Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two protesters during a social rights demonstration in 2020, was hospitalized on Wednesday after a venomous spider bite.
He shared a photo of himself in a hospital and where the apparent bite was located on his body.
"The communists couldn't take me out and i'll be damned if I let a brown recluse take me out," Rittenhouse wrote in a post on X.
In August 2020, Rittenhouse drove to Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, armed with an AR-15 style rifle. In November 2021, he was acquitted of all charges, including homicide, in connection with shooting three men during those protests, two of whom died.
The communists couldn't take me out and i'll be damned if I let a brown recluse take me out. pic.twitter.com/75xSoshhdv — Kyle Rittenhouse 🇺🇸 (@rittenhouse2a) May 6, 2026
Backlash over his controversial JD Vance-inspired ideological shift has forced a conservative think tank leader to step down, according to a report on Wednesday.
The Bulwark's Joshua Tait described how John A. Burtka IV has resigned as president of Intercollegiate Studies Institute after "rebranding itself around JD Vance style pugnaciousness." The organization was founded in Delaware in 1953, and conservative movement voice William F. Buckley Jr. was its first president.
"Under his leadership, ISI tilted toward an edgier, post-liberal identity, and, according to critics, a 'no enemies to the right' ethos," Tait wrote.
But not everyone at the think tank liked that move.
"Last November, two ISI board members urged the board to fire Burtka, saying he had—behind the board’s back—dropped ISI’s educational project to focus on hard-right podcasting with Burtka at the center and Vance as the willing figurehead of their new agenda," Tait explained. "One of Burtka’s first guests on his podcast was neoreactionary blowhard Curtis Yarvin."
"To old-fashioned conservatives, 'the battle for the heart and soul of the American Conservative Movement' has long been waged inside foundations and think tanks. But in this case, though, Burtka may have been done in by something other than ideology. In the wake of the announcement, a former board member tweeted: 'If something can’t go on forever, it won’t,'" Tait wrote.
ISI’s chairman of the Board of Trustees, Mark C. Henrie, announced Burtka was stepping down "after careful personal and professional discernment."
"We suspect—with like-minded conservatives fleeing from there—Burtka won’t be moving to Hungary," Tait added.
The internet was stunned by White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett's comments on Wednesday as he bragged about how credit card spending on higher-priced gasoline was "through the roof."
Hassett made the remarks in an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday morning where he discussed the ongoing Iran war, the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the American economy.
Media experts and political voices were shocked by the comments.
"Is this supposed to be a brag?" Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) wrote on X.
"We must consider the possibility that Kevin Hassett is secretly working for the Democrats," Jon Favreau, co-founder of Crooked Media and co-host of Pod Save America, wrote on X.
"Trump’s chief economic advisor is bragging that people are surviving on credit cards right now," MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski wrote on X.
"?" New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers wrote on X.
"Make this guy the spokesperson for the entire Republican party," House Majority PAC, a Democratic Super PAC, wrote on X.
"Do they understand that this is not a good thing?" Nobel Prize nominee Andrew Gebo wrote on X.
Federal agents have raided the office of a Virginia Democratic legislator who was instrumental to her party possibly picking up four additional congressional seats.
The FBI served multiple search warrants at the office of state Sen. L. Louise Lucas in Portsmouth as part of what sources described as a major corruption investigation, and MS NOW's Carol Leonnig reported that former interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan had made an investigation of the 82-year-old lawmaker a top priority.
"Louise Lucas is a statefairly prominent legislator inher state, but not knownnationally, and the FBI and the Department of Justice have beeninvestigating her for severalyears, three years, I'm told bya source familiar with theprobe," Leonnig said, "and that investigationhas been looking at evidencesuggesting that she solicitedor accepted bribes."
Leonnig reported that Halligan believed that prosecuting a prominent Democrat in the state would be political beneficial to Republicans.
"I'm told by this source, andthis has been ongoing for sometime," Leonnig said, "that when Lindsey Halligan, one of [President Donald] Trump's veryclosest allies and a formerlawyer of his, had been running the U.S. attorney's office inthe Eastern District of Virginia, she had beenpressuring and pushingprosecutors to bring chargesagainst Lucas, believing thatthat would be important, a high-priority case."
"I'm told that Halligan believed it would begood for the White House to beable, before the midterms, toaccuse a prominent state Democrat in Virginia withbribery," she added.
