A Rhode Island Democratic state representative is facing blowback on social media after claiming that a mural of Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian woman whose brutal murder while riding a North Carolina train sparked national outrage, doesn’t reflect the “values” of the city of Providence.

“Ultimately, we want to make sure that every community member who calls Providence home feels safe,” Rep. David Morales told local media about a mural of Zarutska facing calls to be removed from the exterior of an LGBTQ+ club in downtown Providence.

“We can both agree that this mural behind us does not reflect Providence’s values nor does it reflect the creativity that we would want to see in our city.”

The lawmaker’s comments immediately sparked negative reactions from conservatives on social media after they were posted by the conservative influencer account End Wokeness in a post that has been viewed over 1 million times. 

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“What are his values?” Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who is reportedly involved in the mural project, posted on X.

“He cites people wanting to be ‘safe’ as a reason to destroy a mural on a private building meant to honor a murdered woman,” Red State writer Bonchie posted on X. “You can’t imagine how crazy Democrats are in these blue bastions. You think what you see on MSNBC is nuts? It’s even worse in their bubble cities.”

“Honoring the memory of a Ukrainian immigrant who had her throat slit on public transportation by a repeat offender with 14 prior arrests doesn’t reflect Providence’s values????” Defending Education communications director Erika Sanzi posted on X.

“What ‘value’ does the mural not reflect?” Republican Rep. Chip Roy posted on X.

“Iryna’s death highlights the consequences of warped policies that keep violent criminals out of jail,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted on X. “Memorializing her reminds us that those policies create more victims and should be eliminated. Telling that those aren’t Rep. Morales’ ‘values.’”

“True,” Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz posted on X. “Dems would prefer a mural celebrating her murderer.”

“Providence had a George Floyd mural and nobody called it divisive,” GOP strategist and commentator Mehek Cooke posted on X. “Iryna got murdered by a man arrested over a dozen times, and a city couldn’t let her face stay on a wall because the donor list was inconvenient. We means-test grief now.”

CNN commentator Scott Jennings referred to Morales as a “deranged lunatic” in a post on X.

Fox News Digital reached out to Morales’s office for comment but did not receive a response.

Morales responded to Musk on X in a post clarifying what his “values” are. 

“Not to exploit the death of a refugee to push an agenda centered around fear and division,” Morales wrote. “My values, like many of our neighbors in Providence, is to protect our immigrant neighbors from ICE’s state-sanctioned violence and supporting our refugee neighbors with authentic care.”

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The mayor of Providence, Democrat Brett P. Smiley, has also spoken out against the mural.

“The murder of the individual depicted in this mural was a devastating tragedy, but the misguided, isolating intent of those funding murals like this across the country is divisive and does not represent Providence,” Smiley said. “I continue to encourage our community to support local artists whose work brings us closer together rather than further divides us.”

Zarutska, a 23-year-old refugee who fled her country after the Russian invasion, was brutally stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack while riding the Lynx Blue Line light rail in Charlotte, N.C., last year. 

The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, is charged with violence against a railroad carrier and mass transportation system resulting in death, which is a capital offense under federal law.

Records from the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction show Brown has a prior criminal history, including convictions for larceny, breaking and entering and armed robbery. He served five years in prison starting in 2015.

Zarutska’s death prompted questions about soft on crime policies adopted by many Democratic-run cities. President Donald Trump spotlighted the killing during his State of the Union address last month. 

“Iryna was riding home on the train when a deranged monster, who had been arrested over a dozen times and was released through no-cash bail, stood up and viciously slashed a knife through her neck and body,” Trump said.

Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX: The White House is marking Holy Week with days of prayer and worship, including President Donald Trump participating in a number of events to honor Easter and celebrate the “right to religious liberty.” 

“President Trump will never waver in safeguarding the right to religious liberty, upholding the dignity of life and protecting faith in our public square,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital of the White House’s Holy Week events. 

“Millions of Christians across the country will celebrate Jesus Christ conquering death, freeing us from sin, and unlocking the gates of Heaven for all of humanity, and the President is proud to join Americans during this blessed holiday.”

