April 2, 2026: All Newsclips

Lead Stories

Trump makes his case for Iran war, saying it will end 'shortly' but more strikes are ahead

President Donald Trump hailed the U.S. military’s “unstoppable” prowess in the war with Iran, telling Americans in a prime-time address Wednesday night that the conflict, now entering its second month, will end “shortly” without offering a definite timeline. Delivered on Day 32 and framed as an operational update, Trump’s speech offered the clearest public case yet for the conflict, arguing it is necessary for the security of the free world and laying out a framework that he said would measure American success. “Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track and the country has been eviscerated and essentially is really no longer a threat,” Trump said. “This is a true investment in your children and your grandchildren’s future. The whole world is watching."

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Still, he said the conflict would continue until the military objectives were "fully achieved." “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” he said. “We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing.” He also said that if Iran does not make a deal with the U.S., “we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.” Trump, who launched the war with a recorded video from his Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida, has frequently spoken to the media throughout the conflict. While light on new details, this address may reach a broader audience: an American public who may have been watching the finale of “The Masked Singer," which was interrupted for his first speech to the nation about the war. Trump sought to explain why the U.S. entered the war in the first place, accusing Iran’s theocratic regime of having destabilized the global order for decades and claiming Iran was building its nuclear program at a new location, “making clear they had no intention of abandoning their effort to obtain nuclear weapons.”

Tension grows as Republicans pursue reconciliation

It took an extra five days, but Speaker Mike Johnson finally caved to Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s plan to end the DHS shutdown. A Truth Social post from Trump on Wednesday set the plan in motion, aligning the two top Hill Republicans after Johnson rejected the Senate-passed bill last week. This measure funds all of DHS minus ICE and CBP, which Republicans plan to address via budget reconciliation. Thune and GOP leaders are expected to use the Senate’s 7 a.m. pro forma session today to trigger a procedural motion to send the Senate-passed DHS funding bill back to the House. But House Republican leadersaren’t committed to bringing members back next week to vote on the Senate-passed measure. They recognize that GOP rank-and-file members hate this bill. That means GOP leaders may wait until the chamber returns on April 13 to pass it.

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Yet it seems like an unsustainable position to wait another week. Plus, Johnson has to pass a FISA reauthorization by April 20, and that’s a tough vote too. Reconciliation. Once Congress passes the Senate version of the DHS funding bill, Johnson and Thune will embark on what amounts to a risky legislative experiment: trying to pass a reconciliation bill just months before Election Day. Trump says he wants the package on his desk by June 1. The goal here is to bypass Democrats and lock in three years of funding for ICE and CBP. The price tag will be somewhere between $45 billion and $75 billion. This would keep the agencies on autopilot until Trump’s term ends in 2029, GOP insiders say, even if Democrats win control of the House and/or Senate in November. This is Johnson and Thune making the best of a bad hand. Democrats won’t vote for ICE and CBP spending, and it’ll only get harder for Congress to approve the agencies’ funding if the GOP loses in the midterms.

State Rep. Erin Zwiener: Silence enables county judge’s ‘bad behavior’

When I was 21, a man punched me in the face. It was at the holiday party of the Forestry Club at the University of Montana. His name was Mike, and he had been flirting with me but also forceful. I told him I wasn’t interested and went back to chatting with my friend. A few minutes later, a fist came out of nowhere and knocked me to the ground. I couldn’t let him hurt me like that without consequences, so after giving the other party attendees a heads up, I called the police. They came, interviewed me, and arrested Mike. He pled guilty to assault and did probation. I was satisfied.But the Forestry Club and that group of friends? Most of them began avoiding me, and I no longer felt welcome at their events. Over the next few months, I floated away from that community entirely. I didn’t realize I’d broken a secret, unspoken rule: Speaking up against a problem often gets you labeled the problem. But we can’t live that way. People do bad things, and we must have the courage to talk about it. Cultures of silence and punishing those who speak up only protect bad actors, those who lie and who treat others with disrespect.

