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  • House committee votes to subpoena Attorney General Bondi to answer questions over the Epstein files

    House committee votes to subpoena Attorney General Bondi to answer questions over the Epstein files

    WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer questions over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation.

    Five Republicans joined Democrats to support the subpoena proposed by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina in a sign of continued frustration with the department’s review and release of a tranche of documents regarding the disgraced financier.

    The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the subpoena.

    Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, recently sat with lawmakers on the committee for their own depositions over the former Democratic president’s connections to Epstein from more than two decades ago.

  • The sea is higher than we thought and millions more are at risk, study finds

    The sea is higher than we thought and millions more are at risk, study finds

    Climate change’s rising seas may threaten tens of millions more people than scientists and government planners originally thought because of mistaken research assumptions on how high coastal waters already are, a new study said.

    Researchers studied hundreds of scientific studies and hazard assessments, calculating that about 90% of them underestimated baseline coastal water heights by an average of 1 foot, according to Wednesday’s study in the journal Nature. The problem arises far more frequently in the Global South, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia, and less in Europe and along the Atlantic coasts.

    The cause is a mismatch between the way sea and land altitudes are measured, said study coauthor Philip Minderhoud, a hydrogeology professor at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. And he attributed that to a “methodological blind spot” between the different ways those two things are measured.

    Each way measures its own areas properly, he said. But where sea meets land, there are a lot of factors that often do not get accounted for when satellites and land-based models are used. Studies that calculate sea level rise impact usually “do not look at the actual measured sea level, so they used this zero-meter” figure as a starting point, said lead author Katharina Seeger of the University of Padua in Italy. In some places in the Indo-Pacific, the figure is close to 1 meter, or about 3 feet, Minderhoud said.

    One simple way to understand that is that many studies assume sea levels without waves or currents, when the reality at the water’s edge is of oceans constantly roiled by wind, tides, currents, changing temperatures, and things like El Niño, Minderhoud and Seeger said.

    Adjusting to a more accurate coastal height baseline means that if seas rise by a little more than 3 feet — as some studies suggest will happen by the end of the century — waters could inundate up to 37% more land and threaten 77 million to 132 million more people, the study said.

    That would trigger problems in planning and paying for the impacts of a warming world.

    People at risk

    “You have a lot of people here for whom the risk of extreme flooding is much higher than people thought,” said Anders Levermann, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany, who was not part of the study. Southeast Asia, where the study finds the biggest discrepancy, has the most people already threatened by sea level rise, he said.

    Minderhoud pointed to island nations in that region as an area where the reality of discrepancy hits home.

    For 17-year-old climate activist Vepaiamele Trief, the projections are not abstract. On her island home in the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, the shoreline has visibly retreated within her short lifetime, with beaches eroded, coastal trees uprooted, and some homes now barely 3 feet from the sea at high tide. On her grandmother’s island of Ambae, a coastal road from the airport to her village has been rerouted inland because of encroaching water. Graves have been submerged and entire ways of life feel under threat.

    “These studies, they aren’t just words on a paper. They aren’t just numbers. They’re people’s actual livelihoods,” she said. “Put yourself in the shoes of our coastal communities — their lives are going to be completely overturned because of sea level rise and climate change.”

    Paying attention to the starting point

    This new study is pretty much about what is the truth on the ground.

    Calculations that may be correct for the seas overall or for the land are not quite right at that key intersection point of water and land, Seeger and Minderhoud said. That is especially true in the Pacific.

    “To understand how much higher a piece of land is than the water, you need to know the land elevation and the water elevation. And what this paper says the vast majority of studies have done is to just assume that zero in your land elevation data set is the level of the water — when, in fact, it’s not,” said sea level rise expert Ben Strauss, CEO of Climate Central. His 2019 study was one of the few the new paper said got it right.

    “It’s just the baseline that you start from that people are getting wrong,” said Strauss, who was not part of the research.

    Maybe not so bad, some scientists say

    Other outside scientists said that Minderhoud and Seeger may be making too much of the problem.

    “I think they’re exaggerating the implications for impact studies a bit — the problem is actually well understood, albeit addressed in a way that could probably be improved,” said Gonéri Le Cozannet, a scientist at the French geological survey. Most local planners know their coastal issues and plan accordingly, Rutgers University sea level expert Robert Kopp said.

    That’s true in Vietnam, in the high-impact area, Minderhoud said. Officials there have an accurate sense of elevation, he said.

    The findings come as a new UNESCO report warns of major gaps in understanding how much carbon the ocean absorbs. That report said that models differ by 10% to 20% in estimating the size of that carbon sink, raising questions about the accuracy of global climate projections that rely on them.

    Together, the studies suggest governments may be planning for coastal and climate risks with an incomplete picture of how the ocean is changing.

    “When the ocean comes closer, it takes away more than just the land we used to enjoy,” said Thompson Natuoivi, a climate advocate for Save the Children Vanuatu.

    “Sea level rise is not just changing our coastline, it’s changing our lives. We are not talking about the future — we’re talking about the right now.”

  • Sprawling investigation finds decades of sexual abuse among Catholic priests in Rhode Island

    Sprawling investigation finds decades of sexual abuse among Catholic priests in Rhode Island

    PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Catholic priests in Rhode Island preyed on hundreds of children for decades, and were protected by bishops more concerned with the church’s reputation than the victims, according to a new report on clergy sexual abuse that echoes findings elsewhere.