A White House official told Fox News Digital that the president on Wednesday will attend the White House Easter Lunch in the East Room.

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The event will feature worship and prayer, and choral performances from the Free Chapel Choir, led by Pastor Jentezen Franklin on the saxophone.

The event will also include prayers from Reverend Franklin Graham, Bishop Robert Barron, Pastor Paula White and others.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will attend the White House Easter lunch.

Erika Kirk is also expected to attend the White House Easter lunch, a White House official told Fox News Digital. 

Next, on Wednesday evening, at 5:00 p.m., White House staff are invited to attend a Catholic Mass in the Indian Treaty Room. The mass will be celebrated by Father Frank Mann.

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On Thursday, Holy Thursday, a White House official told Fox News Digital that all White House staff are invited to attend a worship service in the same room. That service will feature Rev. Franklin Graham, Pastor Jentzen Franklin, Pastor Paula White and White House Faith Office Director Jenny Korn.

A White House official also told Fox News Digital that President Trump is expected to issue a presidential proclamation honoring Holy Week.

“President Trump wishes Christians across America and around the world a very happy Easter. He is risen, indeed!” Rogers added in a comment to Fox News Digital. 

The president is also expected to post video messages on his Truth Social account to celebrate Easter and Passover.

A White House official told Fox News Digital that Passover events will take place next week. Passover begins at sundown on Wednesday, April 1 and ends at sundown on Thursday, April 9.

The White House Passover event will take place April 6 in the Indian Treaty Room. Edan Alexander, who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza for more than 500 days following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, and his family will be in attendance. Alexander was the last living American hostage released last year.

Faith has been a focal point of Trump’s second term, including signing an executive order in February 2025 establishing a White House Faith Office.

The office empowers faith-based entities, community organizations and houses of worship “to better serve families and communities,” according to the White House. The office is housed under the Domestic Policy Council and consults with experts in the faith community on policy changes to “better align with American values.” 

The Supreme Court on Wednesday will weigh the legality of President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. — a landmark court fight that could profoundly impact the lives of millions of Americans and lawful U.S. residents.

Trump himself will also be attending the Supreme Court oral arguments in a sign of his interest in the case. His attendance marks the first time in U.S. history that a sitting president has attended oral arguments.

At issue in the case, Trump v. Barbara, is an executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office. The order in question seeks to end automatic citizenship — or “birthright citizenship” — for nearly all persons born in the U.S. to undocumented parents, or to parents with temporary non-immigrant visas in the U.S.

The stakes in the case are high, putting on a collision course more than a century of executive branch action, Supreme Court precedent, and the text of the Constitution itself — or, more specifically, the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Trump administration officials view the order, and the high court’s consideration of the case, as a key component of his hard-line immigration agenda — an issue that has become a defining feature of his second White House term. 

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Opponents argue the effort is unconstitutional and unprecedented, and could impact an estimated 150,000 children born in the U.S. annually to noncitizens. 

A ruling in Trump’s favor would represent a seismic shift for immigration policy in the U.S., and would upend long-held notions of citizenship that Trump and his allies argue are misguided. It would also yield immediate, operational consequences for infants born in the U.S., putting the impetus on Congress and the Trump administration to immediately act to clarify their status. 

Here’s what to expect ahead of today’s oral arguments:

What’s at stake?

Justices will weigh Trump’s executive order 14160, or “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” The order directs all U.S. government agencies to refuse to issue citizenship documents to children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants, or children born to parents who are in the U.S. legally but with temporary, non-immigrant visas.

The order would apply retroactively to all newborns born in the U.S. after Feb. 19, 2025. 

Trump’s executive order prompted a flurry of lawsuits in the days after its signing. Critics argued that, among other things, the order violated the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to “all persons born … in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Lawyers for the Trump administration, meanwhile, centered their case on the “subject to jurisdiction thereof” phrase, which they argue was intended at the time of its passage to narrowly “grant citizenship to newly freed slaves and their children” after the Civil War, and has been misinterpreted in the many years since.

U.S. Solicitor General D. Sauer urged the high court to take up the case last October, arguing that a pair of lower court rulings were overly broad and relied on the “mistaken view” that “birth on U.S. territory confers citizenship on anyone subject to the regulatory reach of U.S. law became pervasive, with destructive consequences.”

“Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people,” he said.

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He also argued that the lower court rulings overstepped, and “invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security.”

Justices on the high court will have no shortage of strings to pull on in considering the executive order or questioning lawyers during oral arguments. 

What’s changed?

The Supreme Court will use Wednesday’s arguments to weigh — to varying degrees — the text of the 14th Amendment, legal precedent, and text of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, among other issues cited by Sauer, the ACLU, and authors of the dozens of amicus briefs filed to the court since it agreed to review the case last fall. 

Legal experts told Fox News Digital that they expect Sauer could be in for an uphill battle in convincing a five-justice majority to unwind more than 125 years of precedent and text at issue in the case.

Despite their consensus, however, the court’s conservative bloc will still face thorny issues in reconciling more than a century of court precedent with the narrower reading of the 14th Amendment embraced by the Trump administration.

Justices are likely to focus closely on precedent in the Supreme Court case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark — a 1898 ruling in which the Supreme Court ruled that the son of two Chinese immigrants born in the U.S. was indeed a U.S. citizen. 

The case is widely considered to be the modern precedent for birthright citizenship, including related cases heard by the high court in the decades since. 

Others cited the text of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act statute passed by Congress, which essentially mirrors the text of the 14th Amendment in conferring legal status to persons born in the U.S., as yet another argument that could tip the scales in the migrants’ favor.

“I can think of at least five reasons off the top of my head why the Supreme Court should say that the citizenship clause means today what it has always meant,” Amanda Frost, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who specializes in immigration and citizenship issues, told Fox News Digital.

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“There is text. There is original public understanding, which certainly includes Wong Kim Ark, but also five or six Supreme Court cases after that,” Frost said. 

“There is executive branch practice for the last century,” she added, “which is relevant as well when you’re interpreting the Constitution, and weighing [the question of], ‘What is the longstanding understanding of a constitutional provision by every other actor?’”

“I don’t see how they could easily count to five,” Akhil Amar, a professor at Yale Law School, told Fox News Digital in an interview, speaking of the majority votes needed.

“Even if I lose on one issue, I win on [many others],” Amar said, before ticking through a list of reasons why the Supreme Court, in his view, might swing in favor of the migrant class in question, and ACLU legal director Cecillia Wang, who is arguing the case Wednesday on behalf of the migrants.

Others agreed, albeit with a bit more reservation.

“I don’t think history supports the Trump administration’s view,” John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California Berkeley and former lawyer during the Bush administration, told Fox News Digital on the strength of the administration’s case.

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Stateless newborns, enforcement issues

Another question will be one of enforcement. Trump’s executive order does not codify the legal status that should be conferred to children who are born in the U.S. to holders of temporary, long-term visas — including student visas and H1B visas, legal experts told Fox News Digital.

Frost, the University of Virginia Law professor, noted that Congress has not provided a pathway to legal status for the class of children who would be born in the U.S. and not granted citizenship. This means that the government would essentially need to act at lightning speed to confer some sort of status — be it temporary or longer-term — to newborns, should the justices side with Trump.

“The parents may have applied for a green card,” Frost said of newborns born to illegal immigrants, should the court allow Trump’s order to take force. “They might get the green card the next day.”

“It would not matter,” she said. “The child would not be a citizen.”

Yoo, Amar, and others cited similar concerns voiced by justices briefly during oral arguments in another birthright citizenship case, Trump v. CASA, last year. The administration asked the court to review the case not on the merits of the order, but as a means of challenging so-called “universal,” or nationwide injunctions issued by federal court judges.

Despite the focus on the lower court powers, some justices still used their time to question Sauer about the birthright citizenship order and its implementation.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for his part, pressed Sauer for details on what documentation newborns might need at birth should Trump’s executive order take force.

“On the day after it goes into effect — it’s just a very practical question of how it’s going to work,” Kavanaugh noted, before asking Sauer: “What do hospitals do with a newborn? What do states do with a newborn?” he asked, in order to determine their citizenship on a birth certificate.