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We’ve come a long way from college but not far enough. Recently, an odd game that Judge Ruben Becerra has been playing came to a head. He, in his eighth year in public office, decided to engage on water issues. He brought a proposal to the Commissioners Court on water and data centers that had not been posted publicly or had legal review. Unfortunately, his proposal came with unintended consequences–it would have allowed industrial water users to sidestep the county development process entirely. When the legal team, other commissioners, and I (through a letter to the Court) pointed this out, the judge tabled his own proposal. Then the judge announced a water summit and pointedly said he expected attendance from every Hays County state legislator…except me. The omission stood out to many Hays County residents, because I have been working on water issues consistently and fighting to bring more resources to our groundwater districts. When constituents asked why I was left off, he lied and said I declined to attend. I corrected the record and said I was not invited. Then he publicly invited me, and I said my office would try to participate. My staff RSVPed via an email to both the judge and one of his staffers. But when my staff and I showed up, we were told we weren’t on the list and that the venue was at capacity despite folks inside saying there were several empty seats. The judge’s story for why has continued to change.

Key justices appear skeptical of limiting birthright citizenship

A majority of the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of President Trump’s efforts to limit birthright citizenship during arguments on Wednesday. Key conservative justices raised doubts about the constitutionality of the president’s executive order that would end automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants and some temporary foreign visitors. When a lawyer for the Trump administration suggested that the realities of modern migration required a new assessment of whether the Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is seen as a key vote, retorted: “It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

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Still, in an argument that lasted more than two hours, the chief justice and several other of the court’s conservatives also asked tough questions of a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the legal challenge, making the outcome of the legally complicated and hugely consequential case not fully clear. In an unprecedented move and a signal of the stakes of the landmark case, Mr. Trump attended the first part of the argument, watching from a public gallery as his solicitor general defended the policy. During the A.C.L.U.’s argument, the president abruptly rose from his seat and left the courtroom. After returning to the White House, he posted on social media, falsely, that the United States is the “only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” The case before the court has enormous stakes, potentially redefining what it means to be an American. A decision to limit birthright citizenship could also have sweeping practical consequences, stripping the promise of citizenship from the estimated 200,000 babies or more born in the United States each year to undocumented immigrants.

State Stories

As first anniversary of Trump tariffs approaches, Texas small businesses say they’re suffering

Thursday will mark one year since President Donald Trump proclaimed "Liberation Day," imposing tariffs by executive order on virtually all U.S. trading partners. While the Supreme Court has ruled those tariffs illegal, the administration has yet to refund them, and new tariffs are on the way. Small businesses in Texas and beyond say they're feeling the pain. Over the 11-month period ending in January, Texas companies paid $13 billion in tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Even that understates the damage, according to the small business coalition We Pay the Tariffs.

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The advocacy organization found Texas businesses paid a total of $26 billion in tariffs imposed directly by the White House without the approval of Congress between March 2025 and this January. New trade numbers, due out from the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday, are expected to drive that total still higher. "One year after Liberation Day, the damage to America’s small businesses goes far beyond what any tariff data can capture," said Dan Anthony, executive director of We Pay the Tariffs. "These businesses have spent the last 12 months not growing, not hiring, not innovating, but surviving. They’ve drained savings, taken on debt, laid off employees and cut product lines just to keep their doors open." All of that is taking a toll on the Texas economy, according to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas late last year. Houghton Horns, a musical instrument store in Keller, near Fort Worth, is one such small business. Kacie Wright, the store's business manager, said that even if the administration refunded the emergency tariffs today, it would not make up for the damage done. "Online sales are down about 40%. So, even if we get refunded, because we’ve had to raise our prices so high to cover these tariffs, that refund won’t cover the lost revenue," Wright said.

Artemis II launches as NASA shoots for the moon in historic mission

NASA’s historic Artemis II mission to the moon launched Wednesday evening, taking four astronauts into Earth's orbit and on a path toward the world's first crewed lunar mission in a generation, beginning a journey into remarkable, if somewhat familiar, territory. Artemis II launched from Launch Pad 39B at 5.35 p.m. Central Time at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Houston’s Johnson Space Center now manages almost the entirety of the mission until the moment the spacecraft returns to Earth off the coast of San Diego.

