Rescue crews on skis and snowcats battled blizzard conditions in an effort to reach six backcountry skiers still alive but trapped Tuesday after an avalanche high in the rugged Northern California mountains that left 10 other skiers missing as the danger of more slides remained high. Snow covers a street sign on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026 in Truckee Calif. (AP Photo/Brooke Hess-Homeier) This image provided by the Nevada County Sheriff's Office shows members of a rescue team in Soda Springs, California on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. A vehicle is buried in snow during a storm on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026 in Truckee Calif. (AP Photos/Brooke Hess-Homeier) Trucks are lined up along Interstate 80 during a storm on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026 in Truckee Calif. (AP Photos/Brooke Hess-Homeier) NEVADA CITY, Calif. (AP) — Eight backcountry skiers have been found dead and one remains missing after an avalanche near Lake Tahoe in California, officials said Wednesday, making it the deadliest avalanche in the U.S. in more than four decades. Nevada County Sheriff Shannan Moon said during a news conference that authorities have told the families the mission has moved from rescue to recovery. It is the deadliest avalanche in the U.S. since 1981, when 11 climbers were killed on Mount Rainier, Washington. Crews have faced treacherous conditions in their search for the missing skiers since the avalanche struck Tuesday morning. Six of them have been found alive. The group was on a three-day trek in Northern California's Sierra Nevada as a monster winter storm pummeled the West Coast. Two of those rescued after several hours of searching were taken to a hospital for treatment, said Ashley Quadros, a spokesperson for the Nevada County Sheriff's Office. It sees an average of nearly 35 feet (10 meters) of snow a year, according to the Truckee Donner Land Trust, which owns a cluster of huts where the group was staying near Frog Lake. Multiple feet of snowfall and gale force winds in recent days left the snowpack unstable and unpredictable, and more snow was predicted to fall, the center said. The sheriff's office said Tuesday night that 15 backcountry skiers had been on the trip, not 16 as initially believed. He said the area requires navigating rugged mountainous terrain. Reaching the huts in winter takes several hours and requires backcountry skills, avalanche training and safety equipment, the land trust says on its website. “Our thoughts are with the missing individuals, their families, and first responders in the field,” Blackbird said in a statement Wednesday. Several Tahoe ski resorts had been fully or partially closed due to the weather. Resorts, which use controlled explosions and barriers to manage avalanche threats, were not expected to be at as high of a risk as the backcountry, the center said. The area near Donner Summit was closed for nearly a century before the land trust and its partners in 2020 acquired Frog Lake, which is framed by 1,000-foot-high (300-meter-high) cliffs. Donner Summit is named for the infamous Donner Party, a group of pioneers who resorted to cannibalism after getting trapped there in the winter of 1846-1847. Each winter, 25 to 30 people die in avalanches in the U.S., according to the National Avalanche Center.

In this photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service, soldiers are at a pickup before assignments on the frontline near Kostyantynivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. In this photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service, soldiers control an FPV drone to send food to fellow-soldiers on a mission on the frontline near Kostyantynivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. GENEVA (AP) — The latest U.S.-brokered talks between envoys from Moscow and Kyiv over Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine ended Wednesday with no sign of a breakthrough and with both sides saying the talks were “difficult,” as the war's fourth anniversary approaches next week. “The negotiations were not easy,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after the talks broke up and he spoke briefly by phone from Kyiv with his negotiating team. He earlier accused Russia of “trying to drag out negotiations” while it presses on with its invasion — an accusation he and European leaders have repeatedly made in the past. Despite that, some progress was made on military issues although political differences remain deep, including over the future of land in eastern Ukraine that is occupied by the Russian army and that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to keep, Zelenskyy said. Putin has been receiving reports about progress in Geneva, he said. Both sides said a new round of talks is set to take place. Zelenskyy described the military discussions as “constructive,” adding that the armed forces of both countries considered how any future ceasefire might be monitored. “Monitoring will definitely be carried out with participation of the American side,” he said in a voice message shared in a media group chat on WhatsApp. U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on social media that Washington's push for peace in Ukraine over the past year has “brought about meaningful progress,” without elaborating. Hours after the first day of talks ended on Tuesday, Russian drones killed a woman and injured a 6-year-old girl and 18-month-old toddler in the southern Ukraine city of Zaporizhzhia, officials said. Overnight, Russia launched one ballistic missile and 126 long-range drones at Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian air force. Zelenskyy said that the Ukrainian and American envoys in Geneva met with representatives from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. European leaders, mindful of Putin's wider ambitions, say their own security is at stake in Ukraine and have insisted on being consulted in peace efforts. Russia and Ukraine appear to still be far apart on their demands for a settlement. Putin's key goals remain what he declared when Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022: Ukraine must renounce joining NATO, sharply reduce the size of its army and protect Russian language and culture to keep the country in Moscow's orbit. Additionally, Putin wants Kyiv to withdraw its forces from the four eastern regions Moscow has occupied but doesn't fully control. Zelenskyy says Ukraine won't surrender land to Russia. Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG. Charlotte Drinkwater, 23, has been visiting Nantucket, Massachusetts, for more than 20 years and shared her ideal day on the island in a viral TikTok video. Nantucket may be the perfect summer destination for coastal New England vibes, but new data shows that the famously picturesque island off the coast of Massachusetts is not without some flaws. Recent wastewater surveillance reporting shows once again, as it has before, that cocaine levels in sewer water have been well above the national average from July 2025 to February 2026. In October, levels spiked to 2,948.70 nanograms per liter, while the national average remained under 1,000. There was another spike of 2,815.50 nanograms per liter on Nantucket in December while the national average was just over 1,000, the same reporting shows. Fox News Digital reached out to the town of Nantucket for comment, which noted its public dashboard with relevant data. Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts, is showing cocaine levels nearly triple the national average in its wastewater surveillance. "With a seasonal population that can quadruple in the summer, the town faces the unique challenge of managing behavioral health risks with a limited yet consistent set of resources," it also said. There were an average of 40,000 visitors on most days in July and August between 2021–2022 — with peak days welcoming above 60,000, according to Cape and Islands, a local publication. In October 2025, cocaine levels spiked to 2,948.70 nanograms per liter, while the national average remained under 1,000. The same tests found below-average levels of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid blamed for overdoses around the country. There was another spike of 2,815.50 nanograms per liter of cocaine on Nantucket in December while the national average was just over 1,000. "During COVID, a lot of these communities, and most communities, decided that it was important for them to start testing the water to see if there were any spikes in COVID in the region," Randolph Rice, a Maryland attorney and legal analyst, previously told Fox News Digital. "But what Nantucket has now decided to do as of the beginning of the summer is to actually start testing for other types of substances, particularly drugs, nicotine and other items… within the system there. The town of Nantucket attracts celebrities, millionaires — and billionaires. Nantucket, with a myriad of charms, attracts celebrities, millionaires — and billionaires. Former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick sold his Nantucket home in August for $4 million, as FOX Business reported recently. Ashley J. DiMella is a lifestyle reporter with Fox News Digital. A look at the top-trending stories in food, relationships, great outdoors and more. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG. Vice President JD Vance addresses home affordability, Tom Homan's role in immigration operations and more on 'The Story.' That was the message from top members of President Donald Trump's political team, as they huddled in a closed-door strategy session with Trump administration Cabinet members and their top aides on how best to sell the president's agenda to voters in this year's midterm elections. The meeting, which was confirmed to Fox News by sources familiar with the gathering, was hosted by White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff James Blair, who is steering Trump's political strategy. President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to deliver remarks on the U.S. economy and affordability at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 9, 2025. Republicans are facing traditional political headwinds in the midterms, when the party in power usually loses House and Senate seats. Republicans are also dealing with the president's continued underwater approval ratings, and a slew of surveys, including the latest Fox News polling, that indicates Americans are pessimistic about the economy and say things have not improved in the year since Trump returned to the White House. Meanwhile, Democrats have scored a series of ballot box victories and overperformances in off-year elections and special elections during Trump's second administration, thanks to their laser focus on affordability amid persistent inflation. President Donald Trump takes the stage to speak during a rally at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, Iowa, on Jan. 27. The president spotlighted his administration's efforts to lower prices. Trump wasn't at the meeting, according to sources. But he's expected to spotlight the economy and his administration's achievements when he holds a political event Thursday in battleground Georgia, which is holding key elections for the Senate and governor this year. Vice President JD Vance offered a taste of the messaging in an interview Tuesday on Fox News' "The Story." Pointing to former President Joe Biden's administration, Vance argued, "We're still digging out of the hole the Democrats put us in. And I think the question we're going to put to the American people is, do you want to give the government back over to the people who, frankly, burned down the house and made most Americans much less wealthy and much less safe? Or do you want to double down on the president's leadership?" Besides messaging, sources say the meeting also focused on polling and the 2026 electoral map, with top Trump political aides walking those attending the gathering through new data on key midterm battlegrounds. Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in the swing state of New Hampshire. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more Fox News politics content. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters. At Vox, our mission is to help you make sense of the world — and that work has never been more vital. But we can't do it on our own. We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today? BRASÍLIA, Brazil — André Borges's aunt was pregnant when they took her. In power from 1964–1985, the regime was violently censorial — banning any speech it deemed subversive or leftist. Sitting in a left-wing bookshop in the capital city of Brasília, Borges tells me this story to underscore the fragility of Brazilian democracy. Quite the opposite; I wanted Borges, and others like him, to help me understand why the Brazilian system proved far more capable than its American cousin at a paramount task: protecting democracy from a civilian president who wished to be dictator. In 2018, Brazilian voters elected Jair Bolsonaro — a former military captain and congressional backbencher — to the presidency. An open admirer of the military regime, Bolsonaro ran as an outsider against a political class that Brazilians widely (and correctly) regard as deeply corrupt. But while Bolsonaro's efforts resembled what Donald Trump has done in his second term in the United States, the response from other branches was markedly different. Center-right parties in Congress refused to rubber-stamp Bolsonaro's power grabs. Brazil's Supreme Court repeatedly blocked the president's authoritarian moves, and led aggressive probes into crimes against democracy. When Bolsonaro's hardcore supporters attempted a putsch on January 8, 2023 — an insurrection in Brasília deeply influenced by January 6, 2021 — the military did not join the uprising. Brazil is a middle-income country that was governed by a military regime so recently that middle-aged citizens remember living under it. And yet, when the test came, Brazil's core democratic institutions — the legislature, courts, and federal agencies — defended democracy far better than their American peers. What I found was a paradox: that some of the biggest problems in Brazil's democracy, issues that fueled Bolsonaro's rise in 2018, also made the system almost uniquely resistant to the tactics Trump is using in America today. And we need to understand Brazil as it is: not as an idealized foil for America, but a real place in all its complexity. Only then can we identify how we can make America's institutions as willing to fight for democracy as Brazil's. In Rio de Janeiro, I climbed a set of hilly, narrow streets to meet another well-known political scientist named Carlos Pereira for a drink. Brazil's emergence from democratic crisis seems to have vindicated the argument he had staked his career on: that its constitution works. But what no one had done, at least in any depth, is look at the period before that — when Bolsonaro was president — and compared it to Trump's second term so far. How is it that, when faced with an openly undemocratic leader, Brazil's Congress and Supreme Court performed so much better than their twins in the United States? Brazil, by contrast, has proportional representation: Each state has a set number of seats, allocated to different parties based on their percentage of the state popular vote. While the US system encouraged consolidation into two parties, the Brazilian system allowed for many parties to win a slice of national power. All it took was a relatively small fraction of the vote in one state. At the time, many American experts (and some prominent Brazilians) predicted disaster. With so many parties splitting seats, no president could hope to have a partisan majority in Congress. Instead, presidents would have to build coalitions and strike deals with out-parties, a system that seemed prone to legislative gridlock and even collapse. “The combination of presidentialism and multipartism makes stable democracy difficult to sustain,” Scott Mainwaring, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame, wrote in an influential 1993 article. “Not one of the world's 31 stable democracies has this institutional configuration.” Two historically successful presidencies — center-right Fernando Henrique Cardoso, followed by the first two terms of the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — tamed the country's hyperinflation crisis and significantly expanded its welfare state. Between 1990 and 2010, Brazil's GDP per capita grew by over 40 percent. In his view, the policy accomplishments under Cardoso and Lula were not in spite of its system but because of it. Unlike in two-party systems, where presidents count on partisan loyalty to pass bills, presidents in multiparty democracies have to trade specific favors. Sometimes, this means appointing leaders of other parties to the Cabinet. Other times, it means using presidential powers to direct ungodly levels of pork-barrel spending to states represented by swing legislators. It is instead something called the Centrão (Big Center): a loose group of parties that are center-right ideologically, but in practice willing to deal with any president who will help them secure pork funding and ignore their pervasive corruption. Pereira and Melo acknowledged these downsides, but argued that they were not existential. The self-interested logic bound Brazilian leaders to the system, giving them a direct financial and careerist stake in maintaining democracy. “We see a powerful presidency but also a potent web of watchdogs standing on guard to prevent wrongdoing,” they write. “All relevant political forces have found it best to keep submitting their interests and values to the uncertain interplay of democratic institutions.” Soon after they wrote this, Brazil's democracy would plunge into crisis. President Dilma Rousseff, a former anti-dictatorship guerrilla and Lula's chosen successor in the left-wing Workers' Party (PT), was impeached in 2016 for alleged financial improprieties unrelated to the investigation. Her vice president, the center-right Michel Temer, was criminally charged as part of Lava Jato in 2017. Lula was arrested and convicted on (extremely dubious) corruption charges in 2017 as well; when he tried to run for president again in 2018 from prison, the courts blocked him. All of this played out during a major economic downturn. Together, they caused an explosion of anti-incumbent sentiment in much the same manner as the twin shocks of inflation and revelations about President Joe Biden's age did in 2024. In early 2018, reporter Ana Clara Costa spent roughly two months with Jair Bolsonaro on the campaign trail. When we met for coffee in Rio, Costa summarized her impressions of the man during those months in three words: “He was insane.” “Everything he said was so narrow-minded…it was very much based on conspiracy theories, things that were trending on Facebook,” she recalls. Once, he told a female legislator that “I wouldn't rape you because you don't deserve it.” Another time, he told an interviewer that given the choice between one of his sons coming out as gay or dying, he'd prefer the latter. Yet in an anti-incumbent moment, none of this was disqualifying — and perhaps even helped by situating him well outside the “normal” political elite. Both men began with relatively high favorability numbers, owing to the combination of a rabid base and anti-establishment sentiment among swing voters. In his first weeks, Bolsonaro used the expansive formal powers of his office — including provisional decrees, which are like executive orders with the legal status of a law — to surveil NGOs, purge “disloyal” civil servants, and loosen gun restrictions. His moves pushed the boundaries of presidential power, cutting into authority rightly reserved for Congress. In the United States, Trump's version — which was significantly more aggressive and legally dubious — faced little pushback from Congress. Congress passed a law stripping Bolsonaro of the power to surveil NGOs. It blocked efforts to expand the number of fireable civil servants. And it reversed his effort to seize control over gun policy. This congressional assertiveness wasn't just an early-days phenomenon. According to data from Pereira and Melo, Bolsonaro issued 254 provisional decrees — by far the most any Brazilian president issued in a four-year term. This was the worst success rate of any president to serve a full term; in fact, he was the only such president who had fewer than 50 