Lucas, the Senate president pro tempore, pushed for her fellow Democrats to push for four additional seats, rather than just three, on a mid-decade redistricting map aimed at boosting the party's chances in November's midterms.
"Prosecutors in based out of Norfolk were not sure this wasthe strongest case in the world, but Halligan felt very stronglythat it should be pressed," Leonnig said. "Now,of course, this action by theFBI, as reported by Fox News,is embarrassing to Lucas,embarrassing to the Democratic Party and also to the governorof that state, because Lucas isa close ally of hers, and nowwhat we know from this is theprobe is really quite active.But as for charges, we shallsee. They may be sealed at thismoment, or they may never come.We're somewhere in the middleof those two."
Halligan departed the job after a federal job concluded she had overstayed her interim appointment, and Leonnig said she would not be permitted to be involved in this case.
"It wouldbe inappropriate for her to beinvolved as she departed as theinterim U.S. attorney, afterfederal judge concluded that Halligan's indictments ofvarious people Trump hadtargeted were to be dismissedbecause she had been illegallyappointed, running far outsidethe 120-day period for a U.S.attorney to be appointed,nominated and confirmed by the Senate," Leonnig said.
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) was peppered with questions about why he let a member of President Donald Trump's cabinet give a deposition on Jeffrey Epstein without video recording it, while refusing the same opportunity to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton.
On Wednesday, Comer spoke to reporters at the Capitol minutes before beginning the deposition with Lutnick.
"Mr. Chairman, what are your questions about his associations?" Fox News correspondent Chad Pergram asked. "He went to the island with his family with Mr. Epstein. He didn't seem to cut off his communications with Epstein after his conviction. Are those some of your questions?"
"Yeah, yeah," Comer replied. "Those are the questions."
"It's my understanding he wasn't on the island very long, and he was there with his wife and kids, but we'll see what he says," he noted.
"But this is pretty extraordinary to bring in a cabinet secretary or something like this," Pergram said.
"Yeah, and look, I've been on the oversight committee 10 years, and there's never been a chairman bring in cabinet secretaries of their own party," Comer bragged. "We have Pam Bondi coming in a couple of weeks. So I think people can see that this is a bipartisan investigation. We're really sincerely trying to get the truth."
"Our goal is to provide justice for the victims, and hopefully today will be helpful," he added.
Another reporter asked if Lutnick's credibility had been undermined after he falsely claimed that he cut ties with Epstein following a sex offender conviction.
"We're going to ask him all these questions, and we'll let the American people judge whether the credibility was damaged or not," Comer remarked. "At the end of the day, I haven't seen wrongdoing in the email correspondence, but he wasn't 100% truthful whether or not he had been on the island. So we'll see, and we'll obviously release the transcripts, and everyone can see for themselves."
"Why just a transcript?" Pergram demanded to know.
"Do you have any concerns about the secretary's conflicting statements and why not do this as a videotape?" a second reporter pressed.
"Well, this is, you know, with this transcript, he's coming in voluntarily, first of all," Comer said in defense of the process. "So we didn't video, we don't video people that come in to volunteer."
"But at the end of the day, the transcript is the most important thing," the chairman argued.
A GOP-backed bill that would criminalize blowing whistles to alert people to immigration agents, a tactic embraced by activists in Minnesota earlier this year, was rejected on Tuesday. But that failure is likely to be temporary, and the measure may still land on the governor’s desk.
The proposal would create a new state crime called “unlawful alerting,” and punish it with a class 1 misdemeanor, which carries with it a six-month jail sentence. Someone would be guilty of “unlawful alerting” if they communicate with another person about an impending arrest, including via verbal warnings, gestures, electronic communications or sounds like bells or whistles.
Critics say it risks looping in people who publish social media alerts about the presence of federal immigration agents throughout the Valley.
The bill is part of a push this year by Republican lawmakers to support the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign and lash out at immigrant rights activists who have opposed it. Republicans have framed it as a necessary protection against foiled arrests, but Arizona law already penalizes the act of helping a person avoid prosecution or apprehension with a class 5 felony.
The proposal has sparked backlash from immigrant rights groups and led to a legal tussle over whether lawmakers have the right to ban people from the state legislature. A vocal protest of the bill organized by Living United for Change in Arizona resulted in a panel of Republican lawmakers briefly fleeing a legislative hearing room in February. That prompted Republican leadership to ban people suspected of being members of the group from the state legislature for the rest of the session. LUCHA quickly sued, arguing that doing so violated the civil rights of multiple people.