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Four astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch; and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — are set to spend 10 days in space, orbiting the Earth once before flying to the moon, around it and back. The mission marks the first time in more than 50 years that humans are attempting to travel to the moon. The rockets were successfully fueled up by the early afternoon, filling the rockets with hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. After much of the countdown went without a hitch, NASA found an issue with a safety system about an hour and a half prior to the beginning of the launch window. In the event of an emergency where a rocket is out of control, the flight termination system allows engineers to send a signal to destroy the rocket to protect public safety. Without assurance that the system works, NASA would have scrubbed the mission. Minutes after discovering the issue, though, NASA indicated it had resolved the issue, which did not significantly impact the countdown. Minutes into the flight, after the Orion spacecraft had separated from its rockets, Orion, which houses the four astronauts, appeared to be following its coordinated plan.

Mark Cuban tells D-FW businesses to get on board with AI

Roughly three years after the transformational artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT first commanded the world’s attention, one of Dallas’ most famous — and famously opinionated — entrepreneurs has some blunt advice for North Texas’ business community. At an event in Irving on Tuesday, Mark Cuban warned that “if you’re not using one of the large language models … you’re falling way behind.” Cuban went on to draw an analogy between AI and other recent tech innovations, including personal computers and the internet, which also initially drew skepticism before becoming widely adopted. The billionaire investor even recounted being called “an idiot” after founding Broadcast.com, the internet radio streaming he took over in the late 1990s and went on to sell to Yahoo for more than $5 billion.

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“There was always a group of people that were first, and always a group of people that were naysayers,” he continued. “And the people that were first typically ended up getting further ahead. I think it’s the same with AI today.” The wealthy Shark Tank star and former Dallas Mavericks majority owner made the comments during Convergence AI Dallas, a two-day AI and business conference hosted by the Dallas Regional Chamber at the Irving Convention Center. The event sold out, with around 1,200 registered guests, Dana Jennings, a DRC executive, told The Dallas Morning News. The high-energy confab included multiple panels and talks — topics included AI and Y’all Street, AI’s impact on the workforce and federal government regulation — as well as promotional booths and technical demonstrations, with sponsors that ranged from Accenture and Aecom to the T.D. Jakes Foundation and SMU’s new Spears Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership. Now in its third year, the event’s high attendance also hinted at the growing popularity of AI. A couple years ago, recalled Dave Evans, a managing partner at Sentiero Advisors, a Dallas-based AI-focused venture capital fund, it felt impossible to walk a few feet at the event without bumping into someone he already knew. But this year, Evans told The News, he felt like every face was new. “It’s surprising, but it’s also awesome,” he said. “We’ve grown beyond being that more kind of cottage group of ‘AI people,’ if you will, and it’s kind of expanded out.”

Houston attorneys call out Harris County judge following viral clip of him berating county employee

The president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association is condemning the actions of Harris County District Judge Nathan Milliron — captured in a video that went viral over the weekend — and claiming the judge is now going after a well-known Houston attorney. In a social media video Tuesday, the association’s president, Brent Mayr, criticized the judge. "By now, many of you have seen or heard about this Harris County judge treating a court staff employee in an absolutely inappropriate and humiliating manner," Mayr said. "There is no question that judges should not act like that."

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Over the weekend, a clip of Judge Milliron being impolite to an IT employee went viral. "Don't joke around," Milliron said in the video. "Get out of my courtroom... Find his supervisor, Jesus Christ, I'm sick and tired of this bull..." Mayr also confirmed Tuesday that Houston attorney James Stafford had emailed Milliron, asking the judge to apologize to the county staffer. But in response to the email, Milliron ordered Stafford to appear in his courtroom next month. According to Mayr, Milliron accused Stafford of ex parte communication — a one-sided communication between a judge and only one party of a legal proceeding. Mayr told Houston Public Media Tuesday that Milliron's actions against Stafford could be a violation of the lawyer’s First Amendment rights.

