President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has come for a former Chicago-area teacher accused of helping Tren de Aragua gang members orchestrate a mass shooting. Venezuelan illegal immigrant Giovanna Mercedes Moreno Occhipinti, 32, allegedly drove two shooters who opened fire during a December 2024 house party in Chicago and helped them evade law enforcement, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Three people were killed in the shooting and several others were wounded. Bye bye

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham isn’t backing down from the sports media outrage machine after she sparked leftist outrage over her comments on keeping men out of women’s sports. The WNBA standout took to Instagram on Thursday, posting a photo accompanied by a saluting emoji and a simple, unapologetic message: “I said what I said.”   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Sophie Cunningham (@sophie_cham) The post served as the latest punctuation mark in a week of culture-war outrage sparked by Cunningham’s blunt stance on biological men competing in female athletics. In a recent ESPN feature, the basketball star stirred the pot by arguing that biological males simply do not belong in women’s locker rooms or sports categories, framing the debate around basic fairness and safety for young female athletes. “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” Cunningham said. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” Cunningham’s comment triggered an avalanche of online outrage, with critics slapping her with political labels and accusing her of hostility toward transgenders. That prompted Cunningham to double down during a fiery four-minute press grilling prior to Wednesday’s victory over the Connecticut Sun. “I think I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense,” Cunningham told reporters, brushing off the critics. She emphasized that her stance stems from personal ethics and a desire to preserve Title IX protections rather than political posturing. Pointing out that advocating for female spaces isn’t the same as harboring hate, she clarified that she wants to extend love to everyone while standing firm on the truth. “I’ll always believe in that. It’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category. … I’m not a very political person, but I do have beliefs. I have morals, and I’ll always stand on those. … If I’m gonna live by the love, I’ll die by the hate, and that’s just not who I am. I beat to my own drum.” The controversy has catapulted into the national spotlight. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt jumped to Cunningham’s defense on Thursday, telling Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan, “It’s even more ludicrous that you do have Sophie Cunningham, a female athlete herself, very accomplished in her own right, coming forth and speaking that truth that men shouldn’t play in women’s sports. … The backlash she is receiving from Democrats and left-wing figures across the country is astonishing. They are clearly very out of touch with the American public on this issue, which again, is an 80/20 issue. It’s common sense.” Cunningham remains unfazed, making one thing crystal clear: she isn’t letting the media circus throw her off her game.

Take your family to the National Museum of American History during the nation’s 250th anniversary year and consider what they won’t find. There is no major exhibit telling a coherent story about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, or the American Revolution. But in a recent “Girlhood: It’s Complicated” exhibit, your children could read pages from the diary of a six-year-old girl who “pray[ed] to God every night for my penis to grow.” They can also learn about a bisexual blues singer, a lesbian actress, a sexually liberated film star, an LGBTQ icon, a lesbian TV star, a gay major league baseball player, and a queer women’s soccer player.  Other museum exhibitions — some physical and some online — have featured video of drag performers, magazine images of nude or partially nude women, and a chrome-and-rubber harness designed for sadomasochistic sex. In the “Entertainment Nation” exhibit, your family will learn that P.T. Barnum’s circus symbols were about “maintaining white supremacy,” that ukuleles are “a product of U.S. imperialism,” that Wild West Shows were about “the subjugation of Indigenous people,” and that Mickey Mouse represents “vestiges of longstanding traditions of blackface minstrelsy.” Don’t get me wrong. This Smithsonian museum still contains some of the most iconic artifacts of American history — the desk on which Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, Washington’s uniform as commander in chief of the Continental Army, and the great American flag that inspired the national anthem. But let’s face it: the National Museum of American History is no longer the nation’s museum of American history. On Tuesday I testified before a House subcommittee about a new White House report, “Saving America’s Story,” which documents this overhaul in more than 160 pages and 522 footnotes. As always, the devil is in the details. But the details are evidence of a larger transgression. The real crime here, premeditated and followed through, is that America’s story — the well-established narrative of main characters and key events that has long been at the center of American self-understanding — has been reframed, jettisoned, decentered, deconstructed and “problematized” until it no longer exists in recognizable form. This wasn’t the museum Congress authorized. Smithsonian leaders argued in 1953 that the museum should provide “a stimulating permanent exposition that commemorates our heritage of freedom.” At its opening, the museum’s director said it was intended to “awaken in citizen and foreigner alike a clear understanding of the inspiring story of the United States, its origins, struggles, development, traditions, strength.” President Lyndon B. Johnson hoped its great artifacts would “foster patriotism.” The museum’s current leadership has chosen a different purpose. Director Anthea Hartig has said that the museum works “to reframe the traditional celebratory narrative of U.S. history,” that history is for her “a prime tool of social justice,” and that the institution must connect “research and scholarship to activism and advocacy.” This change was written into the museum’s new mission. Its previous mission was to “explore the infinite richness and complexity of American history” to better understand the past. The new mission is: “Empowering people to create a more just and compassionate future by exploring, preserving, and sharing the complexity of our past.” “Infinite richness” is dropped, leaving only “complexity.” “American history” is replaced by “our past.” Understanding gives way to empowerment. History becomes a tool to encourage change. The new exhibits are the fruits of that redesign. “Upending 1620” reframes the Pilgrims chiefly as colonizers, treats Thanksgiving as a “National Day of Mourning,” and displays a banner urging visitors to “Boycott Plymouth.” “The Electric Dr. Franklin” exhibit asks us to speculate, without any evidence, whether Franklin conducted electrical shock experiments on slaves. “American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith” reinterprets the American idea to mean resistance to persistent racial hierarchies and systemic flaws through petition and protest. “Many Voices, One Nation” describes the settlement of America as a “profound unsettling of the continent” and reframes “our past” to be cross-cultural encounters of ethnic, sexual, and racial identity groups seeking restorative justice from an oppressive system. To be clear, these aren’t efforts to add neglected facts to a familiar, consensus history. They dismantle that history. The key figures are set aside. The key events are decontextualized. Chronology disappears. America becomes an assortment of encounters and social actions that empower a new public identity. This isn’t history based on established facts and known reality. Indeed, it isn’t history at all. It is ideology: a systematic framework for interpreting society and instigating a political agenda. The National Museum of American History should tell the American story, warts and all, so that visitors understand how the nation got to where it is today. Nothing integral to that history should be erased or whitewashed. It should tell the history of a nation and a people driven to overcome injustice and live up to their heritage, a story of imperfection but also overwhelming accomplishment, of tragedies but also great triumphs, of hardship but also heroism. Social transformation should not be the objective. Each generation should have a knowledge of America’s founding principles, a reverence for their liberties and a love of their country. A healthy attachment to this country is neither blind to its flaws nor fanatical in believing that America is the source of all good. But a national museum focused on claims of systemic oppression teaches national self-loathing. And without the civic foundation supplied by the reflective patriotism of a self-governing people, our republic will perish. The great artifacts are still at the National Museum of American History. What is missing is the great story that makes them intelligible, and that makes our country worthy of our affection. Congress and the Smithsonian’s Regents should insist that the ideologically captured NMAH be made the national museum of American history again. *** Mr. Spalding is the Kirby Professor in Constitutional Government and dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. campus.

