In a small Louisiana community, tensions have reportedly reached a boiling point between a pastor’s family and their neighbor. The feud escalated in recent months due to a series of unsettling encounters allegedly involving the neighbor’s son, leading to a police report filed before the situation took a more aggressive turn involving the pastor himself.

Shaye Spell, wife of Baton Rouge pastor Tony Spell, raised concerns with authorities about troubling interactions with Scott Sherwin’s son. In one instance, she claimed that the young man’s actions nearly resulted in a car accident as he supposedly pursued her vehicle, according to a report by WBRZ on Thursday.

Back in May, Shaye documented an incident from March in a police report, describing how Sherwin’s son, Luke, allegedly made a rude gesture at her before proceeding to follow her car. As he tailed her, she claimed he shouted obscenities, a situation which she said escalated her fears.

“Mrs. Spell stated she quickly moved forward out of fear of him approaching her,” reported the police, reflecting her anxiety over the alleged approach.

A subsequent complaint filed by Shaye recounted another encounter where she and her husband, Tony, were subjected to the same offensive gesture by Luke just as they were leaving their driveway. This particular episode occurred mere days after the initial confrontation, further heightening the Spells’ concerns about their safety and well-being.

Shaye alleged Luke “grabbed his crotch” — an act she claimed he had done previously — before pursuing them. She claimed he swerved into their lane, crossing three lanes in the process and nearly causing a crash.

Cops have not named Luke as the victim in Tuesday’s attack.

Officers had warned Scott Sherwin that Luke shouldn’t follow or contact Shaye.

But, the Spells’ reportedly saw the elder Sherwin being told by an officer — and allegedly charged up to him while holding their phones, according to a police report.

Cops ordered the pastor to get back into his truck – and also urged Scott Sherwin to “calm down.”

Sherwin allegedly gesticulated at the pastor – but cops didn’t take any further action.

Spell’s apparent rivalry with the Sherwins dates back to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2020, Spell – the pastor of the Life Tabernacle Church – sued Sherwin for installing surveillance cameras at his home. 

He claimed the devices were planted “to view those coming and going,” according to the lawsuit seen by The Advocate.

Spell also claimed he had been followed and his phone had been tapped in the civil suit filed against a slew of parties, including Governor John Bel Edwards, and officials from East Baton Rouge Parish.

The lawsuit was filed in May 2020 – just weeks after he was slapped with six misdemeanor counts for flouting a COVID ban on large gatherings.

In 2023, Shaye Spell claimed her neighbor “across the street” moved traffic cones to block her church’s entrance, according to WBRZ.

Spell, pastor of the Life Tabernacle Church, said Wednesday that Sherwin’s son threatened to rape and kill his wife and children as he explained the motive behind the now-viral attack.

He claimed Sherwin’s son hurled expletives while he was changing the battery of one of his buses.

Spell allegedly struck his victim eight times before wrestling him to the ground, where he threw another 27 punches, leaving the man needing five stitches to his chin.

Spell faces up to eight years in prison after being charged with second-degree battery. He defended his actions after being released on bond.

“He said, ‘Tony, I’m going to rape your wife, I’m going to rape all your grandchildren, and the next time you go out of town, I’m going to kill them,’” he told reporters Wednesday, explaining the motive behind the attack.

Spell said he had a “duty and obligation” to protect his family.

“Number one, I’m a husband, number two, I’m a father, and number three, I’m a pastor who shepherds his flock,” he said. “I will not allow a man to murder my children when I’m gone.”

Spell will appear in court on September 15.

In a heated exchange at Capitol Hill, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro told Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that he needed to be “put in his place” during a confrontation.

Known for her spirited demeanor and signature purple hair, DeLauro found herself at odds with Mullin over contentious discussions about the administration’s policy of separating children from their undocumented migrant parents.

The 83-year-old Congresswoman aimed to draw attention to the issue of family separations at the border, citing cases where 3,900 children had been separated from their families, when Mullin abruptly interjected.

“450,000 kids were lost under the Biden administration and you didn’t say a word about it,” Mullin retorted, triggering an angry reaction from DeLauro.

“Mr. Secretary! Mr. Secretary! Do not interrupt!” she exclaimed, emphatically shaking her finger at him.

‘Don’t you point your finger at me,’ Mullin responded. 

DeLauro hit back: ‘I will point my finger at you!’

‘Don’t you be a hypocrite, you should be as upset about the 450,000 kids that were lost’ Mullin added.

She continued: ‘I am upset! Mr Chairman, could you put him in his place?’

‘You should be put in your place,’ quipped Mullin.

Republican Committee Chair Mark Amodei stepped in to tell Mullin to let the Democratic member continue with her questions, after he kept interrupting the lawmaker to trade jabs.

