Trump-appointed lawyers leading key federal court districts in blue states have become wrapped up in legal disputes that are testing their authority and threatening to undermine criminal cases they are overseeing.

U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who brought a high-profile indictment against former FBI Director James Comey in Virginia, is in the hot seat, as are President Donald Trump’s appointees in New Jersey, California and Nevada.

In a sign of his growing frustration over the matter, Trump wrote in a pair of statements Thursday night that he had ‘eight GREAT Republican U.S. Attorney Candidates’ who did not have a path to Senate confirmation in blue states, blaming the upper chamber’s ‘blue slip’ tradition. He called the precedent, which requires home-state senators to approve of U.S. attorney nominees, ‘stupid and outdated.’

Vulnerability in Virginia 

Trump nominated Erik Siebert to be U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, but he ousted Siebert in September and blamed it on Siebert securing blue slips from the state’s two Democratic senators. In reality, Siebert opposed bringing criminal charges against two of Trump’s top political nemeses, Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

At Trump’s direction, Halligan, a former insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience, entered the scene within days.

Halligan brought indictments against both Comey and James, which could now come back to haunt the Department of Justice.

Josh Blackman, professor at South Texas College of Law, noted that when she charged Comey, Halligan was the lone prosecutor to sign his indictment alleging he made a false statement to Congress. Comey has since told the court that he plans to contest Halligan’s authority because of the unconventional way Trump installed her to lead the U.S. attorney’s office.

‘The Halligan issue is central to the James Comey prosecution, and if, for whatever reason, it’s found that she was not properly appointed — she was the only person who signed the Comey indictment — that indictment’s thrown out, so the stakes are actually pretty high,’ Blackman told Fox News Digital.

The judge could also toss out Comey’s case on other grounds before addressing Halligan’s appointment, which could allow the court to avoid addressing the matter.

Halligan was also the lone prosecutor to sign James’ bank fraud indictment. By contrast, several prosecutors appeared in court on Thursday for former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s indictment in Maryland and signed onto the 26-page charging document.

‘Utterly implausible’ that president can’t choose his appointees

Halligan is not the only temporary U.S. attorney facing scrutiny. Another Trump ally, Alina Habba, has seen her authority called into question in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, where Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim refuse to support her, creating at least one insurmountable obstacle to her permanent confirmation.

When Habba’s interim term expired, Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi used a series of loopholes in federal vacancy laws to bypass the Senate, fire Habba’s court-appointed successor and re-install Habba as ‘acting’ U.S. attorney, which carries a 210-day term.

Judge Matthew Brann found Habba’s appointment was unlawful, and now the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit will hear arguments over Habba’s appointment on Monday in a case that could be headed for the Supreme Court.

In court papers, the DOJ argued federal vacancy laws established by Congress and the Constitution favored the president.

‘It is utterly implausible that Congress intended the default to be that the President must rely on career officials who may disagree with his policies to serve as acting political officers during the critical period at the start of an administration,’ DOJ lawyers wrote.

But the trend of challenging Trump’s workarounds did not stop with Habba.

More blue state blues

A federal judge disqualified Sigal Chattah from serving as the temporary U.S. attorney in Nevada, while Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli is facing a court challenge after Trump and Bondi extended his tenure in the Central District of California, where pivotal immigration-related cases are playing out.

Three sets of defendants facing charges in California are seeking to have their cases tossed on the grounds that Essayli is an invalid appointee. They alleged in court filings that using loopholes to skip over Essayli’s Senate confirmation is following ‘a handbook for circumventing the protections that the Constitution and Congress built against the limitless, unaccountable handpicking of temporary officials.’

Carl Tobias, professor at University of Richmond law school, told Fox News Digital in August that Trump’s maneuvers to keep his most loyal prosecutors in positions of power defy the spirit of the Constitution.

‘It’s good to have that scrutiny from the Judiciary Committee and then on the [Senate] floor, and so hopefully they could return to something like that, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen, and so I think it is troubling,’ Tobias said.

Although the contentious fight for presidents to push their nominees through the Senate is not new, Blackman said Trump’s escalation of the disputes is uncharted territory and that the issue is ‘two-fold.’

‘The first problem is the senators are perhaps not giving deference to Trump’s picks if they don’t have to,’ Blackman said. ‘The second issue is, does the law actually permit these sort of workarounds? And I think Trump is sort of pushing novel grounds. This hasn’t really been tested before like this.’

The regime in Iran was described as being on an ‘unprecedented execution spree’ by the United Nations. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said the Islamic Republic of Iran carried out more than 1,000 executions since the start of the year.

With as many as nine executions each day at the time of their report, OHCHR said that victims were primarily accused of murder and drug-related crimes.

In an effort to raise worldwide awareness of their situation, some 1,500 Iranian prisoners on death row in Ward 2 of Ghezel Hesar Prison staged a hunger strike on Oct. 13. Among them were 17 members of the Iranian dissident organization Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). 

A spokesperson from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told Fox News Digital that Iran previously executed two MEK members on July 27 and has yet to return their bodies to their families.

The hunger strike has spread to Wards 1 and 4 in Ghezel Hesar Prison, as well as to the notorious Evin Prison. The NCRI claims that prison officials have attempted to break the strike and has shared footage of prisoners in Ward 3 eating food to ‘falsely claim that there is no hunger strike in Ward 2.’

In an exclusive statement provided to Fox News Digital, the striking prisoners said, ‘Our patience has run out over this endless oppression and the taking of the lives of prisoners and young people. Every day and every week, some of our cellmates are sent to the gallows, and many of us spend our nights in the nightmare of death. These are the most agonizing moments of our lives and of our families. We demand the abolition of the death penalty in Iran.’

The NCRI told Fox News Digital that executions have increased in recent days, with 38 executions taking place between Oct. 13 and Oct. 15. This drove the total ‘number of executions during the 14½ months of [Masoud] Pezeshkian’s presidency’ to ‘an unprecedented record of 2,008 prisoners.’

Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the NCRI, called ‘for immediate action by the United Nations, U.N. Security Council members, the European Union, and international human rights organizations to end this horrific nightmare in Iran under the rule of the criminal mullahs.’

Iranian prisoners have called on U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to speak out and intervene on their behalf.

Fox News Digital asked if the U.S. State Department is considering additional sanctions against Iranian leaders in response to the rash of executions. A State Department spokesperson said, ‘We strongly condemn the Iranian regime’s use of executions to kill people for exercising basic human rights, including peacefully protesting for a better life.’

‘For decades, Iranians have been subjected to torture and sham trials resulting in executions and other severe punishments, often with those coerced confessions as the only evidence presented against them. We will continue to hold the Iranian regime accountable, ensuring it faces severe consequences for its heinous acts,’ the spokesperson continued.

Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for Guterres, told Fox News Digital, ‘We stand firmly against and continue to condemn the use of the death penalty in Iran, and anywhere else in the world.’

Earlier this month, the U.N. Human Rights Council drew widespread condemnation after it elected Iran to its advisory committee. 

President Donald Trump called out Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley while asserting that multiple U.S. attorney picks remain unconfirmed because Grassley is honoring the blue slip tradition.

The arcane custom involves showing deference to home-state senators by allowing them to stymie the confirmation of nominees they do not like. 

‘I have eight GREAT U.S. Attorneys, Highly Respected ALL, who will not be confirmed for their positions in various Highly Consequential States only because they’re Republicans, and the Democrats have convinced Chuck Grassley to honor the stupid and outdated ‘Blue Slip’ tradition, which precludes very talented and dedicated people from attaining High Office,’ the president asserted in part of a Truth Social post on Thursday night.

In a portion of another post, the president claimed, ‘A ‘Blue Slip’ means that if you’re a Republican President, and there happens to be just one Democrat Senator in a state where you are appointing a U.S. Attorney or District Court Judge, you will never be successful in getting a Republican confirmed. In other words, ‘Blue Slips’ are a disaster, and I have eight GREAT Republican U.S. Attorney Candidates who will not be able to fulfill their service to the people of a state that voted overwhelmingly for me.’

The president has repeatedly sounded off about the blue slip issue this year.

‘Chuck Grassley should allow strong Republican candidates to ascend to these very vital and powerful roles, and tell the Democrats, as they often tell us, to go to HELL!’ Trump asserted in part of an August Truth Social post.

A Grassley spokesperson responded to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on Friday by pointing to an August post on X in which the senator addressed the blue slip issue.

‘A U.S. Atty/district judge nominee without a blue slip does not hv the votes to get confirmed on the Senate floor & they don’t hv the votes to get out of cmte As chairman I set Pres Trump noms up for SUCCESS NOT FAILURE,’ the senator asserted in the post.

In another post the same day in August, Grassley wrote, ‘The 100 yr old ‘blue slip’ allows home state senators 2 hv input on US attys & district court judges,’ adding, ‘In Biden admin Republicans kept 30 LIBERALS OFF BENCH THAT PRES TRUMP CAN NOW FILL W CONSERVATIVES.’

Former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton surrendered to federal authorities Friday after being indicted on 18 counts related to the improper handling of classified materials.

Photographers snapped images of Bolton leaving his home in Bethesda, Md., earlier Friday. He was later captured on news cameras walking into the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Md.

When asked by Fox News at the scene if he had a comment, Bolton just walked into the building.

Bolton was indicted on eight counts of transmission of national defense information and ten counts of retention of national defense information.

‘From on or about April 9, 2018, through at least on or about August 22, 2025, BOLTON abused his position as National Security Advisor by sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities as the National Security Advisor — including information relating to the national defense which was classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level — with two unauthorized individuals, namely Individuals 1 and 2,’ the indictment reads. ‘BOLTON also unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense, including information classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level, in his home in Montgomery County, Maryland.’

The documents Bolton allegedly transmitted were sent to two individuals unauthorized to view classified documents, the indictment said.

Those documents, according to the indictment, revealed intelligence about future attacks by an adversarial group in another country, a liaison partner sharing sensitive information with the U.S. intelligence community, intelligence that a foreign adversary was planning a missile launch in the future and a covert action in a foreign country that was related to sensitive intergovernmental actions, among other information.

‘The FBI’s investigation revealed that John Bolton allegedly transmitted top secret information using personal online accounts and retained said documents in his house in direct violation of federal law,’ said FBI Director Kash Patel. ‘The case was based on meticulous work from dedicated career professionals at the FBI who followed the facts without fear or favor. Weaponization of justice will not be tolerated, and this FBI will stop at nothing to bring to justice anyone who threatens our national security.’

Bolton’s Maryland home had been raided by FBI agents in August. That search was focused on classified documents that investigators believed Bolton possessed. 

‘Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts,’ Bolton said in a statement Friday to The Associated Press, referencing President Donald Trump.

Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, added in a statement to the AP that the ‘underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago.’

‘Bolton kept diaries — that is not a crime,’ he said, noting that Bolton ‘did not unlawfully share or store any information.’

Lowell told the AP that the charges Bolton faces are linked to portions of Bolton’s personal diaries and included unclassified information that was shared with only immediate family members. Lowell also said this was known to the FBI dating back to at least 2021.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

House Republicans in battleground districts appear to be closing ranks as GOP leaders dig in on their government shutdown strategy, while the fiscal standoff shows no signs of slowing. 

Eight House GOP lawmakers whose seats are being targeted by Democrats in 2026 spoke with Fox News Digital this week. And while some shared individual concerns, they were largely united in agreeing with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., that Republicans should not renegotiate their federal funding proposal — and were confident that Americans are behind them.

‘The more people understand the math inside of the Senate, the more I would say Republicans are winning,’ said Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., who defeated a moderate Democrat for his seat last year.

Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., who also flipped her seat from blue to red, argued the results of the 2024 election show Americans ‘can see through a lot of the games that the Democrats have been playing.’

‘We’ve gotten to work with the demands of the American voters, and Democrats are still in disarray,’ she said.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., said, ‘It’s a simple math problem. And the Democrat Party grossly underestimated the American public’s ability to understand math.’

For a House GOP conference that’s been plagued by historic levels of division in recent history — particularly over the issue of government funding — it has shown a notable display of unity amid the shutdown, with few exceptions.

The shutdown is poised to roll into next week after most Senate Democrats voted to block the GOP’s bill for a tenth time. 

Republicans put forward last month a seven-week extension of fiscal year (FY) 2025 funding levels, called a continuing resolution (CR), aimed at giving congressional negotiators more time to strike a long-term deal for FY2026.

But Democrats in the House and Senate were infuriated by being sidelined in those talks. The majority of Democrats are refusing to accept any deal that does not include serious healthcare concessions, at least extending COVID-19 pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year.

Several vulnerable Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital pointed out they’re in favor of extending the Obamacare subsidies as well. Indeed, a majority of them are backers of a bipartisan bill to extend them for one year, led by Kiggans.

‘I think we would actually prefer to have … longer term than one year,’ said Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa.

But Mackenzie also pointed out that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., criticized the one-year bill, adding, ‘He already said ‘Absolutely not,’ so I don’t even know what their position is and what they’re asking for.’

Jeffries walked those comments back somewhat a day later, telling reporters that Democrats were willing to look at any good-faith offer.

Kiggans told Fox News Digital, ‘I care about that issue, certainly, you know, I had introduced that [Affordable Care Act] premium tax cuts extension.’

She added that Obamacare, formally called the ACA, and reopening the government are ‘two different issues, though’ that should be discussed separately.

The House Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital, while largely supportive of discussing Obamacare subsidy reforms and extensions, were united in refusing to entertain Democrats’ demands to come back to the negotiating table on federal funding. All maintained, in some form, that the House did its job in passing the CR on Sept. 19.

‘We have a clean CR that would fund all of the programs — all of the federal employees, keep everything up and running through Nov. 21st, so that we can finalize FY2026 appropriations and address issues like healthcare. But you don’t do it at the barrel of a gun,’ said Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y.

Lawler is one of three House Republicans who won in a district that President Donald Trump lost in 2024.

‘I think what the Democrats are doing here is creating a mess for the American people. And they’re not actually solving any of the problems,’ he said.

Mackenzie said, ‘It was a seven-week continuing resolution so that we could have time to have policy discussions on other issues that did need to be wrapped up by the end of the year. And we were on track to do that. And I think [Democrats] totally blew that process up.’

‘This is an unprecedented thing that Senate Democrats are doing, trying to add policy programs into the new continuity of funding bill,’ Rep. Tom Kean, R-N.J., the most vulnerable Republican in the Garden State, also said.

Both Lawler and Rep. Dave Valadao, R-Calif., warned that giving up a policy rider-free spending bill in favor of inserting partisan demands would create an unworkable new standard.

‘Holding the government office is never a good strategy. And if it becomes a successful way of negotiating … it’ll set a bad precedent for governing moving forward,’ Valadao said. ‘So this is an absolute no-go, should never be successful.’

Lawler said, ‘The reality is, the moment you start giving in on a clean CR and start giving in to demands, this will continue in perpetuity. Every time there’s a government funding lapse, you’ll have a group of people demanding something, and it will turn into a fiasco.’

Several of the battleground Republicans also praised Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., in the process.

Valadao told Fox News Digital, ‘I think they’re doing a good job. At least all the calls I’ve been on, the conversations I’ve had with my colleagues and, again, folks in the district, they all seem pretty confident that we’re doing the right thing.’

Lawler said Johnson had ‘handled it well,’ while Bresnahan said, ‘I would say, at least with members, they’re, you know, keeping very fluid conversations. We have daily or at least biweekly calls here as to what the messaging needs to be and what the conversations are.’

But there has been some dissent within the House GOP as the shutdown drags on.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has criticized House Republican leaders for not announcing a plan on extending the Obamacare subsidies.

And Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., publicly ripped Johnson’s decision to keep the House out of session while the Senate considers the CR.

‘It is absolutely unacceptable to me and I think only serves further distrust,’ Kiley told MSNBC on Wednesday.

Notably, not all battleground House Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital directly backed Johnson’s move — but none explicitly condemned it, either, and most blamed Senate Democrats for the holdup.

‘I’m kind of torn on that, because to come back and just be a part of the gimmicks that you see going on right now is not helpful,’ Valadao said. ‘Holding the government hostage is what’s the problem here.’

Kiggans, who said she’s lobbying for the House to vote on a standalone bill to pay both active duty and civilian members of the military, said, ‘I think we all want to get back to work. We know that we have work to do, but the ball’s in the court of the Senate Democrats and Chuck Schumer.’

Others more directly backed the move, however.

Kean told Fox News Digital that his staff were still busy in D.C. and in New Jersey trying to help constituents navigate the shutdown and other matters.

‘Any chance we can get back to our district, it’s always important that we listen to our constituents and hear their concerns,’ Kean said. ‘Right now, I 100% support the decision.’

Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said it was ‘the right move.’

‘We should be with our district. I’m keeping all my district offices open despite nobody getting paid,’ Nunn said. ‘Coming back and having a theatrical debate is less effective than having a real conversation about how to get the government back open.’

In theory, this should be a moment of vindication for the Free Palestine movement. A ceasefire holds. Israel has pulled back troops. International headlines finally reflect what activists have shouted for months: that Gaza’s suffering matters. 

And yet, the plazas are still. The hashtags have gone dormant. The chants that once shook campuses have faded into uneasy silence.

Why? 

Many activists can’t celebrate because celebration feels like surrender.

Behavioral science has some explanations. First, there’s cognitive dissonance at play. When the suffering that fueled your cause suddenly ends, any gesture toward happiness feels obscene. They still see bombed hospitals and displaced families. To cheer would feel like betrayal – not of Israel, but of grief itself.

Second, social identity theory tells us people bond most tightly when facing a common enemy. But when the enemy momentarily recedes, cohesion falters. You can see it in activist networks now debating purity tests and political hierarchies: who’s really anti-colonial, who’s performative. The silence isn’t apathy; it’s fragmentation.

And then there’s the matter of trust. The Free Palestine movement’s emotional currency is their perceived moral authenticity. That’s why President Donald Trump, despite questioning aid to Israel, gains no credit here. Even if he were to deliver every demand the Free Palestine movement has ever made – an end to occupation, full recognition, humanitarian aid – he would get no credit. 

To them, he is not a messenger; he is a metaphor. His name evokes everything they stand against: nationalism, hierarchy, cruelty disguised as strength. Their ears are hardened not by indifference, but by identity. When a message comes from a symbol of what you despise, its meaning dies on arrival. That’s not hypocrisy – it’s human nature. We hear only what affirms who we are. What remains is a vacuum of feeling – neither victory nor defeat, just unresolved tension.

For many, that tension is unbearable, so silence becomes self-protection. But silence has a cost.

A movement that cannot speak when conditions improve loses moral clarity. If the world only hears you when you’re angry, it stops listening when you’re right. The tragedy of the Free Palestine silence is not hypocrisy; it’s heartbreak. It reveals how thoroughly moral identity has replaced moral imagination.

To move forward, supporters must learn to celebrate small mercies without mistaking them for betrayal – to see progress not as perfection, but as proof that pain is finally being heard. Until then, the quiet will continue. Not because there’s nothing to say, but because joy, after so much rage, feels foreign on the tongue.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., believed that Senate Democrats were ‘in a bad place’ after they tanked Republicans’ push to consider the annual defense spending bill on Friday.

Thune argued during an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital that Democrats’ decision to vote against the procedural exercise seemed like ‘an extreme measure, and I think it’s coming from a very dysfunctional place right now.’

‘I think there’s a ton of dysfunction in the Democrat caucus, and I think this [‘No Kings’] rally this weekend is triggering a lot of this,’ he said.

Thune’s move to put the bill on the floor was a multipronged effort. One of the elements was to apply pressure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus to join Republicans to jump start the government funding process as the shutdown continues to drag on.

Another was to test Democrats’ desire to fund the government on a bipartisan basis — a demand they had made in the weeks leading up to the shutdown.

‘I think the leadership is applying pressure,’ Thune said. ‘They were all being called into Schumer’s office this morning to be browbeaten into voting ‘no’ on the defense appropriations bill, something that most of them, you know, like I said, that should be an 80-plus vote in the Senate.’

To his point, the bill easily glided through committee earlier this year on a 26 to 3 vote, and like a trio of spending bills passed in August, typically would have advanced in the upper chamber on a bipartisan basis.

The bill, which Senate Republicans hoped to use as a vehicle to add more spending bills, would have funded the Pentagon and paid military service members.

But Senate Democrats used a similar argument to block the bill that they’ve used over the last 16 days of the government shutdown in their pursuit of an extension to expiring Obamacare subsidies: they wanted a guarantee on which bills would have been added to the minibus package.

‘What are you — are you gonna go around and talk to people about a hypothetical situation,’ Thune countered. ‘I think, you know, once we’re on the bill, then it makes sense to go do that, have those conversations, which is what we did last time.’

The Senate could get another chance to vote on legislation next week that would pay both the troops and certain federal employees that have to work through the shutdown, but it won’t be the defense funding bill. Instead, it’s legislation from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and several other Senate Republicans.

As for the torpedoed defense bill, which was the last vote for the week in the Senate, Thune argued that it was emblematic of Senate Democrats being ‘in a place where the far-left is the tail wagging the dog.’

‘And you would think that federal workers, who you know, federal employee unions, public employee unions, who Democrats [count] as generally part of their constituency, right now, they’re way more concerned about what Moveon.org and Indivisible, and some of those groups are saying about them, evidently, than what some of their constituents here are saying,’ he said.

‘Because there’s going to be people who are going to start missing paychecks, and this thing gets real pretty fast,’ he continued. 
 

A video shared on X shows Erika Kirk at the Turning Point USA office surrounded by staff members, proudly showing them the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to her late husband, Charlie Kirk.

In the clip posted by Mikey McCoy, Charlie Kirk’s former chief of staff, Erika speaks movingly to the assembled team.

In the clip, she can be heard saying, ‘I wanted you guys all to see the Medal of Freedom and be able to look at it and the back of it.’

‘You guys are all part of the legacy. Thank you,’ she says warmly.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award in the U.S. It was awarded posthumously to Charlie Kirk by President Donald Trump on Oct. 14, 2025, a date that would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday. 

Erika accepted the award on her husband’s behalf at a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House. She also delivered remarks highlighting her husband’s beliefs and sacrifice.

Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, while speaking at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley State University in Orem, Utah.

Following her husband’s death, Erika was unanimously appointed CEO and chair of Turning Point USA’s board.

A teenage street musician has been jailed and charged with leading a public gathering in which she led a crowd in singing an anti-Putin rock song in St. Petersburg, a rare act of defiance, according to local reports.

Diana Loginova faces a single administrative charge for organizing an unauthorized public gathering and has been jailed for 13 days, The Moscow Times reported.

After serving her sentence, Loginova will face an additional administrative offense of ‘discrediting’ the Russian military, Reuters reported.

Loginova, who performs under the name Naoko with the band Stoptime, was arrested Tuesday after being filmed earlier leading a crowd in singing the lyrics to exiled rapper Noize MC’s hit song ‘Swan Lake Cooperative.’

Noize MC, the musician who wrote ‘Swan Lake Cooperative,’ is openly critical of the Kremlin and left Russia for Lithuania after the start of the war in Ukraine.

For its part, Moscow has added him to its list of ‘foreign agents,’ which includes hundreds of individuals and entities accused of conducting subversive activities with support from abroad, Reuters reported.

The song doesn’t reference Russian President Vladimir Putin or mention the war in Ukraine. It is a reference to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, which was played on television after the deaths of Soviet leaders and during the 1991 coup attempt against President Mikhail Gorbachev.

In May, a St. Petersburg court banned the song on grounds it ‘may contain signs of justification and excuse for hostile, hateful attitudes towards people, as well as statements promoting violent changes to the foundations of the constitutional order.’

The commander of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), whose area of operations includes the Caribbean waters where the strikes against the alleged drug boats have been conducted, announced he is retiring suddenly by the end of the year. 

Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey, who became the commander of SOUTHCOM in November 2024, announced Thursday that he would retire from the Navy in December. No reason for his abrupt exit was provided, and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

‘The SOUTHCOM team has made lasting contributions to the defense of our nation, and will continue to do so,’ Holsey said in a statement SOUTHCOM shared on social media. ‘I am confident that you will forge ahead, focused on your mission that strengthens our nation and ensures its longevity as a beacon of freedom around the globe.’ 

Holsey commissioned in 1988, and flew both SH-2F Seasprite and SH-60B Seahawk helicopters. Holsey’s previous assignments include serving as the deputy commander of SOUTHCOM, as well as deputy Chief of Naval Personnel and the commander of the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson’s carrier strike group.

The New York Times first reported that Holsey was departing his post. 

Holsey’s retirement less than a year into his tenure leading the combatant command is unusual. Former SOUTHCOM commander, Army Gen. Laura Richardson, served in the role from 2021 to 2024. 

Holsey’s retirement comes as tensions heat up in his area of operations, and just a few days after the U.S. military conducted a strike against alleged narco-traffickers in the Caribbean and after the Department of War unveiled a new counter-narcotics Joint Task Force in SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility.

The Trump administration has adopted an aggressive approach to address the flow of drugs into the U.S., and designated drug cartel groups like Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa and others as foreign terrorist organizations in February.

Likewise, the White House sent lawmakers a memo Sept. 30 notifying them that the U.S. is now participating in a ‘non-international armed conflict’ with drug smugglers, and has conducted at least five fatal strikes on alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela. 

Even so, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed doubts about the legality of the strikes, and Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., filed a war powers resolution in September to prohibit U.S. forces from engaging in ‘hostilities’ against certain non-state organizations.

Although the resolution failed in the Senate by a 51–48 margin Oct. 8, Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted with their Democratic counterparts for the resolution.

Meanwhile, Trump has signaled he is eyeing land operations now ‘because we’ve got the sea very well under control,’ and confirmed that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, after the New York Times reported Wednesday he had approved the order. 

Trump said he did so because Venezuela has released prisoners into the U.S., and that drugs were pouring into the U.S. from Venezuela through the sea routes. 

However, Trump declined to answer though when asked if the CIA had the authority to ‘take out’ Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Trump administration has said it does not recognize Maduro as a legitimate head of state, but a leader of a drug cartel.

Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth commended Holsey for his service, and wished Holsey and his family continued success. 

‘Throughout his career—from commanding helicopter squadrons to leading Carrier Strike Group One and standing up the International Maritime Security Construct—Admiral Holsey has demonstrated unwavering commitment to mission, people, and nation,’ Hegseth said in a post on social media on Thursday. ‘His tenure as Military Deputy Commander and now Commander of United States Southern Command reflects a legacy of operational excellence and strategic vision.’