By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN

(CNN) — First Daniel Biss wants to win his primary for an open US House seat in the north Chicago suburbs on Tuesday. Then he has the makings of a plan: Tell as many other Democratic candidates as he can that they could beat AIPAC too.

The grandson of Holocaust survivors who moved to Israel, who grew up with dual citizenship and briefly studied there while an undergraduate, who has a cousin who was called up to the reserves after the October 7, 2023, attacks, Biss is running on a wide array of progressive stances. But the Evanston mayor said he believes the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, other PACs it is funding and connected donors together are dumping millions into his race because of the specific threat he presents.

“It’s obvious that I care about the well-being of the Jewish people and the problem of antisemitism,” Biss told CNN. “They can’t dismiss my positions that are for justice, for dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people as somehow illegitimate or being pushed forward by someone who doesn’t know.”

“This,” Biss argued, “is a very important race for that reason.”

Several people familiar with AIPAC’s decision-making disputed that, arguing that Biss wouldn’t be the threat to them he imagines. But Biss is making such a big issue of AIPAC that he is running an ad about how much connected money has gone to support one of his opponents — Laura Fine — the favored AIPAC candidate who has publicly distanced herself from the group. Through at least three shell PACs including the United Democracy Project, AIPAC is set to top $20 million just in the Chicago-area House races ahead of Tuesday’s primaries.

A growing issue

What’s happening in the Chicago area has been playing out all over the country.

At a Latino voter-focused forum at a Mexican restaurant called El Ranchito on the outskirts of Dallas last month, the first question to the candidates was about taking AIPAC donations. From Minnesota to Mississippi, operatives involved in races tolf CNN candidates are constantly facing questions about the group on the trail. Incumbents tell CNN they expect it to come up regularly at town halls. And online, detractors constantly pounce on politicians’ comments they perceive as sympathetic to Israel as evidence of being coopted by AIPAC.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war in Gaza repels more Americans on the left, even many Democrats who consider themselves strong supporters of Israel have felt out of sync and uncomfortable. But they and other Israel backers also worry that support for the country is becoming more partisan — and that, especially as prospective candidates start to speak out, anti-Israel rhetoric could become a defining issue in the next presidential primary race.

AIPAC has become a stand-in for all of that.

And that was before the war in Iran — in which critics argue the US is hurting its own interests by following Israel’s lead — criticism the Trump administration has rejected.

Calling out Democrats whose policy positions they don’t like has become a tactic on the left, including by entities like the “AIPAC Tracker” account on X, which lists past donations from pro-Israel groups and donors next to photos of political candidates. Several incumbents across the country are facing primary challenges explicitly based on their connections to AIPAC, often backed by new, specifically anti-AIPAC PACs popping up.

David Hogg, the March for Our Lives co-founder now running an organization to promote a new generation of leaders, sent a fundraising email last weekend with a one-word subject line: “AIPAC.” A video AIPAC posted last week of Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens praising Israel and thanking her for standing with the country — what

By Lauren Fox, Sarah Owermohle, CNN

(CNN) — Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy in February 2025 weighed possible political peril against a long career in medicine, ultimately casting the critical vote to confirm known vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy as the president’s Health and Human Services secretary.

But the choice hasn’t guaranteed the senator’s political future. Now the incumbent who made a career out of advocating for vaccines is ensnared in a bitter primary election back home — without President Donald Trump’s support. And as he fights for his political life, he must decide whether to confirm a Kennedy ally, Casey Means, to serve as Trump’s surgeon general.

The saga of whether to schedule the vote and push for Means’ nomination despite headwinds is putting Cassidy back in the spotlight as he faces off in a three-way primary against Rep. Julia Letlow, who has been endorsed by the president and embraced by the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, and John Fleming, a state treasurer who has tried to establish himself as a conservative alternative in the race.

Sources close to the process concede that Means’ nomination doesn’t appear to be trending in the right direction and that may be regardless of how Cassidy casts his vote.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a member of Cassidy’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told CNN last week that she’s “not enthusiastic about her” when asked whether she would support Means. And Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine who is locked in a tough reelection fight of her own, told CNN on Thursday that she was still reviewing written questions Means had submitted.

The loss of just a single GOP vote in the committee could kill Means’ nomination if Democrats are unified against her. And as the chairman of the committee and already a top target of the president’s, it’s just the latest headache for Cassidy.

“The best-case scenario for Cassidy is that she withdraws,” said Robert Hogan, a professor of political science at Louisiana State University. “I don’t think he has much to gain by opposing it or championing it. He has used all his other signals and it hasn’t moved people.”

CNN has reached out to the senator’s office for comment.

