For several hours on the afternoon of July 20, two diplomatic security agents stood watch outside the office of Gavin Wax, a 33-year-old chief of staff at the State Department’s Washington headquarters, under orders to ensure he did not leave early.

At 5 p.m., Wax was summoned to a meeting with human resources and informed that he was being placed on administrative leave. Officials told him it would be his final day at the State Department.

Until that moment, Wax’s fierce devotion to President Donald Trump had helped him survive repeated controversies and rise through the ranks at Foggy Bottom.

This time, it appeared, his protection had worn thin.

But by the next Monday, Wax was back behind his desk, still overseeing the public diplomacy office, with his position seemingly untouched.

Wax had made what one source described as a ‘Hail Mary’ phone call to Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s personal senior counselor, to save himself, the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal.

Epshteyn allegedly took the issue to the president, and Wax’s dismissal was undone within the week, five senior Trump administration sources familiar with the matter said.

The decision to place Wax on leave had been approved by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel and senior State Department officials, at the behest of Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau. The White House’s office liaison at State coordinated the plan.

They were all overruled inside a week by a single adviser who holds no post at the department and whose authority rests entirely on his proximity to the president.

Five sources familiar with the matter said the reversal guts the credibility of the department’s staff and sends a message that anyone with the president’s ear is untouchable.

‘It signals to everyone else in the department that if you have the ear of someone close to the president, you are untouchable no matter what you do,’ one State Department source told the Daily Mail.

The reversal allegedly infuriated Marco Rubio. He has since made clear that Wax cannot stay in his department, three senior sources familiar with his reaction told the Daily Mail.

‘This is false and never happened,’ State Department spokesperson Dylan Johnson said when asked for comment. 

The final straw was reportedly over Serbia.

On Friday, July 17, Wax hosted a lunch in the eighth-floor executive dining room for Serbian right-wing politicians seen as pro-Kremlin, after being advised not to by career officials at the State Department.

The department’s Europe bureau was allegedly furious, and Landau’s office asked whether the guests could be barred from the building.

Wax had also been telling the Serbs that Landau had signed off on the meetings, a White House insider said, and when Landau learned his name was being used, it sent him into a fury. 

Three days later, Wax’s boss, Under Secretary Sarah Rogers, received word from HR at noon that her chief of staff would be gone by the end of the day.

She allegedly objected and was told she had no say. Wax is now on paternity leave after the birth of his second child.

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When he returns, he will follow Rogers to the US Agency for Global Media once the Senate confirms her to lead it. Inside the administration the move is being sold as a promotion.

Sources say it is the opposite: Rubio and other senior officials are putting their foot down to get him out of the building.

‘Gavin Wax will be an incredible addition to the United States Agency for Global Media and will continue to successfully execute President Trump’s America First policies,’ a White House official told the Daily Mail. 

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether Wax would keep his State Department role after moving to the US Agency for Global Media.

The episode caps a year in which Wax has become the most divisive political appointee in the department, accused of leaking in last fall’s Young Republican group chat scandal.

In a complaint the Daily Mail revealed in July, Wax was accused of shoving and threatening an aide to Greenland envoy Jeff Landry in a Truman Building elevator. The department’s Office of Special Investigations reviewed the complaint. It is unclear if the investigation remains ongoing.

Senior State Department officials overseeing Diplomatic Security coordinated the plan for his departure with PPO and senior department officials, sources said.

Putting agents outside his office struck some colleagues as excessive. Wax had figured out what the 5pm meeting was, and nobody wanted him leaving early or making an excuse about why he could not attend, sources say. 

A State Department spokesperson denied that Diplomatic Security agents were placed outside Wax’s office.  

Landau also allegedly soured on Wax over his relationships with the presidential special envoys, according to multiple sources. 

Senior officials had wanted him gone for months but held back under a White House rule that political appointees are not fired, only promoted up and out.

He and Epshteyn go back years in New York. When Trump gave a speech at the New York Young Republican Club’s gala in December 2023 and thanked ‘your president Gavin Wax’ from the stage, Epshteyn was in the room.

A year later Epshteyn attended the same gala, with Steve Bannon as the keynote speaker. Wax name-drops him constantly, a White House insider said.

