Actress Margaret Cho said she turned down a role in the popular gay hockey drama “Heated Rivalry” because it was filming in Canada and she was afraid of being “detained at the border.” The 57-year-old comedian and outspoken Trump critic made the comments during a recent appearance on the “I Never Liked You” podcast. “Last year, I got a pilot script for a show that I really loved, but it shot in Canada. I was, like, so scared because I’m so vocal about hating ICE and hating this administration,” she said. “I was like, I will get detained at the border and I will be put in ICE detention if I go. And I was like struggling over it, and I had to talk to all these people about it, and I was super upset, and I said no. And it was ‘Heated Rivalry.’” “Like, it kills me,” Cho added. “And it’s all because of Trump.” She further stated that she asked showrunners about being involved in season two, which is currently in development. “I asked them, we’ll see,” Cho said. The stand-up comedian made headlines in 2023 for advocating for trans characters in Disney projects. Cho said as much after playing an LGBTQ guidance counselor in the made-for-TV Disney+ movie, “Prom Pact.” “I would love to see them everywhere,” Cho said of “queer characters” in kids’ films. “I would love to see trans characters and different types of people in roles of, like, Disney princess, Disney prince, and Disney everything.” “I think this would be really important and it’s a move towards the future,” she added. “It’s a move towards who we are. I think it’s really admirable and really exciting.” “Heated Rivalry,” which became a breakout hit in 2025, follows two closeted hockey players who engage in a romantic relationship. It’s been criticized for featuring graphic sexual content. Despite that, it has been especially popular with heterosexual women. Former first lady Jill Biden was fully prepared to shell out $35,000 for a chance to appear in an upcoming season of the show after bidding on the prize during an LGBT charity auction last month.

Divers in Mobile, Alabama, stumbled upon an improvised explosive device earlier this week that had been placed underwater at a dam in what authorities are calling an “unprecedented threat” to the city’s drinking water. A diving team that was surveying the J.B. Converse Reservoir dam for routine maintenance on Tuesday found a grenade-like IED, according to Mobile’s Fox 10 News. The divers immediately notified authorities, sparking a multi-agency response that included the FBI Bomb Squad. The IED was safely removed from the reservoir and detonated. The reservoir, which holds around 17 billion gallons of water, is federally designated as critical infrastructure. “This is an unprecedented threat, and we are fortunate that this device was discovered before it could cause serious damage to our water supply or harm to individuals,” said Bud McCrory, the director of the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System. “We are grateful for the professionalism and competency of our law enforcement partners — as well as the quick thinking of our contractors and divers — in identifying this device and safely destroying it.” “Our top priority is keeping your drinking water safe,” McCrory added. The response also included officers from the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office, Mobile Police Department Explosive Ordinance Detail, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Bomb Squad, and the Daphne, Alabama, Search and Rescue Team. Local officials notified the Department of Homeland Security after the explosive was discovered. Authorities have not identified a suspect as of Thursday morning. The Mobile Area Water and Sewer System said it plans to increase security around the dam following the troubling find. The reservoir, built in 1952, is protected from surrounding developments by 9,000 acres of land.

