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Nov. 12, 2025, 6:27 PM EST / Updated Nov. 12, 2025, 9:09 PM ESTBy Kyle Stewart, Frank Thorp V and Sahil KapurWASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson said the House will vote next week to repeal a provision slipped into the bill to end the shutdown that would allow senators to sue the government for potentially millions of dollars if their data is obtained without their notification.Johnson said he was “shocked” and “angry” when he learned about the provision, which would uniquely benefit eight Republican senators, whose phone records — but not the contents of their calls or messages — were found to have been accessed as part of the investigation that led to former special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.When asked Wednesday if he knew about the provision, which was tucked into the bill to reopen the government, Johnson replied, “No, I found out about it last night.”“I was surprised. I was shocked by it, and I was angry about it, to be honest,” he said.The House passed the package to reopen the government later Wednesday, sending it to President Donald Trump to sign, and end the 43-day government shutdown.But Johnson vowed on X that House Republicans would introduce stand-alone legislation to undo the provision, adding that he will put it on a fast track to get a vote in the House next week. That process means it will need the support of two-thirds of House members to pass and move on to the Senate.Democrats and many House Republicans have been critical of the measure, which appears to apply only to senators and retroactively applies to data requests that were made on or after Jan. 1, 2022.Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., one of two Republicans who voted against the legislation, vented his frustrations with the process that led to the provision being included, and the fact that House Republicans were being asked to vote for the bill regardless.“That does nothing to change the fact that certain senators will get paid an additional $500k of taxpayer money. The Senate will never take up your ‘standalone’ bill,” he wrote on X in response to Johnson. “This is precisely why you shouldn’t let the Senate jam the House.”Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released an unclassified document in October showing that the FBI requested a review of phone data for eight Republican senators and one House member on Sept. 27, 2023.It is unclear who initially pushed for the provision. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., included it in a part of the package that will fund the legislative branch through September.Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., the top Democrat on the subcommittee responsible for funding the legislative branch, said in a statement shared with NBC News: “I am furious that the Senate Minority and Majority Leaders chose to airdrop this provision into this bill at the eleventh hour — with zero consultation or negotiation with the subcommittee that actually oversees this work.”“This is precisely what’s wrong with the Senate,” Heinrich said.A GOP aide said the language was a member-driven provision but did not name which senators made the push, and they said that Thune did include the language at their request. Thune’s office declined to comment.“Leader Thune inserted that in the bill to provide real teeth to the prohibition on the Department of Justice targeting senators,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.A Democratic aide told NBC News that Schumer fought to make the provision prospective to protect his members from a corrupt and out-of-control DOJ under Attorney General Pam Bondi.But a Schumer spokesperson said later Wednesday that Schumer now supports Johnson’s effort to strip the language from the bill and will push for that in the Senate.The eight Republican senators whose phone “tolling records” were accessed were: Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; Bill Hagerty of Tennessee; Josh Hawley of Missouri; Dan Sullivan of Alaska; Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming; and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania also had his tolling records disclosed as part of the probe, but the provision in the government funding bill specifically focuses on senators.The “tolling data” would include who was called, when and the length of a call, but not what was said.The provision added to the government funding bill would require that senators be notified if their data is disclosed. If they aren’t — as the eight Republican senators were not — and they successfully sue, the court would be required to award “the greater of statutory damages of $500,000 or the amount of actual damages” for each violation.It would not apply if the senator was the target of a criminal investigation or if a court ordered that the notification be delayed.Graham, whose call data was accessed, said he favors the provision because it would “protect the Senate in the future, and it will also cover any Democrats in this Senate this term that may have something happened to them.”Graham said he “definitely” plans to sue under the provision if it becomes law.