percent of their decrees approved by Congress. Similarly, Congress voted to override a Bolsonaro veto on legislation 30 times over the course of his presidency. By comparison, the four prior presidents — stretching back to 1995 — had a total of nine vetoes overridden. The evidence leaves little doubt that Bolsonaro would like to have acted as Trump has done in his second term. Those center-right Republicans in Congress who have private qualms about Trump's authoritarian politics do not, for the most part, dare criticize him publicly: They are too afraid for their jobs, social standing, and potentially even their lives. Many of them have acted like what the political scientist Juan Linz called “semi-loyal democrats”: people who pay lip service to democratic ideals, but act in a way that encourages and even normalizes the radicals. Brazil's multiparty system meant that Bolsonaro had no such control. Legislators had independent political support bases, and could win reelection without backing from the president. The Centrão cooperated with Bolsonaro when it suited them — he pushed through a major pension reform bill with their support in 2019. But they drew the line at his attempts to build an imperial presidency. “It's very clear to me that Bolsonaro [wanted to be] a populist president who slowly undermines checks and balances,” Borges said. “But this wouldn't be good for the old-style, traditional mainstream right. For them, it would be much better to have a weak president.” About a year into Bolsonaro's presidency, he faced his first major crisis: the coronavirus pandemic. He arrested critics of his Covid policy using a dictatorship-era national security law, and launched eight times as many investigations under this law per year than the average under prior presidents. He moved repeatedly to block the work of government transparency watchdogs and nominated his hyperloyal chief bodyguard to run the national police. Perhaps most ominously, he began a sustained attack on the integrity of Brazil's elections, calling the country's electronic voting system corrupt and trying to move to a paper system. On Election Day 2022, he sent federal police officers to obstruct access to polling stations in the opposition's core territory in Brazil's northeast. Congress had acquired even greater say over Bolsonaro at this point: Facing Covid-related impeachment threats, he was obliged to strike a formal coalition deal with Centrão parties, ceding key control over the legislative agenda and the budget. But it was Brazil's judiciary that ultimately took center stage in the pushback against Bolsonaro. In 2019, the Court asserted a novel power to open an investigation into threats made against judges by Bolsonaro allies and supporters. This unprecedented court-ordered inquiry spiraled into a wide-ranging investigation into “fake news” and anti-democratic activity led by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a center-right former prosecutor who would, in 2022, take on a dual role as president of Brazil's highest court for electoral matters (the Superior Electoral Court). With backing from other justices, Moraes wielded his powers aggressively — emerging as the most effective and ruthless opponent of Bolsonaro's power grabs. In 2021, for example, he turned out hundreds of thousands of supporters for rallies on Brazil's Independence Day in which he openly promised to ignore Supreme Court rulings. The judicial offensive against Bolsonaro was hardly a given. If you looked at the Court's pre-Bolsonaro record, you might have predicted something like what happened in the United States: ideologically aligned justices greenlighting a president's power grabs. “The supreme court was heavily divided ideologically prior to Bolsonaro,” said Celso Rocha de Barros, a columnist at Folha de São Paulo (Brazil's New York Times equivalent). “If you look at the two guys with the highest legal reputations, Gilmar Mendes and Luís Roberto Barroso, they hated each other. If you look for it on YouTube, there's video of them cursing at each other during Supreme Court sessions.” So here we have a puzzle: Why did Brazil's seemingly politicized Supreme Court manage to unite in defense of democracy in a way that SCOTUS demonstrably has not? Except in Brazil, the Senate has members from roughly a dozen parties — meaning that presidents would never have the majority required to approve a true rubber-stamp justice. “In Brazil, the Supreme Court is not partisan because you don't have this two-party system,” said Christian Lynch, a prominent Brazilian legal theorist. “You can't nominate a judge who is going to be loyal to you as a person, the president.” But Lynch cautions against reducing the Court's behavior to a simple mechanistic model, in which multipartyism guarantees good judicial behavior. There was an element of choice here: a decision by the justices to push back against Bolsonaro's attempts to consolidate power in his own hands. Imagine the current US Congress overriding even one of Trump's! Judges saw their role as not just adjudicating criminal cases, or even disputes between the branches, but rather as guarantors of the new democratic order. The Court's expansive powers, in their view, can and should be wielded aggressively to both ensure democracy's survival and promote its health. In a remarkable April 2022 essay, then-Justice Luís Roberto Barroso openly positioned the Court as a bulwark against what he called an “institutional coup” by Bolsonaro, describing a court once divided on corruption cases but now “joined in the defense of democracy.” This was, he argued, necessary: Courts play a “decisive” role in resisting authoritarian presidents, and must proactively choose to resist them. In fact, he writes that the Centrão is “allied” with Bolsonaro, describing the faction as being “renowned for its voracity for political offices and public funds.” Though Congress's performance during Bolsonaro's term is impressive from an American perspective, the Court mistrusted such a cynical and self-interested body. “Now the judiciary is the ringleader in a process of defending democracy, when it is no longer the legislative branch, which should be,” says Tião Viana, a former senator and governor from Lula's left-wing PT party. “Alexandre de Moraes is the expression of this.” Support from the center-right was decisive: Some of Lula's prominent rivals, like Geraldo Alckmin and Simone Tebet, backed the leftist on defense-of-democracy grounds. When Lula's victory was announced, nearly everyone in Brazilian politics immediately accepted the results. Bolsonaro presented them with a draft of an order that would declare a state of emergency, annul Lula's victory, and place Justice Alexandre de Moraes under arrest. But they did not notify Moraes or the police — nor did they do so after a second meeting a week later, where Bolsonaro's team again pitched them on the coup plan. Stonewalled by top generals, Bolsonaro began plotting with some lower-ranked ones. The evidence was damning enough to secure indictments for Bolsonaro, his former vice president, his defense secretary, and dozens of other generals and aligned officials. Late last year, Bolsonaro and his allies were convicted of masterminding a conspiracy against Brazilian democracy. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison and is currently serving time; a separate electoral court ruling, in 2023, had already disqualified him from running for public office until 2030. From an American point of view, it's hard not to be jealous of a country where a former president incited an insurrection and actually suffered consequences for it. But in the pursuit of accountability, Moraes asserted extraordinary powers — including authority to suspend the DF governor and imprison people without trial if they made violent threats on social media. Even some supporters of Moraes's actions, like Meio's Pedro Doria, describe his actions as a kind of democratic chemotherapy: necessary to defeat the cancerous coup plot, but with dangerous side effects that Brazilians now must reckon with. “But for the first time in our history, we survived to live another day, and we have a shot at getting this right in the next decades.” This can't be credited to other institutional actors: Neither Congress nor the courts knew about the full scope of Bolsonaro's plans until Moraes's post-facto inquiry. “The military themselves, they don't have democratic convictions,” said Adriana Marques, a political scientist who studies civil-military relations in Brazil. At the last minute, he dropped out — citing an alleged family emergency. The best theory I've heard, advanced by Marques and others, is that their decision reflected not democratic principle but cost-benefit analysis. The generals simply had little to gain from backing Bolsonaro's coup, and would be risking quite a lot in doing so. Moreover, the Biden administration had sent very clear signals that it wouldn't tolerate a coup. Few informed people I met in Brazil believed the military had truly come to believe in civilian rule as a matter of principle. In the United States, by contrast, there is a very long tradition of the military keeping out of civilian affairs. But at present, there is a live debate over whether Trump will order security services to interfere with voting during the midterm elections. What choice will they make, if faced with a similar test to their Brazilian counterparts? Standing in a hall in the presidential offices, I spotted politicians chatting with uniformed generals behind velvet ropes — their very presence, seemingly, a reassurance that the coup plot had been contained. Geraldo Alckmin, now well into his term as Lula's vice president, claimed that their victory saved Brazilian democracy. Two days earlier, Washington marked its first anniversary of January 6 with Trump back in office — and, in a way, proved Alckmin's point. It is important not to overstate Brazil's democratic stability, even in comparison. Its weaknesses were on display even at Lula's January 8 event. Even more tellingly, the event's centerpiece moment was a staged veto of a bill that would overrule court sentences for roughly 1,000 people convicted of coup-related crimes. The legislation, which would slash Bolsonaro's sentence from 27 years to two, may still become law