In an interview with CNN earlier this month, Cassidy declined to comment on whether Means had been clear enough about her position on vaccines or if he was prepared to back her nomination. “I’m not prepared yet to comment on the hearing yesterday,” he said.

He has not scheduled a committee vote on her nomination.

For the last year, Cassidy has gone out of his way to try to ingratiate himself with the president and his voters. Cassidy said publicly as recently as November that he believed the president was going to stay neutral in the race before Trump ultimately endorsed Letlow.

Cassidy has been a fierce supporter of the president’s top priority, the “SAVE America Act,” a bill that imposes strict voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for US voters. In the last year, he has voted “yes” on all of Trump’s Cabinet nominees and he has been careful when pressed on whether he regrets his vote on RFK Jr.

“Life is lived forward. What I have to do is do my best to reassure the American people that vaccines are safe, that the president believes in vaccines,” Cassidy told Punchbowl News last November.

Cassidy’s task to win over Trump voters has become more essential now that Louisiana has moved from an all-party primary to a more traditional partisan n

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN

(CNN) — When Melanie Galeaz posted a fan edit of “Heated Rivalry,” she didn’t know it would lead to her dream job.

“I watched (the edit) so many times, it kind of like lost any spark to me,” Galeaz, 25, said, referring to her minute-long video condensing the six-episode, steamy hockey romance. The series streams on HBO Max in the United States.

The fan edit gained 4.6 million views on X and blew up on Instagram, TikTok and even Threads after it was posted on December 28. This year, Melanie left the world of financial consulting to edit trailers and promos full-time at HBO, who she said reached out to her via DM saying they loved her edit.

(CNN and HBO share the same parent company, Warner Bros Discovery. HBO did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.)

As eyes turn from big screens to vertical video and seemingly everyone has a streaming platform now, movie studios are buying into the fan-edit frenzy to reel in a new generation of franchise enthusiasts. Movie studios are shifting their marketing priorities to reach the lucrative Gen Z and millennial groups – and hiring young, digital-native editors to make fan edits. Lionsgate, HBO and Netflix have all promoted fan edits in the last couple of years.

The short fan-made videos, a longtime part of internet culture, string together clips from movies, TV shows or other sources, often using eye-catching transitions and evocative music. Gen Z overwhelmingly identifies as belonging to fandoms, and the most popular fan edits can draw hundreds of millions of views on social media.

Lionsgate has been working with fan editors for years but brought more attention to it recently, working with a team of at least 10 to 15 fan editors at a time as contractors. The movie studio saw two of its franchises, “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games,” gain a second life in part because of its self-aware, tongue-in-cheek edits.

“We want to create content that is very native, that is fan-first, and the best people to do that are the fans,” Briana McElroy, Lionsgate’s head of worldwide digital marketing, told CNN.

A new dawn for Twilight (and others)

While trailers promote upcoming movies on the big screen, fan edits are usually made for vertical video and can focus on anything from just-out shows to movies from years ago. Lionsgate told CNN that when it pushed its own “Twilight” edits on social media, alongside viral fan-made edits, there was a direct correlation with increases in views for the movie on streaming sites.

Hiring fan editors could signal an industry-wide shift in how studios market their movies, Shawn Robbins, founder and owner of industry analysis group Box Office Theory, said.

Viral edits can attract new fans and bring Gen Z from TikTok to theaters and streaming sites, Robbins told CNN. A survey from advertising agency Ogilvy found that 86% of Gen Z respondents called themselves fans in a report last December — and half of them reported that their fandoms help them make sense of the world.

Fan engagement, such as viral edits, “keeps these brands going for years and years,” Robbins said.

Take “The Hunger Games” series. Viral edits, — such as thirst traps of Josh Hutcherson’s character, Peeta Mellark — garner hundreds of thousands to millions of views on social media over a decade after the first film’s release. The series’ resurgence lined up with the release of a prequel movie, “The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” in 2023.

For the upcoming “Hunger Games” prequel, “Sunrise on the Reaping,” Lionsgate sought to combine the appeal of traditional movie trailers and fan edits. “When we released the trailer, Read more

By Alaa Elassar, CNN

(CNN) — Streetlights shaped like alien heads line the roads of Roswell, New Mexico, where murals of flying saucers streak across storefronts and tourists pose beside statues of little green men.

Nearly eight decades after a mysterious crash in the desert sparked global fascination with extraterrestrials, the small city remains synonymous with one of the world’s most enduring mysteries: the Roswell Incident.

In July 1947, the US military announced it had recovered the wreckage of a UFO from a nearby ranch before quickly retracting the claim, saying the debris was from a weather balloon.

The episode helped ignite decades of speculation that something far stranger had fallen from the sky — and that whatever was recovered, including rumors of bodies that didn’t belong to human beings, was quietly transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a sprawling military installation in Ohio long speculated to house secret government research into unidentified flying objects.