    The report, released Wednesday by Attorney General Peter Neronha, follows a multiyear investigation into the Catholic Diocese of Providence, R.I.

    Neronha said the full scope of the priest abuse problem in Rhode Island — the smallest U.S. state but the one with the highest Catholic population per capita, at nearly 40% — had long remained elusive. He agreed with victims who say not enough has been done to address the problem long after it was exposed in the nearby Boston diocese in 2002.

    “Not until now has there been a comprehensive review of this painful chapter in our state’s history, with a view toward offering transparency, accountability, and systemic reforms that will, I hope, lessen the likelihood of future child sexual abuse, not just within the Diocese of Providence, but in our community as a whole,” Neronha wrote in the report.

    Neronha, who was raised Catholic, said he hopes the report will spur legal reforms to boost investigative powers and help victims seek justice.

    The investigation found that 75 Catholic clergy had molested more than 300 victims since 1950, but officials stressed that the number of victimized children and abusive priests is likely much higher.

    The diocese, in response, acknowledged the scourge of child sexual abuse — especially by clergy — but said the report reflects the church’s willingness to share internal records under a 2019 agreement with the state.

    “The report presents this 75-year history in ways that might lead the reader to conclude these issues are an ongoing diocesan problem or that these are new revelations. They are not,” the diocese said in a statement.

    3 priests charged in R.I. awaiting trial

    Church records show the diocese transferred accused priests to new assignments without fully investigating complaints or contacting law enforcement, a practice exposed in investigations in Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

    And, as in other cities, the Diocese of Providence opened a “spiritual retreat-style facility” in the early 1950s for accused priests to seek treatment. Later, when the abuse was deemed a mental health problem, priests were sent to more formal treatment centers.

    By the 1990s, accused priests were sometimes placed on sabbatical leave.

    For example, a priest named Robert Carpentier resigned after a victim came forward in 1992 to say that he had been sexually abused as a 13-year-old victim in the 1970s. Carpentier acknowledged the abuse, was sent to a treatment center, and later went on sabbatical at Boston College. He retired in 2006 and received support from the diocese until he died in 2012.

    Most accused priests, the report found, avoided accountability from both law enforcement and the diocese.

    Neronha’s office has charged four current and former priests with sexual abuse in connection with allegations stemming from 2020 to 2022. Three of them are still awaiting trial. The fourth priest died after being deemed incompetent to stand trial in 2022.

    Only 20 people — about a quarter of the clergy identified in the report — faced criminal charges, and just 14 were convicted. A dozen others were laicized or otherwise dismissed.

    Diocesan review board member among the accused

    One survivor described being groomed for more than a year before he was abused by the pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Cranston in 1981. The survivor, who is not named in the report, said the late Msgr. John Allard showered him with attention. By ninth grade, he said, the sexual abuse began in the priest’s bedroom.

    “His comment to me was always, ‘You need a hug,’ and that’s something that I can hear him saying very clearly to this very day,” the survivor told officials in 2013.

    While a review board deemed the abuse credible, the Vatican — at the urging of then-Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin — let Allard retire rather than be defrocked.

    In at least one case, a member of the diocesan review board hearing abuse complaints was himself accused, the report says. The Rev. Francis Santilli stepped down after the complaint, but remained in active ministry even after other complaints surfaced in 2014 and 2021. He was not removed until 2022. A message left at a possible number for him on Wednesday was not immediately returned.

    Church, AG spar over degree of cooperation

    Neronha launched the investigation in 2019, a year after a Pennsylvania grand jury issued a landmark report that found more than 1,000 children had been abused by roughly 300 priests since the 1940s.

    However, Rhode Island law does not allow grand jury reports to become public — a hurdle that Neronha has long tried to change. Instead, he forged an agreement with the diocese to access its trove of records on clergy sexual abuse.

    The church turned over 70 years’ worth of material, including complaints from its secret archives, civil settlement records, treatment costs, and other documents. Yet Neronha called the diocese’s help limited at times.

    “It repeatedly refused my team’s requests for interviews of diocesan personnel responsible for overseeing the diocese’s investigations,” Neronha said in the report.

    The diocese, in its response Wednesday, pushed back on that view, saying the report would not have been possible without the church’s cooperation.

    “Any abuse of children is an abhorrent sin and a terrible crime,” the diocese said in its statement. “The very existence of the Attorney General’s report is the result of the Diocese of Providence’s unprecedented and voluntary agreement to extraordinary transparency. ”

  • Claims of ‘rediscovered’ Michelangelos unsettle Renaissance experts

    Claims of ‘rediscovered’ Michelangelos unsettle Renaissance experts

    ROME — An independent researcher claims that a marble bust of Christ in a Roman church is by Michelangelo, the latest purported attribution to the Renaissance genius who is one of the most imitated artists in the world.

    The unverified claim by Valentina Salerno has unsettled Renaissance scholars, especially since a recent sketch of a foot that was attributed to Michelangelo — but disputed by some as a copy — recently fetched $27.2 million at a Christie’s auction.

    Given the stakes — and Salerno’s suggestion that several other works can now be attributed to Michelangelo based on her documentary research — leading experts have declined to comment.

    Salerno has published her theory on the commercial website academia.edu, a non-peer-reviewed social networking site academics use, and announced the first “rediscovery” at a news conference Wednesday.

