Mitch McConnell, 83, Collapses in Senate Office Building

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell tripped and fell in the Senate building Thursday, adding another worrying incident to his long list of public health issues.

McConnell, with the help of an aide, can be seen on video walking through the Senate halls while a woman asks him about ICE. 

“Do you support ICE taking working people off the streets and kidnapping them?” the woman asks. Then McConnell abruptly falls to the ground as if he tripped over something. His aide and a police officer help him to his feet, as he turns and waves sheepishly to the woman while saying something inaudible. He then walks away. 

McConnell’s age has long been a catalyst for conversations about gerontocracy and congressional term limits in the U.S. In 2023, he had his infamous freezing moment during a press conference, and colleagues have long noted that he often appears checked out and hard of hearing. 

McConnell is not the first active politician to experience symptoms of age publicly. The late Senator Dianne Feinstein had issues with memory and processing while she was still in office. Senator John Kennedy had a McConnell-like freeze-up just this summer. And of course, former President Joe Biden had countless moments of mental incapacity. That is what happens when you age. But the issue is that all of these folks refused to admit it, and hold onto power for far too long.  

In justifying U.S. escalations against Venezuela and describing its regime as “illegitimate,” a top Trump diplomat on Thursday—in the height of irony—cited a New York criminal case against the country’s president.

Mike Waltz, President Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador, was asked Thursday on Fox News about the administration’s plans for Venezuela. Trump recently authorized covert CIA operations against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and has publicly considered conducting land strikes on the country.

Waltz told Fox News that Maduro is an “illegitimate leader, convicted in the Southern District of New York,” adding that the U.S. will “do whatever it takes” to dismantle Venezuelan “terrorist gangs.”

Notably, Maduro was not convicted, but rather charged with narcoterrorism and other offenses, in New York’s Southern District in 2020. He has not been apprehended nor stood trial, and the Trump administration has a $50 million bounty out on information leading to his arrest. (Venezuela’s foreign minister at the time called the charges against Maduro “miserable, vulgar, and unfounded,” and consistent with a U.S. “policy of forced regime change in Venezuela.”)

And of course, if a conviction in New York is such a stigma, as Waltz suggests, then Trump is in deep trouble. Trump became the first felonious president in May 2024, convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records by a New York State Supreme Court jury—whose verdict he is appealing.

Waltz, a congressman at the time, cried election interference.

The Arizona Young Republicans clearly don’t understand what was wrong with its members’ frolicsome participation in a racist, Nazi-loving text chain exposed in a gangbusters report by Politico.

The local chapter released a statement Wednesday night in which the organization firmly rejected “any involvement in the ongoing political witch hunt targeting fellow Young Republican members” over the Telegram group chat reported on Wednesday, which was filled to the brim with racism, antisemitism, rape jokes, and other filth.

The statement said that their organization would not stand for “mob-style condemnation driven by political opportunism or personal agendas.”

But it seems members of the Arizona chapter were prolific in the infamous group chat. Luke Mosiman, the chair of the Arizona Young Republicans, appears multiple times in the texts. In July, he suggested linking a political opponent to white supremacist groups, by “releasing Nazi edits with her” and “pro Nazi” propaganda.

Rachel Hope, the events chair for the Arizona Young Republicans, replied: “Omg I love this plan.”

“The only problem is we will lose the Kansas delegation,” Mosiman wrote, to which Hope and the two other Kansas Young Republicans laugh-reacted.

Mosiman also made racist jokes, saying that the “Spanish came to America and had sex with every single woman,” and later added, “Sex? It was rape.”

In the statement Wednesday, the group accused critics of “selective outrage” over their leaders’ horrific remarks.

“It is disheartening to see the double standard applied by so many critics,” the statement said, “While certain voices within our own movement have been quick to condemn, many of these same individuals have overlooked or ignored deeply concerning rhetoric and actions on the political left.”

The Arizona Young Republicans seemed particularly pissed that they’d been hung out to dry by the Young Republicans National Federation, which had released a statement “without so much as a single call” to their Arizonan membership. “This lack of communication reflects a troubling disregard for unity and due process, and raises serious concerns about loyalty and leadership within our movement,” the statement said.

In that Wednesday statement, the Young Republicans National Federation called the language “vile and inexcusable,” and said that the behavior of group chat members was “disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican.”

“Those involved must immediately resign from all positions within their state and local Young Republican organizations,” the statement said.

But this wasn’t the beginning of beef between Arizona and national leadership—and the group chat provided receipts. In June, Mosiman jokingly called for the Young Republicans Federation Chair Hayden Padgett to be raped. Ah, well: nevertheless.

CBS News’s head of standards and practices, Claudia Milne, announced her departure from the network Thursday morning, marking the first exit of a major executive since Bari Weiss became editor in chief.

Milne did not specify her reason for leaving, but said in a farewell message to colleagues that her exit came amid “complicated times” for the company, the industry, and the country.

“I believe our role as journalists is to hold the powerful to account,” Milne said in a copy of the note obtained by Variety. “We are here to question and challenge our political leaders on behalf of our audiences, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative … we must interrogate the social media companies that want to control our attention, the businesses that manage our healthcare and the institutions that shape our education system … and So. Much. More.”

Milne joined the company in 2019 as a managing editor of CBS This Morning, but climbed CBS’s ranks by taking on leadership responsibilities during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, she was tasked with overseeing a unit focused on deepfakes and misinformation.

Weiss’s takeover at the network has been met with widespread criticism. The anti-woke, pro-Israel grifter was announced as the newsroom’s newest chief earlier this month, despite lacking any experience as a news reporter, working in broadcast news, or running a major news operation.

Her appointment is the just the latest in a string of chaos at CBS. Over the past year, the company has undermined itself by settling multimillion dollar lawsuits with Donald Trump over its fair and accurate coverage, in an apparent bid to butter up the administration for its multibillion dollar merger. That resulted in the loss of two storied showrunners, including 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens and CBS News chief Wendy McMahon, who rejected Paramount’s approach to handling the groundless lawsuit.

The network climate somehow managed to get even hairier last month when Paramount tapped a former Trump adviser, Kenneth Weinstein, to serve as CBS’s ombudsman.

But Weiss’s whopping promotion—and Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of her blog The Free Press—mark the beginning of a radical new era for the historically middle-of-the-road news conglomerate, which once served as the home of some of journalism’s most venerable names, including Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. Weiss is expected to continue the right-wing lurch that’s been ongoing at CBS under the ownership of Trump ally David Ellison.

Senator John Fetterman may be primaried in 2028, and he’s apparently quite butthurt about it.

As Axios reported Thursday, possible contenders are emerging to take on the Pennsylvania Democrat. Elected in 2022, Fetterman flipped a long-held red seat after embracing a progressive image. But while in office, he has turned his back on—and even began lashing out at—the left.

Possible 2028 Democratic challengers, per Axios, include Representative Brendan Boyle and former Representative Conor Lamb, who have both been openly critical of the senator, as well as Representative Chris DeLuzio, who has made a name for himself as a progressive economic populist.

The response from Fetterman, a man known for his volatile temperament, was bitter.

“Enjoy your clickbait!” Fetterman texted Axios. When prompted for a follow-up, he cut off communication, telling the publication, “Please do not contact,” before later sending an article with statistics that he claimed evidenced his anti-Trump bona fides. “ACTUAL NUMBERS,” Fetterman wrote, “less clicks.”

Fetterman’s rightward shift came as he took an increasingly hard-line, almost monomaniacal pro-Israel stance, which, along with an adoption of a more Trump-friendly posture on issues like immigration, seemingly spurred a mass exodus of his staffers.

One ex-staffer is quoted in Mother Jones as calling the senator “Trump’s favorite Democrat.” He has lived up to that label lately in siding with MAGA on the U.S. military’s extrajudicial strikes in the Caribbean sans congressional approval, blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown, and even on whether Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.