CAREER PLANNING: The pundit class is scrutinizing the announcement by New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that she’s going to have her eggs frozen and that she has broken up with her long-term boyfriend Riley Roberts.

  This comes amidst increasing speculation that Ocasio-Cortez, commonly referred to as “AOC,” is angling to run for president in 2028. She is one of the lightning rods of the progressive movement.

  The decision to be open about her personal life is taken as an indicator that she’s preparing for the microscopic examination that comes with running for or being president.

  The 36-year-old AOC in recent days has also distanced herself from the “woke” language movement that was successfully weaponized against liberals by President Trump and his MAGA crusade. Moving to the middle is another sign of aspirations.

THE INSIDER: A former employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center has been arrested in California on charges that she oversaw secret payments to informants inside of White supremacist groups, one of whom she was reported to be living with in a romantic relationship. 

  Heidi Beirich previously ran the SPLC’s tracking of US hate groups. She has been accused of wire fraud, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to conceal money laundering.

  The Justice Department has accused the entire organization of defrauding donors who did not know their money was being used to pay informants inside the same groups that the SPLC aimed to identify and destroy. The SPLC says the liberal group has been targeted for political reasons.  

INFINITE SCROLL:

— The Trump administration has plans to spend $20 million equipping immigration officers with gloves capable of delivering an electric shock. They are describing the gloves as a “de-escalation device” in making confrontative arrests.

  ICE agents have already been criticized for tackling people, using pepper spray, and, of course, shooting them to death. “ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

  Interestingly, the user manual for the gloves says, “When dealing with anyone, always give the subject(s) a reasonable opportunity to comply before force is used.” 

  Also in matters of expenditure,  the Department of Homeland Security paid $464 million in a no-bid contract to buy 10 used luxury business jets to be deployed for deportations … which so far they are not using.  

— White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is leaving the job at the end of this month to spend more time with her family, President Trump announced. Leavitt has two young children and just returned from maternity leave. 

  Trump said, “Karoline has been a real leader in the White House, and has done a phenomenal job fighting for Justice, Liberty, and Freedom, since 2018, including our Historic Re-Election Campaign of 2024.” 

  Leavitt will have a big future at Fox News when she’s ready to work again.

— Two media organizations sued President Trump over the new service on the President’s Truth Social platform that offers early access to posts that could move the stock markets. The suit calls the $100,000 a month service “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional.”

  The Intercept and the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation allege that the Truth Social offering runs violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of equal public access to the president’s statements and also violates the Fifth Amendment by granting preferential access for “unreasonable sums.” 

 The suit asks a federal court in New York to block the president from posting official government information exclusively on Truth Social.

THE SPIN RACK: Nick Reiner has been indicted for the murders of his parents, Hollywood director and actor Rob Reiner, and his mother Michele. The indictment cites “special circumstances” including lying in wait and the violence of the stabbing murders that would qualify the Reiner son for the death penalty if convicted. — The ball bounces. Former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump son-in-law Jared, are buying the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion just one year after the team sold for $10 billion. — Millions of people in Europe stepped outside yesterday to view a total eclipse of the sun. The path of total eclipse passed through portions of Greenland, Iceland and Spain,

THE OBIT PAGE: Ward Churchill, a professor who was fired by the University of Colorado on accusations of research misconduct after he published an essay arguing that the United States had brought on the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks on itself, has died at age 78.

  In that essay he said that the finance workers who died at the World Trade Center were not innocent bystanders, but “little Eichmanns” who were part of “a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire.”

  It wasn’t until 2005 that the essay became a big issue and the University established a panel to examine Churchill and his work. They fired him, accusing him of falsifying and fabricating historical details and plagiarism in his work.

  In 2009 a jury found that Churchill had been wrongfully dismissed and awarded him $1 million. He said, “I didn’t ask for money, I asked for justice.” But he didn’t get his job back.

BELOW THE FOLD: Andy Green, 64, a retired Royal Air Force pilot, set the record for the fastest land speed in a hydrogen-fueled internal-combustion vehicle on Tuesday at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. He clocked in at  406.320 miles per hour and later told The NY Times, “The ground comes at you very, very quickly.”

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