 3 requires only a one-time summary of the published files to be sent to congressional committees.

"All — not some, not a summary of, not the ones that Blanche feels like picking out of the air to do — all redactions must be accompanied by a written justification published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress," Phang said, reading from the statute.

"Section 2 is different than Section 3," she added. "You know what he just cites? He cites Section 3. He doesn't do Section 2."

"Good for you for Section 3. Good for you. You were late — you didn't do it 15 days after you published all this crap in January. Doing it in August, six and a half months later. Not the law," she continued.

Section 3 was due within 15 days after the DOJ completed the release of the Epstein files, which it sent on Feb. 14, even though all of the files had not been released.

The department also never fully complied with the redaction log requirement in section 2. Sullivan gave the DOJ until July 2 to publish it or explain why it could not, according to his June 25 opinion.

"In fact, there's names of perpetrators, recruiters, enablers, co-conspirators, and other people that — I don't know — committed child rape," Phang pointed out on Friday.

At an Aug. 13 hearing, Sullivan said he would seek a sworn declaration regarding the government's compliance with the release of the redaction log, which could have exposed Blanche or other DOJ attorneys to the risk of perjury.

"I don't want to do it, but I will do it to ensure justice is fairly administered," Sullivan said. "That's not a threat, that's a promise."

Sullivan warned that he had previously held three prosecutors in contempt in the 2008 corruption case against former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) for withholding evidence.

The answer also refuses to hand over handwritten FBI interview notes behind four reports, arguing they repeat what is already public and risk exposing victims.

"The Department maintains its objections to producing any such documents," the filing states, warning that review would "open the door to" line-by-line examination of millions of pages.

The department asked Sullivan to pause any such order so it can appeal to the D.C. Circuit. Phang's reply is due Sept. 3.

President Donald Trump left NASA confused with remarks in which he said his uncle loved space and that it was something "we have genetically," at a medal ceremony for astronauts in Houston.

The president spoke Friday during a Congressional Space Medal of Honor ceremony at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he saluted four Artemis II astronauts, who in April became the first crew to travel beyond the Moon in more than 50 years, NASA said.

"I had an uncle who was a great scientist, a great man. He was at MIT for 41 years, Dr. John Trump. And he loved space. He used to tell me about space, space, all space," Donald Trump noted.

"He would throw in the word nuclear every once in a while. But he loved space. So I guess we have genetically, we sort of, I believe in that stuff," he continued.

John Trump's documented career contains no space research, according to Physics Today. He earned a doctorate in electrical engineering at MIT in 1933 and developed high-voltage generators. His work ranged from wartime radar to radiation cancer therapy.

Donald Trump's claims about the same uncle have been repeatedly fact-checked, according to Newsweek.

The magazine rated his claim that John Trump was MIT's longest-serving professor false, finding at least two faculty members who served longer.

The genetic framing is also decades old, according to the Los Angeles Times. Donald Trump told CNN's Larry King in 2007 that there was "something to the genes," the newspaper reported.

"You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it? Don't you believe? The racehorse theory," Donald Trump told a 2020 rally in Bemidji, Minnesota.

Eugenics historian Paul Lombardo told the Los Angeles Times the language echoed the movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

"He has all of the earmarks of a classic eugenicist," Lombardo said.

Donald Trump used similar language at a White House ceremony 11 days earlier when he honored 16-year-old lifeguard Ryder Williams on Aug. 17 for a rescue in Santa Cruz, California.

"You did a good job. It's good genetics," Donald Trump told the teenager's mother.

At Friday's event, the president's remarks were less coherent.

"I love it. I find it so interesting, so amazing. It's very special," he said of genetics and space.

A document dump to a right-wing website exposed a secret and controversial hire made by the Trump administration, according to a new report.

Hidden metadata in an internal Trump administration letter, released by Homeland Security, revealed that Pennsylvania election denial activist Karen DiSalvo was a quietly hired department adviser conducting an operation similar to her efforts following President Donald Trump's loss in the 2020 election.

The letter, signed Aug. 24 by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, threatened to withhold security funding from states that do not conduct post-election audits. The conservative outlet Just the News posted it Thursday.

Metadata in the document names DiSalvo as its creator, according to Democracy Docket, which examined the file. DiSalvo works as a senior adviser in the department's Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, according to records.

That is the same office where Heather Honey, an election-denial activist whom the department hired last year, oversees election integrity. Before either joined the government, the two founded the Election Research Institute, a Pennsylvania anti-voting group, the report said.