New York City operates the nation’s most expensive public schools, and they are empty. The city’s proposed Department of Education budget is $38 billion, an 8% increase from last year. At the same time, enrollment continues to decline. Last year alone, New York City lost 3,500 pre-K and kindergarten students. This is not an anomaly. The School Construction Authority projects that enrollment will decrease by another 153,000 students over the next decade. This decline is mostly due to demographic changes — since 2000, the number of children born in the city has decreased by more than 20%. But also, New York families are increasingly choosing charter schools and homeschooling. Currently, 380 schools — nearly 25% of all city schools — already operate below 60% capacity. Maintaining a sprawling system of underenrolled schools is fiscally irresponsible and educationally unsustainable. Even left-leaning publications such as the Atlantic have acknowledged the growing crisis facing NYC school districts with shrinking student populations. New York City’s political leaders can no longer avoid reality. The mayor and chancellor should create a strategic plan to merge and close underenrolled schools, ensuring a better allocation of the education budget and improving academic outcomes. My new report for the Manhattan Institute, “What to do about NYC’s empty schools,” analyzes the city’s enrollment declines and offers recommendations for rightsizing the district, particularly by addressing underperforming and underenrolled schools. The underenrollment problem is getting worse. Last year, 112 city schools had fewer than 150 students; this year, that number has risen to 134. One school currently employs 21 staff members for just 28 students. Charter schools, by contrast, face much stronger accountability pressures. Because they are funded on a per-pupil basis, shrinking enrollment forces them to adapt or close. Nationwide, charter schools represent only 7.5% of total student enrollment but accounted for nearly 12% of all school closures in 2021. District schools face no comparable pressure. The NYC DOE continues to fund underenrolled schools as though they were operating at full capacity, costing taxpayers nearly $388 million annually. Unfortunately, city leadership has repeatedly shown an unwillingness to address this problem. Last March, New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels canceled a plan to close Community Action School after a parent made a racist comment on a Zoom meeting. The school remained open so students and their families could “process and recover from” the scandal. The comment was despicable, but it should not have prevented closing a failing school. Community Action School went from 229 students in 2020 to 141 in 2024. Its students’ academic performance is below the district’s average. More recently, Chancellor Samuels pulled back a plan to close and relocate three schools. One proposed for closure lost 240 students over five years and had only 54% of its eighth graders reading at grade level. This decision to throw good money at failing schools lowers educational standards across the board. By keeping bad schools afloat, we leave less money on the table for successful schools to open and expand. New York City students desperately need high-quality education. Despite record spending, only about half of New York students are proficient in reading (53%) and math (57%), according to the results of 2024–25 New York State assessments The decision to close and merge schools is a serious one and should be carefully considered. It creates disruption for students and staff — and it can have a small negative impact on students’ outcomes. But refusing to act is even more damaging for students and taxpayers alike. The Mamdani administration will inevitably have to address this reality, given the continuous decline in student enrollment and the budget gaps the city faces. The city cannot continue operating a school system designed for a much larger student population that no longer exists. Other major cities — including Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, and Cleveland — are already dealing with this problem and have approved plans to close schools. It is time for New York City to follow suit. Every year the city delays action, it wastes hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars maintaining half-empty buildings instead of directing resources toward effective classrooms and student achievement. Students deserve a school system focused on quality, accountability, and academic success — not one committed to preserving empty seats and bureaucratic inertia. *** Danyela Souza Egorov is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is escalating his rhetoric as Democrats reel from a series of redistricting setbacks, accusing the Supreme Court of unleashing the “ghosts of the Confederacy” after recent rulings weakened Democrats’ efforts to preserve race-based congressional maps. Speaking on Wednesday, Jeffries painted the high court’s decision as an existential threat to black political power, claiming, “The ghosts of the Confederacy has [sic] afflicted the United States Supreme Court majority and is [sic] invading and haunting the nation right now.” The dramatic language comes as Democrats face a political reality they did not expect: years of legal and political maneuvers designed to secure favorable maps are beginning to unravel, threatening the party’s hopes of reclaiming the House before 2028. Jeffries’ remarks followed the Supreme Court’s decision reinterpreting the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing states to redraw districts without preserving certain majority-minority seats that had become a cornerstone of Democratic electoral strategy in the South. The ruling, combined with the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a Democrat-backed map referendum, dealt a major blow to the party’s redistricting plans. Rather than moderating his tone, Jeffries appeared to signal a broader Democratic retaliation campaign. In the same remarks, he vowed a “decisive and overwhelming response” before the 2028 election, saying Democrats would ensure voters, not Republicans, decide control of Congress and the White House. That message lines up with reporting from POLITICO, which noted House Democrats are abandoning years of “good government” rhetoric about independent commissions and nonpartisan map-drawing in favor of openly discussing aggressive partisan redistricting in blue states. Democratic lawmakers are now considering new map fights in states including New York, Maryland, Colorado, and Washington. Jeffries has framed the court’s decisions as a return to “Jim Crow,” but Republicans argue the rulings simply ended an unconstitutional system that prioritized race in congressional district design. The court’s reinterpretation of the VRA undercuts decades of legal precedent that effectively mandated racial sorting in elections under the guise of civil-rights enforcement. The increasingly apocalyptic language from Jeffries suggests Democrats understand the stakes. With Republicans positioned to gain several House seats through redistricting changes in states like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee, the party’s path back to the majority has narrowed significantly. If Democrats were confident that favorable political winds alone would carry them to victory, Jeffries likely would not be invoking Confederate ghosts and promising to “crush” political opponents’ “souls.” Instead, his comments reflect a party increasingly alarmed that the redistricting war may be slipping out of its hands — and willing to abandon its prior anti-gerrymandering rhetoric to fight back.