if the Centrão joins with Bolsonaro's allies in Congress to support an override — a clear illustration of how the elite self-interest that helped stiffen resistance to Bolsonaro's power grabs can just as easily turn against democratic accountability when circumstances change. There is also a presidential election in the fall. Lula is ahead in the polls currently, but his lead is not insurmountable — and the president turned 80 in October. But these are problems that many Americans wish they had. It would be better if Congress acted as the first line of defense, resisting Trump's power grabs before things got so bad that ordinary citizens needed to put their literal lives on the line. And it would be better if the US Supreme Court was not so deferential to the Trump administration, but so militantly pro-democratic that the concern was not complicity but rather overreaction. So if we wanted to learn from Brazil — to think about how we could repair our system so, in the future, it might be as resilient as theirs — what lessons could we take away? This is certainly consistent with Pereira and Melo's takeaway. Their excellent postmortem on the Bolsonaro presidency, titled “Why didn't Brazilian democracy die?” argues that the crisis during his presidency basically vindicates their prior claims about the virtues and stability of Brazil's multiparty system. And indeed, the international expert view on multiparty presidentialism has shifted quite far in their direction. In a 2023 paper published by Protect Democracy, Scott Mainwaring — the American political scientist once so skeptical of Brazilian-style systems — conceded that he had gotten it wrong. He and his co-author, Lee Drutman, argued that the United States should move to a multiparty system — specifically, by adopting Brazilian-style proportional elections for the House that would provide safeguards against democratic erosion. Comparative evidence suggests that presidential democracy is most likely to fail when the president's party has a majority in both chambers of the national Congress. The Brazilian case certainly provides real evidence for these conclusions. If the political stars align for something like it, I'd support it — but that likely won't happen anytime soon. So, is there any way to adopt Brazilian-style safeguards against authoritarianism in the meantime? Brazilian legislators win reelection by providing tangible goods for their constituents. American legislators depend on highly partisan primary voters and the national reputation of their party. The Brazilian system has problems: It promotes wasteful spending and outright graft. But the American system has bigger ones: It creates ideologically disciplined parties whose members are terrified of bucking an in-party president. This is why a Republican Congress and a Supreme Court confirmed by GOP majorities are so much more supine in the face of Trump than their Brazilian peers. On the electoral front, this might involve a national ban on partisan gerrymandering (which nearly became law during the Biden presidency) and the reform, or ideally abolition, of legislative primary elections (a corrosive American practice with no real peers elsewhere). These two reforms, when put together, would increase the number of representatives in both parties who were responsive to more mainstream electorates — creating incentives for a Brazilian-style culture of dealmaking rather than pure partisanship. America should also take inspiration from Brazil's approach to congressional oversight. Currently, Congress has no formal role in approving or rejecting executive orders, allowing members of a president's party to easily deflect accountability for power grabs by saying it's out of their hands. But if the United States adopted a version of the Brazilian provisional decree system, mandating that executive orders expire within a set number of days absent affirmative congressional approval, members of a president's party could be held more directly responsible for White House actions — giving purple-state legislators more incentives to buck the party. These specific reforms are hardly exhaustive: They would not fully “fix” Congress, let alone the Supreme Court or corroded institutions like the Department of Justice. But no study of another country will yield a single reform idea that saves American democracy on its own. Foreign models are best seen as rough templates, not strict blueprints — sources of broad guidance, rather than rigid prescriptions. And the most valuable insight from Brazil is not that its specific system is the best possible, but rather that its operating logic — its ability to bind political actors to democracy through self-interest and incentives — was incredibly effective at hemming in a would-be authoritarian. American reformers need to start reflecting on that lesson and designing policies that work in our context (with an eye toward not replicating Brazil's corruption problem). I believe that Americans will soon have an opportunity to put this into practice. Trump's authoritarian project will likely fail as Bolsonaro's did, albeit for very different reasons. Its failure should create an opening to build new barriers against any future president who tries to replicate his unilateral rule. In that future, we had best be humble enough to learn from younger democracies like Brazil — places that, as of late, have much better democratic recent track records than our own. This story was supported by a grant from Protect Democracy. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. The Colbert censorship story is messier than it looks. Today, Explained explores the fall of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and what it proves about Trump-style authoritarians.

Democratic candidates have notched a series of wins in recent special elections — but a new AP-NORC poll finds views of the Democratic Party among rank-and-file Democrats have not bounced back since President Donald Trump's victory in 2024. Birds fly near the U.S. Capitol during sunrise, Feb. 13, 2026, in Washington. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., stepped off the Senate floor, Friday evening, Jan. 30, 2026, at the Capitol in Washington. The Senate voted Friday to fund most of the government through the end of September after President Donald Trump made a deal with Democrats to carve out Homeland Security funding and allow Congress to debate new restrictions on federal immigration raids across the country. People stand outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, June 14, 2016. WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic candidates have notched a series of wins in recent special elections — but a new AP-NORC poll finds views of the Democratic Party among rank-and-file Democrats have not bounced back since President Donald Trump's victory in 2024. Only about 7 in 10 Democrats have a positive view of the Democratic Party, according to new polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. While the overwhelming majority of Democrats still feel good about their party, they're much less positive than they've been in the past. The midterm elections are still many months away, and lackluster favorability doesn't spell electoral doom. Additionally, recent polling has found that independents tend to identify more with the party that's out of power, which could boost Democrats this year too. And despite overwhelming victories in November's off-season elections and a string of wins since then, those views haven't recovered. Other polling indicates that Democrats are deeply frustrated with their party. Although Republicans are slightly more enthusiastic about their own party, Americans in general don't think highly of either party. Health care is on many Americans' minds this year, and it's an issue where Democrats have a large advantage, according to the survey. Meanwhile, Republicans have lost some ground on two of Trump's signature issues, the economy and immigration, although Americans don't necessarily trust Democrats more on those issues as a result. Other polling suggests that Democrats' post-2024 slump is unusually large. In Gallup's measure of favorability, Democrats' positive views of their own party declined about 12 percentage points in the last year. Notably, Democrats did not see a similar decline after their first loss to Trump in 2016. That diminished view of the Democratic Party in the AP-NORC polling is consistent regardless of Democrats' age, race, ideology or educational background — suggesting that appealing to a specific group or two won't fix the problem. A separate survey from the Pew Research Center last fall found roughly two-thirds of Democrats in September said their own party made them “frustrated” compared to just 4 in 10 Republicans. Among those frustrated Democrats, about 4 in 10 felt their party was not fighting hard enough against Trump while about 1 in 10 said there was a lack of good leadership or a cohesive agenda. It's not just Democrats — Americans aren't thrilled with either party right now. That double-negativity is especially sharp among independents and Americans under 45. With health care at the top of Americans' priority lists as costs and premiums rise, Democrats have a possible advantage going into the midterm year. About one-third of U.S. adults — 35% — trust the Democrats to do a better job handling health care, compared to 23% for the Republicans. But Democrats haven't managed to capitalize on it. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults, 31%, say Republicans are the party they trust to handle the economy, down slightly from 36% last year. But Democrats haven't made any gains on this issue; rather, slightly more Americans now say they trust “neither” party to handle the economy. Neither party has an edge on who is better equipped to manage the cost of living, which was first asked in the most recent poll. Republicans are also down slightly on handling immigration. Only about one-third of U.S. adults trust them to better handle immigration, an apparent decrease from 39% in October. Democrats didn't appear to benefit from that shift either. The AP-NORC poll of 1,156 adults was conducted Feb. 5-8 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for Democrats overall is plus or minus 6.0 percentage points.

In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here. And in a stunning-but-not-surprising moment to those who have been paying attention, the possible commander in chief was asked the following foreign policy question: “Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a um — this is, of course, a, um, very long-standing, um, policy of the United States and I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation — and for that question to even arise,” she responded. Needless to say, the U.S. would be in serious trouble if somehow this social media creation ascended to the Oval Office. This answer, which makes the installed 2024 Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, sound like Margaret Thatcher, is disqualifying. Watch it if you haven't: This answer is no different than an unprepared sophomore struggling to reach a minimum time requirement on an oral exam, and the word painful is the only thing that comes to mind. The Spanish also instituted breeding farms to produce more horses. “The modern cowboy culture of the Americas can also trace its roots back to Spain, given that the Spanish settlers trained indigenous populations to wrangle cattle on horseback in order to maintain their ranches in places like Texas, Arizona and New Mexico,” History.com reads. And throw in the fact that Ocasio-Cortez accused Israel of genocide in Gaza — and made such a claim while on German soil, a country that once carried out an actual genocide during World War II — and it's safe to say this was a disastrous trip for the 34-year-old. But then again, this is a legacy media darling we're talking about, so perhaps the damage won't be as extensive as it should be. And it gets even more hilarious, unintentionally, of course. “American voters have twice elected Mr. Trump, who is hardly a foreign or domestic policy expert and often stumbles far more than she did on Friday,” the story that isn't labeled an opinion piece asserts. “Her slips could ultimately be outweighed by the practice she is getting in speaking about tough international issues, and perhaps by her star power.” The New York Times will try to ensure that. As for its dig on President Donald Trump's foreign policy prowess, perhaps the publication, which hasn't endorsed a Republican presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower, could also have noted Trump's numerous foreign policy victories. Back to Ocasio-Cortez, this is the same lawmaker who cried on the House floor after congressional funding was approved for Israel's Iron Dome, which has saved countless lives and arguably has saved Israel itself from extinction. She was given a pass for that cheesy performance art by outlets such as Bloomberg, which continues to carry an ocean's worth of water for her to this day. “It was Ocasio-Cortez who drew the most buzz,” Bloomberg's “report” on her Munich performance reads. “It was her first time at the annual conference, and she doesn't sit on the House foreign affairs or armed services committees. What foreign-policy work she's done has centered mostly on Latin America and her opposition to Israel's war in Gaza. “Republican commentators back home declared her unprepared for primetime for what they called a flubbed answer to a question from Bloomberg's Francine Lacqua on whether the US would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked. ‘The US should avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise,' she said.” After portraying Ocasio-Cortez's horrific answer on China-Taiwan as a “Republicans pounce” moment, this “straight news” story went on to quote an Ocasio-Cortez foreign policy adviser who called her incoherent response on China-Taiwan a simple matter of being “careful” with her words. In 2028, it's doubtful, albeit not impossible, for that to happen. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), who also attended the Munich conference to bash Trump and his administration, to make Ocasio-Cortez his running mate. And based not just on her statements in Munich but eight years in Congress, God help us all if she ever ascends to a position of actual power.

The announcement was made Wednesday at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, where leading tech executives, government officials and AI researchers are debating how to use AI to solve real-world problems. Policymakers globally are increasingly worried that the unequal adoption of AI risks widening income and development gaps between rich and poor countries. In December, the United Nations Development Project called for global cooperation on standards and safety to ensure the technology “functions as a shared public good rather than a concentrated advantage.” At the summit, Microsoft likewise expressed the need for cross-border partnerships to prevent poorer countries from being left behind. “We need to act with urgency to address the growing AI divide,” Microsoft president Brad Smith and chief responsible AI officer Natasha Crampton said in a joint statement. “Artificial intelligence is diffusing at an impressive speed, but its adoption around the world remains profoundly uneven.” The company's $50 billion commitment to developing economies by 2030 compares with the roughly $80 billion that Microsoft invested into data centers last year alone, more than half of which was directed to a single economy: the United States. A recent Microsoft report found that AI usage in the global north, a catch-all term for developed and high-income countries, is roughly twice that of the global south — and growing. “This disparity impacts not only national and regional economic growth, but whether AI can deliver on its broader promise of expanding opportunity and prosperity around the world,” Smith and Crampton said. They warned that, just as unequal access to electricity has exacerbated a growing economic gap between the global north and south, without urgent action, the AI divide could perpetuate that disparity in the century ahead. On the other hand, the technology could be used positively to help poor countries leapfrog older development pathways. “If AI is deployed broadly and used well by a young and growing population, it offers a real prospect for catch-up economic growth for the Global South,” said Smith and Crampton. Only about 36% of Africa's population had broadband internet access in 2022, according to the World Bank. That compares with some 90% of US households, official figures show. The AI Impact Summit, hosted by India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, highlights the country's ambition to position itself as an AI leader in the global south. High-profile attendees include Sam Altman of OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Google CEO Sundar Pichai who is due to deliver a keynote address on Friday. Most stock quote data provided by BATS. US market indices are shown in real time, except for the S&P 500 which is refreshed every two minutes. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices Copyright S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and/or its affiliates. Market holidays and trading hours provided by Copp Clark Limited.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG. FDA commissioner Dr. Marty Makary joins 'Fox & Friends Weekend' to discuss President Donald Trump's efforts to reduce drug prices, expedite R&D and establish new vaccine requirements. A Democratic Senate candidate endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is being slammed for allegedly flip-flopping on one of his primary campaign issues. Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive candidate who previously ran an unsuccessful bid for Michigan governor, has made "Medicare-for-all" a hallmark of his Senate campaign. However, as the Michigan Senate primary race heats up, El-Sayed's Democratic opponent, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, is accusing him of backing down from a full "Medicare-for-all" stance and of "rewriting definitions to have it both ways." Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. Roxie Richner, an El-Sayed campaign spokesperson, responded by telling Fox News Digital, "Dr. El-Sayed would be the first Democratic doctor elected to the U.S. Senate since 1969, and he looks forward to passing ‘Medicare-for-all' into law," added Richner. El-Sayed's campaign website page on "A Healthier America" cites a book he co-authored in 2021 in which he wrote that limiting private alternatives to "Medicare-for-all" would be important to ensuring providers accepted the insurance. The book advocates for "Medicare-for-all" as a type of "monopsony" in healthcare, in which there is only a single buyer of medical services, the government. "By insuring all Americans, M4A becomes a monopsony in healthcare. In a November post on X, El-Sayed explained that this monopsony "would instantaneously create a disciplining feature against rising prices," because it "takes out the profit motive on the payer end of the transaction." The book further states that "because alternatives to M4A [Medicare-for-all] would be limited, participation of providers would be virtually guaranteed." "Instead of spending time and money dealing with the arcane requirements of hundreds of different health plans […] providers could use one streamlined system that would free up resources to focus on clinical care," the books reads. The latest version of the federal "Medicare-for-all" Act, introduced in the Senate by Sanders, includes language that would effectively ban most comprehensive private insurance plans and relegate private insurers to providing limited supplemental care. The legislation would make it unlawful for "a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this Act; or (2) an employer to provide benefits for an employee, former employee, or the dependents of an employee or former employee that duplicate the benefits provided under this Act." Dr. Abdul El-Sayed speaks during a coronavirus public health roundtable with Sen. Bernie Sanders. El-Sayed testified before the Senate in support of the "Medicare-for-all" Act in 2022, calling it "the clearest pathway to universal, durable healthcare insurance, bar none" and saying that "cradle to grave coverage would do away with the premiums, co pays, deductibles that leave even privately insured Americans