Renewed attention is falling on the base after the disappearance of retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, a former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson whose career placed him at the center of some of the Pentagon’s most advanced aerospace research.

The US Air Force has repeatedly denied any extraterrestrial technology or “alien bodies” were ever in their possession. But Donald Schmitt, the lead investigator at the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, says he believes the government is not telling the truth.

“We are presently up to 30 deathbed confessions, all admissible in a court of law, attesting that it did happen. I can’t say that about 99.9% of the other UFO cases, because they’re very fleeting. It’s a sighting, it’s a photograph, it’s a video. Now you see it. Now you don’t,” Schmitt said.

“With Roswell, you have the actual recovery of a craft, the remains, the wreckage and the crew, the bodies (from a craft of unknown origin),” he said.

Since the Roswell crash, over 1,600 reports of possible sightings have been made in the US alone, according to the Department of Defense, but Russia, China and Japan, among other countries, also are tracking sightings.

In recent years, both extraterrestrial enthusiasts and doubters have been drawn to dramatic government-released military videos and reports of unidentified aerial encounters, as well as high-profile congressional hearings featuring whistleblowers who claim firsthand knowledge of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, the modern term for UFOs.

But Wright-Patterson has played a central role in the US military’s real investigations into mysterious objects in the sky — from Cold War-era research programs to efforts to study UAPs.

While authorities say there is no evidence linking McCasland’s disappearance from his Albuquerque home to UFO research, the case has revived curiosity about the base and the decades of speculation surrounding it.

Here’s what we know about the mysterious military base and UFO lore.

Inside Wright-Patterson, once the heart of UFO investigations

Long before it became the subject of UFO speculation, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was one of the most important research centers in the US military.

“If there was e

By Graham Hurley, CNN

(CNN) — Between slick ice and sharp skates, the chilled hollow of a hockey rink is where Colin Dorgan has experienced the most devastating and the most jubilant moments of his life – all within the span of a month.

The high school senior’s mother, brother and grandfather were killed in mid-February when gunfire pierced the clamor of sticks, skates and cheers during one of his games at an arena in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

His life upended, Dorgan took some time to return to the rink, and when his skates hit the ice, the team captain performed like he hadn’t missed a moment. The divisional championship game this week played out like a movie. In double overtime, Dorgan scored the winning goal to send his team to the state championship.

But three seats in the arena that should have been filled by Dorgan’s biggest supporters were empty.

Retired firefighter and head coach of the Blackstone Valley Co-op hockey team Chris Librizzi has seen his share of tragedy up close. But nothing in his years on the job could have braced him for what he witnessed at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena.

“This was by far the worst that I’ve ever been to, because I was right there from the onset,” Librizzi said.

While his players scrambled off the ice, the former first responder rushed to the stands to treat the wounded.

After the shooting, returning to the rink was not an easy transition for anyone.

A heavy decision

The coaches gathered the team for a meeting a couple of days after the shooting to encourage the players to take some time to think about whether they wanted to continue, emphasizing there was no pressure if they wanted to stop.

“I got to thinking after that that this is not a way that Rhonda Dorgan, Aidan Dorgan and Gerald Dorgan would ever want Colin’s season to end, and not a way that they would want our season to end,” Librizzi explained about the decision to resume.

After circling back with the team and their families a few days later, Librizzi and the other coaches told the team they were going to keep playing.

“We want you to be a part of this team. Standing on the bench or standing in the stands with us, we’re going to continue the season,” Librizzi said.

At the same time, Librizzi had been meeting with Colin and his sister, Ava, each day following the shooting. Librizzi asked Colin about coming back to play for the rest of the season.

“I said, Colin, if you don’t want to come back to the team, I completely understand and I will support your decision, but I just want you to know that if you decide not to come back to this team, and I allow that to happen, your mom would have kicked my ass,” Librizzi said.

While Dorgan grieved, the team spent time together nearly every single day. The only exceptions were a couple of days when they were snowed in by the massive blizzard that gripped the region.

“The first two days back on the ice were incredibly difficult. Some of the players were hesitant on coming back and stepping foot on the ice,” Librizzi said.

They had regular workouts. They went to Topgolf. They had dinners together for 15 days straight. And perhaps most importantly, everyone participated in both individual and group counseling sessions to cope with the tragedy.

Librizzi had previously told the schools’ administration this year would mark the end of his 32-year coaching career. The coach has cancer and has undergone four surgeries over the past year.

“After this incident took place, I had a conversation with my wife, and she said, ‘This is your call. It’s up to you,’” he said. “I told her I didn’t feel it was right for me to leave them this year, so I’m