Chisos Mountains Lodge project at Big Bend National Park suddenly cancelled

A multi-million dollar project to tear down and rebuild the Chisos Mountains Lodge at Big Bend National Park was suddenly cancelled Wednesday just a month before it was set to begin. Park officials did not announce the abrupt change in plans for the project, which was set to begin May 1. The change was noted on the park’s website, which was updated Wednesday afternoon to say the “construction project has been cancelled” and “will not proceed as planned.” The park website also indicated the Chisos Basin area, which was set to close to visitor access for at least the next two years starting in May, will now remain open.

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Later Wednesday evening, the park's website was updated to offer an explanation for the change in plans, citing "unforeseen challenges, including design complexities and implementation delays." "Construction costs have risen sharply since 2019, resulting in a substantial budget shortfall. This financial gap now prevents full funding for both the lodge construction and the Chisos Basin water system rehabilitation," the update read. "In light of these developments, the park is reevaluating its finacial resources and exploring alternative strategies to advance construction efforts. The National Park Service plans to reissue a contract soliciation focusing exclusively on the Chisos Basin water system rehabilitation, excluding lodge reconstruction and other facility upgrades. The exact schedule for this re-soliciation is currently being finalized." Spokespeople for Big Bend National Park and the National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions about the cancellation. The project – which would have involved a complete teardown and rebuild of the decades-old lodge and restaurant – had already been delayed multiple times over the past year or so. The plan was funded by the Great American Outdoors Act of 2020 and also involved a project to replace the Chisos Basin’s aging water infrastructure.

Texas megachurch pastor Robert Morris is free after 6 months in an Oklahoma jail for child sex abuse

The founder of a Texas megachurch who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child in the 1980s was released Tuesday after serving six months in an Oklahoma jail. Robert Preston Morris, 64, was released just after midnight, said Osage County Sheriff’s Capt. Matt Clark. Morris pleaded guilty last year to five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child as part of a plea agreement under which he received a 10-year suspended sentence with the first six months to be served in the Osage County Jail. The abuse began in 1982 when the victim was 12 and Morris was a traveling evangelist staying in Hominy, Oklahoma, with her family, according to Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, whose office prosecuted the case.

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Morris was the senior pastor of Gateway Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake, where he led one of the nation’s largest megachurches until June 2024 when — faced with the victim’s allegations — he resigned. He was indicted last year by an Oklahoma grand jury. Morris must register as a sex offender and will be supervised by Texas authorities via interstate compact. He also was ordered to pay his costs of incarceration, including any medical expenses, and restitution to the victim. The victim, Cindy Clemishire, who is now in her 50s, did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment, but said in a statement when Morris was sentenced that “justice has finally been served, and the man who manipulated, groomed and abused me as a 12-year-old innocent girl is finally going to be behind bars.” The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Clemishire did. Jeff Leach, a Dallas-based attorney who represents Clemishire, said in a statement they are “heartened to know that he (Morris) still has nearly ten years of probation as well as a lifetime ahead of being publicly registered as a sex offender.”

Rejected Tarrant GOP delegates deny claims they supported Democrats

Some Tarrant County Republicans who weren’t chosen as delegates to the Texas GOP convention denied claims that they supported Democrats. Most who were not selected at the Senate District 9 convention also opposed the proposed split of the Keller school district. The usually solid red district, which spans northern and western Tarrant County, flipped to the Democrats on Jan. 31 when Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss in a runoff. Zee Wilcox, who had supported former Southlake Mayor John Huffman in the Nov. 3 special election for the Senate seat, said she never supported Democrats, including Rehmet.

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“If the GOP wants to win SD9 she [Wambsganss] needs to get out of the race,” Wilcox said. “Huffman was the better candidate.” Wilcox sued Tarrant County GOP chair Tim Davis when she was removed from the ballot in the House District 98 primary because of problems with her paperwork. She regained her spot on the ballot but lost her bid for election. Wilcox said she worked to help elect Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare and other candidates. “I took the heat for them,” she said. Jim Sutton, the SD 9 chair, said in an email to the Star-Telegram that he did not provide any information concerning the people who were not chosen as delegates to the Texas GOP convention, scheduled for June 11-13 in Houston.