Epshteyn is not Wax’s only route to the president. A source close to Wax said his most direct line runs through Natalie Harp, the blonde 35-year-old aide who is rarely more than a few feet from Trump.

Wax allegedly keeps a close texting relationship that produces personal notes from Trump and has helped him ride out one controversy after another.

Despite their ties, there’s no indication that Harp had any role in saving Wax’s job.

Wax took over the club in 2019 and made it the first Young Republicans chapter to endorse Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Last October, after Politico published thousands of racist and anti-Semitic messages from Young Republican leaders’ group chats, a Small Business Administration official, Michael Bartels, swore in an affidavit that Wax had demanded his private chat log and threatened him.

That month, the Daily Mail reported that senior White House officials had questioned Wax over texts that appeared to show him passing names and phone numbers to the Politico reporter.

Wax denied leaking at the time and faced no consequences.

The White House, Epshteyn, Wax, Rogers and the State Department have been contacted by the Daily Mail for comment.

Aaron Rodgers fired back sharply at what he called “horse s–t” claims that he was a “monster” in past relationships, after Shailene Woodley and Danica Patrick made allegations about their experiences with him.

“I dated two women who nobody gives a f–k about unless they drop my name,” the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback said during Thursday’s episode of the “Not Just Football” podcast.

Rodgers continued, “They like to say their version of the history of what actually happened. I’m just like, this ‘monster’ of a partner, and it’s just f–king horse s–t.”

“Number one, why are you still talking about me? It’s been years,” the 42-year-old NFL star added, noting that he began dating Patrick, 44, around early 2018.

Speaking about the former professional race car driver, who had stepped away from full-time racing the previous year, Rodgers said, “She had just retired.”

“She was depressed and not fun to be around,” he admitted. “But I didn’t leave her because I was trying to be there and be a good partner.”

Rodgers explained how his and Patrick’s relationship was heading toward a “certain direction” with “no intimacy.”

“Then, I’m buying a house in Malibu, and she goes, ‘Well, would you want to buy it together?’ And I say, ‘No,’” he recalled. “She said, ‘You know what that means then?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s the way things are going.’”

The athlete shared how he and Patrick briefly went to counseling, explaining their relationship took another turn when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and they were “stuck” together.

“So she tells the story [that she’s] totally blindsided by getting left,” Rodgers said about their 2020 split, sharing how Patrick claimed he also “leaves a trail of blood around.”

“I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’” the pro footballer questioned. “That is not what happened by any means.”

Rodgers’ comments appeared to be directed at Patrick’s 2025 interview on “The Sage Steele Show,” where she ripped him as being “emotionally abusive.”

“People could never imagine that I would lack … any confidence or belief in the simple things about who I am,” she said, admitting that she ignored many red flags in their relationship. “Yeah, he leaves a trail of blood.”

“Then I date Shailene,” Rodgers continued on the podcast, reflecting on the start of his July 2020 romance and December 2020 engagement with Woodley, 34.

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“I propose, and she says, ‘Yes,’” he recalled. “Now, she maybe felt like she was forced to make a decision. She could have said no. But not a couple of days after that, she tells me, ‘You know, before we get married I gotta go f–k this guy.’”

“Her story is, I ruined her life and gave her a crazy depression because I left her,” he said, alleging that Woodley was the one to call off their engagement in March 2021.

“We had a couple of times that we tried to get reunited, and nothing ever happened,” Rodgers explained. “She literally told me, ‘I don’t want to be with you.’”

Rodgers claimed there were “a lot of narratives” about him that were “just not true” spread by Patrick and Woodley, saying, “They portray things a certain way because they can get away with it.”

“All due respect … no one knows what they’re doing,” he claimed. “The height of their fame is when they were with me. They get clicks when they say my name … they get clicks when they say my name because I am a lightning rod. People actually give a f–k.”

“Stop talking about me,” Rodgers continued. “You’re not relevant … Move on with your life. Also, two, you’re lying about what actually happened … Like, I was actually a good partner.”

Reps for Woodley and Patrick weren’t immediately available to Page Six for comment.

Woodley has previously discussed her relationship with Rodgers, referring to their breakup as the “darkest” time of her life.

Additionally, the “Divergent” star once stated their romance was “not right” during a 2024 interview with Outside magazine.