    The claims have drawn perhaps more attention than they normally would, given the Vatican seemed at least initially interested. Friday marked the 550th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth, and a number of exhibits, conferences, and commemorations are reviving attention about his genius and legacy.

    The culture ministry was invited to participate in Salerno’s news conference but did not, said the abate of the order that runs the church, the Rev. Franco Bergamin, while the Carabinieri’s art squad refused to weigh in on the authenticity of the statue but said it was being protected and a laminated sign now graces the sculpture: “Alarm armed,” it reads.

    “We hope that this asset, which belongs to our cultural heritage regardless of whether it can be attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti or not, is part of the national heritage that we are responsible for defending,” said Lt. Col. Paolo Salvatori.

    ‘Documentary evidence on this’

    Michelangelo Buonarroti, who lived from 1475 to 1564, created some of the most spectacular works of the Renaissance: the imposing statues of David in Florence and Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and The Last Judgment fresco behind the chapel’s altar. Salerno now says she has located another — a bust of Christ in the Basilica of Sant’Agnese fuori le mura, listed by Italy’s culture ministry as anonymous from the Roman school of the 16th century.

    She is not the first to make the claim. In 1996, Michelangelo expert William Wallace wrote an article in ArtNews about the well-documented history of wrongly attributing works to Michelangelo. It quoted the 19th-century French writer Stendhal as writing that at the Sant’Agnese church, “we noticed a head of the savior which I should swear is by Michelangelo.”

    “Stendhal’s vow notwithstanding, the head has never been taken seriously, and nowadays would not even appear in a catalog raisonné under ‘rejected attributions,’” Wallace wrote.

    Salerno suggests that several documents in the first few hundred years after Michelangelo’s death correctly attribute the work to the artist but that in 1984 a scholar debunked it, erroneously in her view, and it has remained wrongly attributed ever since.

    “I have provided and will continue to provide — I hope, because the research continues — a whole series of documentary evidence on this,” she said. “There will be experts in the field who will conduct their own investigations. To date, we can say that, according to the documents, the object is attributed to Michelangelo.”

    She suggested that the bust was modeled on Michelangelo’s intimate friend, Tomaso De’ Cavalieriis, and was part of the great artistic inheritance Michelangelo left to his friends and students when he died. Salerno said she came to the conclusion tracing wills, inventories, and notarized documents held in church and state archives and the archives of Roman confraternities to which Michelangelo and his students belonged.

    Salerno, an actor and a fiction author, has no college degree or expertise in art history. She has said she fell into the research “by chance” when she set out to write a novel about Michelangelo 10 years ago.

    According to her research published on academia.edu, Salerno uncovered evidence of a secret “pact of indissolubility” among some of Michelangelo’s students and their heirs to keep Michelangelo’s works after he died. The pact included the previously unknown existence of a chamber, whose locks could only be opened with three keys, held by three different students, she said.

    Vatican takes note

    Salerno’s research caught the eye of Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, who runs St. Peter’s Basilica. He named Salerno and her mentor to a scientific committee formed in 2025 to discuss a possible Vatican exhibition to commemorate the anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth.

    Nothing has yet come of the committee’s work. But its members have downplayed the significance of Salerno’s work or refused to discuss it.

    Some expressed surprise at her inclusion in a committee made up of some of the leading Renaissance and Michelangelo scholars in the world, including Barbara Jatta, director of the Vatican Museums; Hugo Chapman, curator of Italian and French drawings, from 1400 to 1800, at the British Museum; and Wallace, professor of art history at Washington University in St. Louis.

    Jatta has distanced herself from the Vatican committee when contacted by the Associated Press.

    The British Museum declined to make Chapman available for comment. Gambetti’s office did not respond to a request. Other committee members declined to comment.

    Wallace told the AP that Salerno’s methodology was sound and noted that there is a strong tradition in Europe of noncredentialed researchers doing solid work. He said he agreed with her thesis that Michelangelo did not destroy his works in a fire, a commonly held belief at the time that has been debunked for years by scholars. Rather, he concurred with Salerno that Michelangelo entrusted what remained of his works in his final years to his students to finish his projects.

    But he disputes Salerno’s conclusion that a huge treasure of Michelangelo’s was secreted away — and is therefore ripe for new discovery — saying Michelangelo simply was not producing that much in his final years. Michelangelo was overseeing six architectural projects in Rome at the time. What drawings he made were sketches to resolve technical problems on the worksite, and likely did not survive because they were merely “working drawings,” he said.

    Wallace concurred that existence of a secret chamber that can be opened only with three keys is new. But he said proper academic scholarship would call for Salerno to transcribe the documents and allow for a peer-review process to take place.

    Italy is no stranger to claims of new discoveries about old artists, with fakes, frauds, and new “discoveries” of Modiglianis and other artists a regular occurrence in art history circles.

    “I think I counted up 45 attributions to Michelangelo since 2000, and not one of which you can remember or mention, but every single one arrived with the headline, ‘The greatest discovery of the time,’ [or] ‘It will change everything we think about Michelangelo,’” Wallace said. “And then, five years later, we can’t even remember what it was.”

  • What Democrats need to do to flip Texas, and how Republicans can hang on

    What Democrats need to do to flip Texas, and how Republicans can hang on

    Texas primary voters of both parties voted with cool heads Tuesday, rejecting candidates who appealed to their parties’ bases with more inflammatory styles that could have proved riskier in a general election.