“I don’t think they do anything different,” Sauer said in response. “What the executive order says in Section Two is that federal officials do not accept documents that have the wrong designation of citizenship from people who are subject to the executive order.”

“How are they going to know that?” Kavanaugh pressed, shaking his head.  

The government’s position “makes no sense whatsoever,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said at the time, before noting that it appeared to violate “four Supreme Court precedents,” and risked leaving some children stateless.

Justices to watch

While it’s difficult to speculate how justices on the high court might position themselves in considering a case, there are some conservative justices that have signaled early skepticism about the Trump administration’s arguments. Their votes could prove to be decisive, experts said.

“In terms of oral arguments, I think what you’re going to see is a lot of attention paid to how Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh view the issue in particular,” Yoo said. “I think it will be up to them” to determine the majority ruling, he said.

Roberts, in particular, often relies heavily on Supreme Court precedent, Yoo noted, and has been wary of overturning decisions made under previous courts — pointing to the “sort of anguished dissent” he authored in Roe v. Wade. 

“I think that’s really the question: whether there’s going to be enough historical evidence to change Robert’s mind about how to treat precedent,” he said, noting the chief justice tends to view questions of institutional importance and consistency as top-of-mind.

When it comes to birthright citizenship, Yoo said, there is a much longer history and court precedent that is older and “more well-followed” than Roe ever was, he noted, which could swing the conservatives in the ACLU’s favor.

“We never know why the Supreme Court decides to hear a case,” Amar told Fox News Digital. “But I’m hoping that they heard the case because America deserves an answer.”

A decision from the high court is expected by late June. 

FIRST ON FOX: Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., a Trump-endorsed Senate candidate in Louisiana, is saying that she will ensure diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies will be rooted out of schools in her state if she wins. 

However, Letlow’s past remarks and actions as a university faculty member, such as promises to open a DEI office if hired as a university president, and her past praise for DEI nationwide, have thrown these promises into question.

In a 2020 video from Letlow’s hiring process, when interviewing to be the president of the University of Louisiana Monroe, Letlow called the school’s record on faculty gender diversity “shameful,” praised DEI efforts around the country, said she wanted to open the school’s first DEI division and suggested that, if hired, she would want “a person around the table that is cognizant and fighting for diversity, equity and inclusion before any decision is made for the university.” 

In January, The Daily Caller first reported that, prior to serving Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District, Letlow was in a communications position at UL Monroe, where she helped push DEI initiatives aimed at “diversifying marketing and comms teams” and “establish[ing] diverse content.” She also signed a statement embracing diversity as one of UL Monroe’s “core values” shortly after the death of George Floyd. 

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“I was able to go to eight different universities and see some amazing work that other universities have already started – and you don’t even have to keep it to Louisiana, you can go nationwide to see the amazing effort people have been doing for years to address these issues,” Letlow told a panel interviewing her for the UL—Monroe presidency in 2020, in response to a question concerning the percentage of tenured female faculty. “So, one of the first things I would do – I believe we need a division on this campus, a division of diversity, equity and inclusion, with leadership that goes all the way to the top with a full staff because our issues are so great.”

During Letlow’s hiring process to potentially be the next president of UL—Monroe, she also spoke in a video meant to introduce herself to students, during which Letlow called herself a “strong and progressive leader” as the result of many years in higher ed.

The GOP primary race in Louisiana for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat, between Letlow and incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., has become a battle over who is more pro-Trump – and DEI has been a major proving point.

“While Liberal Letlow was pushing DEI policies at ULM, calling herself a ‘strong and progressive leader,’ Senator Cassidy was working with President Trump and others to secure billions of dollars for the state and bring conservative policies to Louisiana,” said a spokesperson for Cassidy’s campaign. “From no boys in girls sports, to co-sponsoring the Save America Act, the HALT Fentanyl Act, and the Working Families Tax Cuts.” 

Cassidy himself has been accused of being anti-Trump, and when reached for comment on the matter, Letlow’s team argued that “any honest account of DEI in this race has to include Cassidy’s record vs Julia’s record.” 

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Letlow holds both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from UL Monroe. According to her LinkedIn profile, she also held multiple positions at the university, first from 2007 to 2011 and then again from 2014 to 2021. These positions include the director of marketing and communications from 2015 to 2018, executive director of external affairs and strategic communications from 2018 to 2019, and executive assistant to the president for external affairs and community outreach from 2019 to 2021 for the university.

In 2020, Letlow wanted to become UL Monroe’s president, during which she was subject to numerous interviews. One included questioning from a panel of UL Monroe officials, which was posted publicly on YouTube. 

“Study after study has shown that the more diverse an organization is in its leadership, the more successful it is, and in businesses that converts to actual financial success,” one questioner from the panel began when probing Letlow. “In academia, you know, it’s in the way — all the ways, the metrics that it’s supposed to succeed in a community, and yet we see a lot of slowness in change … so my question is, how would you go about supporting diversity and equity in the faculty ranks?” 

In response to the question, which focused specifically on the percentage of tenured female faculty at a university with a majority female student body, Letlow lamented that “we have an issue on this campus,” and promised to create a new DEI division to assist. 

“There would need to be a strategic plan put in place on how to address those concerns that you just raised, and those metrics and those numbers, because they are shameful, truly, and I believe that having that strong [DEI] division, having that leadership, if you have a person around the table that is cognizant and fighting for diversity, equity and inclusion before any decision is made for the university, then that’s how you change. That’s how you recruit more faculty,” Letlow responded. 

“There are a lot of people on this campus who have never heard of unconscious bias. They don’t know that it exists,” she continued. 

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“I was looking at the numbers – we have 8% African-American faculty women on this campus. That’s not enough,” Letlow added later. “That does not reflect our student population, and so that would be number one for me. I’m glad you asked that question.”

Letlow’s remarks, which have been publicly available on Youtube but have only 218 views as of Tuesday, add fodder for critics like Cassidy who say she is not sufficiently an opponent of DEI. However, Letlow recently told local media that Cassidy’s claims that she is “woke” are “absolutely false” and that she has spent the past five years in Congress fighting against DEI. 

“I saw [DEI] firsthand when I worked at the university,” Letlow told Louisiana First News this month. “DEI was presented to us as something that would help students achieve the American dream and when I quickly witnessed that it was hijacked by the radical left and turned into indoctrination and actually holding people down, I spent the last five years of Congress fighting against it.” 

Meanwhile, in comments to Fox News Digital, Letlow’s campaign representatives said that “President Trump endorsed [Letlow] because he knows exactly where she stands.”

“While Letlow was fighting DEI in Congress, Bill Cassidy was working with Joe Biden to pass major federal legislation that funded DEI programs, imposed equity mandates, and embedded gender-identity language into federal policy,” the spokesperson continued, referring to the bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Act passed in 2021. “Cassidy authored and voted for a $1.2 trillion spending bill loaded with DEI provisions, voted for the CHIPS Act’s DEI research requirements, and negotiated a gun bill whose grant programs the Trump administration later canceled for being DEI vehicles.”

Letlow’s husband was originally elected to represent Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District but died before he could enter office. Letlow was then chosen via a special election. In 2023, she sponsored the Parental Bill of Rights Act, requiring stricter transparency in school curriculums and allowing parents to challenge classroom materials. She also voted in favor of the End Woke Higher Education Act, which bars university accrediting organizations from requiring schools to adopt DEI policies as a condition. 

Letlow’s team argued to Fox News Digital that she “has a clear record opposing DEI,” citing things like the congresswoman’s introduction of a federal Parental Bill of Rights, Letlow’s efforts to “strip DEI from the U.S. military,” and the congresswoman’s vote to reverse a Biden-era revision to Title IX regulations. Letlow’s campaign also said the congresswoman has “stood with President Trump” as he works to dismantle DEI across the federal government.

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“There is no place for woke ideology in schools,” Letlow posted on social media in 2024. “We will keep up the good fight, our children’s futures depend on it.”

But, in January, The Daily Caller also reported on records it obtained showing Letlow’s time as a university employee at UL—Monroe included promoting DEI initiatives. 

In a January 2020 email to staff from schools in the University of Louisiana system, Letlow reportedly asked officials to attend a “follow-up meeting” to an “Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Workshop” held the prior semester because they had been “charged with discussing a plan to move these initiatives forward.” These included recommendations of “diversifying marketing and comms teams” and “establish[ing] diverse content” in university publications that “lack representation of the students it serves.” 

The Letlow campaign told Fox News Digital that the email Letlow sent was standard operating procedure, and she was just doing her job as an executive assistant to the president for external affairs and community outreach by sending the follow-up email to coordinate attendance for the workshop from the prior semester.

In their report, The Daily Caller also highlighted a statement put out by UL Monroe shortly after the death of George Floyd, titled “ULM condemns racism, embraces diversity,” which was signed by Letlow and 11 other university leaders, including the interim president. The letter stated that “integrity must include condemning racism and racially motivated violence.”

Letlow’s previous membership with the National Communication Association (NCA) came under scrutiny from The Daily Caller as well. The Daily Caller reported the NCA issued a letter in 2020 which slammed statements condemning racism as “White self-reflexivity” and argued that such remarks must be paired with “strategic action” to combat things like “police brutality, Black death,” and “White normativity.” The letter went on to call the Trump administration’s use of the term “Chinese virus” to refer to COVID-19 “racist and xenophobic” and referred to White people as “privileged by Whiteness.”

The Letlow campaign contested she had anything to do with the letter, which came from the NCA’s Diversity Council, not from the NCA as an organization. A copy of the letter reviewed by Fox News Digital confirmed that Letlow was not a signatory. 

“Julia is not responsible for statements issued by a professional association because she was a member of it. She has not been a member in five years, and past membership did not mean endorsement of every position that group took,” her campaign said in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

When reached for comment about her remarks and the criticism that has resulted about Letlow’s past actions relating to DEI, the White House referred Fox News Digital to the Republican National Committee (RNC), which declined to comment on the matter.

President Donald Trump said he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of NATO over the alliance’s refusal to join his administration’s efforts in the Iran conflict, according to a report.

“I was never swayed by NATO,” Trump told The Daily Telegraph in an interview published Wednesday.

The president, long a critic of the military alliance, which has been pivotal in maintaining global order since World War II, said reconsidering the matter was “beyond consideration.”

“I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” Trump told the British outlet.

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The comments come after European nations reportedly rejected Trump’s request that allies send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply travels. Iran has threatened or moved to restrict access to the strait in reaction to the U.S. offensive against Iranian targets, raising concerns about global energy markets and economic stability.

“Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey,’ you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic,” Trump said.

“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”

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The president also criticized the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not participating in the conflict.

“You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work,” Trump said.

Responding to the president’s comments, Starmer said Britain is “fully committed to NATO,” calling it “the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen.”

Starmer told reporters that “whatever the pressure on me and others, whatever the noise, I am going to act in the British national interest in all the decisions I make.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Kyrsten Sinema could be forced to shell out tens of thousands of dollars in damages for an affair she had with her former bodyguard after his estranged wife sued the former senator under a 19th century law that allows jilted spouses in a handful of U.S. states to sue for a broken heart.

The so-called “alienation of affection” lawsuits are currently recognized in just six U.S. states — including North Carolina, where Sinema’s former bodyguard, Matthew Ammel, had lived with his now-estranged wife, Heather Ammel, for roughly a decade. 

The complaint against Sinema accused her of engaging in “intentional and malicious interference” in Ammel’s marriage and sought $25,000 in damages from Sinema as a result of the allegedly “willful and wanton” conduct.

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In order to succeed in the lawsuit, plaintiffs must satisfy a difficult burden of proof. First, that the marriage had real affection and a viable relationship before any third-party involvement; second, that the “love and affection” were destroyed, or significantly diminished; and third, that the defendant in question directly “caused the destruction of that marital love and affection.”

Perhaps for this reason, the complaint spares no detail: it ticks through an extemporaneous timeline of Ammel’s relationship with Sinema, as a member of her security detail, a member of her staff, and later, as her romantic partner.

According to the complaint, Sinema sent suggestive messages to Matthew Ammel repeatedly over Signal, the encrypted messaging app, months before he and his wife officially split.

“I keep waking up during my sleep and reaching over for your arms to hold me,” Sinema told Ammel via Signal in June 2024, according to the complaint — around the same time Ammel allegedly stopped wearing his wedding ring.

On another occasion, Sinema offered to “work on” Ammel’s back with a Theragun, and allegedly suggested that he bring MDMA on a work trip and offered to “guide him through a psychedelic experience,” though Sinema said she has “no recollection” of those messages. 

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At times, Heather was herself a party to the relationship, before and after the affair allegedly began. In 2023, she traveled to Las Vegas to attend a U2 concert with her husband and Sinema where they drank Dom Pérignon wine in Cindy McCain’s suite, according to the lawsuit. 

The two also traveled to Miami for a Taylor Swift concert in October 2024 — which the three attended out of “concern” for Ammel’s children, according to copies of the affidavit reviewed by Fox News Digital. 

It was the same month that Heather Ammel allegedly confronted Sinema directly by responding to one of her Signal messages. 

“Are you having an affair with my husband? You took a married man away from his family,” she wrote, according to the complaint. Sinema has since acknowledged having received the message.

The lawsuit accuses Sinema of acting with “deliberate” interference in the marriage of her bodyguard and his now-estranged wife, who argued that the former lawmaker seduced him and thus “wrongfully and maliciously” deprived her of the “warmth, companionship” and love of their marriage.

The relationship between the two is not in dispute: Sinema, who served in the Senate from 2019 to 2025, has since acknowledged her relationship with her former bodyguard, though she argued the case should be dismissed for a lack of jurisdiction, since the affair in question took place “exclusively outside” the boundaries of the Tar Heel state, according to her lawyers.

While these lawsuits have become increasingly rare in the 21st century, they are not unheard of — and plaintiffs in the state have at times won eye-popping payouts for such claims. 

In 2010, a jury in North Carolina awarded plaintiff Cynthia Shackelford a total of $9 million in compensatory and punitive damages for an “alienation of affection” lawsuit brought against her husband’s alleged mistress. More recently, 2018, a Durham County judge ordered some $8.8 million in damages be paid out to BMX show owner Keith King from the man he said stole his wife — and ruined his company.

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Sinema, for her part, says the relationship between the two became “romantic and intimate” beginning in May 2024, during a trip to Sonoma, California, and said they were subsequently “physically intimate” in the months that followed, including in Phoenix, Arizona; Aspen, Colorado; and New York City. 

They were not, her lawyers stressed, intimate within the physical bounds of North Carolina prior to the dissolution of Ammel’s marriage.

The judge presiding over the case ordered the plaintiff, Ammel, to file a response to Sinema’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit by mid-April.

Matthew Ammel filed for divorce from his wife earlier this year.

Amid President Donald Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown, one congressional Democrat is calling for reparations for foreign nationals who are affected.

“We are going to have some form of reparation for the kids and the families that have been traumatized through all of this,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said Friday during a congressional hearing, referring to illegal immigrants. “You talked about how there’s no support for people even once they’re released. We need to make sure that we are funding that kind of work to continue to provide relief.”

Jayapal, the former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), made the comments during the seventh installment of a hearing series titled “Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump’s Attack on Children.”

The left-wing lawmaker said reparations for illegal immigrants affected by Trump’s crackdown efforts would be just one item in a series of reforms she would push Democrats to pursue if they retake House control in November. 

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Jayapal, who was born in India and became a U.S. citizen in 2000, also said she wants “offensive action” regarding those who are carrying out Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown. 

“We need real accountability, because at the end of the day, the people that have been inflicting this harm need to be prosecuted,” Jayapal said. “They need to be brought before us, and they need to be held to account for the trauma that they have created.”

A spokesperson for Jayapal did not respond to a Fox Digital inquiry about who specifically she wants to see prosecuted or who would be eligible for reparations.

Reparations refer to financial compensation for a specific group intended to address reputed economic harms. Many progressive Democrats have long advocated for reparations for the descendants of American slaves.

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Throughout the hearing, congressional Democrats repeatedly called attention to the children of deported illegal immigrants, while saying little about the victims of illegal immigrant crime.

The group of Democratic lawmakers did not discuss 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman, who was allegedly shot and killed by a Venezuelan national illegally living in the United States in Chicago earlier this month.

Jayapal’s comments came during the record-breaking Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that has continued to drag on with no end in sight.

She and nearly all House Democrats have refused to fund the department until the Trump administration agrees to various proposals that could rein in immigration enforcement.

“I have been clear since the start of the appropriations process: I will not vote to give Trump’s ICE or CBP another cent without major reforms,” Jayapal said Friday following her vote against a two-month DHS funding extension.

Though Democrats have been willing to fund the non-immigration parts of DHS, most Republicans have rejected that idea because it would effectively defund law enforcement.

Zeroing out appropriations for ICE and the Border Patrol would continue to force support staff employed by those agencies — have not received a full paycheck during the seven-week funding lapse — to keep working without pay.

Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk has been the focus of legislative efforts by Republican lawmakers across multiple states seeking to memorialize the slain activist. 

More than six months after Kirk was assassinated during a campus event at Utah Valley University, many of those proposals remain in limbo, with some facing roadblocks.

As the TPUSA founder participated in a debate event as part of his “American Comeback Tour,” he was shot in the neck and later pronounced dead at the age of 31. Tyler Robinson was later arrested and now faces multiple charges, including aggravated murder.

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Oklahoma State Sen. Shane Jett introduced two pieces of legislation honoring Kirk on Sept. 17, 2025, just one week after the assassination. The first bill, SB 1187, would require public colleges and universities in the state to establish “a dedicated square or plaza” honoring Kirk. The Republican’s legislation states that the designated square or plaza shall include a statue of Kirk, adding that the design and size would be approved by the legislature. The bill describes two options for statues: either Kirk sitting at a table with an empty seat across from him or one of Kirk and his wife, Erika, holding their children.

The second piece of legislation, SB 1188, would memorialize Kirk by designating his birthday, Oct. 14, as “Charlie Kirk Free Speech Day.” Since the introduction of the bill, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt declared Oct. 14, 2025, to be “Charlie Kirk Day.” If SB 1188 passes and Stitt signs, the designated day would become an annual tradition in the Sooner State. However, both SB 1187 and SB 1188 remain in committee.

In Minnesota, Republican state Sen. Nathan Wesenberg introduced a bill appropriating funds for a statue commemorating Kirk’s life. The bill allocates $25,000 in Fiscal Year 2027 from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund to the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota. According to the legislation, the statue will be placed on the university’s Twin Cities campus. 

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“I introduced this bill to honor Charlie Kirk’s work to foster respectful debate and free speech on college campuses,” Wesenberg said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital. “The point of the statue is to remember that political violence will not silence free speech.”

“While I originally drafted the bill for the U of M to have the statue as the largest campus to reach the most students, I am considering turning it into a competitive process so that any college campus could apply for this funding,” he added.

Wesenberg’s bill, which was introduced in late February, has been referred to the Environment, Climate and Legacy Committee.

University of Minnesota Regent Robyn Gulley expressed concern about the legislation earlier this month. Gulley expressed her sympathies to Kirk’s family in a statement to The Minnesota Daily, but said that erecting a statue to Kirk on the University of Minnesota’s campus could be seen as “disrespectful,” citing the TPUSA founder’s disdain for higher education.

In Tennessee, a bill aimed at requiring public universities to build memorial plazas honoring Kirk was stalled earlier this month. The legislation would have mandated the establishment of courtyards at public higher education institutions. Each of the memorial areas would be known as the “Charlie Kirk Memorial Courtyard for Civil Debate,” according to the bill, which also included required measurements.

The proposal would have cost taxpayers more than $18 million and resulted in the construction of 47 courtyards statewide, The Tennessean reported. The bill was moved to summer study after facing pushback in the state’s House Education Subcommittee over the price tag, according to The Tennessean.

Following Kirk’s assassination, President Donald Trump posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on what would have been his 32nd birthday. He also declared Oct. 14, 2025, to be the National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk. Later, Trump honored Kirk at the State of the Union, which the slain activist’s wife attended.

Fox News Digital reached out to Jett for comment.