"Someone linked me up with Heather, and so we formed this nonprofit, the Election Research Institute, last year," DiSalvo said on a 2024 podcast.

Honey's false claims about the 2020 election were cited by Trump in his speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mullin addressed the letter to a White House task force whose members include Just the News founder John Solomon, who joined the administration as a special government employee while continuing to cover election integrity for his own outlet.

The pattern reaches well beyond one office. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, created in Trump's first term to shield elections from foreign interference, has lost nearly a third of its workforce since he returned.

Its public affairs director is Marci McCarthy, a Georgia Republican official who helped lead a lawsuit challenging her state's voting machines.

At the Justice Department, the voting section is run by Eric Neff, whose prosecution of a voting software executive collapsed after conspiracy theorists seized on the case.

"The administration dismantled the election cybersecurity expertise built up during the past two administrations, including Trump's first term, and has replaced that expertise and credibility with conspiracy theorists," said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

"Election officials of both parties tell me they can no longer trust the federal government as a partner in running secure elections," he told Democracy Docket.

Mullin's agency refused to say when taxpayers first began paying DiSalvo's salary.

"DHS does not comment on existing personnel," a spokesperson told the outlet.

Archived versions of DiSalvo's state bar profile suggest that as late as September 2025, she did not list the department as her employer, the outlet reported. The letter itself ties federal money to a practice DiSalvo spent years demanding. States must show they conducted "random post-election manual counts of paper ballots," Mullin wrote.

Her 2022 demands to the Lycoming County elections board included "no future use of voting machines," the report said.

The county hand-counted more than 59,000 ballots and found no significant discrepancies. Officials said the exercise proved the machines were accurate.

She later sued to block Pennsylvania's machines and filed a federal case that state officials said would disenfranchise "tens of thousands" of overseas voters, according to the report.

A co-founder of the Minnesota firm listed as her employer in earlier filings, William Mohrman, worked to overturn the 2020 Wisconsin result before the Justice Department hired him. The department has said it will send 1,000 monitors to the polls this fall.

Attorney General Todd Blanche drew a profane rebuke from the attorney suing him over the Epstein files after he appealed a judge's order to release documents.

In a video posted to Instagram on Thursday, attorney and independent journalist Katie Phang, who sued Blanche in April, tore into him for defiance in the face of a preliminary injunction issued by Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in June. Blanche finally appealed the order on Aug. 24 after claiming he had complied with it.

"So I'm going to say it again in really, really basic terms for you, Todd Blanche. Just some free legal advice. Okay?" Phang said.

"He either granted the motion or he didn't," she said.

Blanche's notice of appeal told the court that whether the June order can even be appealed is "inconclusive."

"If he didn't grant the motion, then what the f--- are you appealing? If he granted the motion, then you have been violating all sorts of canons and ethics and rules by pretty much trying to snow the court — which, trust me, Judge Sullivan has got your f---ing number — or you're so damn stupid, you don't know what the hell is going on," Phang continued.

Sullivan refused Blanche two stay requests in his June opinion, and the Justice Department asked for a third on Thursday.

"If you don't get a stay from Judge Sullivan or from the appellate court, it's not stopping s---," Phang said.

Blanche has never filed an answer to the complaint, according to Phang's court filings.

"But if you're saying — which you [have] been saying and writing — that Judge Sullivan never granted my preliminary injunction... then you blew the deadline and you're basically in default," she added.

"So you don't have any defenses. It's not like you ever raised any defenses," Phang said.

Sullivan reached a similar conclusion in June, writing that "by not responding substantively, the Attorney General has conceded Ms. Phang's merits arguments."

The Epstein Files Transparency Act required the Justice Department to publish the files by Dec. 19, 2025, and Blanche declared the department finished in January. The redaction log the law demanded did not appear until Thursday.

Blanche is still withholding handwritten notes from four FBI interviews, telling the court in a Thursday filing that they are duplicative and risk exposing victims.

Sullivan warned Justice Department lawyers at an Aug. 13 hearing that he had held prosecutors in contempt before, CNN reported.

"The public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case. The victims have a right to know. The court has a right to know," Sullivan said.

"Either way, you look dumb," Phang said.

Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO) drew laughter at a debate after he claimed to be unaware of President Donald Trump's order renaming Lake Ontario.