    But challenges remain for Democrat James Talarico — who won the primary outright on a unifying message of reaching out to all Texans — and for Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who nosed ahead of firebrand Attorney General Ken Paxton but now faces a punishing May 26 runoff against him.

    Democrats face an uphill battle to flip a Senate seat in the red state no matter what happens in the runoff, as they mount their long-shot bid to retake the Senate in November. The chamber is currently controlled by Republicans, 53-47, and Democrats would have to flip several deep-red states like Texas to regain control.

    The next few months will determine how well-positioned Texas Democrats are to regain a Senate seat that has eluded them for more than 30 years, as the party hopes unusually high voter enthusiasm and weariness with President Donald Trump could fuel their comeback. Talarico in the coming months must work to unite the party by attracting Black voters who strongly backed his opponent, all while fending off coming attacks from the right painting him as a radical.

    And Cornyn’s political survival may depend on the actions of someone who is notoriously hard to predict or corral — Trump. The president said Wednesday that he would soon endorse one candidate and that the other should quit the race. If he does not get Trump’s endorsement, Cornyn may struggle to clear the runoff, and either way the next few months will be a divisive slugfest between two Republicans with large megaphones.

    “We are not going to go quietly, and we are not going to let you buy the seat,” Paxton said at his election-night party in Dallas, referencing the tens of millions of dollars Cornyn and his allies poured into the race.

    FILE – This photo combination shows Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, left, in Dallas and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in Austin, Texas, both on March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, Jack Myer)

    Cornyn, a fourth-term senator who is widely considered to be a stronger general-election candidate than the scandal-plagued Paxton, fell short of the 50% mark that would have avoided a runoff. Paxton was impeached by the GOP-controlled Texas House in May 2023 on charges of bribery but was acquitted by the Senate.

    Cornyn warned Paxton that “judgment” was coming for him. “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered, and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton to risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build,” he told reporters.

    The bitter intra-Republican warfare marked a stark contrast to the Democratic side of the ledger, where Rep. Jasmine Crockett set aside her earlier attacks on Talarico — and a legal challenge she filed Tuesday after voters were turned away from polling places in her Dallas district — and urged Democrats to come together Wednesday.

    “Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person,” Crockett wrote in a social media post.

    Talarico also urged unity, telling his supporters Tuesday, “The stakes in Texas are too high for division.”

    Mudslinging in the final weeks of the race may have caused some damage that Talarico will need to repair ahead of November, however. Crockett called the argument that Talarico was more electable than her a “dog whistle” and slammed him for not condemning ads run by a super PAC that supported him as “straight-up racist.” (Talarico does not control the super PAC, and the group denied darkening Crockett’s skin in an ad.)

    Crockett ran strong with the state’s Black voters, while Talarico appeared to run away with the Latino vote in the state. He beat Crockett by 30 percentage points or more in 21 counties that are more than 75% Latino. In counties that were 20% or more Black, Crockett won by 25 percentage points.

    Nancy Zdunkewicz, a Texas Democratic pollster, said she believed that much of the Crockett-Talarico tensions played out online rather than on the campaign trail and that the primary electorate was not divided.

    “She has conceded graciously, and I don’t want to overstate any damage done simply because of the social media dialogue, which was unnoticed by voters,” she said.

    Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who backed Crockett in the final days of the race, urged voters to unify. “I congratulate James Talarico for his win, and the inspiring campaign he continues to build,” she said in a statement. “I offer him my full support in the months ahead.”

    Republicans have a while to go before they can start their postprimary healing process, a delay that could dampen enthusiasm in November. It is also unclear whether Republicans will continue to vote with their heads instead of their hearts in May by backing Cornyn. Runoffs tend to feature a smaller, more intense group of voters compared with regular primaries, which could benefit Paxton. And it remains an open question whether Trump will support Cornyn, a nod that could put him over the top.

    Political analysts also do not know if the roughly 13% of Republicans who voted for GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt, who failed to make the runoff, will show up again in May and, if so, which candidate they would favor.

    Cornyn’s allies have warned the president that should Paxton be their nominee, the party would have to spend $200 million to get him over the finish line — a haul that would take away from other competitive Senate races Republicans are defending in Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio. Paxton historically has not been a strong fundraiser, and Democrats have nominated Talarico, whom they see as a stronger candidate than Crockett in the general election and who may take more resources to beat.

    Cornyn has Trump-connected allies on his side as they make this pitch, including Trump’s former campaign manager Chris LaCivita, who is running his super PAC, and Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio.

    Republicans in the state are sounding the alarm about record-breaking primary turnout for Democrats, which they see as a signifier of high enthusiasm going into November. Ross Hunt, a Republican pollster, called the turnout “a code red alert for Texas Republicans” in an analysis he published earlier this week. He predicted Democrats have added more than 480,000 voters to their turnout in the fall.

    “Republicans will need to do everything right this fall: we will need to select the best nominees for the General Election, maximize GOP turnout, practice intense message discipline, and have a clear-eyed and dispassionate understanding of where the new front line of defense stands after March 3rd,” he wrote.

  • South Africa’s anti-apartheid veteran and ex-defense minister Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota dies at 77

    South Africa’s anti-apartheid veteran and ex-defense minister Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota dies at 77

    JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, 77, a South African anti-apartheid veteran and former defense minister, has died after a long illness, his political party said Wednesday.

    Mr. Lekota was a prominent activist against white minority rule in South Africa and served eight years in prison on Robben Island alongside other jailed anti-apartheid figures, including Nelson Mandela, from 1974 to 1982.