Galveston officials say ‘significant headway’ has been made in unsolved ‘Texas Killing Fields’ case after new arrest

More than four decades after a series of murders along a stretch of Southeast Texas known as the “Texas Killing Fields,” prosecutors say they are making progress—and the investigation is far from over. During a press conference Wednesday, Galveston County District Attorney Kenneth Cusick formally announced charges against James Elmore, 61, who was taken into custody Tuesday following a grand jury indictment. Elmore is believed to have been involved in the murders of Laura Miller and Audrey Cook. Prosecutors allege Elmore helped longtime suspect Clyde Edwin Hedrick conceal the remains of Miller and Cook after their deaths.

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“He has made numerous statements, and yes, he’s implicated himself,” said Cusick. Elmore is charged with manslaughter and tampering with evidence in Laura Miller’s murder and tampering with evidence in Audrey Cook’s murder. Both Cook and Miller were found the same day in 1986 in a field off Calder Rd. in League City. The manslaughter indictment reads that Elmore, “prepared a vial of cocaine for Clyde Hedrick to administer to Laura Miller.” Laura’s father, Tim Miller, said Elmore told him over the course of dozens of meetings that Hedrick gave his daughter a “hot shot” that killed her. The two tampering indictments read Elmore observed Laura and Audrey’s bodies being dumped in the so-called “Texas Killing Fields,” but never reported their murders. Hedrick died last week at the age of 72. He was never charged in any of the cases and maintained his innocence until his death.

East Texas hit hard by gun-related suicides

Discussions involving mental health and firearms can be fraught in Texas, especially in a deeply conservative area like East Texas, where a culture of self-sufficiency and gun ownership runs deep. And it’s costing lives. Of the 4,389 gun deaths in Texas in 2024, more than 63 percent—or 2,779—were suicides, according to records obtained from Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions. East Texas is among the hardest-hit regions in the state. Panola County, which includes the town of Carthage near the Louisiana border, had among the highest rate of gun suicides in Texas from 2020-2024, with 27.1 suicides per 100,000 people, according to state records. Other counties in Deep East Texas—Henderson, Anderson, Cherokee, Van Zandt and Rusk, for example—also had high rates, with gun-related suicides accounting for more than 70 percent of all firearm deaths. At the same time, access to mental health treatment and facilities in East Texas is limited by a sparse number of providers, lack of health insurance among residents, poverty, and transportation problems.

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“It is very safe to say that we are in a mental health desert in the state of Texas,” said Steve Bain, Ph.D., a Texas A&M Kingsville professor of counseling who studies mental health care access. “Out of the 254 counties in Texas, only about six of those are not considered mental health provider shortage areas,” Bain said. “In other words, everybody is short mental health, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, social workers. Everyone is short. You’ve only got six counties who were like ‘Yeah, we’re doing pretty good,’ and most of those are urban counties.” The concentration of gun suicides traditionally is higher in rural areas. Across the nation, 63 percent of suicides in rural areas involved firearms, compared to 50 percent in large metro areas, according to Johns Hopkins research. Even if mental health resources are available in a region, they may be so distant that people won’t have the time, transportation or financial resources to access them, Bain said. And the situation is even more dire for minorities living in Texas, especially those in rural areas. “They fare even worse, in terms of availability and accessibility,” Bain said. “And then you’ve got a culture that says, ‘Well, you don’t talk about your problems.’”

SpaceX has filed confidentially for IPO ahead of AI rivals

SpaceX has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter, bringing billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and AI company closer to delivering the biggest-ever listing. The company submitted its draft IPO registration to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public. The filing puts it on track for a June listing, which would make SpaceX the first of what could be a trio of mega-IPOs, ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. SpaceX could seek a valuation in the IPO of more than $1.75 trillion, people familiar with the matter have said. The company acquired Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI in a deal that valued the enlarged entity at $1.25 trillion.