rationing their healthcare today." The year before, in an interview with NerdWallet, El-Sayed said that under a "Medicare-for-all" plan, the government would be "buying you out" of your private insurance plan but would allow "a few insurance companies that offered a sort of concierge-level service for folks who wanted to pay for that." In a 2024 episode of the "America Dissected" podcast, El-Sayed emphasized that "we don't really need private health insurance in this country." He said that "private health insurance is a system by which you have a middleman in our healthcare system making a tremendous amount of money that is leading to a number of the biggest problems in American healthcare whether that's the fact that our costs continue to spiral upward, whether that's the fact that nearly ten million people in our country don't get health insurance at all, or it's the fact that we are consistently in this country, unable to guarantee, even people who are insurance access to the health care they need." In October, El-Sayed knocked McMorrow for advocating for allowing a public option under universal healthcare, writing on X, "a public option can't deliver healthcare to every Michigander. Politico, in December, reported El-Sayed slamming McMorrow's call for universal healthcare with a public option as "incoherent." There is no reason why it would actually address any of the foundational problems in our system. It wouldn't bring down the rising costs. It wouldn't guarantee people healthcare, and we don't really know how much it would cost," he said. Yet, while speaking on the Brian Tyler Cohen podcast in January, El-Sayed suggested that under "Medicare-for-all," "if you like your insurance from your employer or from your union, that can still be there for you." Days later, speaking on radio channel WDET, he again said, "'Medicare-for-all' is government health insurance guaranteed for everyone, regardless of what circumstances you're in. He also said, "If you have a public option, what happens is, the private health insurance system will try to dump all of the most expensive patients onto that public option, vastly increasing the cost of that public option and making it unsustainable." El-Sayed's campaign website states that he "believes in expanding Medicare to cover every single American from cradle to grave while sustaining the option for workers to keep supplemental private insurance their unions or employers may provide." Amid criticism from McMorrow, El-Sayed doubled down on his "Medicare-for-all" messaging in a January fundraising message, in which he wrote that "private insurance could supplement or duplicate Medicare." Meanwhile, McMorrow has accused him of not being honest on "Medicare-for-all." "On an issue as important as healthcare, you have to be honest about what you're fighting for," McMorrow wrote in a public reply to El-Sayed, adding, "The ‘Medicare-for-all' legislation that you've championed completely eliminates private health insurance as it exists today." Sanders' office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Peter Pinedo is a politics writer for Fox News Digital. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. An FBI official says investigative genetic genealogy is underway in the Nancy Guthrie investigation. DNA recovered inside the home also yielded no matches. Covered by: Stephen Sorace, Greg Wehner, Michael Ruiz, Christina Dugan Ramirez, Peter D'Abrosca, Jasmine Baehr and Landon Mion The search for Nancy Guthrie entered its third week on Sunday. The 84-year-old disappeared from her home in Tucson, Arizona, 17 days ago. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos cleared Nancy Guthrie's family as suspects in her disappearance case, calling them "victims" who have been cooperative. Authorities still have no suspects or persons of interest, though Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said more law enforcement operations are expected in the coming days. A glove with a DNA profile of an unknown male has been recovered, and appears to match the pair worn by a subject seen in surveillance video outside Nancy Guthrie's home, the FBI said Sunday. Investigative genetic genealogy is underway after the DNA resulted in no CODIS hits. The suspect is described as a male between 5'9” - 5'10” tall, with an average build and was seen carrying a 25-liter "Ozark Trail Hiker Pack" backpack. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said the Nancy Guthrie case is far from being cold, stressing that it will not be considered cold as long as there are leads to pursue. "As long as we have the ability to chase a lead, it's not cold," Nanos said on Tuesday, according to the outlet. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos on Tuesday made a plea to the suspect in Nancy Guthrie's kidnapping, urging the individual to "just let her go." It will work out better for you in the long run," Nanos said, according to Fox 10. The sheriff also appeared to remain optimistic, saying the investigation continues to be a rescue operation and not a recovery mission. "You have no proof, nobody does, that she's not [alive]," Nanos said. "My team, 400 people out there in the field today, woke up this morning and went out there with the hope and the belief that they're going to find Nancy, and she's going to be okay," Nanos said. Archbishop Ronald Hicks was selected by Pope Leo XIV in December to take over the position, and he assumed the role earlier this month. Hicks was asked by NBC host Hoda Kotb about any words he wished to share with the Guthrie family, as authorities continue to search for the missing woman. "I want to just extend my absolute support, and especially my prayers, not only my own prayers, but she has a community of people who are praying for her and for her mom and for the entire family," Hicks continued. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told NBC that he has seen a photo that could show the suspect in the Nancy Guthrie case wearing a ring, but said investigators will analyze the image before drawing any conclusions. He added that the image would be reviewed more closely by investigators. Investigators have not yet obtained video from additional cameras at Nancy Guthrie's home. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told NewsNation correspondent Brian Entin that authorities still do not have video from Guthrie's other cameras and that the video is currently “in the hands of Google.” It was not immediately clear what type of cameras were involved or how long it may take for investigators to retrieve the material. Investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) is defined as "the science of using genetic and genealogical methods to generate leads for law enforcement entities investigating crimes and identifying human remains," according to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy. Investigators use a DNA sample to search for genetic familial matches, ultimately looking to narrow down potential identities by zeroing in on close relatives of the individual. On Tuesday, the FBI confirmed to Fox News Digital that IGG was being used to test DNA found on a glove discovered two miles from Nancy Guthrie's home and other DNA samples found inside her house. Find out more about how IGG could help solve the case. This is an excerpt from a story by Fox News Digital's Julia Bonavita. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos addressed speculation involving Adult Protective Services in the case of missing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, clarifying that after a neighbor made a call, APS sent an investigator to her home the day she was reported missing. “The day she was reported missing a neighbor called Adult Protective Services,” Nanos said. Fox News Digital's Michael Ruiz contributed to this report. U.S. Border Patrol confirmed to Fox News its elite BORSTAR search and rescue team used the bright blue shirt seen lying along the walkway at Nancy Guthrie's home as part of a K-9 scent search at the property. Fox News Digital previously reported that Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said the bright blue shirt was used by a U.S. Border Patrol K-9 team and had been left behind and later retrieved. The garment was seen lying near blood drops on Guthrie's front steps. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said investigators are now debriefing recent forensic findings and prioritizing additional lab work as the investigation into the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie continues. Nanos told Fox News Digital that the next phase will include separating merged DNA samples recovered inside Guthrie's residence, conducting further testing and evaluating whether any viable material could be used for investigative genetic genealogy or entered into CODIS. Nanos said each step requires laboratory analysis before investigators can move forward. Fox News Digital's Michael Ruiz contributed to this report. Two men wearing badges were seen entering a home next door to Nancy Guthrie's residence as the investigation into the missing 84-year-old woman continues. An FBI official tells Fox News Digital that investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) is already underway in the Nancy Guthrie investigation. IGG is a forensic method that uses crime scene DNA to identify potential relatives through public genealogy databases when traditional law enforcement databases like CODIS produce no matches. Earlier Tuesday, the FBI and Pima County Sheriff's Department said the unknown male DNA profile on a glove found two miles from Nancy Guthrie's home did not result in any CODIS hits. CeCe Moore, the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs, told Fox News Digital she has full confidence that investigative genetic genealogy will be able to identify that DNA contributor. Authorities deployed specialized Bluetooth and Wi-Fi detection technology during the search for Nancy Guthrie, according to a statement from Parsons Corporation, which said it began assisting the Pima County Sheriff's Department earlier this month. Parsons described BlueFly® as “a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi sensor intended for search and rescue operations in challenging environments,” adding that the technology “has been used on a variety of air and ground vehicles, and on foot in austere terrain.” The system “provides first responders with a heat map to identify signals within a search area.” According to the statement, BlueFly® was used Feb. 3 during the sheriff department's search and rescue helicopter operation over the Guthrie neighborhood and was later deployed in additional search efforts by helicopter, ground vehicles and on foot. During an interview with Fox News' Jonathan Hunt, Nanos was asked whether authorities were considering the possibility that Guthrie may have been transported into Mexico. “You know, I'm sure the FBI has looked into that as well, but no,” Nanos said. We know where Mexico is in relationship to this, and it's a possibility. Nanos emphasized that investigators are continuing to follow available leads but have not uncovered any information suggesting Guthrie was taken across the border. It was not immediately clear who the two men were or whether they were law enforcement officials connected to the investigation, which remains ongoing. An Arizona gun store owner says an FBI agent showed him pages of photos and names tied to a kidnapping probe and asked him to check for recent gun purchases – even as Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos disputes reports investigators have narrowed their focus to specific people. Phillip Martin, co-owner of Armor Bearer Arms in Tucson, told Fox News an FBI agent visited his store with three pages containing photos and the names of roughly 18 to 24 people, asking whether any had purchased a firearm there within the past year. “He actually had given me a list of paper, list of people that had pictures and names on it, and he wanted to know if I could help him pull up in my system if any of these people have purchased a gun in the last year,” Martin said. Martin said he was initially skeptical but agreed to help out of sympathy for the victim's family. According to Martin, he typed each last name into the store's system, which would display identifying information if the person had made a purchase. He said none of the names returned a match. During an interview with Fox News' Jonathan Hunt, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos pushed back on reports that investigators were asking gun stores about around 40 people. “That's not true,” Nanos said when asked whether authorities had narrowed the suspect pool to a few dozen individuals. Nanos said investigators have not zeroed in on a specific group but are instead working through evidence that includes DNA, Ring camera footage and potential leads tied to a Walmart. The unknown male DNA profile on a glove found two miles from the home of Nancy Guthrie has been run through the FBI's DNA database – and did not result in any hits, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told Fox News chief correspondent Jonathan Hunt in an interview on Tuesday. DNA recovered from Guthrie's home also did not match records in the FBI database, Nanos said. “We're hopeful that we're always getting closer, but the news now, I think, is we had heard this morning that, of course, the DNA on the glove that was found two miles away was submitted for CODIS. And I just heard that, CODIS had no hits,” Nanos said. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told Fox News on Tuesday that a blue shirt seen lying along the walkway leading up to Nancy Guthrie's home had been left by federal law enforcement. Nanos said the bright blue shirt was used by a U.S. Border Patrol K-9 team. The shirt was not far from a trail of blood drops on Nancy Guthrie's front steps. Michael Hupy, who is also the president of Milwaukee Crime Stoppers, said he is offering the reward locally through Crime Stoppers for any information that leads to an arrest. I think it could have been done much better,” Hupy told the station. “I think if the $100,000 was put up through crime stoppers – we could be further along." Hupy said he believes that even though the FBI has its own $100,000 reward, its requirement for personal information may discourage tips from the public. "This woman has been missing for two or three weeks and no leads have amounted to anything,” he told the station. “So if the person who knows who the perpetrator is doesn't want his name exposed, wants a reward and has information that will lead to an arrest – crime stoppers is the perfect place to do it.” He said the reward will be posted through Crime Stoppers of Tucson. A vehicle parked outside a home in Catalina Foothills that was raided by the FBI on Friday was towed away by an insurance company — not law enforcement — on Monday. A neighbor told Fox News Digital that the vehicle, which appeared to have significant front end damage, was towed at the request of State Farm after it was totaled in a crash last week. A retired detective told “FOX & Friends” how investigators in Nancy Guthrie's disappearance may have examined her family members before clearing them in the case. Jon Buehler, who worked as an investigator on the Laci Peterson missing persons case in California over two decades ago, detailed the process that law enforcement usually goes through when trying to pin down a suspect in such a case. “Generally, what you're going to do is you're going to take a look at where family members were when the abduction took place and verify their alibi that they weren't involved in it,” Buehler said. “You're going to take a look at their friends and associates and make sure that none of them have a criminal record or past history of violence or anything like that, maybe gambling debts or things like that, that would put them in a position to target Nancy.” The sheriff's announcement came as the FBI was awaiting forensic testing results on a glove that had a DNA profile of an unknown male. He added, however, that the timeline on getting the results is “not like plugging in a wall socket or anything like that,” and may take time. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told local Tucson station KOLD13 that Nancy Guthrie's family members were ruled out as suspects “in the first few days” of the investigation. NBC News national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent Tom Winter said the sheriff likely felt so strongly about making such a statement because there has been a lot of incorrect online speculation surrounding the case. “Throughout the entirety of this investigation, there's not a single person that I have talked to that's been briefed on it, is familiar with all the facts of the case, that has ever said there was a single piece of evidence that tied back to any member of the Guthrie family, period,” Winter said on NBC's “Today.” While detecting the signal of Nancy Guthrie's pacemaker may be like searching for a needle in a haystack, an expert says it remains the best hope of finding the missing 84-year-old, Griff Jenkins, co-host of "FOX & Friends Weekend," reported from Tucson, Arizona, on Tuesday morning. “It essentially every one to three minutes sends a simple ping up that says, ‘Hey, iPhone. Well, in this case, if the ‘signal sniffer' in the sky can pick it up, it can locate it, do a triangulation of directional antennas and within an hour they could possibly find her,” Jenkins reported. Jenkins also flew in a helicopter over the search area's challenging terrain of rough hills and steep culverts, providing a birds-eye view similar to what law enforcement has seen while using the new high-tech Bluetooth scanner in the search for Nancy Guthrie. An FBI official told Fox News Digital DNA recovered from a glove believed tied to the suspect in the Nancy Guthrie case is still undergoing quality control testing at the sheriff's private lab in Florida after being sent from Tucson on Feb. 12. When asked whether more than one suspect could be involved, the official pointed to FBI Director Kash Patel's comments on “Hannity” last week referencing “persons of interest,” indicating investigators are not ruling out the possibility of multiple individuals. Fox News Digital's Michael Ruiz contributed to this report. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani proposed a 9.5% property tax increase on Tuesday as part of his plan for the city's “preliminary budget.” Mamdani said the tax hike was necessary to offset a $5.4 billion budget shortfall in the city due to financial mismanagement by previous administrations. Mamdani's proposal comes months after his mayoral campaign focused on affordability issues and lowering the cost of living. As part of his $127 billion city budget proposal for fiscal 2027, which begins in July, he described the property tax increase as a “last resort,” predicated on Gov. Kathy Hochul's (D-NY) refusal to implement a tax hike on affluent New Yorkers and corporations. After years of fiscal mismanagement, we're staring at a $5.4 billion budget gap — and two paths. “Today, I'm releasing the City's preliminary budget,” Mamdani posted on X. “After years of fiscal mismanagement, we're staring at a $5.4 billion budget gap — and two paths.” If approved, it would be the first property tax increase in New York City since 2003, according to reports. Hochul and other Democrats blasted Mamdani's idea, saying she didn't think it was “necessary.” New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin also criticized the idea, emphasizing that it should not even be considered. “At a time when New Yorkers are already grappling with an affordability crisis, dipping into rainy day reserves and proposing significant property tax increases should not be on the table whatsoever,” read the joint statement. However, it is also believed that such an increase would disproportionately affect black neighborhoods in New York City. Citizens Budget Commission, a self-described “nonpartisan, nonprofit civic organization whose mission is to achieve constructive change in the finances and services of New York City and New York State government,” dismissed Mamdani's proposal and criticized the rationale behind it. “Mayor Mamdani's preliminary budget proposes a false choice: either the state raises personal income and business taxes, or the city raises property taxes and saps money from reserves, including those to protect New Yorkers from a recession,” said Andrew Rein, president of the CBC.

