• Ryan Routh gets life in prison: The man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump on a golf course weeks after the Butler attempt has been sentenced to life in prison. Ryan Routh defended himself during the trial, but he was appointed an attorney at sentencing after he had previously tried to harm himself in the courtroom with a pen. Given the chance to make a statement, Routh produced a 20-page essay that was not allowed to be completed because it was irrelevant. The attempted assassin asked to be placed in a prison in a state that allows for assisted suicide, although the judge did not respond to that request. The prosecution secured guilty verdicts on all five felony charges brought against Routh. His court-appointed attorney, Martin Roth, sought a reduced sentence on the grounds of Routh’s incompetence defense and his failure to harm anyone during his crimes.

• SCOTUS okays California gerrymandering: On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request from California Republicans and the Justice Department to put a hold on implementing the state’s new Democrat-gerrymandered redistricting map. After Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature redistricted to potentially gain up to five more GOP House seats, California Democrats responded with their own redistricting effort to potentially flip five Republican seats to the Democrats. Gov. Gavin Newsom gloated, “Donald Trump said he was ‘entitled’ to five more congressional seats in Texas. He started this redistricting war. He lost, and he’ll lose again in November.” Trump didn’t start a battle that has been raging for decades. Thus far, SCOTUS has consistently rejected legal challenges to partisan redistricting in several states.

• Trump endorses Clay Fuller for MTG’s House seat: The district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, Clay Fuller, is running to fill Marjorie Taylor Greene’s now-vacant House seat. Our “Pop Culture Contrarian” podcast team interviewed Fuller last week, and this week, in a crowded field, Fuller earned President Donald Trump’s endorsement. We get results! “It is my Great Honor to endorse America First Patriot, Clay Fuller, who is running to represent the wonderful people of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District,” Trump said. “He is strongly supported by the most Highly Respected MAGA Warriors in Georgia, and many Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. … Clay Fuller has my Complete and Total Endorsement… HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!”

• Trump’s NBC interview: Donald Trump loves the spotlight, and when the antique media is willing to offer a semi-friendly interview, he’s happy to oblige. The president sat down for a 50-minute interview with NBC’s Tom Llamas, and the discussion ranged from immigration enforcement to Trump’s Republican successor to artificial intelligence. Trump admitted that he learned he needs a softer touch on immigration enforcement after the riotous events in Minnesota, expressing a desire to be “invited” to five more cities for an immigration crackdown. Trump opined on the economy, blaming Joe Biden for “the worst inflation in the history of our country.” Trump called both JD Vance and Marco Rubio fantastic and suggested that the two together would be nearly unbeatable. On AI, Trump acknowledged fears of job loss but reminded Llamas that the same had been said of the internet, concluding, “You end up, if you’re smart, doing great.”

• Dems attempt to neuter immigration enforcement: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered their 10-point list of demands before they’ll vote on new DHS funding. They demand that ICE not enforce federal immigration law in an area around any hospital, church, courthouse, child care facility, or other “sensitive locations.” Perhaps they’re already mapping out brand-new “Quality Learing Centers” nationwide to make entire areas off-limits. Next, they insist that only rioters, not ICE officers, be able to wear identity-obscuring masks. Another absurd requirement is giving state and local authorities veto power over large-scale immigration operations. In short, Democrats are attempting to end immigration enforcement entirely before they fund the department that exists in large part to enforce immigration laws.

• Virginia dumps ICE: While campaigning in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, Democrat Abigail Spanberger framed herself as a moderate. However, after winning the election, she has shown her true colors by enacting a radical leftist agenda. The latest example is her new anti-ICE policy whereby she has directed state police and other state law enforcement agencies to cancel any agreements to work with federal immigration authorities. She defended her directive by accusing the feds of “the bad tactics, the bad training, the bad vetting that we have seen … in places like Minnesota — that is degrading trust in law enforcement.” The irony is that Minnesota experienced a more aggressive ICE presence because state law enforcement was not working with federal immigration enforcement to remove criminal illegal aliens.

• Minneapolis drawdown: Minneapolis will see less of an ICE presence on the streets after Border Czar Tom Homan announced that 700 ICE agents are leaving the Twin Cities. Homan explained that “unprecedented cooperation” with local elected officials had resulted in “significant progress” being made. “My goal was … to achieve a complete drawdown. End the surge as soon as we can,” he explained. “But that is largely contingent upon the end of the illegal and threatening activities against ICE. We will not draw down on personnel providing security for our officers. I will not let our officers be put at risk, so we will not draw down on personnel providing security and respond to hostile incidents.” This initial ICE drawdown will reduce the number of agents in Minneapolis to 2,000.

• Nobel Peace Prize for useful idiots in Minneapolis? In one of the more ridiculous items of the day, the Leftmedia outlet The Nation has nominated the city of Minneapolis for a Nobel Peace Prize. In a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, The Nation contends that the people of Minneapolis have engaged in a Martin Luther King Jr.-type protest against President Trump and his “masked” ICE agents who “have targeted the city’s diverse immigrant communities and struck fear into all of its residents.” They argue that Minneapolis’s response to ICE “has met and exceeded the committee’s standard of promoting ‘democracy and human rights, and work aimed at creating a better organized and more peaceful world.’” This is another example of the Left’s “mostly peaceful protests.” Apparently, what they define as “peaceful” is anything but.

• Illegal immigrants collect a lot of welfare: American taxpayers who’ve watched prices skyrocket across the country in the last decade may wonder how the bereft citizens of other countries who make treks of hundreds of miles to illegally cross into the U.S. are able to support themselves. The answer is simple: they live off those taxpayers. Roughly half of all immigrant-headed households in the U.S. collect welfare, and among illegal crossers, that rises to 61%. For reference, only slightly more than one in three U.S.-born households collect welfare. Center for Immigration Studies chief researcher Steven Camarota, who collected this data, suggests that skill requirements for immigrants are a way to reduce the number of them on welfare. The more straightforward approach would be to enforce restrictions that limit the American welfare safety net to, well, Americans.

• Gingrich warns of threat to religious freedom in S. Korea and Japan: In a speech at the annual International Religious Freedom Summit, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned that the legal attacks on the Unification Church in both South Korea and Japan could signal the suppression of religious freedom around the world. Since the Unification Church’s founding 70 years ago, it has maintained firm anti-communist positions and continues to keep close ties with Japan’s liberal Democratic Party, now led by the recently elected Sanae Takaichi. The church in both countries has faced targeted legal allegations, orders to dissolve, and arrests of prominent leaders of the organization. Gingrich hopes that Takaichi will take “a new look at the way in which the church has been mishandled in Japan.”

Headlines

• Trump reportedly planning to construct Christopher Columbus statue outside White House (Daily Caller)

• Nike hit with federal employment probe into allegations of anti-white discrimination (Washington Times)

• U.S. moves troops into Nigeria amid escalating violence against Christians (Daily Caller)

• New Orleans PD hired an illegal alien and gave him a gun, but ICE got him (Not the Bee)

• What’s going on with that secret biolab in Las Vegas connected to China (National Review)

The Executive News Summary is compiled daily by Jordan Candler, Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, and Sophie Starkova. For the archive, click here.