‘Mr. Secretary, if you would like four minutes for a closing statement when everybody’s done, I’ll give you that. But while members are on their eight minutes, I need them to have their eight minutes,’ Amodei said.

Mullin refused to comply with Amodei’s request, leading the Republican chair to step in again: ‘Mr. Secretary, the floor is hers. Actually, I gave it to her. You know, there is a chairman of a committee. That’s me. I gave it back to her.’

The Homeland Secretary continued clashing with DeLauro, forcing Amodei to step in again and order Mullin to stop interrupting. 

‘We are going to have something resembling order here,’ Amodei said. ‘The time is the ranking member’s. If you would like to respond later on there are methods to do that but it’s not a who can talk louder into the mic.’

‘I will not let her sit there and lie and accuse me of something that’s ridiculous,” Mullin barked back. 

‘You know, this is the legislative branch and it’s my hearing and so I’m going to try to some extent to control it moderately,’ Amodei added. 

The White House responded favorably to Mullin’s treatment of DeLauro, with Steven Cheung praising the secretary on X.

‘Blue-haired Democrat freak widely gesticulating in a fit of rage. Secretary Mullin remains calm, cool, and collected as he shuts her down with the truth,’ he said.

DeLauro again hit back, making a reference to Cheung’s weight in a quote-tweet.

‘Widely is crazy coming from you,’ she wrote about Cheung.

Earlier in the argument, Amodei threatened to postpone the hearing unless both sides agreed to not interrupt each other. 

‘This is not Meet the Press or Fox News or whatever for anybody involved, it’s what’s the question, what’s the answer,’ he said. 

Mullin is Trump’s second DHS secretary, having replaced Kristi Noem in March after a string of personal and professional scandals marred her tenure and prompted Democrats to cut off funding to the department for months.

Mullin, like Noem, has repeatedly claimed that 450,000 minors went missing during Biden’s tenure after crossing the southern border on their own. 

Homeland Security claimed earlier this month that it had located 146,000 of those minors.

DeLauro has often been combative with members of the Trump administration, in this month alone she’s duked it out with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. 

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — With Bosnia-Herzegovina’s victory over Qatar on Wednesday, it was almost certain who the U.S. national soccer team would face in the Round of 32.

However, Thursday’s 3-2 defeat to Turkey solidified this matchup as a confirmed eventuality.

The U.S. will consequently take on Bosnia in Santa Clara next Wednesday at 8 p.m, contending for a coveted place in the round of 16.

“They’re a strong side. A Round of 32 clash that’s all or nothing,” remarked Sebastian Berhalter. “We’re gearing up for it. Hoping to see our fans rallying for us.”

This upcoming match marks the USMNT’s most promising opportunity to secure a knockout victory at the World Cup since defeating Mexico to advance to the quarterfinals in 2002, a milestone that remains their most recent success in knockout rounds 24 years onwards.

Since then, it has lost in the round of 16 to Ghana (2010), Belgium (2014) and the Netherlands (2022); this is the first World Cup to feature a round of 32.

Asked about Bosnia on Wednesday, before it became official, Mauricio Pochettino deflected the question, talking instead about the importance of winning Thursday’s glorified exhibition against Turkey.

Having upset Italy to make it to the World Cup before going 1-1-1 in Group B — beating Qatar, drawing Canada, losing to Switzerland — Bosnia will be an underdog, but the U.S. would be foolish to look past it.

Led by talisman Edin Džeko and winger Kerim Alajbegovic, Bosnia has already achieved its best World Cup finish, with a group-stage exit in 2014 being its only other time qualifying since the Balkan nation achieved independence.

Before facing Paraguay in the World Cup opener, the last time the U.S. men’s national team had played at SoFi Stadium, it did so in front of thousands of empty seats.

The seats that were filled at that disastrous CONCACAF Nations League performance were mostly occupied by fans of Mexico, which played the other game in two doubleheaders when the USMNT lost to Panama and Canada.

“Day and night,” Pochettino said Wednesday, when asked to compare the crowd back then to now.

“When you connect, you connect,” Pochettino said. “I think that connection was the most difficult to create. Now when you connect with fans, people are excited and our players, the team is so excited to play tomorrow here and feel the connection, because that’s a unique feeling and emotion. It’s difficult to get in another place, that is the adrenaline that you like to feel in your body when that connection happens.”

Chris Richards, one of four players with a yellow card and thus not expected to play Thursday, said he didn’t expect a long rest before the round of 32 would have adverse effects.

“Fitness won’t be an issue. I don’t think sharpness will be either,” he said. “Obviously it’s good to keep into some sort of rhythm.… I think we’ll be fine next game.”

