A federal grand jury in Alabama returned an 11-count indictment charging the SPLC with wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The DOJ alleges the nonprofit secretly funneled over $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to individuals tied to the KKK, United Klans of America, and neo-Nazi organizations via shell accounts and prepaid cards — paying one white supremacist informant over $1 million even after declaring his group "irrelevant." Acting AG Todd Blanche called the conduct "egregious" and denied political motivation.
Senate Republicans cleared the first hurdle for a reconciliation package to fund ICE and Border Patrol, passing a budget resolution along party lines with Sens. Murkowski and Paul voting against. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has warned the department will be unable to pay salaries — including 50,000 TSA workers — starting in May, with only one payroll left. The resolution targets up to $70 billion for immigration enforcement agencies while bypassing the 60-vote filibuster.
President Trump will attend the annual WHCA dinner at the Washington Hilton this evening after boycotting the event every year of his presidency until now, accepting the Association's invitation to serve as honoree. Over 200 journalists — including Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson — signed an open letter demanding Trump be confronted over press freedom concerns. The WHCA hired mentalist Oz Pearlman instead of the traditional comedian, and rapper Nicki Minaj is among the high-profile guests.
Sens. Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, and McConnell broke ranks and voted with Democrats to block an effort to add SAVE America Act election integrity provisions to the DHS budget reconciliation package. The vote underscores internal GOP divisions as House and Senate leaders clash over whether to pursue a narrow DHS funding bill or a broader package that includes Trump-backed election security measures. House Speaker Johnson has warned there is no time for a drawn-out reconciliation process.
President Trump extended the U.S.-Iran ceasefire "until such time as" Tehran submits a "unified proposal," hours before the two-week truce was set to expire after Iran refused to attend planned talks in Pakistan. Trump said Iran's government is "seriously fractured" — civilian officials including the Parliament Speaker favored continuing talks, but the IRGC blocked further negotiations while the U.S. naval blockade persists. VP Vance warned Iran will "find out" Trump is "not one to mess around" if a deal falls apart.
Armed groups launched what appears to be a coordinated assault across Mali early Saturday, with sustained heavy weapons and automatic rifle fire reported near Bamako's Modibo Keïta International Airport and gunmen entering the northeastern city of Kidal. Mali's military confirmed "unidentified armed terrorist groups" targeted barracks and locations in the capital and said soldiers are engaged in eliminating attackers. The U.S. Embassy in Bamako issued a shelter-in-place alert for American citizens.
The White House OSTP published a memo accusing Chinese entities of conducting "deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distill U.S. frontier AI systems." OSTP Director Michael Kratsios said Chinese labs — including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax — used roughly 24,000 fraudulent accounts to generate over 16 million exchanges with Anthropic's Claude chatbot in a coordinated distillation campaign. The State Department warned the stolen technology is being stripped of safety protocols, raising tensions ahead of a planned U.S.-China summit.
U.S. pharmacies are scrambling to fill estradiol transdermal patch prescriptions as demand for hormone replacement therapy surges following the FDA's November 2025 decision to remove black box cancer warnings from HRT products. CVS confirmed manufacturers have been "unable to provide sufficient supply" for weeks, with the shortage driven by a massive spike in new prescriptions from women and their doctors who had previously avoided HRT due to the now-removed warnings.
The FDA is preparing to discuss relaxing restrictions on therapeutic peptides after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushed to make compounds like BPC-157 and other regenerative peptides more accessible to patients. The move could open the door for compounding pharmacies to produce peptide therapies that have been in regulatory limbo, though some medical experts have cautioned that broader availability without robust clinical trial data carries risks.
A growing list of scientists and engineers connected to NASA, the Air Force, and national nuclear laboratories have died or vanished under unusual circumstances, with the 11th case — a 2022 death now reclassified — drawing renewed scrutiny. Victims include an anti-gravity propulsion researcher who warned she was in danger before her apparent suicide, a NASA engineer killed in a fiery car crash so severe his body was unrecognizable, and multiple Los Alamos-linked employees. President Trump said he "just left a meeting" on the matter and vowed answers within days, while the FBI confirmed it is reviewing all cases together for potential connections.