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In a confidential filing, companies can receive feedback from the regulator and make changes before the information becomes public. Details of the offering including the number of shares to be sold and the price range are expected to be disclosed in a later filing. A listing for SpaceX would raise as much as $75 billion, Bloomberg News has reported. At that size, it would dwarf the current record holder, Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion debut in 2019. SpaceX is telling prospective IPO investors to expect briefings from company executives this month, people familiar with the matter have said. The so-called testing-the-waters investor meetings would potentially include more detail that would support its valuation target. The company has lined up Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley for senior roles on the IPO, people familiar with the matter have said, and has added more banks to the lineup.

Without scientific studies, Brownsville is a test lab for CBP river buoys

If the federal government took the time to study in advance what could happen if a floating wall of huge, cylindrical buoys were installed in the middle of the Rio Grande for 536 miles, they haven’t told the public, nor have any technical details been made publicly available. Which leaves the possibility that the government is just going for it, in which case Brownsville is serving as a test lab of sorts, since it’s here that the first 17 miles of buoys are being installed. Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was fired in March, came to Brownsville on Jan. 7 to announce the plan’s launch. DHS waived more than two dozen federal environmental regulations to allow the experiment to proceed.

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Hydrologist Jude Benavides told The Brownsville Herald that the lack of information about the so-called buoy barrier system makes it virtually impossible for scientists to model possible scenarios. Normally, for such a massive project, the National Environmental Policy Act would require that environmental and cost/benefit considerations be carefully and methodically weighed, everything proceeding at a snail’s pace, he said. Frustrating? Definitely. But well worth it “99 times out of 100, unless you have an urgent, pressing need … that requires circumventing this kind of stuff,” said Benavides, who teaches for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley but emphasized he was speaking for himself and not the university. Meanwhile, Rio Bravo, Latin America’s name for the Rio Grande, is a more fitting moniker given the river’s extreme nature under certain conditions, he said. “Bravo” in Spanish means valiant or brave, but also wild, savage or fierce. Despite dams upriver, the Rio Grande can “wake up” and quickly rise to artificial levee height given enough rain in parts of the watershed, Benavides noted.

National Stories

Trump has discussed firing Attorney General Pam Bondi

President Trump has discussed firing Attorney General Pam Bondi in recent days as he grows frustrated with her leadership at the Justice Department and her handling of the Epstein files, according to four people familiar with the conversations. Mr. Trump has floated the idea of replacing Ms. Bondi with Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations by the president. Mr. Trump has not made a final decision, and Ms. Bondi’s allies pointed to photos of her and the president traveling to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to dispute the notion that the president is planning to fire her. “Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” Mr. Trump said in a statement to The New York Times. A spokesman for Ms. Bondi referred to Mr. Trump’s statement.

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But the president has been souring on Ms. Bondi for months. Among his top complaints is Ms. Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files, which has become a political liability for Mr. Trump among his supporters. He has also complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and vented about what he sees as the department’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his foes, according to people who have spoken to him recently. The House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Ms. Bondi last month to compel her to testify about the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. Her deposition is scheduled for April 14, though she and Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s Republican chairman, have been working together to avoid the deposition, even though it is unclear whether it is legally possible to withdraw a subpoena. Mr. Trump has also said the Justice Department under Ms. Bondi has not moved aggressively enough to prosecute his political enemies. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a social media post directed at Ms. Bondi in which he grumbled about the lack of indictments.

Trump’s surgeon general nominee caught in GOP crossfire over MAHA

President Trump’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general appears stuck in the Senate, the latest sign that some Republicans in Congress have reached their limit on the more divisive aspects of the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda. While the surgeon ?general wields no direct regulatory powers, the nation’s top doctor has a powerful bully pulpit — one that some in the GOP seem hesitant to hand over to Casey Means, a healthy living influencer with an expired medical license and no plans to renew it. Trump indicated he was open to withdrawing her nomination over the weekend, before the White House swiftly reaffirmed its support for Means, the sister of White House senior adviser Calley Means, an influential figure in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s orbit.