    Mr. Lekota was a fiery member of various political youth organizations during apartheid and was jailed even after he was released from Robben Island for his continued anti-apartheid activism.

    He served as South Africa’s minister of defense from 1999 to 2008 and was also the national chairperson of the African National Congress, which governed the country after the first democratic election in 1994.

    However, Mr. Lekota’s relationship with the ANC soured after former President Thabo Mbeki was removed as the country’s president in 2008, having lost the presidency of the ANC to former President Jacob Zuma in 2007.

    Mr. Lekota formed a breakaway party, the Congress of the People (COPE), which contested the 2009 elections. It became the third-biggest opposition party, with just over 7% of the national vote and 30 seats in South Africa’s 400-member parliament.

    The breakaway led to a significant decline in the ANC’s electoral support in 2009, with many former ANC members and leaders leaving the party to join Mr. Lekota’s new political outfit.

    In 2024, the ANC lost its outright majority for the first time and is now the biggest party in a coalition government.

    In addition to his accolades as a political activist, Mr. Lekota was well respected as a long-serving lawmaker and political leader who strengthened the voice of opposition parties.

    However, factional struggles within COPE led to its gradual decline and its failure to win any parliamentary seats during the 2024 general elections, ending Mr. Lekota’s career as a lawmaker.

    In 2025 he stepped away from politics for health reasons, with his party appointing an acting leader after his departure.

    Tributes poured in from across South Africa’s political landscape.

    “He decided to leave the ANC and formed COPE with other South Africans; by doing so he literally strengthened the opposition parties,” said Bantu Holomisa, South Africa’s deputy minister of defense and leader of the opposition United Democratic Movement party.

    “His role was not doubted, because he and others from the ANC did understand the passage of the struggle. And they knew very well what was the original agenda, which seemed to have been hijacked,” Holomisa said.

  • Major historical documents start journey across U.S. as part of nation’s 250th anniversary celebration

    Major historical documents start journey across U.S. as part of nation’s 250th anniversary celebration

    Some of the United States’ most important historical documents are embarking on a first-of-its kind journey as part of the country’s 250th anniversary commemoration.

    Typically housed in highly controlled vaults under the watch of preservation experts at the National Archives, documents such as the 1783 Treaty of Paris that formally ended the Revolutionary War and the 1774 Articles of Association that urged colonists to boycott British goods are rarely moved.

    But those documents, signed by George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and other American revolutionary leaders, will be making their way across the country and put on display for free at local museums.

    “It’s tangible history, and tangible history inspires,” said Jim Byron, senior adviser to the acting archivist of the United States. “These documents have not traveled, and they’ve certainly not traveled collectively, ever. They are here in vaults.”

    The Boeing 737 “Freedom Plane” transporting the documents is just one of many events and activities planned across the country to mark America’s forthcoming 250th anniversary celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia. A congressionally chartered commission, America 250, and a separate White House-led initiative, called Freedom 250, are both coordinating events, an overlap that has faced some criticism in Washington.

    Among the planned activities are a fleet of mobile museums driving across the country, a story collection initiative, and a Great American State Fair on the National Mall in Washington. President Donald Trump has even announced plans for a “Patriot Games” sporting event featuring high school athletes and a UFC mixed-martial arts fight at the White House.

    The “Freedom Plane” departed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Monday en route to its first stop in Kansas City, Mo., where the documents are being transferred to the National WWI Museum and Memorial. The records include a rare original engraving of the Declaration of Independence printed in 1823 from a copperplate of the original; the Oaths of Allegiance, signed in 1778 by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and other officers of the Continental Army; and a rare draft copy of the U.S. Constitution that includes handwritten notes by the delegates.

    Other planned stops will be in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Miami, the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, and Seattle.

    “The reality that these documents are leaving D.C. and coming to the heartland is fantastic,” said Matt Naylor, president and CEO of the National World War I Museum and Memorial, where they will be on display for a little over two weeks starting Friday. “There’s a lot of excitement about that and a lot of talk in and around the city about what that means.”

    Naylor said the early response has been overwhelming. Local schools have already booked visits for more than 5,000 schoolchildren.

    “That’s indicating that there’s a lot of enthusiasm for this,” he said.

    The “Freedom Plane” tour was inspired in part by the “American Freedom Train” that toured 48 states in 1975 and 1976 as part of the country’s Bicentennial celebration. It carried various pieces of American history, including the original Louisiana Purchase documents, Judy Garland’s dress from The Wizard of Oz, and Jesse Owens’ gold medals from the 1936 Olympic Games.

  • Rep. Gonzales faces ethics investigation over allegations of affair with aide

    Rep. Gonzales faces ethics investigation over allegations of affair with aide

    The House Ethics Committee will investigate allegations that Rep. Tony Gonzales (R., Texas) had an affair with a former staff member who later died after setting herself on fire, the committee said Wednesday, ensuring that the scandal that has dogged Gonzales through his bitter primary race will continue to factor heavily as he heads into a runoff.

    An investigative subcommittee will look into allegations Gonzales “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges,” Rep. Michael Guest (R., Miss.), chair of the Ethics Committee, wrote in a letter Wednesday.

    Under House rules, lawmakers are not permitted to engage in sexual relationships with staff.

    Gonzales, a married father of six, has been accused of having an improper relationship with a then-aide, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, who died in September after lighting herself on fire in her backyard. Her death was ruled a suicide.