“I want to make it so painful no one ever does this again,” he added.Johnson didn’t indicate who was responsible for the provision but said he trusts Thune. “He’s a great leader, but some members got together and hoisted that upon — put it into the bill at the last minute. And I wish they hadn’t,” Johnson said. “I think it was a really bad look, and we’re going to fix it in the House.”The eight Democratic caucus members who voted for the legislation were Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Tim Kaine, D-Va.NBC News asked each of their offices whether they knew the language was in the bill when they voted for it, and whether they agree with Johnson that it should be stripped out.Durbin’s office said he didn’t know about the provision and supports repealing it.A Rosen spokesperson said, “Given that this provision was added at the eleventh hour, Senator Rosen strongly supports efforts in the House to strip it out from the bill.”A Cortez Masto spokesperson said the senator “had nothing to do with the decision to add this provision to the bill at the last minute, and she supports stripping it from the bill.”A Shaheen spokesperson said: “Senator Shaheen was not involved in adding this language.”A Hassan spokesperson said, “Senator Hassan strongly opposes this provision that was added to the legislation by Senate leadership at the last minute without her knowledge and supports action to reverse it.”“Can absolutely say that Sen. King wasn’t aware” of that provision, said a spokesperson for King.The others didn’t immediately return requests for comment.Kyle StewartKyle Stewart is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the House.Frank Thorp VFrank Thorp V is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the Senate.Sahil KapurSahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
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Nov. 13, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Aria BendixOne of the most common viruses in the world could be the cause of lupus, an autoimmune disease with wide-ranging symptoms, according to a study published Wednesday.Until now, lupus was somewhat mysterious: No single root cause of the disease had been found, and there is no designated treatment for it. The research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, suggests that Epstein-Barr virus — which 95% of people acquire at some point in life — could cause lupus by driving the body to attack its own healthy cells.It adds to mounting evidence that Epstein-Barr is associated with multiple long-term health issues, including other autoimmune conditions. As this evidence stacks up, scientists have accelerated calls for a vaccine that targets the virus.“If we now better understand how this fastidious virus is responsible for autoimmune diseases, I think it’s time to figure out how to prevent it,” said Dr. Anca Askanase, clinical director of the Lupus Center at Columbia University, who wasn’t involved in the new research.In lupus patients, an autoimmune attack can result in extreme fatigue, joint pain and skin rashes. In rare cases, the disease may lead to fatal or life-threatening issues such as kidney damage, or weaken the immune system so the body can’t fight off infections.Scientists have long suspected a link between Epstein-Barr and lupus, but the exact connection had remained elusive. Dr. William Robinson, a co-author of the new study and chief of the division of immunology and rheumatology at Stanford University, said his new findings solve a major piece of that puzzle.“From our perspective, it’s the key, missing mechanistic link,” Robinson said. “We think it applies to all lupus cases,” he added. Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. are living with the disease.But Hoang Nguyen, assistant vice president of research at the Lupus Research Alliance, said it’s too soon to know if the mechanism is behind every case.