“I felt like I lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy,” she told the outlet. “I really understood depression and anxiety and, like, complete soul detachment. I knew I was depressed when I looked at a tree and felt nothing.”

Rodgers also dated actress Olivia Munn from 2014 to 2017. However, they’ve never publicly shared anything negative about their romance.

Rodgers has since tied the knot with a mystery woman identified as Brittani. The couple got married last year after briefly dating and breaking up in 2017.

As for Woodley, she’s not publicly in a relationship, while Patrick is dating a mystery man.

A 20-year-old Michigan man who had only recently arrived in Central Florida to take part in the Disney College Program died after what authorities and his family described as an apparent lightning strike along a walking trail.

Matthew Eric Jenkins, a native of Shelby Township, Michigan, was discovered unresponsive Tuesday evening on a path located behind a hotel in Celebration, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said.

Jenkins’ father told WESH-TV that his son had relocated to Central Florida the previous week to start the Walt Disney World internship program.

The sheriff’s office said deputies were dispatched to the Bloom Street path at approximately 6:25 p.m., and investigators later noted that lightning had hit nearby.

Spyro Betz, who had been walking nearby before reaching his car, told FOX35 Orlando he heard a powerful crack of lightning.

“I heard the big crack of lightning that was like right overhead,” Betz said.

He initially thought it had struck a building.

“When I heard the lightning strike I expected it hit the building or something like that or hit the hotel, I didn’t expect it to hit a person,” Betz said.

Felipe Costa told WESH-TV he ran toward the path after hearing the lightning and found Jenkins on the ground.

“As soon as I heard that, I started running and I came over here [where it happened]. That’s when I saw the man,” Costa said.

A woman joined Costa and began performing CPR while they waited for first responders.

Jenkins was taken to AdventHealth Celebration, where he was pronounced dead.

Jenkins’ father told the outlet that the family was grateful to everyone who tried to help his son.

The sheriff’s office said detectives are awaiting the medical examiner’s determination of Jenkins’ official cause of death.

NASA scientists have identified a puzzling cluster of holes etched into the Martian surface, adding a fresh mystery to the long-running exploration of the Red Planet.

The unusual formations were spotted as NASA’s Curiosity rover continued its gradual climb through Valle Grande, a wide valley that slices across Mount Sharp in Mars’ Gale Crater.

Small pits are not rare on Mars, a world heavily scarred by meteorite strikes and harsh surface processes. But researchers say these newly observed features do not yet have a clear explanation.

What makes the Valle Grande holes stand out is their shape: spread across exposed bedrock, they appear wide, shallow and, according to scientists, “unlike quite anything we have seen in the past.”

Dr Michelle Minitti, deputy principal investigator for Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager, reflected on the find in a mission blog post, writing: “After Curiosity’s 14 years on the surface, Mars continues to surprise.”

She added: ‘They were a welcome new puzzle into the processes that have affected this particular section of rocks.’

On both Earth and Mars, small holes worn into the bedrock are a relatively common discovery.

These typically form when a tough pebble or intrusion gets stuck in a bed of softer rock.

When these resistant intrusions are eventually weathered out of the softer surrounding rock, they leave small impressions behind.

However, NASA scientists were stumped when they discovered none of the normal signs of this familiar process.

Dr Minitti wrote: ‘The pits of this week were much broader and shallower than past features and were not accompanied by obvious objects that were once in the pits.’

The Curiosity rover was instructed to use the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to photograph the pits from close range.

Meanwhile, the Mastcam camera took a series of overlapping images of the surrounding terrain.

Combined, these images will allow scientists to make a full three-dimensional map of the pits and to measure their shapes and depth.

The researchers hope that this should shed some light on how these enigmatic pits came to be dotted over the flanks of Mount Sharp.

It may be that the holes were formed by an unusual property of the surrounding rock, a previously unknown erosion process, or some entirely other factor.

However, that research will take time, meaning scientists currently have no idea how these holes were formed.

Nor were the holes the only mystery encountered by Curiosity in this part of the Martian mountain.

The researchers also noticed rapid changes in appearance between nearby layers of rock bed, including tough grey areas that resist erosion differently from their surroundings.

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NASA suggests that this could be evidence of rapid changes in the conditions under which these layers of rock were laid down millions or even billions of years ago.

Curiosity was directed to sample the chemistry of these unusual layers, but further analysis will take more time.

