MURDER RAP: The suspect in the murder of healthcare executive Brian Thompson is fighting extradition from Pennsylvania to New York where he faces second-degree murder, forgery, and three gun charges. Luigi Mangione, 26, will remain in a Pennsylvania jail while he delays his inevitable transfer to New York.

  Mangione is accused of the sidewalk murder of UnitedHealtcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was 50 years old with a wife and children.

  Evidence and Mangione’s own words indicated that he had a grievance against the healthcare and insurance industries. Yesterday while he was transferred in an orange jumpsuit into a courthouse Mangione could be heard shouting, “It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people. … It’s lived experience.”

  Mangione evidently had serious and painful trouble with his spine.

  CNN reports that Mangione wrote notes saying he considered using a bomb to kill Thompson but decided that might kill innocent people. He wrote that he decided “to kill the CEO at his own bean counting conference.”

  Mangione has become a cultural phenomenon, a kind of hero among Americans furious with their healthcare companies. There was a Mangione “lookalike”  gathering in New York and people continue to rant online about health insurance. Macy’s is reported to have quickly sold 700 jackets similar to the one worn by the shooter.

POWER PLAY: There’s nothing like the quest for power to change what a man thinks … or at least what he says he thinks.

  Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who has previously said women in combat are a hindrance to the military, is singing a different tune.

  Monday night on Fox News Hegseth said “I also want an opportunity to clarify what has been misconstrued that I don’t support women in the military. Some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women.”

  But here is what Hegseth said in an interview last November; “I’m just straight up in saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. It hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.

  Yet when Hegseth speaks to senators seeking their confirmation, it appears to be snowing. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a 20-year military veteran and victim of sexual assault, said after meeting Hegseth, “He is very supportive of women in the military. It is one thing that we discussed.”

  Interestingly, the Hegseth debate has focused on his history of drinking, misbehavior, and possible sexual assault rather than whether a former host of Fox News is the right man to head the Department of Defense and its three million people. 

THE WAR ROOM: Israel said it destroyed Syria’s navy overnight Monday in an effort to deprive the Islamic rebels who took over the country of the al-Assad regime’s military assets. 

  Israeli warplanes have conducted hundreds of strikes in Syria since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, that Israel’s military “has been operating in Syria in recent days to hit and destroy strategic capabilities that pose a threat to Israel.” The Syrian navy wasn’t much of a threat to anyone.

  The rebel intentions for ruling or forming a government have not been stated, yet it’s clear that the entire country is relieved to be done with the brutality of al-Assad’s government. Still, Katz warned, ““From here, I warn the rebel leaders in Syria: Those who follow Assad’s path will end like Assad.”

THE DISAPPEARED: The family of American journalist Austin Tice, believed to have been imprisoned in Syria, are hoping that he will be found alive following the toppling of the al-Assad regime.

  They are not alone. Syrian families have flooded into the liberated prisons where thousands of their countrymen were locked up, hoping to find family members alive. It looks grim. The prisons are rife with evidence of torture and death.

PEELING THE ONION: A federal bankruptcy judge  has blocked the auction sale of Alex Jones’s Infowars media empire to the satirical outlet The Onion because it does not net the maximum amount of money for the Sandy Hook School families who won a $1.4 billion defamation judgement against the popular conspiracy monger.

  Judge Christopher Lopez objected to the closed-bid process of the sale and said the families could have netted more money even though they approved the deal.

  Jones had repeatedly claimed that the 2012 Connecticut school massacre was a hoax carried out by crisis actors.

  Ever himself, Jones suggested that the groups involved with the Onion bid colluded to rig their bid and would be investigated by the Justice Department.  He said, “I’m not a litigious person, but they’re trying to destroy us and destroy free speech, so you know what’s going to happen to them.” 

THE OBIT PAGE: Nikki Giovanni, the poet, activist, author of children’s books and professor who wrote about race, politics, gender, sex and love, died on Monday in Blacksburg, Virginia at age 81. Giovanni was a star of the Black Arts Movement spawned during the civil rights era.

THE SPIN RACK: A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked a $25 billion merger of the Kroger and Albertson’s grocery chains, siding with the Federal Trade Commission against what would create a grocery behemoth that could result in higher food prices. — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky tripped and fell yesterday, spraining a wrist and sustaining a small cut on his face. He’s 82.

BELOW THE FOLD: We wish we had gone on record with our belief that Donald Trump Jr. is never going to marry his fiancée of four years, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Trump men usually trade for newer models. Guilfoyle was married to the MAGA movement, but never to Junior.

  Trump Jr. was recently seen strolling hand in hand around Palm Beach with Florida socialite Bettina Anderson. And CBS reports that Trump Sr. plans to name Guilfoyle to be ambassador to Greece, sending her half way around the world.

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