The moment came Thursday at the Pikes Peak Center in Colorado Springs, during a debate hosted by KOAA News5 between the candidates in Colorado's 5th Congressional District.

Colorado Politics reporter Ernest Luning put the question to both candidates hours after Trump signed the order amid a trade war with Canada.

"Lake Ontario or Lake America? The president issued an order changing the name of Lake Ontario," Luning asked.

"Lake Ontario," answered Jessica Killin, Crank's Democratic challenger.

"I'm unaware of — what's the reference?" Crank said.

The lawmaker's answer drew laughter and groans from the audience.

"He did this morning. He changed the name to Lake America," Luning told him.

"I don't know. I — I have other more pressing issues I'm working on. Goodness!" Crank replied.

The debate crowd erupted once again.

Minutes earlier, Luning had asked the same pair whether the body of water to the south is the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of America. Killin said, "Gulf of Mexico."

"Gulf of America," Crank said.

"Audience, please!" moderator Alasyn Zimmerman of KOAA said over the reaction that followed.

Trump signed the Lake Ontario order after imposing 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods, according to Axios. It directs the Interior Department to update federal maps within 30 days.

"Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always," Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote, per NBC News.

Crank was also deferential to Trump's name for the Department of Defense at Thursday's debate.

"Department of War," he told the moderators.

Killin pointed out that no act of Congress had changed the name.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) bragged about defeating Minnesota's lawyers hours before an immigration officer whose release he could have prevented walked out of jail.

Christian Castro, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, was released from the Cameron County jail shortly after dawn, The New York Times reported. Just hours earlier, Abbott crowed about winning the court case that allowed Castro to be released.

Abbott wrote on X at 12:19 a.m. Thursday, taunting the state that had spent months trying to bring the officer back to face criminal charges.

"You guys are such bad lawyers. You showed up unprepared, uninformed & unpersuasive. You don't know the law & it showed," Abbott wrote. "I'll put Minneapolis at the top of the list for future bus drop-offs if we ever have a President like Joe Biden again."

Abbott alone had the power to send Castro north to Minnesota, where he faced charges in a shooting. Abbott, however, declined to use that power. Texas law caps detention in extradition cases at 90 days, so Castro had to be freed.

"Governor Abbott claims to be 'tough on crime.' How is he 'tough on crime' by manipulating an extradition process that is not supposed to be discretionary to protect a man who shot into a house with children inside?" Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said.

Prosecutors say Castro fired through the front door of a Minneapolis home on Jan. 14, striking a Venezuelan man in the leg. The bullet made "its final impact in the wall of a child's room," Moriarty's office said, according to a report from The National News Desk.

Officer Abbott declined extradition for Castro, who faces four felony counts of second-degree assault and one misdemeanor count of falsely reporting a crime. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison eventually was forced to sue the Texas governor. But a judge appointed by President Donald Trump refused to grant Ellison's request.

"Abbott is playing with constitutional fire," Ellison wrote on X. "By refusing to extradite Castro, Greg Abbott is turning Texas into a sanctuary state for violent criminals."

U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. ruled Wednesday that he could not order Abbott to sign the warrant, the Times reported. Ellison had asked the court to block the release.

Federal prosecutors dropped an assault case against the wounded man in February after investigators concluded, based on video, that agents had likely lied about the encounter, the Times reported.

A spokesperson for Abbott said the law required the release and that a governor's warrant would be executed immediately if Abbott determines Castro is a fugitive, Texas reporter Mary Elise O'Bar reported.

Abbott has not formally responded to the extradition request.

President Donald Trump's Justice Department defended new mail-in ballot restrictions by comparing election mail to cremated human remains and replica explosives.

The argument came in a combined opposition filed Thursday in Boston federal court, where the department is fighting two emergency motions to block a Postal Service rule governing federal ballot envelopes. The Postal Service said the requirements are now in effect, Reuters reported Thursday.

Ballot mail belongs to a category that is "sensitive, but non-dangerous," the department wrote, and the Postal Service has long imposed special rules on such items. Cremated human and animal remains must travel in Postal Service boxes and stay trackable by barcode, the filing said, because the agency considers them "sensitive matter."

Replica explosives must be handed over at a retail counter and shipped by Registered Mail, the department added, "rather than being prohibited from the mail altogether."

The department conceded the fit is imperfect, writing that ballot mail "does not present precisely the same operational issues as cremated remains or replica explosives."