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Mark Brewer, professor and chair of the department of political science at the University of Maine, said lawmakers might be getting “gun shy” following poor performances by Trump nominees, but he argued the apparent reluctance to confirm Casey Means likely has more to do with her specific background. “She doesn’t have the appropriate qualifications. She doesn’t really have kind of any public health experience, per se,” said Brewer, echoing criticism from Jerome Adams, a physician who served as surgeon general during Trump’s first term. “If she were to be installed as the surgeon general, I think it would send a message,” he added. “And at least some senators are not interested, it appears, in the message that that would send.” More than a month after her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), there has been no movement on her nomination. And there do not seem to be any immediate plans to bring her nomination up for a vote.

Border Patrol chief Michael Banks hit with prostitution allegations by agents

The national chief of the Border Patrol, Michael Banks, was known among colleagues for taking regular trips abroad to engage in sex with prostitutes, according to six current and former Border Patrol employees who spoke with the Washington Examiner. Banks “bragged” to colleagues while in his previous management role at Border Patrol about paying for sex with prostitutes while traveling in Colombia and Thailand over the course of a decade. Banks’ behavior was said to have been investigated by Customs and Border Protection officials twice, including last year, but the investigation ended abruptly while Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in office, leading to more questions.

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“I don’t know how he became the chief of the Border Patrol with his character,” a former Border Patrol agent told the Washington Examiner in a phone call, adding that now-53-year-old Banks had personally pushed him to come along on one of the trips. “He’s going to third-world countries to take advantage of poor f***ing women, which disgusts the hell out of me.” Four others said Banks talked freely with his subordinates about his travels and that it was known why he went, making his promotion to the top of the agency last year that much more flabbergasting. “He would tell people that’s why he was going on these trips — he would go there to engage in activities with prostitutes,” a second person said. “So I think those stories are out everywhere, and you can’t put them away or not give it attention because he was the one telling people about these trips. “In our line of work, part of what we do is try to combat the trafficking of females, that is part of our job,” the same person said. “It’s counter to what we do or what we should be standing for. If you’re partaking in those activities, you’re supporting the trafficking and exploitation of women.”

NYC Mayor Mamdani rips ‘unrealistic’ city council plan to balance budget without hiking property taxes

The City Council released its own plan for filling the city’s $5.4 billion budget deficit over the next two fiscal years, mostly through reestimating the city’s revenues and spending – a proposal Mayor Zohran Mamdani said would require cutting city services instead of bringing in new revenue. The savings plan cobbles together $6 billion as an alternative to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “last-resort” proposal to raise the city’s property tax rate by 9.5% across the board. The city is required by law to balance its budget each year, and Mamdani said his plan was made in an effort to balance the budget while drawing down reserves from the city’s savings and reducing services.

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The property tax is the one major revenue source the city directly controls, and can increase without the state’s sign-off. Doing so is politically unpopular, however, with property owners of all kinds, so that the last hike came more than two decades ago. “We cannot in good conscience fund the city’s needs on the backs of homeowners or renters, by digging into emergency reserves, or by cutting essential programs,” City Council Speaker Julie Menin said in a statement. In the midst of budget negotiations, Mamdani replied on Wednesday that Menin’s preliminary budget proposal was “unrealistic.” “Double counting previously identified savings, overestimating revenues, and exaggerating debt service savings does nothing to close a deficit,” he said in a statement.

Ballroom commission changed documents at White House’s request

An independent planning commission reviewing President Donald Trump’s ballroom building softened its own official documentation about the project at the White House’s request, records show. The National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled to vote Thursday on the project, the final procedural obstacle to building a 90,000-square-foot structure that would dramatically remake one of the most recognized symbols of American power and democracy. Emails obtained by The Washington Post through a public records request show the commission changed what would become a public FAQ document about the ballroom after a White House staffer asked it to soften language about the commission’s authority over the project.