Cristian Roldan was not listed in the squad Thursday after dealing with a quad injury all week.

Experts in foreign policy are urging the Trump administration to maintain a vigilant stance on Iran, particularly concerning its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah — a group notorious for its involvement in acts that have harmed Americans.

Hezbollah’s significance to Tehran is evident in the broad U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding. Although the document does not explicitly name Hezbollah, the first clause of the 14-point agreement calls for the complete halt of military actions on all fronts, implicitly including the cessation of hostilities in Lebanon.

Lisa Daftari, serving as editor-in-chief, shared with News Media that “Hezbollah stands as the Iranian regime’s most cherished proxy, effectively acting as the regime’s primary line of defense. For almost five decades, Iran has pumped billions into transforming Hezbollah into a formidable missile threat aimed squarely at the heart of Israel.” She further commented, “Losing Hezbollah would deal a severe blow to the mullahs, even more devastating than losing control over the Strait of Hormuz or any other strategic asset. This is why Hezbollah is featured in the first clause of the MOU.”

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Daftari said Hezbollah is “a forward-deployed arm of the IRGC Quds Force taking Lebanon hostage,” She said that “the IRGC created Hezbollah in 1982, trained it, armed it, funded it, and to this day embeds Quds Force commanders inside its command structure. Treating them as separate organizations is a fiction Tehran exploits.”

While the State Department didn’t answer News Media questions over concerns raised by critics regarding the administration’s handling of Hezbollah, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took a tough line on the terror group when asked by reporters in the United Arab Emirates Tuesday about Tehran’s terror proxies and why Iran’s ballistic missile program was left out of the recent Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MOU).

Rubio insisted that regional proxy threats are fundamentally covered by the framework. “I think a careful reading of the MOU will see that when you talk about, for example, a complete – an end of hostilities in the entire region, well, that’s not possible. You can’t have the end of hostilities and conflicts in the region as long as Iranian proxies are launching missiles and drones from Iraq and are participating in terrorism like Hamas did and like Hezbollah did. So I do think it’s covered by the MOU, and it is an issue that will be gotten to at the appropriate time in these negotiations.”

Hezbollah was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. in 1997.  Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense for Democracies (FDD) and editor of its Long War Journal, told News Media that “Hezbollah has a five-decade-long track record of killing Americans, starting with the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, attacks on U.S. embassies and airplane hijackings.”

Roggio said the efforts “continue to this day,” with Hezbollah playing “a key role in establishing, training, advising and supporting the Iraqi militias, which are responsible for killing more than 600 American soldiers. Hezbollah also trained al Qaeda to use suicide car bombs, which it implemented in the 1998 suicide attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and perfected in theaters such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.” 

In May 2025, A U.S. District Court determined that the torture of Lebanese American Amer Fakhoury was the responsibility of Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah. Fakhoury lost sixty pounds during a six-month period of captivity after being kidnapped by Hezbollah in Lebanon in September 2019. He died six months after his return to the U.S. of cancer that was diagnosed in prison in Lebanon.

Zoya and Guila Fakhoury, Amer’s daughters and co-founders of the Amer Foundation, told News Media that their “family wants to see a peaceful, sovereign, and prosperous Lebanon” and welcomes “any effort that genuinely reduces violence and helps Lebanon move toward stability.”

The Fakhoury’s said that “lasting peace cannot come at the expense of accountability. True stability in Lebanon requires ensuring that terrorist organizations like Hezbollah no longer hold the power to intimidate, detain, and silence innocent people.”

They expressed disappointment that there has been “little public focus on the Americans who remain unjustly detained by the Iranian regime.” They added that “Any meaningful agreement with Iran should include concrete progress toward bringing every wrongfully detained American home.”

A U.S. official told News Media that “The Trump Administration is committed to securing the release of all Americans unjustly detained in Iran and around the world. The Iranian regime has a long and shameful history of unjustly detaining U.S. nationals and other foreign citizens. The Iranian regime should immediately release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran.  To ensure the safety and security and security of those Americans, we have nothing further to share at this time.”

As talks brokered by the U.S. between Lebanese and Israeli officials resumed in Washington, the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, released a statement on his X account Tuesday, thanking the Vice President and Secretary of State, stating in part “for the attention that the United States is showing toward Lebanon, aimed at ending the war there, strengthening the authority of the Lebanese state, and the independence of its decision-making, considering it solely responsible for preserving national sovereignty, the dignity of the Lebanese people, and their safety.”

Walid Phares, a foreign policy expert and author of ‘Iran: An Imperialist Republic and U.S. Policy,’ told News Media that it was “a major mistake…to give the Islamic regime in Iran a power to include Lebanon and Hezbollah in the talks. He warned that “putting Lebanon on the agenda of the talks with the regime in Switzerland could collapse the Washington, D.C. platform.”