The Postal Service has no legal responsibility for administering elections, the filing said, a point it raised to argue the rule regulates mail rather than voting. The rule grew out of an executive order Trump signed March 31, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is helping challenge it.

Trump's order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to build state citizenship lists from federal databases with documented accuracy problems, the Brennan Center said.

The order "threatens criminal penalties for election officials, mail carriers, and others," the group wrote.

It further told the attorney general to prioritize investigating and prosecuting election officials who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters, a directive that follows the citizenship-list section, the Brennan Center said.

"[E]lection officials who issue ballots to individuals not on the faulty lists created by DHS will be treated as criminals," the group wrote.

Under the rule, states must upload the name and address of every intended ballot recipient to an online portal and submit envelope designs for review, the filing said. The department reached for elder-abuse mail scams to argue it may police fraud through envelope rules.

"[T]here is no evident reason why the Postal Service could not impose special design and registration rules for envelopes used to send solicitations to such locations," the department wrote of retirement communities targeted by scammers.

"Whether or not voter fraud is common or uncommon, the Postal Service has the legal authority to take the measures in this rule to facilitate enforcement of federal law," the rule says, as quoted in the filing.

Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia sued this week, saying the rule gives the agency an "unprecedented gatekeeping role," MS NOW reported.

Voters cannot add themselves to the list or check whether they appear on it, the Democratic groups challenging the rule said, Democracy Docket reported.

"[T]here can be no do over and no redress," those plaintiffs wrote of the coming election, the outlet reported.

State election officials keep full control over who may vote by mail, the department said. The rule displaces no state election law.

No court has ruled on whether the rule is lawful, and U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani lifted the last order blocking it Wednesday, CNBC reported.

"Every prior challenge was filed before the rule existed, which is why the administration has won on ripeness four times running without once defending the rule's legality," Hofstra University law professor James Sample said, according to MS NOW.

A fuller defense of the rule is due by 11 p.m. Saturday, and the first ballots go out next week.

Brevard County's 2025 Deputy of the Year resigned rather than be fired after admitting he posed for a photograph investigators said showed him performing a Nazi salute.

Deputy Michael Fultz, 24, quit in May as Sheriff Wayne Ivey prepared to fire him for "egregious misconduct," according to internal affairs records obtained by News 6 and published Aug. 20.

The Brevard County Sheriff's Office in Florida opened the investigation after an email from Fultz's ex-girlfriend, the records show.

In March, the agency had named Fultz its Deputy of the Year and given him its Medal of Valor for a fatal shooting in April 2025, the sheriff's office announced.

"Deputy Fultz's decisive actions and extraordinary restraint under extreme pressure undoubtedly saved the life of a frightened mother," the agency wrote in its award citation.

Her email reached the sheriff's office the same day as that ceremony, News 6 reported.

"My intention in providing this information is not to pursue personal retaliation but to ensure the agency is aware of conduct that, in my understanding, may conflict with departmental policies or professional standards," the email said.

Among the allegations investigators took up was a 2023 photograph, taken before Fultz was hired, that showed his mustache "shaved in what appears to be an attempt to mimic Adolf Hitler," they wrote.

Fultz admitted posing for it but "denied being racist and stated that the photograph was merely a joke," the records show. Fultz, who is white, also confirmed text messages showed him repeatedly using the N-word, News 6 reported.

"Deputy Fultz stated he grew up in a foster home with black parents and siblings, and the words became normal to use," investigators wrote.

He confirmed images showed him putting a gun in his ex-girlfriend's mouth and pointing it at the back of her head during sex, the records show.

Fultz said the gun was his own. Investigators said it resembled the handgun the agency issued him after the shooting.

"Deputy Fultz admitted to ignoring all firearm safety training that he had received," investigators noted.

She also gave investigators screenshots from a FaceTime call showing Fultz in uniform in his patrol car, according to News 6.

Fultz "denied ever masturbating on duty and claimed that he was only 'pretending' to masturbate while on the video call," the records show.

Fultz's ex-girlfriend told investigators he had discussed "watching her" on Flock, the agency's license plate reader system, which records where vehicles travel.

An audit found he searched her plate once before a shift, logged as "investigation," according to News 6.

"Deputy Fultz denied checking her vehicle registration to spy on her or out of revenge but could not provide any reason as to why he queried her vehicle registration tag while off duty," investigators wrote.

In February, a month before the complaint, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper clocked Fultz at 111 mph on his motorcycle, according to the traffic stop video.