Unlike its acrimonious public reception, the bill has sailed through the legislature with the help of the GOP majority, but on Tuesday it was defeated simply because not enough Republican lawmakers were in attendance. The 29-22 vote in the Arizona House of Representatives was one shy of the number needed for a bill to pass in the 60-member chamber.
Hitting that threshold is normally an easy task for Republican-backed bills, because the party holds 33 seats in the House. But two members have recently resigned, and several more were absent on Tuesday. Cognizant of that, Republicans opted to preserve the legislation for a second try in the future. Rep. Cody Reim, R-Scottsdale, flipped his vote to against at the last minute in a procedural move that enabled him to call for reconsideration later.
But it will be at least four weeks before the bill can be revived: Lawmakers on Tuesday also announced they were leaving until June 1 amid a stalemate on the state budget with Gov. Katie Hobbs..
The effort to advance the bill is more symbolic, in the end. Even if it wins the approval of the House, it’s destined to meet Hobbs’s veto stamp. The Democrat has consistently rejected legislation that doesn’t earn bipartisan support.
Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) astonished critics with his over-the-top praise of President Donald Trump in the wake of Tuesday's primary elections.
The 79-year-old president extracted his revenge when at least five incumbent GOP state legislators lost against Trump-backed candidates in Indiana after they failed to pass a mid-decade redistricting push on his orders, and Emmer gassed up his political clout during an effusive appearance on Fox Business.
"Look, all of these pollsthat try to suggest that Donald Trump's influence is waning arecompletely false," Emmer told host Stuart Varney. "Trump has never been stronger,especially with the Republicanbase, and you saw it last night in Indiana."
"He's become more than Donald Trump," the GOP whip added. "He is icon of the ages and whenhe speaks, people listen, and I know the left doesn'tlike to hear that, Stuart, butit's fact and you saw it lastnight on display in Indiana."
"Yes, the MAGA held together insupport of the president onthis," agreed Varney. "I think his political fortunesmay be on the upswing."
The high-ranking congressional leader's enthusiasm set off social media mockery.
"Tom Emmer is a mere bug in the presence of our Godhead Emperor and Leader Donald Trump," quipped journalist and attorney Scott Horton.
"I've joked about 'God-King Trump' before, but Emmer seems to believe it," opined podcaster Paul "Princejvstin" Weimer. "Also, a thankfully good twist of history – if six hundred votes had gone the other way, this man would have been Governor of Minnesota."
"Does Trump have something on Emmer?" wondered Bluesky user KerriLeigh. "His boot licking seems to be stuck on ‘max level’. Gross."
"He’s a historical icon alright, however it’s largely due to his norm breaking, violent rhetoric and actions, and historic unpopularity," posted X user White City DJ. "People do listen when he speaks, but only because they’re forced to."
"History is going to look back on these people with loathing and weakness," seethed X user Bekah Freitas.
"You know when Kim Il Sung died he was declared the Eternal President of North Korea and isn't technically considered to have died? Yeah," pointed out writer Nick Pettigrew.
"This is end-stage cult ideation, the kind of thing people whispered to each other in the Berlin bunker and the waning days of Jonestown," noted journalist Lindsay Beyerstein.
Matilda Munro, the niece of convicted sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, resigned from her oversight role at a British public school after the Justice Department’s release of Epstein-related files revealed a letter she had sent a New York City federal judge on behalf of her aunt, the Daily Mail uncovered in its report published Tuesday night.
“She is of no danger to the public,” Munro wrote in a letter sent in late 2020 to the U.S. Southern District of New York. “Her treatment to date feels punitive and unjust. She had ample opportunity to leave the US legally prior to her arrest and did not do so. It is less likely not more likely that she would do so now.”
Since early 2024, Munro has served in a leadership role for Columbia Primary School in East London, and “most parents were unaware that she was related to Ghislaine,” the Daily Mail reported – that is, until the letter was released in full by the Justice Department as part of its release of Epstein-related files.
Despite Munro’s plea, and her insistance that the convicted sex trafficker was "of no danger to the public," Maxwell was not granted bail in the lead up to her trial, where she was ultimately found guilty on five felony charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. Munro stepped down from her role at Columbia Primary School on March 27, a spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Mail, and Munro did not immediately respond to the outlet’s request for comment.