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The commission then released the document ahead of its Jan. 8 meeting to provide information about its role in reviewing federal construction projects, when it would take up the ballroom and whether it had reviewed previous White House projects. The draft included the subhead “Why is the National Capital Planning Commission reviewing the project?” under which itdefinitively stated that the White House sits on federal land — a fact that “requires” federal agencies to get commission approval, according to a Dec. 19 email sent by commission General Counsel Meghan Hottel-Cox. White House staffer Heather Martin requested the addition of a sentence explicitly stating the White House is not a federal agency but had asked the commission to review the project “in the spirit of cooperation.” The commission deleted the entire subhead and the word “require,” softening the explanation of its role to: “Projects located on federal land within the District of Columbia come to NCPC for review.”

American commandos join Ecuadorian troops in mission targeting alleged narco-terrorists

American commandos in recent days joined Ecuadorian troops in a joint mission aimed at dismantling a suspected criminal hub operated by an alleged narco-terrorist organization along the country's coast. The operation, dubbed Lanza Marina, focused on a compound believed to serve as a staging ground for high-speed boats linked to Los Choneros, a powerful Ecuadorian criminal organization, according to two U.S. officials who spoke to CBS News under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The two U.S. officials said the American forces worked in advisory roles, assisting and accompanying their Ecuadorian counterparts as they moved against the site, part of a broader effort to curb trafficking networks that rely on fast-moving maritime routes.

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The Defense Department has historically used several authorities such as security cooperation agreements and train-and-equip programs to allow U.S. special operation forces to support foreign forces. For instance, "127 Echo missions," referring to 10 U.S.C. § 127e, are commonplace. 127e is the legal authority that allows for the U.S. military to support foreign forces to combat terrorism. While these types of missions are overseen by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, the defense secretary has historically been required to approve these missions and to sign congressional notification letters, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. CBS News exclusively reported last year that President Trump rolled back constraints on American commanders to authorize airstrikes and special operation raids outside conventional battlefields, broadening the range of people who could be targeted. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the reporting by CBS News was accurate.

Environmental, religious groups take Georgia's PSC to court to stop Georgia Power data center expansion

Several environmental and religious groups are asking a court to review if the state broke the law after it approved Georgia Power’s request for energy-related costs over data centers. In December, the Georgia Public Service Commission allowed Georgia Power to provide 10 new gigawatts of power, mostly expected to go to data centers. According to the group’s petition to the court, it said “the Public Service Commission approved Georgia Power charging customers for an estimated $50–60 billion dollars of electricity-generating resources without first answering the statutorily required question: Will customers need each resource when the resource begins to operate? And the Public Service Commission certified 757 megawatts of new energy resources, enough to power over 150,000 households, without evidentiary support: even Georgia Power’s data shows it is not needed during the relevant time frame.”

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follow the law’s protections against a monopoly utility’s unnecessary and uneconomic investments that will be charged to captive customers, and it clearly erred by certifying far more investments than necessary.” When the PSC approved Georgia Power’s request, all of the commission’s seats were held by Republicans. Since then, two Democrats were elected to the board and urged the board to wait until they were sworn in to vote on Georgia Power’s request. In an earlier interview, Georgia Power said it needs to be ready for the future. “The Georgia PSC’s unanimous decision in December not only provides the energy we need to keep energy reliable for a growing Georgia, but delivers savings of more than $100 per year for the typical residential customer. The generation resources were properly approved and certified by the Commission,” Georgia Power spokesperson Matthew Kent said in a statement. “This suit has no merit and is a simple attempt to create economic and regulatory chaos. We don’t think it needs to be reconsidered.” Georgia Power estimates that at least 80% of future demand will come from data centers. “My concern is we’re talking about theoretical contracts with theoretical large load data centers,” Liz Coyle, the executive director of Georgia Watch, said. “But the money to build these facilities is very, very real.” Coyle worries that Georgia Power may be overestimating future demand while committing billions to non-renewable energy sources. She is concerned that if the contracts do not materialize, Georgia Power customers may need to pay more.

Copyright April 02, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved