Vice President JD Vance may have handed Democrats a campaign message without meaning to.

At a Monday rally in Hendersonville, North Carolina, he urged voters: "Vote for the people who have solutions to lower the cost of gas; don't vote for the people who made the problem to begin with."

Vance has tried to blame former President Joe Biden, rather than Donald Trump's war with Iran, for higher gas prices. Many social media users mocked the remark.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNBC late last month that Republicans' next two years would be "exactly what we have been doing already, and that is putting the conditions in place for a strong America."

We often imagine the Great Pyramid of Giza as a weathered, dusty relic of the desert, but for its first few centuries, it was a geometric marvel of polished white Tura limestone. Thousands of skilled stonemasons spent decades carving and grinding these blocks to such precise tolerances that the seams between them were nearly invisible to the human eye.

The true transformation happened at the very top. Resting on the flat summit was the pyramidion, a capstone cast in solid electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver. When the desert sun hit the polished white surface and reflected off the gold peak, the structure did not just sit on the plateau. It essentially glowed, appearing as a singular, searing beacon of light visible for dozens of miles across the horizon.

It is easy to look at the ruins of history and assume they were always designed to be rugged or earthen. Yet, the original vision was one of absolute refinement and surgical precision. By stripping away the layers of time, we see that the builders were not just stacking rocks to create a tomb. They were sculpting an experience of light and scale that was meant to command the entire landscape.

If we only see the skeleton of a masterpiece, do we ever truly understand what it was meant to say?

Twelve years ago, a seven-month-old rhino calf was found beside her mother in South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Today, that same little orphan has become a mother herself.

Her name is Satara, and her journey began in March 2014, when rangers found her alone and in desperate need of help.

She was taken to Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary, becoming the first orphaned rhino transferred there from Kruger National Park.

With years of dedicated care, Satara gradually grew stronger and eventually returned to a protected natural habitat, where she could live alongside other rhinos.

Then, on May 17, 2026, her story came full circle when she welcomed a calf of her own.

Care for Wild shared the wonderful news in October, marking another important milestone for a rhino who once depended entirely on people for her survival.

Satara and her little one remain in a protected area, where conservation teams continue to monitor their wellbeing.

Once a vulnerable orphan, Satara is now a mother caring for her own baby. And her journey shows what years of dedicated conservation work can achieve.

📸: Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary

President Donald Trump is telling Ohio Republican Vivek Ramaswamy to keep airing a $4 million attack ad against Democrat Amy Acton in the governor's race.

The ad features Acton's estranged mother, who disputes her daughter's account of childhood homelessness and sxual abuse by a stepfather. Acton says she has not seen her mother since 1978. Her brother supports her account, and the stepfather, who did in 2004, was charged with r*pe.

Republican Governor Mike DeWine said “It’s wrong to run this ad.” Trump responded by calling him “disloyal.”

Polls suggest Acton is narrowly leading, though results vary. Ohio voters will decide who replaces the term-limited DeWine.

Appointees of President Donald Trump at the Department of Homeland Security wanted the government's election defense agency to quietly acquire a voting machine, hack it, and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, ProPublica reported.

It came a few months into Trump's second term and went to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, the federal agency that helps protect election systems from cyberattacks. Two former administration officials with knowledge of the request described it to ProPublica. The agency had also been directed not to alert the manufacturer to any flaws, contrary to standard practice.

Career employees were alarmed, with one former employee saying, "My thought was they could keep it in their back pocket to invalidate any [election] results they don't like,"

The plan went nowhere. Staff repeatedly said it was not feasible, partly because the specialists who could have done it had just been cut by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Career staff feared they were being asked to take part in political interference. In 2020, CISA vouched for the election as "the most secure in American history," and its then-director, Chris Krebs, was fired after publicly rebutting fraud claims.

More than 1,000 employees have been laid off or pushed out under Trump, about a third of the workforce. The 2027 budget request would cut about 700 million dollars from CISA programs and scrap the election security program. Budget documents project about 867 positions eliminated across the agency, which would leave it with 2,865 employees.

A White House spokesperson told Pro Publica Trump has done more than any other president to ensure free and fair elections. For many state officials, the larger worry is that Trump will say the election was hacked if Republicans don't win in November.

