• Swalwell, Gonzales to resign: That didn’t take long. Rep. Eric Swalwell was the Democrat frontrunner in the California governor’s race just last week. Today, not only is his gubernatorial campaign over, but he is resigning from Congress over rape allegations. Swalwell is not alone, however. Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales also announced his intent to resign on Monday, weeks after dropping out of a reelection runoff due to sexual misconduct allegations. Congress seems to have worked out a tit-for-tat system that achieves some (minimal) level of justice. If the Republicans are willing to punish the bad behavior of one of their own, the Democrats will do the same. Two Florida lawmakers are also under the gun: GOP Rep. Cory Mills and Democrat Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick are both under scrutiny for their apparent misuse of campaign funds. Mills is also under investigation for alleged domestic abuse.

• DOJ fires four Biden prosecutors: Four Biden-era Justice Department prosecutors were fired on Monday following an investigative report that uncovered their involvement in tracking and targeting pro-life activists to enforce the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. “This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche explained. “No Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.” Following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, members of Biden’s DOJ weaponized the FACE Act against pro-life advocates by coordinating with the FBI and pro-abortion groups. This coordination was led by senior DOJ attorney Sanjay Patel, one of the four prosecutors who was fired.

• FBI arrests man shot by ICE: A foreign national who was shot by ICE officers last week after he attempted to flee has been taken into custody from the hospital by the FBI. According to ICE, Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez was shot by agents when he attempted to drive into them. Mendoza Hernandez, who holds dual citizenship in Mexico and El Salvador, is accused of being a member of the 18th Street Gang. He was tried for murder in El Salvador and was acquitted back in 2019. Federal officials have yet to reveal why he was arrested, but there is likely much more to this developing story.

• ICE detains fewer noncriminal illegals: The number of illegal aliens detained by ICE who have not committed crimes beyond their illegal residence within the U.S. is decreasing. The number of non-criminal illegals detained by ICE has dropped by 12% since January, with a drop of 21% occurring in March. While the largest group of ICE detainees remains non-criminal illegal aliens, the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement focus has clearly changed since DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin replaced Kristi Noem. As Mullin explained during his confirmation hearing, “Working with municipalities, I would love to see ICE become a transport more than the front line. If we get back into simply working with law enforcement, we’re going to them, we’re picking up criminals from their jail.”

• Utah Valley University is tone-deaf: Graduation is coming up for students at Utah Valley University. The school year began with a massive TPUSA “American Comeback Tour” event that ended tragically when Charlie Kirk was publicly assassinated. The year will end with a commencement speaker who, a week after his assassination, took Kirk’s quotes out of context to explain why eulogizing him was a bad thing. Sharon McMahon calls herself “America’s Government Teacher” and claims to be nonpartisan. Of course, that claim only works if you haven’t shown your hand; everyone has a bias, and McMahon’s is anti-conservative. She claimed that Kirk did not operate in good faith with anyone who was “black or Muslim.” UVU claims that reactions to McMahon’s selection were “overwhelmingly positive,” but somehow we doubt that.

• Pride flag going back up at NYC Stonewall monument: The Stonewall National Monument in New York City has been recognized by LGBTQ activists as the origin of the pride movement since the 1969 protests there. After years of campaigning for the rainbow flag to be flown daily on the site, the movement succeeded in 2022 during the Biden administration. In February, however, the park removed the flag to comply with federal guidance on flag displays; the LGBTQ activists promptly sued. The Interior Department and National Park Service “have confirmed their intention to maintain a Pride flag at Stonewall,” lawyers for the activists wrote in a joint court filing. “Stonewall is sacred ground in the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation, and this resolution helps ensure that the Rainbow Flag will continue to fly there, where it belongs,” stated the president of The Gilbert Baker Foundation.

• Miss America clarifies that contestants must be born female: Miss America needs to be a woman. It’s surprising that needs to be said, but at least the organization has clarified its policy disallowing males of any stripe from competing. The organization got in trouble last year after Miss North Florida Kayleigh Bush refused to sign a contract that would allow those who had undergone “sex reassignment surgery” with medical documentation of vaginoplasty to compete. The Miss America organization has now clarified its rule, indicating its intent to allow chromosomally female intersex individuals born with non-standard genitalia to compete, not anyone with XY chromosomes. Perhaps a simpler route would be to state that anyone who needs sex reassignment surgery, for any reason, is not qualified to become Miss America.

• Roadblock thrown in Alberta’s independence vote drive: With Albertans successfully gathering more than enough signatures for a petition to hold a referendum on the province’s independence, there has predictably been an effort to derail that referendum. A judge has halted the signature verification process, which is required in order to get the referendum on the October ballot, in response to a challenge raised by First Nations claiming the referendum violates their treaty with Canada. While the issue is being hashed out, the judge noted that signature collection can still continue. Interestingly, while First Nations leaders oppose Alberta’s independence drive, many of Alberta’s indigenous peoples would actually embrace independence. They, like the rest of Albertans, would like to be free of Ottawa’s radical leftist abuses.

• Colombia to cull wild herd of Escobar’s hungry hippos: Colombia has an unusual problem on its hands: dozens of hippos roaming the country unrestricted. The giant African beasts — just three females and a male — were first imported in the 1980s by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar to his Hacienda Nápoles ranch, where he had built a private zoo. In 2022, an estimated 170 hippos were roaming freely. Sterilization efforts have so far failed to cull the population, so the authorities have authorized a plan to do so by allowing hunting up to 80 of them. Other plans to deport the hippos to wildlife sanctuaries around the world are costly, and returning them to Africa poses dangers due to their limited gene pool and the risk of disease.

Headlines

• U.S., Iran may return to negotiating table as early as this weekend (Jerusalem Post)

• Gabbard reveals intelligence community conspiracy that led to Trump’s 2019 impeachment (RedState)

• Biden DOJ “weaponized” federal law to prosecute pro-lifers and give them longer prison sentences (NY Post)

• Irish fuel protests might bring down the government (Hot Air)

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