    Since then, the former aide’s estranged husband has shared text messages that showed Gonzales pressing Santos-Aviles for a “sexy pic” and asking her about her favorite sex position. Santos-Aviles pushed back against the lawmaker, writing, “This is going too far boss,” at one point in the May 2024 conversation.

    Gonzales recently declined to say whether the messages are authentic.

    Gonzales has denied any wrongdoing or improper relationship with Santos-Aviles, and he adamantly refused calls to resign from Congress or to end his reelection bid — several of which came from his Republican colleagues.

    Representatives for Gonzales’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), who is holding onto a razor-thin majority in the House, has called the accusations against Gonzales “very serious” but not called on Gonzales to step aside, saying the issue would “play out” in his reelection bid.

    Gonzales on Tuesday fell short of the majority vote required to avoid a runoff. Now he will face off against the other top finisher in the GOP primary, Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber with a gun business who calls himself “the AK Guy.” Herrera maintained a narrow lead Wednesday morning with most of the votes counted.

    The Office of Congressional Conduct, a nonpartisan office governed by a board of private citizens, had begun looking into allegations against Gonzales in November, according to the San Antonio Express-News, and it was required to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee by Wednesday for either further review or dismissal.

    Under House rules, the Ethics Committee has up to 90 days to release the OCC’s report — unless it creates an investigative subcommittee, as it has this time, in which case it still must release the OCC’s findings within a year. Members of the investigative subcommittee have not been selected yet, Guest said Wednesday, suggesting findings of the investigation will not be made public very soon. There is no timeline for Ethics Committee investigations, which can take months.

    Rep. Nancy Mace (R., S.C.), one of the GOP lawmakers who has called on Gonzales to resign, introduced a resolution last week that would compel the Ethics Committee to release, within 60 days of adoption, all reports related to sexual harassment violations involving lawmakers, their staff members, or lobbyists.

    “I mean, literally, [Santos-Aviles] killed herself in the most heinous way,” Mace told Fox News on Tuesday, referring to the Gonzales allegations that she said had motivated her to introduce the bill. “She literally lit herself on fire and died, and we’re just going to sit here and say, ‘Let the process play out’? No.”

    Voters do not always punish scandals, and this was apparent Tuesday night in other Texas primary races. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) handily defeated a primary challenger, despite being charged in 2024 with bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy and being pardoned by President Donald Trump last year.

    Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton, who faced a lengthy impeachment trial and a very public divorce in which his wife accused him of adultery, nevertheless will head into a runoff against Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) for his seat after neither captured a majority of the vote Tuesday.

  • Top defense officials push back on concerns about U.S. munitions shortage

    Top defense officials push back on concerns about U.S. munitions shortage

    The Pentagon is rapidly burning through its stocks of precision weapons less than a week into the massive campaign of airstrikes against Iran, while also expending sophisticated air defense missiles at a rate that puts the U.S. military potentially “days away” from having to prioritize which targets to intercept, according to three people familiar with the matter.

    The scope of “Operation Epic Fury,” which U.S. Central Command’s Adm. Brad Cooper says has hit more than 2,000 targets so far, is forcing U.S. military commanders to make difficult calculations about how quickly their Iranian adversaries will burn through their own munitions — even as President Donald Trump says the war may last four to five weeks.

    Top Pentagon leaders dedicated considerable time at a news briefing Wednesday morning to addressing worries the military is reaching too deeply into its inventory at the cost of readiness. “We have sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand, both on the offense and defense,” said Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, without offering specifics or numbers.

    The United States will rely on its larger stores of less-sophisticated weapons as Iranian defenses are degraded in the coming days, allowing American forces to get closer for their attacks, he said.

    “The hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Monday before a classified briefing with select lawmakers.

    In retaliation, Iran has launched thousands of one-way attack drones and hundreds of missiles at an array of U.S. military installations and civilian targets across the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates. At least six U.S. troops were killed in a drone attack in Kuwait, and U.S. Embassies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait City have come under Iranian fire.

    So far, the U.S. military has expended hundreds of its most sophisticated munitions, including Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors — considered the world’s premier missile defense systems — and Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at Iranian leaders and ballistic missile sites, four people familiar with Pentagon assessments said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the highly sensitive numbers.

    Late Monday night, Trump posted on social media that the U.S. inventories of “medium and upper medium grade” munitions are “virtually unlimited” and could sustain the pace of attacks in Iran indefinitely. He also wrote that weapons at “the highest end” are in “good supply, but are not where we want to be.”

    A spokesperson with U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, referred questions to the Pentagon.

    A Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a statement Tuesday that the military “has everything it needs to execute any mission at any time and place of the President’s choosing and on any timeline.” Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Parnell added, “have made restoring American military dominance their top priority from day one, and American dominance has been proved again and again following every major military operation under this administration.”

    Behnam Ben Taleblu, who tracks Tehran’s weapons programs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank, said Iran had more than 2,000 ballistic missiles before the conflict began and “many more-fold” drones.

    “It is very apparent it has learned lessons from the 12-day war” in June and is trying to use its weaponry more efficiently, Taleblu said.

    Iran, he said, is targeting the United States’ Persian Gulf allies with low-cost drones to terrorize and exhaust limited air defenses, while focusing its ballistic missile attacks on Israel.