It sounds like an elite law firm, a 1970s cop show or even a duo of visionary architects, since they hope to turn battlefields into futuristic cityscapes. But Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are running President Donald Trump's freelance peacekeeping franchise, on which global stability, countless lives and their boss's best hope of that elusive Nobel Peace Prize depend. The pair were in the thick of it Tuesday, on an extraordinary double-barreled day of diplomacy in Geneva, huddling with Russian, Ukrainian and Iranian officials. They're expected back in Washington this week for a meeting of the Board of Peace — Trump's personal big-dollar private global diplomacy network. The two super-rich, well-connected American dealmakers are charged with ending one vicious war and preventing one that might be about to erupt. Success in either case would be a huge achievement, but both goals seem intractable. Trump's hopes for a deal with Iran, as he masses a vast armada within shooting distance, only crawled forward Tuesday. The Iranians touted an understanding on “guiding principles.” But Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that while things “went well” in some ways, Tehran won't acknowledge some of Trump's red lines. The first of two days of talks between Ukraine and Russia also highlighted a big potential roadblock: the question of whether Moscow really wants to end the fighting or is only playing at diplomacy to buy time for battlefield wins. Given global skepticism about the prospects for agreements and of the Witkoff and Kushner double act, this is an achievement in itself and a mark of Trump's desire to work for peace. Witkoff and Kushner's latest efforts come at a perilous moment for the world and a politically tenuous one for Trump's presidency. ► Their biggest win so far — the ceasefire in Gaza — is fragile amid renewed fighting. ► At the same time, the Ukraine war is grinding through another winter, amid battlefield carnage and Russian attacks on defenseless civilians. But Trump probably has a better chance than anyone. But polls show Americans don't want it. Each separate negotiation risks running into the same brick wall — the parties' refusal to compromise on issues they see as existential to national survival or honor. For President Vladimir Putin, this means fighting on at least until he seizes the reminder of the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region on which he's already spent tens of thousands of Russian lives. While it's ready to discuss concessions on a nuclear program already shattered by US attacks last year, Tehran is refusing to bargain away its ballistic missile program and regional proxy networks, which it views as crucial to the survival of the Islamic revolutionary regime. “If the parties want a limited and achievable agreement, they're going to have a deal,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, told CNN's Becky Anderson on Monday. But he's the husband of Trump's daughter Ivanka, and therefore family. Neither appears to have any political ambition outside polishing Trump's legacy. Each man personifies Trump's unique brand of foreign policy. They're business tycoons who disdain formal diplomatic and governmental structures and seem to see every global conflict as a potential real estate deal. Each also has huge commercial interests in the Middle East and elsewhere, a concern for critics who believe Trump makes no distinction between his own interests and the nation's. “We can't spend our time focused on perception as much as we have to focus on the facts,” Kushner told CBS' “60 Minutes” in a joint interview with his partner in October. Witkoff, for example, seems to emerge from meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin singing the Kremlin strongman's tune. “I don't regard Putin as a bad guy,” he said last year, of a man who launched an illegal, unprovoked invasion and has massacred thousands of Ukrainians. And a 28-point peace plan he drew up last year could have been written by Moscow. It took weeks of diplomatic sanding down, including by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, before it could serve as the basis for talks. Still, despite huge skepticism that their quasi-official partnership could master the diplomatic game while bypassing traditional US foreign policy norms, Witkoff and Kushner are responsible for one of the most significant foreign policy successes of Trump's second term: the Gaza ceasefire deal. Their quiet diplomacy and networks in the region — both in Israel and the Gulf states that will be asked to finance rebuilding — secured an official end to the fighting based on 20-point peace plan. This included the return of living and deceased Israeli hostages from Gaza in return for significant releases of Palestinian prisoners and large quantities of humanitarian aid entering the devastated strip. Trump said Sunday that members had pledged $5 billion toward rebuilding and thousands of troops to the stabilization force. “The Board of Peace will prove to be the most consequential International Body in History,” he said on social media. But Phase 2 of the plan seems, for now, like a nonstarter. There's little chance nations will put their troops into a war zone, and at least 11 people died in Israeli airstrikes over the weekend, Reuters reported. The president knows this,” former US Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller told CNN's Richard Quest last week. “He mediated, unlike all of his predecessors (and) brought (an) extraordinarily a degree of pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to do phase one, and he has got his son-in-law and one of his best friends, Steven Witkoff, mediating or trying to mediate deconfliction with Iran and Russia-Ukraine.” But Miller argued that arms decommissioning was still a long shot. “The notion that Hamas is going to give up its guns before the Israelis withdraw, or frankly, before Hamas gets an opportunity to take over the Palestinian National Movement, which is what they want, is slim to none. And I am sorry to say, for the sake of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza and Israeli civilians, slim already left town.” This reality points to a major liability of the Witkoff-Kushner approach. Conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine can superficially seem like land disputes, but they are far more complex than a knotty business problem. For those involved, the land is more than a future construction site. Trump's impatience also means Witkoff and Kushner are under the kind of pressure that can lead to superficiality. Successful US peace efforts usually followed painstaking and intricate diplomacy. Still, history also shows that using unofficial envoys outside the government's official structures can work. President Franklin Roosevelt maintained layers of personal emissaries in World War II to outwit other power centers in the government and to ensure he was the sole American with a full overview of the conflict. President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger set up a parallel foreign policy operation to cut out the State Department — much as Trump has done — and they opened a historic channel to communist China. But Trump's evisceration of the department has deprived his administration of institutional memory and expertise that might have built on any breakthroughs by Kushner and Witkoff. Ultimately, breakthroughs may require more than drive-by summits in Geneva. And America's amateur peacemakers may have Trump's ear, but they have yet to prove they belong in the geopolitical big leagues alongside a Machiavellian Putin, a manipulative political survivor like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the theocratic fascism of Hamas.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) offered Republicans a suggestion on Tuesday on how to ensure a competitive Senate seat remains in GOP hands. Fetterman contended that President Donald Trump and Republicans have the opportunity to “lock down” Sen. John Cornyn's (R-TX) hotly contested seat by coming together to endorse the incumbent over two other leading GOP candidates looking to beat Cornyn in a three-way primary. But now I don't know why politically — I'm not sure why the Republicans and the president wouldn't sit on that and just lock down Texas,” Fetterman said during an interview on Fox Business Network's Mornings with Maria. Fetterman's comments came hours after Trump told reporters he couldn't endorse a GOP candidate in the race, saying it was too difficult to pick between Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX). Greg Abbott (R-TX) has also stayed neutral as the March primary inches closer, even as recent polling has not appeared favorable to Cornyn's hopes of winning the March 3 primary outright, instead handing Paxton and Hunt an edge, according to surveys aggregated by the New York Times. They're all good, and you're supposed to pick one. So, we'll see what happens, but I support all three,” Trump said Monday evening. “I just haven't made a decision on that race yet. The three Republicans have angled to portray themselves as the most pro-Trump candidates as they vie for Trump's endorsement. In 2020, Cornyn won a fourth term in office by under 10 percentage points, marking the closest reelection battle of his career. His latest bid has attracted millions in funding, with former Republican Gov. Rick Perry's Lone Star Freedom Project promising Tuesday the group would spend “whatever we need” to keep Cornyn in office.