Scientists are particularly interested in this area of the Martian surface because it could unlock the secrets of the Red Planet’s distant past.

The Gale Crater is believed to have been formed around three billion years ago when a massive asteroid collided with the Martian surface.

At its centre is Mount Sharp, which rises about 3.4 miles (5.5km) above the floor of Gale Crater.

NASA says the mountain’s sedimentary layers are a ‘history book of sequential chapters recording environmental conditions when each stratum was deposited’.

Even more excitingly, experts believe that Gale Crater was filled with water after it formed before eventually drying out some time in the past.

Scientists, therefore, believe that the crater could be one of the best places to find evidence of life that could have survived during the planet’s warm, wet past.

On the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, masked separatist militants have been targeting luxury vacation properties with explosives and arson — yet the threat has done little to cool demand from wealthy buyers eager to own a piece of the island.

The most alarming wave came in October 2023, when 34 homes in 20 different towns were reportedly bombed or set on fire during one unsettling overnight series of attacks.

Corsica’s armed pro-independence movement, which does not appear to have caused any deaths in the attacks, has continued to focus on second homes — many of them empty holiday residences owned by people from mainland France or foreign investors. As recently as March 2026, another property was blown up, according to the New York Times.

The National Liberation Front of Corsica, the paramilitary arm of a separatist campaign that has existed for roughly half a century, has made its message clear: it wants non-Corsican property owners to leave the island.

That warning was delivered openly last month, when about 15 masked and armed members of the group staged a press conference and told tourists and prospective second-home buyers to keep away from Corsica.

“Until our national rights are recognized and respected, we have only one message to send them,” one member read from a prepared statement. “Stay home. And, if that’s not the case, do not consider yourself safe on our national territory.”

The threats have not slowed the market. Second homes now account for 37% of Corsica’s housing stock, and as much as 50% in some coastal towns, according to a 2026 report from the Corsican Assembly. 

Only about 61 Americans live on the island full time, according to a 2020 report from the Local, making it the least popular region in France for US expats, largely due to its lack of a major city and pricier travel links to the mainland.

Politically, the bombing campaign has paid off. The French Senate votes next month on a constitutional amendment recognizing Corsica’s distinct language — far more similar to Italian than French — culture and history, and granting its local government new authority over zoning and waste management. It would be the first time any French region received that status.

“It was a tactical success,” André Fazi, a political scientist at the University of Corsica, referring to the bombings, told The Times. 

Still, the amendment stops short of giving Corsicans control over who can buy property there, the central demand of hardline separatists. Petru Antone Tomasi, a spokesman for the independence party Nazione, which opposes the amendment as a diluted compromise, said the land fight cannot be separated from the broader independence push.

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“We consider the fight for the land intertwined with the struggle for Corsica,” Tomasi told the outlet.

The Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for thousands of attacks since forming in 1976, including a 1991 operation that hit more than 80 vacation homes and a 2012 incident in which masked gunmen dragged a Parisian financier and six others from his villa before blowing it up. 

Fifteen homes have been burned or bombed since 2024 alone. A Paris counterterrorism investigation into the 2023 attacks has led to 10 arrests, and prosecutors have opened a separate probe into last month’s press conference.

Buyers keep coming regardless. Madeleine Michaud, a 65 year old retiree from Lyon, paid 2.5 million euros for a home in southern Corsica, including 150,000 euros for a retractable glass wall overlooking the sea. She noticed nationalist tattoos on some of her construction workers but said her ties to local friends make her feel protected, though she asked to be identified only by her middle and maiden names as a precaution.

“They don’t care about me,” she told The Times.

Real estate agent Irène Valentin said she regularly hears from anxious prospective buyers.

“Some of them are very afraid,” she said. “They know somebody who had a house in the village and the house was burned. They want to come here and they want to be reassured.”

Not every buyer takes the threat seriously, she added.

“They can be very arrogant,” Valentin said. “I say to myself, if they behave that way here, they’ll get their house burned.”

Mona Wingate, whose family bought a Corsican olive mill in 1975 amid an earlier wave of bomb threats, moved back to the property in 2019 and has taken the opposite approach, opening her land to locals and attending village events.

“It’s their land and they had access to it for hundreds of years,” she said.

So far, she said, she has had no problems.