    “Iran is firing smaller volleys of missiles, signaling an interest in preserving their stocks while still testing and attriting Israel’s air and missile defenses,” Taleblu said. “The goal over time is to make Israel focus its dwindling interceptor stocks on defending smaller patches of terrain.”

    “Iran is conscious of missile math, perhaps more so than ever before,” he said.

    For the U.S., the trends underscore the urgency of an “effective defanging operation” that aggressively destroys Iran’s missile caches and infrastructure, he added.

    The rate at which the U.S. military is expending its most sophisticated munitions has slowed since the first day of the conflict, in which Iran fired many of its highest-end weapons, a U.S. official said, noting that the pace has not fallen “dramatically.”

    In the days since, the U.S. and Israel have established air superiority, allowing fighter jets to soon fly closer to targets and use less expensive munitions such as precision-guided glide bombs, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe ongoing operations.

    Hegseth said Wednesday that the Pentagon would increasingly rely on massive GPS-guided gravity bombs, “of which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile,” and that the military would “no longer need” to dip into its inventory of more sophisticated weapons.

    “Iran cannot outlast us,” Hegseth said.

    U.S. munitions stocks have been depleted by years of trade-offs in the defense budget, aid to countries such as Ukraine, and more recently the Trump administration’s vast use of the military to carry out its foreign policy. After little more than a year in office, Trump has launched attacks in seven countries — Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen — and fired dozens of missiles in more than 40 strikes on alleged drug traffickers at sea around Latin America.

    “When you combine the amount of munitions that we have spent over the last year attacking the Houthis, the amount of munitions that are spent on … the seven different military conflicts the president has put America into, our munitions are low,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said after attending the briefing with Rubio and other top Trump officials Monday.

    The Washington Post previously reported that Caine warned Trump ahead of the operation that an extended campaign posed acute risks for the U.S. military, including a drain on its limited stores of precision weapons, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions.

    Following classified briefings before each chamber of Congress on Tuesday, Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.) said he asked Caine about the number of munitions the U.S. has depleted compared with Iran. The general, Kim said, did not provide specifics but was not “raising alarms himself” while speaking with lawmakers.

    Still, the scarcity could intensify a long-term problem for America’s ability to deter a conflict with China, particularly around the self-governing island of Taiwan, where Beijing has hosted increasingly complex and aggressive military drills in recent years.

    Two of the people familiar with the U.S. inventories said that an extended conflict in the Middle East could require drawing down munitions stocks in the Indo-Pacific region. A separate U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive state of munitions, said that inventories were so thin that a lengthy campaign against Iran would not leave enough munitions for other threats, especially China.

    The first U.S. official said that senior U.S. military leaders around the world are making decisions now about where to reallocate munitions, based on assessments of how far they can dip into stockpiles.

    Warner and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said that the operation will almost certainly require Congress to pass supplemental money for the Defense Department to replace stocks spent during the attack, though the specific dollar figure would depend on the length of the ongoing campaign in Iran.

    Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, has asked the administration to provide the cost of munitions expended in the war, and said he expects the supplemental funding request to be “in the billions” of dollars.

  • Bettors wagered $54 million on Khamenei’s death. Now they’re not getting paid.

    Bettors wagered $54 million on Khamenei’s death. Now they’re not getting paid.

    When he learned last weekend about the killing of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Israeli American business executive in New York was excited to cash in.

    On the prediction-market site Kalshi, the executive — who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concern over what his friends would think — had placed two bets, totaling $3,460, that Khamenei would be “out as Supreme Leader” by March or April 1. His Kalshi app placed green check marks next to his bets, indicating he had won payouts worth more than $63,000.

    Minutes later, however, Kalshi froze the $54 million trade for everyone who bet on that scenario, saying the site does not allow transactions “directly tied to death.” The change triggered an online uproar, as Kalshi users flooded social media to argue the site had unfairly robbed them of winning bets.

    “I was booking my trip to Courchevel,” the French Alps ski resort, he said jokingly to the Washington Post. “Then they changed the rules … and everybody got screwed.”

    The outrage has intensified scrutiny into the explosive rise of prediction markets, which run like traditional sportsbooks but allow people to gamble on elections, international affairs, and real-world events.

    Supporters of Kalshi and its biggest competitor, Polymarket, have defended the sites as game-like platforms for following and perhaps profiting off the news. But critics like Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) have said they are creating a more “dystopian world” by helping people gamble on life-and-death crises and military assaults in a way that could incentivize political violence.

    “This is American commercial immorality on steroids,” Murphy said in an interview. “Once events that involve good and evil simply become a financial product, I don’t know how right and wrong matters any longer. … People shouldn’t be rooting for people to die because they placed a bet.”

    Kalshi heavily promoted the trade to bettors on its home page and app and in push notifications before Khamenei’s death was publicized. Kalshi also tweeted the morning of the strike that the odds “Khamenei is out as Supreme Leader have surged to 68%,” along with a disclaimer that Kalshi did not broker trades that “settle on death.” In a follow-up, the company said the post was “grammatically ambiguous” and offered to reimburse traders’ lost value.

    Murphy said in an interview he is drafting legislation that would broadly ban prediction-market trades related to government actions, saying they could corrupt public decision-making by allowing military or government officials to profit off secret information.

    Polymarket said in August that the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., had joined its advisory board, and a handful of recent bets on the administration’s moves have sparked public accusations of insider trading.