Governor Gavin Newsom’s $189 million initiative to modernize California’s correctional system has come under fire following a bombshell investigation revealing that taxpayer-funded digital tablets are being used by death row inmates to access pornography and groom minors. While the Newsom administration heralded the distribution of free tablets to every inmate in the state as a step toward “digital equity” and “rehabilitation,” serial killers and rapists inside the system say the devices have effectively become personal sex machines, City-Journal reported. The program, designed to provide “justice-impacted” individuals with access to educational content and family contact, has reportedly been hijacked by the state’s most dangerous offenders. In interviews with dozens of death row inmates, a disturbing pattern of lurid behavior has emerged, ranging from the exchange of lewd photos to live pornographic video chats. Newsom’s office denied the claims, saying, “This is flat-out FALSE. This MAGA nonprofit provides ZERO evidence for its outrageous claims. Their ‘sources’? Convicted murderers and a random guy who doesn’t even live in California.” The governors office claimed that “prison tablets DO NOT provide open internet access,” adding that the devices “are monitored, recorded, searchable, and investigated.” Among those utilizing the technology is Robert Maury, the notorious “Tipster Killer” convicted of raping and strangling multiple women. Maury admitted in an interview that he has used his device to “flirt” and receive topless photos from women on the outside. He also detailed a common loophole where inmates use the video chat feature to have someone on the outside broadcast pornography onto a television, which the inmate then watches through the tablet’s camera. “If you try hard enough, there is always a way around the system,” Maury said, noting that younger inmates who grew up with the internet are particularly adept at evading the state’s “bullsh*t” restrictions. The abuse isn’t limited to viewing. Samuel Amador, another condemned serial killer, admitted to rotating between watching pornographic clips and family videos on his state-issued device. Even more alarming, Jamar Tucker — convicted of a triple homicide — revealed he uses the tablets to receive videos of women in thongs for sexual pleasure. The most harrowing consequence of the program involves Nathaniel Ray Diaz, a convicted child predator. Prosecutors allege Diaz used his prison-issued tablet to contact and exploit a 12-year-old girl, allegedly forcing her to send explicit images and engaging in “thousands of calls” from inside Avenal State Prison. Douglas Eckenrod, a former high-ranking California corrections official, warned that the Diaz case is just the “tip of the iceberg.” He expressed grave concerns that the lack of oversight on the 90,000 devices currently in circulation has created a “pathway” for predators to groom children. “I would bet my pension that there’s a vast amount of childhood pornography on the tablets,” Eckenrod said. The former high-ranking corrections official stated, “I would bet my pension that there’s a vast amount of childhood pornography on the tablets. There are probably several thousand [children] that are currently being groomed.” Despite the mounting evidence of sexual misconduct and child exploitation, the Newsom administration is moving “full-speed ahead.” The current contract allows for extensions that could see taxpayer spending on the devices reach $315 million. While the Department of Corrections maintains the tablets are “tightly controlled,” the men on death row say the reality is a click away.