WASHINGTON — The rescheduled White House Correspondents Dinner will take place Friday evening in Washington, D.C., months after an assassin tried to barge into the event and target the president and top conservatives. Friday’s White House Correspondents Dinner will take place at the Waldorf Astoria, formerly Trump Hotel, in downtown D.C. — “a Building and Ballroom that I built,” as the president said in a Truth Social post earlier this summer. “I was asked to be there, and speak, by Weijia Jiang, President of The White House Correspondents’ Association, and have accepted,” Trump added. “I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out.” Friday night’s event, including Trump’s speech, will be streamed live on The Daily Wire. The previous dinner was held at the Washington Hilton, where, on April 25, a shooter named Cole Tomas Allen attempted to charge into the event and open fire on multiple top Trump administration officials, according to federal prosecutors. Karoline Leavitt promised from the briefing room podium on Thursday that Trump “looks forward to finishing what he started” before the assassination attempt, encouraging Americans to “tune in, for what promises to be a very entertaining and memorable evening.” “The president’s speech will be a combination of unifying yet vicious, and serious yet hilarious, all at the same time, if you can imagine that,” Leavitt added on Friday. “One thing I can assure you, it will be entertaining.”   Karoline Leavitt, Melania Trump, Donald Trump, and Weijia Jiang attend The White House Correspondents Dinner at Washington Hilton on April 25, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for OP) The Secret Service told The Daily Wire on Friday that it is committed to ensuring the safety and security of the dinner, sharing that “Secret Service personnel have been in collaboration with the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), hotel security, and law enforcement partners at the federal and local level.” Guests should expect to see a “visible police presence around the Waldorf Astoria hotel,” Anthony Guglielmi, U.S. Secret Service chief of communications, shared on Friday, noting that there will be enhanced traffic closures due to the location of the event. All guests of the dinner will have to go through “airport-style magnetometer screening,” and the roads around the Waldorf will be closed on Friday. “We are confident that our robust security plan will ensure the safety of our protectees and attendees, just as our plan did in April,” Guglielmi said. “Our agency grows and adapts from every event we secure, and we have engaged with WHCA to ensure attendees are given timely information in the unlikely event on an emergency during the event.” This image shows Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect in the shooting incident in Washington at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, while in his hotel room at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, on April 25, 2026. (Photo by U.S. Department of Justice/Getty Images) Weijia Jiang, the outgoing president of the White House Correspondents Association, said Friday night’s dinner will not only be an opportunity to actually hold the dinner, but it will also be “a statement that violence has no place in American life and a free press will not be intimidated into silence.” “As you have all demonstrated, courage and community can and should rise above,” Jiang told the White House press in an emailed statement. Authorities indicted accused assassin Allen on four charges: attempting to assassinate the president, assault on an officer of the United States with a deadly weapon, transporting a firearm, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. He is the fourth known person to attempt to assassinate Trump in the past two years. Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump during his Butler, Pennsylvania rally in July 2024, Ryan Wesley Routh attempted to shoot Trump on September 15, 2024, and Austin Tucker Martin was shot and killed by authorities as he attempted to breach Mar-a-Lago in February 2026. Crooks was also killed by authorities, and Routh is serving a life sentence in prison.

The Treasury Department dropped the hammer Thursday on a sprawling network of terror-supporting hypocrites, slapping heavy sanctions on Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas operators who hide behind fake charities and underground banks to fund violent extremism. The Trump administration isn’t playing games. The Office of Foreign Assets Control exposed a senior U.K.-based Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood official, alongside three money-laundering operatives and three front organizations secretly fueling Hamas’s military wing. “The Trump administration will relentlessly pursue terrorists and those who finance them,” warned Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “Whether operating under the guise of charities, businesses, or underground financial networks, those who enable Hamas will be exposed, sanctioned, and held accountable.” Thursday’s action pulled back the curtain on how these terror networks exploit donors while funneling cash directly into violent ops. Mahmoud al-Abyari, secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood General Secretariat, was exposed for managing ties with Hamas and helping raise cash for previously sanctioned terror-linked groups like Hayat Yolu. Entities like Indonesia’s Tujah Bulah Global (operating under the alias Seven Spikes Global) and the Gaza-based Madad Palestine Charitable Society claimed to gather cash for needy civilians. Instead, the money was secretly diverted straight into the pockets of Hamas fighters. Turkey-based El-Kahira for General Trading, owned by Khuldun Khamis Zakaria Alden and operated with shareholders Zaid and Abdullah Al-Jebouri, moved hundreds of thousands for Hamas. The operation didn’t stop at terror. It also provided underground fiat and crypto banking to violent European organized crime groups like Sweden’s notorious Foxtrot Network. This crackdown marks the latest salvo in an aggressive, ongoing push by the Treasury Department to relentlessly pursue Muslim terrorist entities and dismantle their global cash pipelines. Thursday’s blitz builds directly on Treasury enforcement actions from earlier this year, including the March 12 dragnet, when Treasury targeted four bogus non-profits, including Türkiye-based Ghazi Destek Dernegi and Indonesia’s KNRP, and captured Hamas documents proving that they were secretly funneling cash, supplies, and construction materials exclusively to armed militants in Gaza. On January 21, Feds exposed six Gaza-based front groups posing as medical clinics, including the Waed Society and Al-Nur Society, that were directly integrated into Hamas’s security apparatus. Treasury also sanctioned the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA) and UK organizer Zaher Khaled Hassan Birawi for orchestrating political propaganda and Gaza-bound “flotillas” at the direct behest of terror bosses.