    The analytics firm Bubblemaps said it found six “suspected insiders” on Polymarket that had made $1.2 million by betting that the U.S. would hit Iran by Feb. 28, the date that Operation Epic Fury began. All of the accounts were made last month and bet exclusively on Iran-strike timing; some of the bets were made within hours of the first explosions in Tehran. One account bet $60,000 and won $560,000.

    Murphy said in an online post that the trades indicated “people around Trump are profiting off war and death.” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, said on Monday that “the only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”

    Polymarket did not respond to questions about whether it knew or would help investigate whether the account holders had internal knowledge of the military campaign. Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment.

    A similar debate played out in January when an anonymous Polymarket trader won roughly $400,000 after successfully predicting, within a few hours, the timing of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s capture. The Defense Department said then that it prohibited personnel from using classified information for personal gain.

    In the case of Khamenei, Kalshi has argued that the trade, known as an “event contract,” was not specifically a bet on his demise. The company’s chief executive, Tarek Mansour, said on X that long-standing rules ban people “from profiting from death” but that he believed the trade was still “important because leadership changes in Iran have major impact on the world order,” including on oil prices and geopolitical relations.

    “It’s always possible for a ruler to step down or transition power without death, even in autocracies. It just happened in Venezuela,” Mansour said.

    Furious Kalshi bettors have since flooded social media to argue that the site’s rules were muddled and that they believed they would be paid out upon his death. In one video, the cryptocurrency-content creator Gabriel Haines mocked Kalshi by saying, “We meant a peaceful transition or riding off on a unicorn to kiss [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu on a cheek.”

    Some users have vowed to close their Kalshi accounts and take their money elsewhere, with one posting, “You owe me $2,500+ & you owe many innocent, casual traders millions more.”

    Amanda Fischer, a former chief of staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission who now works as a policy director at the financial advocacy group Better Markets, said the trade offered a “really good mini-model of just how problematic this business is.”

    “How is an 86-year-old theocratic leader supposed to lose his power other than through death?” Fischer said. “All of the Kalshi users who placed bets on this believed they were voting on a death market, and many are very angry at how Kalshi broke the trades.”

    Lawmakers have worried that allowing death-related trades could offer fatal incentives; an assassin, for instance, could plan and then profit off the date of a victim’s death. “There’s a reason we don’t let people take fire insurance policies out on [other people’s homes] — because it would incent arson,” Fischer said.

    The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, bans any bets that involve or reference terrorism, assassination, or war, and six Democratic senators sent a letter last month voicing concern about any bet that “resolves upon or closely correlates to an individual’s death.”

    Dustin Gouker, a gaming-industry consultant and the publisher of Event Horizon, a newsletter about prediction markets, said Kalshi could have a financial incentive to keep the rules vague. It could have specified that the bet would pay out only in the case of a peaceful regime change, but that might have reduced bettors’ interest — and the ensuing fees Kalshi earns from every transaction.

    “They could have easily made the title ‘by way other than death,’ but that’s obviously not as exciting to trade, and that’s why they didn’t do it,” Gouker said.

    Kalshi has sought to quiet the firestorm by reimbursing any bets, fees, or losses from the trade, which Mansour said led the company to incur “a substantial loss to make users whole.” A person familiar with Kalshi discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail internal deliberations, said the payments have cost the company roughly $2.2 million.

    Mansour said that the company did not change the trade rules after the incident but that a disclaimer on the listing noting the company’s “death carveout” exception has been overly confusing and will be revised for future bets. Some bettors have pointed out that, after former President Jimmy Carter died, the company paid users who had bet that Carter would not attend President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

    For some in the industry, the episode has triggered a moment of self-reflection. Aaron Courtney, the cofounder of market-tracking firm Kalshinomics, said in an online essay that war-related trades are “simultaneously one of the most important and most uncomfortable things prediction markets have produced” and have raised big questions. “Is it morally acceptable to profit from correctly predicting that bombs will fall on people?” he asked.

    Polymarket, however, has trumpeted its war-related bets, saying in a note that prediction markets’ ability to create forecasts for world affairs is “particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today” and can give people “the answers they needed in ways TV news and X could not.”

    While Kalshi is regulated in the United States, Polymarket operates under different trade rules overseas, and its users have bet more than $500 million on trades related to the timing of American strikes against Iran, according to platform data. Unlike Kalshi, Polymarket has not frozen trades for bettors wagering that Khamenei would be “out as Supreme Leader” by the end of this month; its trading volume now stands at more than $61 million.

    On the first morning of the assault, Polymarket posted a meme image of a man with five screens laying out bets about Khamenei’s ouster and the caption, “Can’t right now babe, I’m monitoring the situation.”

    But Polymarket now faces its own questions around potential insider trading. Murphy said in an interview on Monday that he was horrified by the “corrupt and immoral” trades, adding, “It doesn’t smell right to people that these markets are rigged and people inside know the answers … making thousands off whether we send their kids to war.”

    Emily Austin, a conservative influencer and sports podcaster who has promoted Polymarket online, said she had friends and siblings who were upset about lost winnings on Kalshi’s Khamenei bet. Despite the scandal, however, she said her love of prediction-market betting remains as strong as ever. She said she sees the bets as a “social community” and a way to keep in touch with friends.

    “I’ve been a huge sports bettor since I was allowed to legally bet, but I never thought you’d be able to bet on world leaders being out,” she said. “And if I’m being totally honest, I find it so fun.”