State law allows an arrest at 100 mph or more when the driving threatens other people or property, and investigators wrote that Fultz's speed and the traffic conditions met that standard.

"I'm not going to take you to jail, Fultz," Trooper Joshua Provencher said.

Provencher wrote him a $155 civil ticket instead, telling a sergeant, "I don't want to ruin his job," News 6 reported.

"The nature and severity of your misconduct has irreparably damaged the trust required to perform the duties of a deputy sheriff," Ivey wrote in a memo. Fultz resigned May 27.

"I do not agree with every allegation or conclusion contained in the administrative investigation," Fultz said in a statement to News 6.

A court hearing for Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) opened Wednesday on an unplanned contempt motion minutes after the Trump-endorsed Republican congressman confronted the ex-wife he allegedly abused in a courthouse hallway.

The hearing in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court was scheduled to address a written request for a restraining order against Miller, according to News 5 Cleveland. Emily Moreno has accused Miller of abuse during their marriage, including holding a gun to her head, CNN reported. He denies it.

Before the court reached that motion, Emily Moreno's attorney, Andrew Zashin, raised something that had happened outside the courtroom.

"In a hallway Max approached Emily and said words that were upsetting to her, and for that reason we asked for a motion for oral contempt, which the judge wouldn't go forward on," Zashin told the outlet.

Miller's attorneys then canvassed people in the hall, including a News 5 photographer, asking whether anyone had seen anything.

"We said 'Could we have your tape?' He said 'Subpoena it.' The tape will show Max didn't do anything," attorney Larry Zukerman said.

The News 5 reporter in the hall said no words were exchanged that the outlet witnessed. Miller has not denied the encounter himself.

The motion the court had convened to hear concerned a separate incident last month.

The two sides settled it themselves, News 5 reported, agreeing that neither party would contact the other's lawyers outside depositions, with future depositions at neutral sites.

"To the extent they claim victory, if by victory they mean Max avoids taking the stand, sure that's a victory, but he's running out of rope," Zashin said.

Mother Jones reporter Abby Vesoulis sought an interview with Miller at the courthouse. He initially agreed to speak with her before turning over questions to his lawyer.

"I was a part of that family for a very long time. There are certain things that he would like me to remain quiet about," Miller told Mother Jones, making a veiled threat to his former father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH).

Miller did not say what he meant. Bernie Moreno, who sat in the courtroom with his daughter, has called on Miller to leave Congress, and CNN reported that the judge had twice warned that emotions were no excuse for violating court orders.

"But really, what today showed me is that the animosity between these two families is intense and is continuing," Mother Jones reporter Abby Vesoulis said.

The parties are set to return to court next month, News 5 reported.

Alarm swept the Kennedy Center's defenders hours before a hearing to consider a threat by President Donald Trump's board to tear down the center if his name was not added to the building.

In a motion filed later Wednesday afternoon, lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) accused the board of holding the building hostage. Beatty is ex officio trustee on the board through her seat in Congress and sued last year after crews put Trump's name on the marble facade.

"[T]he administration is now threatening in federal court to LEVEL the Kennedy Center if Trump does not get his way," Norm Eisen, a Democracy Defenders Action co-founder and one of Beatty's attorneys, wrote on social media, the Guardian reported. "His path of destruction knows no bounds."

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper takes up her emergency request at 2 p.m. Thursday. He will decide whether the board can put Trump's name back on the building. Beatty's filing was in response to the Justice Department, which told Cooper on Monday that the center would have to be torn down rather than renovated.

"Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down," Justice Department attorney Brantley Mayers wrote.

Mayers floated "a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River" as a replacement, conceding it would "fail to adequately honor" John F. Kennedy.

"In plain English, Defendants have not-so-subtly said: 'What a nice Kennedy Center you have here. What a shame should something happen to it,'" Beatty's lawyers wrote. "This is a breathtaking assault on the rule of law. It is delusional. And it must stop."

The board damaged the building's one-of-a-kind marble the last time it mounted Trump's name, and the administration has not disputed it, the reply said.

Unless Cooper acts soon, the lawyers wrote, the board is "poised to do further harm to the Kennedy Center's historic façade."

Hands Off the Arts, a group of more than 2,800 activists, told the Guardian the filing amounted to a demand that the judge allow Trump "to hijack JFK's memorial or I will turn it into a crater." The group pointed to the demolished White House East Wing.