Munro is the daughter of Kevin Maxwell, Ghislaine's brother, who was charged but later acquitted on charges of "plundering" the pension fund left by his father, Robert Maxwell, the Daily Mail reported. Robert Maxwell is also suspected by veteran journalist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez to have potentially sold surveillance software to a U.S. nuclear research facility in New Mexico that may have been compromised by Israel, a claim supported by a declassified but heavily redacted FBI document.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence at a minimum-security prison in Texas, one she was controversially transferred to last year by the Trump administration, a transfer that required the Bureau of Prisons to waive federal prison rules given her status as a sex offender, which ordinarily would make her ineligible to be housed at a minimum-security facility.
Maxwell currently enjoys “special privileges” at the Texas prison, the conditions of which Maxwell has gushed over as “fantastic.”
The chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee is ignoring widespread public dissatisfaction with Donald Trump's unpopular war and skyrocketing gas prices, instead urging voters to exercise patience and still cast their ballots for Republicans in November.
Despite polling showing heavy dissatisfaction with Republicans' slim House majority — and predictions that the party could lose as many as 30 seats in the chamber — Richard Hudson insisted that the Republican base will ultimately prove forgiving.
"I'm not worried at all because voters remember that we had $9 gas in some places and we've now brought prices down," Hudson said on the NOTUS podcast. "It's a question of, 'Do you want to continue down this path of recovery, or do we want to go back to artificially inflated gas prices?'"
Hudson's strategy relies on framing the 2026 House elections as a choice between Republican policies under Trump versus memories of the Biden administration — a gamble that appears increasingly risky given the ongoing economic pain from the Iran war, Ed Deamria of NOTUS wrote.
"We're still on a rescue mission," Hudson said. "Remember how bad it was before? Give us a chance to continue to make your lives better."
Hudson also celebrated a recent Supreme Court ruling that Louisiana's congressional map constituted an "unconstitutional racial gerrymander," opening the door for states to redraw their lines ahead of November's elections.
"I think states need to heed this ruling," Hudson advised. "There are some states that have already had their primaries, but certainly states that haven't had their primaries yet, I think they ought to delay the primaries and heed the ruling to make sure their maps are legal."
In his comments, Hudson appeared to distance himself from Republicans' mid-decade redistricting efforts earlier this year, but this week claimed the initiative was ultimately beneficial, the report notes.
As Republicans work to craft their midterm message, Hudson acknowledged that the party has failed to effectively communicate its economic achievements, particularly from the 2025 reconciliation bill.
"We haven't done a good job with it," Hudson conceded. "We've tried to really talk about the things that are affecting people's pocketbooks because that's the top issue on voters' minds right now. … But there's so much good."
Renowned CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour took a swipe at Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison for the chaos at CBS News under his leadership — in anticipation of him moving to control CNN as well.
According to The Daily Beast, "The veteran chief international anchor, 68, faces life under Trump-friendly nepo baby Ellison, 43, after Paramount Skydance secured shareholder approval last month for its $111 billion acquisition of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. The deal ... would hand Ellison, son of Donald Trump megadonor and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, control of two of America’s biggest newsrooms."
Amanpour made her thoughts on this clear at the Truth Tellers Sir Harry Evans Investigative Journalism Summit in London.
“Clearly I’m concerned, and I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about a corporate thing that’s underway, but I am obviously as a person, as a journalist with a record — yeah, concern," she said. "And I’m concerned based on what’s happened. And I’m concerned based on what’s happened to the other things that he’s taken over already, like CBS News. Do I have to list what’s happening there? I mean, hemorrhaging viewers, probably hemorrhaging money, this ideological realignment of CBS and the destruction, potentially, of 60 Minutes.”
Since the makeover of CBS that also saw conservative thinker Bari Weiss put in charge of editorial duties, the network has lurched between controversy after controversy as well as a crash of ratings.
The FBI is reportedly investigating an Atlantic journalist who wrote a "deeply unflattering" report on Director Kash Patel's drinking habits.
Two sources familiar with the investigation confirmed to MS NOW that the "highly unusual" investigation was looking into the leaking of material that embarrassed Patel for alleged drinking and absences from work. Agents investigating journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick were reportedly based in Huntsville, Alabama.
"Typically, leak investigations look into government officials who may have disclosed state secrets or classified documents," MS NOW noted. "Journalists who receive and publish such information have typically only been involved as potential witnesses."
Some of the sources expressed "great concern" about how investigators were going to look into the journalist, which could include confiscating her cell phone.
"They know they are not supposed to do this," one source explained. "But if they don't go forward, they could lose their jobs. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't."
For its part, the FBI denied investigating Fitzpatrick.
"This is completely false. No such investigation like this exists, and the reporter you mention is not being investigated at all," spokesperson Ben Williamson insisted to MS NOW. "Every time there's a publication of false claims by anonymous sources that gets called out, the media plays the victim via investigations that do not exist."
The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, called the alleged investigation "outrageous."
"We will defend Sarah and all of our reporters who are subjected to government harassment simply for pursuing the truth," he vowed.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) was facing scrutiny on Wednesday after a new Politico report revealed he was receiving overlapping payments, raising questions about his past as a political operative.
Lawler's advocacy and political groups paid more than $720,000 to Checkmate Strategies, the consulting firm he co-founded and sold last year for up to $50,000. While ethics experts say the arrangement is legal, it has fueled speculation about potential conflicts of interest as the Republican lawmaker pursues reelection in a highly competitive district.
"POLITICO has previously reported that Lawler’s campaigns paid his former firm $500,000 for campaign services," according to the outlet. "A new analysis of other campaign finance and lobbying records shows that in addition to those payments, before entering Congress, Lawler directed a host of organizations that paid a combined total of at least $221,515 to Checkmate for its services between 2019 and 2021."
Lawler previously worked as a lobbyist, political consultant and an executive director of the New York State Republican Party.
"But the lines between the three roles often blurred together — a reality that now poses a political liability as Democrats eye his suburban congressional seat as a prime pickup opportunity this year," Politico reported.
A review of public records has revealed that when he was serving as the director of the natural gas advocacy group New Yorkers for Affordable Energy, the organization paid Checkmate Strategies $97,000 to lobby for it in 2019 and 2020. At the time, Lawler was listed as the group's lobbyist. As leader of the economic development group 17 Forward 86, that organization ended up paying Checkmate $95,000 for lobbying. Checkmate was paid more than $26,000 for campaign mailers and consulting services from 2019 and 2021, while Lawler was chair of the Orangetown Republican Committee.
Government watchdog groups called the payments from organizations Lawler directed to his former political firm "improper" and urged that such arrangements forbidden.
"These kinds of self-dealing transactions should be banned," Rachael Fauss, a senior policy advisor with the group Reinvent Albany, told Politico. "No nonprofit board or political committee should allow their leadership to enter into contracts with another entity they have a financial stake in. Unfortunately, attempts to rein this in have failed for decades."
President Donald Trump's newly-minted Homeland Security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, vowed on Wednesday morning to find nearly half a million "unaccounted for" kids, based on an internet conspiracy theory that misinterpreted a number about migrant minors.
We're setting up a special department that's going over especially kids," Mullin told Newsmax's Rob Schmitt. "There was roughly 450,000 kids that are unaccountable, or unaccounted for under the Biden administration."
The idea that 450,000 migrant children were "missing" or "unaccounted for" under the Biden administration is a statistic that has been thrown around for years in right-wing circles; Mullin's predecessor, Kristi Noem, repeatedly cited the figure too. However, it's based on a misunderstanding of a statistic.
According to the Minnesota Reformer, "Trump and members of his cabinet have talked about lost immigrant children since the 2024 presidential campaign, and cite a Homeland Security report from that year. But as PolitiFact and otheroutlets have previously reported, those statements distort the report’s findings. Looking at data spanning both the Trump and Biden administrations, from fiscal year 2019 to 2023, the report found Immigration and Customs Enforcement could not monitor all unaccompanied minors released from the agency’s custody. It didn’t say the children were 'missing' or 'lost.'"
In other words, Mary Miller Flowers of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights told the Reformer, “That does not mean in any way that the child is missing. That means that paperwork largely has not been able to reach that child, or phone calls have not been able to reach that child.”
Mullin was appointed after Noem was unceremoniously fired by the Trump administration, which was reportedly enraged over her shifting of blame for a $200 million taxpayer-funded advertisement that promoted herself.