Pressed by reporters while in Kuwait on Wednesday about Israel’s continued military presence, Rubio drew a firm line on the administration’s expectations, stating its hope is “that the Lebanese Armed Forces and the legitimate, sovereign Lebanese government will continue to be able to control and secure more and more of their own territory – because that’s who needs to control Lebanese territory, not a terrorist group like Hezbollah. So that’s the goal. And I think the Israelis have been clear. They don’t have any quarrels with the Lebanese people, they don’t have any claims on the territory of Lebanon.”

Jonathan Conricus, a former international spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, told News Media that “From an Israeli perspective, Hezbollah is not an organization that we can talk with or expect them to change their ways.” He said that as a jihadi organization, “their primary objective in life is to wage holy war against the Jews, and then against Christians and against other what they consider to be infidels and Westerners. These are not people that you can negotiate or talk sense with.”

Conricus, a senior fellow at the FDD, added that “there’s a unique chance here to roll back Iranian aggression in the region and to dismantle the most important Iranian proxy Hezbollah.” To do so, he called for “political pressure, information pressure and…economic pressure on Hezbollah [and] on all of its financial institutions.”

A U.S. government official told News Media that “Secretary Rubio spoke to both [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and Aoun on Friday about solidifying ceasefire and future talks. As a result of those calls, the U.S. started a monitoring mechanism via [U.S. Central Command] so that our policymakers have real-time and accurate information about fighting in Lebanon.”

The Washington talks between Lebanon and Israel are expected to continue into Thursday.

JD Vance lauded his wife Usha’s sharp retort to liberals who critiqued her $8.75 maternity dress, humorously proposing that the Second Lady should spearhead the federal government’s budget management.   

Expecting her fourth child, Mrs. Vance hit back at The New York Times after its fashion critic used a Father’s Day video featuring the pair to discuss the broader political narrative concerning prominent pregnant women linked to the Trump administration.

In her response, the Second Lady shared a screenshot revealing that the dress, with its asymmetric and figure-flattering design, originally retailed at $49.99. It had been reduced to $12.49, with an additional discount lowering the price by $3.74. 

Her husband, the Vice President, expressed his admiration with a playful quip: ‘She managed to snag a $50 dress for just $8.75. America: here’s your future federal budget director!’

He further showed his support by retweeting his wife’s sharp dissection of the liberal newspaper’s viewpoint.

‘Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what The New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks!’ Vance wrote on X.

The piece, written by Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, was titled The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image and examined the public pregnancies of Vance, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Friedman’s column began with the Instagram Reel shared by the Vances for Father’s Day.

In the clip, Mrs Vance tells her husband their growing family means he will have many more years of reading to children.

‘Luckily, there’s going to be a new baby for you to read to,’ she says in the video. ‘So you’re going to have many more years ahead of you.’

JD Vance replies: ‘I was not yet ready to be out of the baby phase, so here we are, about to jump right in, in just a few short weeks.’

Friedman noted Mrs Vance was wearing a ‘stretchy coral dress’ that emphasized her pregnancy and said the video offered a particularly direct public introduction to the couple’s coming arrival.

She also pointed to Leavitt’s recent birth of her second child and Miller’s birth of her fourth child, describing the three pregnancies as coincidental but significant in the context of the administration’s wider image-making.

‘That three such prominent women in the MAGA movement were pregnant at pretty much the same time was, indubitably, a coincidence,’ Friedman wrote.

But she argued the pregnancies had nevertheless created a ‘consistent’ public picture of the White House’s family and fertility agenda.

‘If the bare-chested, muscled mixed martial arts fighters of the UFC match that President Trump hosted on Flag Day were the poster guys for MAGA’s image of masculinity,’ Friedman wrote, ‘then the pregnant women of Trump world are one half of their feminine counterparts.’

The columnist said Mrs Vance’s pregnancy also helped present a more personal side of the Vice President.

‘As second lady, her job is also to represent and humanize the Vice President,’ Friedman wrote. ‘By spotlighting her pregnancy, she is doing exactly that.’

Vance has been promoting his religious journey in a new book that could ultimately serve as a sort of origin story for a future presidential campaign.

‘Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith’ comes out Tuesday from Harper, and The Associated Press obtained a copy ahead of its release. 

The HarperCollins imprint also put out ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ the bestselling memoir from 2016 that helped make Vance a national figure.

Vance has been working on and off on his new book since then, a tumultuous decade that included a Hollywood movie about his youth, a short stint as a US senator for Ohio and now Vice President to Donald Trump.