Cooper ruled in May that only Congress can rename the center, the reply noted. The board voted 20-3 on Aug. 13 to try again anyway, the Guardian reported.

"Defendants consciously chose to play a dangerous game of chicken with the law," Beatty's lawyers wrote, calling the effort a "slavish attempt to corrupt the Kennedy Center at all costs."

"And now they have threatened the destruction of the Kennedy Center, a sacred memorial to a fallen President, all in the name of one man's vanity," they wrote. "Enough is enough. This has to stop."

Greg Bovino, the former Border Patrol commander who led President Donald Trump's mass deportation raids, accused senior administration officials of pulling his security detail because "they want me dead."

Bovino made the accusation in an interview with Tucker Carlson released Wednesday. He retired at the end of March, months after being removed as commander-at-large.

"The administration didn't want you to have security? Why?" Carlson asked.

"I think to silence me," Bovino answered. "Do I think they want me dead at this point? Yes."

"Do I think they want me killed? Absolutely," he added. "The minute I left, security detail gets pulled. I'm one of the highest, if not the highest, threats in DHS. Death threats."

"Those Border Patrol agents refused to leave my house, and I had to direct order, hey, no, you're leaving, because I'm not in the Border Patrol anymore," Bovino continued. "We're going to shut that guy up."

He named Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott as the official who took the detail, with border czar Tom Homan present.

"I think Rodney Scott — he's the one that took my security detail away, with Homan there. Yeah, absolutely," Bovino said.

"I don't think Trump would," Bovino said of the president. "I think if Trump knew what they had done and what they would do to Border Patrol agents or ICE officers or anyone that disagrees with them, I think he would have an absolute panic attack or a heart attack."

"They're guarding the gate," Bovino said of the officials he accuses of keeping Trump from the truth. "You know, the surrender in Minnesota. People say, hey, Bovino, you retired. I did. I retired. That's neat, clean, and easy."

Bovino acknowledged to the New York Times that his retirement was not entirely voluntary, the Guardian reported.

"If they want you gone — if those gate guards want you gone — better watch out. They'll come for your retirement. They'll come for everything," the former Border Patrol chief told Carson.

He was removed in January after federal agents fatally shot U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti during the Minneapolis operation, the last of the deployments that also took him to Los Angeles and Chicago, CNN reported.

A federal judge in Chicago found last year that Bovino lied about why he threw a tear gas canister into a crowd, CBS News noted.

"They're coming after other family members as well," Bovino revealed, adding that the FBI had to intercept his mail.

Neither Scott nor Homan has publicly responded to Bovino's allegations.

A Republican pollster warned that women are abandoning her party at a historic rate ahead of the midterms, with Democrats now leading by 18 points among them.

Christine Matthews, a pollster at Bellwether Research and Consulting, surveyed 1,604 women from Aug. 21-22 and shared the results first with Politico.

Matthews specializes in women voters and has worked for Republican clients, according to Politico.

Democrats now lead among white women 47 percent to 39 percent, the survey found. Republicans carried that group 55 percent to 44 percent in 2024.

Among married women, the two parties are tied, according to the survey. Republicans won them by 13 points in 2024.

"When I look at those numbers, I am seeing sirens," Matthews said.

President Donald Trump's approval among women stands at 32 percent, the survey found. One in four of his own voters now disapprove.

" Trump spins everything," Matthews told Politico. "The reflecting pool was the result of vandals. Whatever is wrong in the world is Biden's fault. And the grocery prices — and again, this is really grocery prices — are still high for people, and now Trump owns it."

Women ranked the economy and cost of living their top concern, at 38 percent, according to the survey. Health care, Medicare and Social Security followed at 17 percent.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) said she has pressed the issue with fellow Republicans, telling Politico that affordability is what women are asking her party to deliver.

"I've been raising this inside our party for months," Cammack said in a statement.

Cammack pointed to the elimination of taxes on tips and overtime, and to a doubled child tax credit, as results her party can run on.

"Nobody owes us their vote. We earn it with results or we don't earn it at all," Cammack said.

U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who has long defended killing a bill that could have acted on forced child marriage in Colorado City in 2013, let it slip to reporters this week that he knew what was going on all along.

Biggs, the Republican nominee for Arizona governor, faced the questions Tuesday at the 2026 Gubernatorial Public Safety Policy Forum. The lawmaker has recently come under fire over claims that his opposition as then-state Senate leader effectively shut down legislation that would have helped the girls who were being abused.