“Although the evidence is intriguing and promising, more evidence is needed to demonstrate that the link to EBV applies to all lupus,” Nguyen said. The alliance is a private funder of lupus research and contributed grant funding to Robinson’s study.An infection withe Epstein-Barr virus does not necessarily cause symptoms, especially among children, though the virus is also the most common cause of mononucleosis (often referred to as mono).It’s primarily transmitted by saliva from kissing or sharing drinks, food, utensils or toothbrushes. After someone is infected, the virus lingers permanently in the body, where it usually remains inactive — though not always. The new study is not the first to tie Epstein-Barr to autoimmune issues. Past research has linked it to multiple sclerosis. Though not the sole trigger of MS, the virus may be part of a chain of events that leads to the disease. Robinson said a pathway similar to the one described in his new study could also lead to other autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease, but more research is needed to tease that out. Of course, the vast majority of people who contract Epstein-Barr do not go on to get lupus, MS or any other autoimmune disease. Robinson said it’s possible that only certain strains of Epstein-Barr trigger autoimmune reactions.To determine the causal link between Epstein-Barr and lupus, Robinson and his co-authors focused on B cells — white blood cells that help fight off infections. Even in healthy individuals, Epstein-Barr lies dormant in a tiny portion of B cells. But those virus-containing B cells are far more prevalent in lupus patients, who have a 25 times higher share of them, according to the new research.The study also highlights a type of protein called antinuclear antibodies, which bind to the nucleus of cells and are one of the hallmarks of lupus. The researchers found that Epstein-Barr infects and reprograms B cells to produce antinuclear antibodies that attack the body’s own tissue, thereby causing lupus.Robinson said the findings go hand-in-hand with some other theories about what causes lupus. For instance, scientists suspect that a person’s genetics or hormones can predispose them to the disease, as well. A study published last year in the journal Nature also found that people with lupus have too much of a particular T cell — another type of white blood cell — that’s associated with cell damage and too little of another T cell associated with repair. Robinson said the pathway described in his study could activate that T cell response.The new research points to a few potential options for lupus treatment, according to Robinson, who is the co-founder of two drug development companies exploring treatments for autoimmune diseases.Many of the current medications given to ease lupus symptoms, such as corticosteroids, broadly focus on reducing inflammation. Robinson said future therapeutics could specifically target B cells infected with Epstein-Barr.But an Epstein-Barr vaccine — several of which are in clinical trials — could someday stop infections in the first place.“Vaccination to protect people against ever being infected by EBV would be the ultimate, fundamental solution,” Robinson said.Aria BendixAria Bendix is the breaking health reporter for NBC News Digital.
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Nov. 21, 2025, 5:49 PM ESTBy Tim StellohFor as long as she can remember, Heather Thiel believed her father was a killer.She was so convinced that she twice urged authorities to examine whether he was responsible for a horrific, unsolved double murder that shook rural Wisconsin more than three decades ago. But her role in the investigation into the slaying of Tim Mumbrue and Tanna Togstad led to an outcome she never could have imagined: three years ago, authorities concluded that her cousin, not her now-deceased father, fatally stabbed the couple on March 21, 1992.For more on the case, tune in to “Raising the Dead” on “Dateline” at 9 ET/8 CT tonight.DATELINE FRIDAY SNEAK PEEK: Raising the Dead01:59Just as head-spinning, that cousin, Tony Haase, was acquitted in the murders earlier this year. During a nearly monthlong trial, Haase’s lawyers made the case that the evidence pointed at Heather Thiel’s dead father, Jeff Thiel. For Heather Thiel, who is 40 and works at a group home for mentally ill adults, the whiplash of the last three years left her questioning longstanding beliefs and wrestling with a familiar feeling.“I wish there was a definite answer,” she said. “Now, I feel like we still don’t know for sure.”Fixated on murderOn March 11, 1995, Jeff Thiel pointed a shotgun at a law enforcement officer after he was pulled over in a traffic stop. The officer retreated to his car, and Jeff Thiel, who’d worked in the maintenance department of an iron foundry in a rural community east of Green Bay, escaped, Haase’s defense attorney said at trial. Heather Thiel. Courtesy DatelineHe blew through a roadblock and fled the state, said the attorney, John Birdsall. Nearly three months later, in a hotel room in Washington state, Jeff Thiel died by suicide, according to his daughter. He was 44. Heather Thiel, who was 11 when her mother told her the news, can still recall her response: “I said, ‘When’s the party?’”Heather Thiel described her father as a scary and abusive parent who killed neighborhood pets and would casually — and routinely — threaten to shoot her mother. Her mom, Marie Stanchik, also believed her ex-husband was a killer. In an interview with authorities three years ago, she recalled how his “ultimate dream was to kill somebody.”Jeff Thiel. Courtesy Dateline“He used to tell me that all the time,” Stanchik said, according to audio of the interview. “He’s had a gun in my face and said if I ever call the cops on him, he’s gonna use it.”Jeff Thiel also had a thing for knives, said Heather Thiel, who has memories of him sitting in a recliner with sharpening tools and blades. Because he worked at a foundry, she said she came to believe he easily could have brought a murder weapon to work with him and melted it down.And there was this comment, which she said her father made the day Togstad and Mumbrue were killed: “It’s funny how you can get away with murder these days.”A suspect from the start The murders were brutal. They were found in the bedroom of Togstad’s farmhouse. Mumbrue, 34, was stabbed 27 times, according to a forensic pathologist who testified at Haase’s trial. His throat had been cut. Togstad, 23, had been stabbed once in the chest and appeared to have been sexually assaulted. Tanna Togstad and Tim Umbrue.Courtesy DatelineEven Togstad’s dog, a terrier named Scruffy, was fatally stabbed. According to one of the original detectives who investigated the case, authorities focused on Jeff Thiel as a possible suspect early on. “With his background and build and strength, he was certainly a person that we had to go after,” said Al Kraeger, who retired from the Waupaca County Sheriff’s Department six years ago.But physical evidence soon cleared those suspicions for law enforcement, said Capt. Nick Traeger of the Waupaca County Sheriff’s Department. In 1996, just as DNA was revolutionizing forensic sciences, an analysis eliminated Jeff Thiel as the person who sexually assaulted Togstad, Traeger told “Dateline.” A blood sample taken from the clothes he was wearing at the time of his suicide did not match semen found on Togstad, the captain said.Heather Thiel said she knew none of this. And as the years passed and no arrests were made, she said she would tell anyone who would listen that her father was probably responsible for the murders.In 2010, she saw a billboard authorities had put up seeking information about the killings and called the listed phone number.According to a law enforcement summary of the interview that followed, Heather Thiel told investigators about her father’s habit of killing animals and his casual comments about murder. She told them that he’d wanted to be with Togstad and had an obsession with knives. And she told them that he’d taken his own life after fleeing from law enforcement. “I had spent my whole life thinking my dad did this and maybe I’d get answers,” Heather Thiel said. “But then, literally nothing came of it.”One of the investigators who interviewed Heather Thiel, Mike Sasse of the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, said that they did nothing with her information because he already knew that DNA had eliminated Jeff Thiel as a suspect years earlier.“Now, could he have been a peripheral character” in the murders? Sasse added. “At that time, yes, he could have been.”A confession from a night in a ‘drunken stupor’More than a decade passed and still, there were no arrests. Then, on April 8, 2022, Heather Thiel found herself speaking to law enforcement — again. This time, her mother was present for the interview, according to a case report from the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation. Authorities were interested in obtaining their DNA and learning about the family’s allegations against Jeff Thiel, the report states.During the interview, Heather Thiel said she raised the same concerns that she’d detailed for Sasse in 2010. She provided a buccal swab, she said, as well as access to a family tree she’d been developing on a genealogy site. “She turned on her profile, and it was like the Christmas tree lit up,” said Traeger, one of the investigators who interviewed her. The mystery DNA obtained from the crime scene did not match Jeff Thiel, Traeger said, but it did match someone else in the family — Heather Thiel’s cousin, Tony Haase, a father of four with no criminal record who worked at the same iron foundry as Jeff Thiel.Authorities confirmed the link by surreptitiously collecting Haase’s DNA from a pen during a traffic stop, Traeger said. During interviews with authorities, Haase, 54, denied that he had anything to do with the murders. When one of the officers told him that his DNA was found at the crime scene, he said: “I still don’t buy it,” a video of the interview shows.Tony Haase. Courtesy DatelineBut as investigators continued to press Haase, he admitted that over the years he’d had “little clicks” — or memories — that made him wonder if he’d been involved in the killings. He said he remembered a barbell in the house — crime scene photos showed one in the bedroom — then leaving the house and vomiting outside, according to the video. In an interview at the sheriff’s office, investigators said this latter detail was a natural human response following an extreme event.Haase described how his father had been killed in an accident while racing snowmobiles with Togstad’s father, and how on the night the couple was killed, he was drunk and all he could think about was the accident.“I didn’t go there to hurt nobody,” he told investigators. “I honestly can tell you that I don’t know what started, what happened, what started it all.”Asked why it took so long for him to acknowledge what he’d done, Haase said: “Because I didn’t want it to sound like I had this planned.”On Aug. 11, 2022, Haase was arrested for the murders of Togstad and Mumbrue. A probable cause affidavit filed in Waupaca Circuit Court said that at the time of the killings he’d been in a “drunken stupor.”Doubt surrounds murder trialHeather Thiel was shocked. She didn’t know her cousin well but said he didn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body.The arrest also prompted some self-reflection.“I was like, how could I have had it wrong?” she said. “If I was wrong about my dad and it was actually my cousin — well, sorry, you should pay for what you did.”Jeff Thiel, however, continued to loom over the case as Haase’s trial approached. In a pretrial hearing in May, Haase’s attorneys said that because Jeff Thiel’s genetic profile had not been excluded from all of the blood evidence gathered at the crime scene, they should be able to argue at trial that he was still a possible suspect in the murders. Prosecutors objected, but the judge sided with the defense, a transcript shows. So the state asked to exhume Jeff Thiel’s remains to carry out additional DNA testing — a process that Waupaca County District Attorney Kat Turner said would allow them to exclude him from physical evidence gathered at the scene. In June, Jeff Thiel’s remains were disinterred from a Waupaca County cemetery.“The DNA analyst worked on nothing but that until he had the analysis complete,” Turner told “Dateline.” “And again, excluded Jeff Thiel from all of the blood evidence that was available.”In the pretrial proceedings, Haase’s lawyers sought to bar that evidence because they said they didn’t have time to prepare a response before trial, which was scheduled to start two weeks later. Prosecutors again objected, Turner said, but the judge ruled that if the trial started as scheduled, the state would be prohibited from presenting any DNA evidence related to Jeff Thiel.Instead of delaying the trial and challenging the ruling — a process that could have taken years, Turner said — the prosecution forged ahead. Turner said that decision was made after consulting with victims’ families and weighing the challenge of trying an old case in which investigators and scientists were becoming sick or dying.’Somebody who has no conscience’Haase’s trial began in July in a Waupaca County courthouse. His attorneys argued that Haase’s confession had been coerced — investigators planted false memories in an hourslong interrogation — and they said the male DNA found on Togstad’s body had been degraded by years of testing and storage. As evidence of Jeff Thiel’s involvement in the murders, attorney John Birdsall cited an apparent motive — Tanna had rejected Jeff Thiel’s advances — and he linked Jeff Thiel’s habit of killing pets to Scruffy’s death.“This was killed by somebody who has no conscience, who has absolutely no problem killing anything in its path,” he said in his closing argument. “That’s Jeff.”Amy Ohtani, the assistant attorney general who also prosecuted the case, described the defense’s strategy as an effort to “weave together a fantasy to keep you from paying attention to the actual evidence.” The DNA had been properly collected, preserved and tested, she said in her closing argument, and the idea that Haase’s admissions were false was a “distraction.” Jeff Thiel, she said, was the “perfect scapegoat.”Jeff Thiel. Courtesy DatelineAt trial, she said, he’d been described by family members as an “absolutely terrible person” — but wasn’t there to defend himself and there was no evidence actually linking him to the crime. “Jeff Thiel sounds like he was a terrible guy,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean he killed Tim and Tanna.”On the fourth day of deliberations, the jury acquitted Haase of the murders.For his cousin, that decision was the right one. Heather Thiel had come to doubt the forensics that excluded her father from the murders and linked her cousin to them, she said, and she believed Haase had been coerced into making a false confession.Although the trial produced no definitive answers, Heather Thiel said, the proceedings prompted her to return to a long-held position about who killed Mumbrue and Togstad.“Until proven otherwise, I will always believe it’s my dad,” she said.Tim StellohTim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
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