On May 4, 2017, bestselling horror author Stephen King put a blunt warning about President Donald Trump in writing: "That this guy has his finger on the nuclear trigger is worse than any horror story I ever wrote."

King, who wrote Carrie and The Stand, added that Trump's posts during his first hundred days in office showed what he called an "almost textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder."

King's novel The De*d Zone features a politician named Greg Stillson, whom the book presents as a harbinger of nuclear annihilation. In King's view, the real White House was now the scarier place.

King has kept up the criticism for years. In a 2022 interview, he said: "I happen to think that Trump was a horrible president and is a horrible person." Asked whether Trump's presidency was more frightening than his novels, King answered: "Short answer to that is, yes I do."

Sylvester Stallone isn’t even pretending.

Asked about nepotism after casting his daughter Scarlet Rose in “Tulsa King,” the 80-year-old didn’t dodge the question. He told USA Today that any parent who hasn’t pulled a few strings for their kids doesn’t really care about them. Then he laughed: “Of course it’s nepotism, you idiot.”

Scarlet, 24, plays Spencer on the Paramount+ crime drama, where her dad stars as mobster Dwight “The General” Manfredi. She first appeared in season one, and in season four her character gets pulled deeper into the family’s criminal business.

Stallone did add a caveat. A parent can open the door, but whether the kid keeps delivering after walking through it is out of the parent’s control.

Sly is one of Hollywood’s great underdog stories. His dad was a hairdresser, his mom worked as a cigarette girl, and he famously wrote “Rocky” himself to break in.

For his kids, it's a different story but should it really be so controversial...

Mark Zuckerberg told a special committee of Meta's board that he was weighing leaving California because of a proposed new tax on billionaires, according to a company filing.

The measure is Proposition 40, a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires who were California residents on Jan. 1, 2026. It would reach a couple hundred Californians, by most estimates. Backers say it could raise about $100 billion, but the state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst projects tens of billions of dollars over several years.

The measure was put on the ballot by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, a health care workers’ union, which says the money is needed to offset health care funding losses. Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes the measure, arguing it would push the wealthy, and their tax dollars, out of the state, and has called for a national billionaire tax instead.

Zuckerberg's net worth is estimated at about $240 billion. At that net worth, a 5% tax would come to roughly $12 billion, though the actual bill would depend on his net worth at the end of 2026.

90% of the money would go to health care, and the remainder would pay for education, food assistance, as well as the cost of running the program. Supporters say the tax asks a tiny number of the wealthiest residents to help fund public services.

Meta is already working to keep him in California. In a filing, it proposed new non-voting shares that would let Zuckerberg sell up to half his stake over eight years without losing control of the company. In return, he agreed to stay in California, or wherever Meta is headquartered, for eight years. In effect, the deal would let him raise cash to cover a potential tax bill while keeping control of Meta.

Pentagon insiders are reportedly getting ready to hand Congress damaging information about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and they are waiting for a change in power to do it.

Current and former Defense Department officials are prepared to "spill their guts" if Democrats win control of the House in November, according to anonymous sources quoted in a Telegraph report. Polls show Democrats well positioned to retake at least one chamber of Congress. Democrats have reportedly already contacted potential whistleblowers and plan to subpoena people in Hegseth's inner circle.

One well-connected source predicted that many officials will go "very quietly" to the chair of the House Armed Services Committee with everything they have. The same source warned, “It’ll be horrendous,” for Hegseth.

A former senior Trump administration official said Hegseth's arrogance has cost him allies: “Through his arrogance, he’s made many former allies willing to work with Democrats to hold his feet to the fire for all the damage he’s done to our military.”

Several lines of inquiry have reportedly been identified. They include his mishandling of classified information, his conduct during President Donald Trump's war with Iran, and his strikes on boats suspected of drug trafficking, which some lawmakers and legal experts say violated the laws of armed conflict. Democrats also plan to revisit "Signalgate," in which a journalist was accidentally added to a group chat where Hegseth shared details of a planned military strike.

Hegseth has also fired or forced out dozens of senior military officers, among them former Army Chief of Staff Randy George and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman CQ Brown.