Reporters pressed the candidate about the 2013 bill that would have stripped authority from the local police department, the Colorado City Marshal's Office, which was believed to have been protecting FLDS leaders and their practices.

"You didn't know what was going on?" a reporter asked.

"I was the Senate president. I knew what was going on," Biggs replied.

"I mean about the FLDS marrying off young girls who were underage," the reporter pressed.

"We heard — we've heard bits and pieces of it. It was also under investigation by the feds at the time," Biggs said.

Biggs offered a different explanation in a television interview last year, saying officials were still gathering information, the Washington Post reported.

"What I was concerned about is, did we have enough as a state to step in, as a state legislature?" he said at the time.

Then-Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne backed the 2013 measure, and it cleared the state House 52-7, according to the Post. The bill then died in the state Senate without ever reaching a vote, the Post reported.

A jury convicted sect leader Warren Jeffs in 2011 of sexually assaulting girls aged 12 and 15, both of whom he had forced into marriage, the Post reported.

The Justice Department sued the two towns the marshal's office served in 2012, alleging it acted as the sect's "enforcement arm," according to the Post.

"Women and children suffered three years longer than they should have because he protected the bad guys," said then-state Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, an Arizona Republican who sponsored the bill.

Survivors and advocates raised the same questions at an Aug. 20 press conference, as reported by the Copper Courier.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs' campaign released a video about Colorado City the same day as the forum, according to a campaign statement.

"I would like Andy Biggs to explain why he chose to not support this bill and not protect women and children," Elisa Wall, who left the sect as a young woman, said in the video.

Drew Sexton, a Biggs campaign adviser, said the congressman opposed the "poorly-written legislation" because it was too broad and drew opposition from the Arizona Police Association, the Post reported.

"So we're ready to move on," Biggs told reporters, ending the exchange.

A Tampa event featuring Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended abruptly on Wednesday as he was pressed on a $1 million donation from a kratom company that federal prosecutors had stopped pursuing.

Kennedy was pressed by a reporter about ties to the company selling the potentially addictive substance at Tampa Bay Boulevard Elementary School roundtable with Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL).

Sky News correspondent Martha Kelner was still asking questions when Moody thanked the room and the two officials moved to leave.

"The Justice Department dropped its case against Feel Free, and MAHA PAC received a $1 million donation," Kelner said. "Does that have anything to do with the DOJ?"

The MAHA PAC is run by close Kennedy ally Tony Lyons.

"I don't know anything about either of the things that you just said," the health secretary insisted.

"It was from Terry Ross of Feel Free," Kelner pressed.

"Well, I don't know anything about that, and I don't make decisions for the Justice Department," Kennedy quipped.

Moody stepped in and cut the reporter off mid-question.

"Thank you very much for joining us today to talk about our kids and their healthy futures, and Florida is gonna continue to lead the way," the senator interjected.

"So, you have no knowledge about [the] $1 million donation?" Kelner shouted as the Trump officials sped out of the room.

Botanic Tonics, which makes Feel Free, donated $1 million to the Make America Healthy Again PAC, The New York Times reported. That was about 44 percent of the committee's total haul through April, the newspaper found.

A federal judge had cleared the way for prosecution in December, the Times reported. Within two weeks, the Justice Department moved to drop its own case, according to the newspaper.

"Well, [the] FDA is looking at that issue right now," Kennedy said earlier at the event, when Kelner asked about addiction to natural kratom leaf.

Kennedy announced a move last July to ban synthesized 7-OH, a far stronger kratom compound sold by competitors, according to the Times. The Food and Drug Administration's then-commissioner, Marty Makary, said the agency was "not targeting the kratom leaf."

Allies of Botanic Tonics founder J.W. Ross funded a lobbying operation named Stop Gas Station Heroin, the Times found. It has paid one firm at least $600,000, the outlet reported.

But not everyone agrees that the Feel Free product is harmless. Jack LaBounty went from one bottle of Feel Free a day to six or seven, he told The Wall Street Journal.

"I remember feeling the euphoria and wanting to do it again as soon as I could," LaBounty said. "I can just go get gas, and I don’t have to worry about seeing any kratom there.”

LaBounty entered detox in 2023 and was prescribed a drug used to treat opioid addiction, the newspaper reported.

Kennedy and the Health and Human Services Department did not respond to questions from the Times, which also reported that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin holds a stake in Botanic Tonics worth as much as $1 million.