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Marco Rubio excoriated Congress for this inexcusable move they just made

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Marco Rubio excoriated Congress for this inexcusable move they just made

Washington, D.C. moves at a snail’s pace. It’s crazy.

And now Marco Rubio excoriated Congress for this inexcusable move they just made.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio isn’t waiting quietly for House Republican leadership to find the political will to act. This week Rubio pressed the House to move forward on a sweeping Senate-passed Russia sanctions bill, arguing the legislation would give President Trump valuable leverage at exactly the moment Vladimir Putin’s economy is showing real signs of strain from the pressure already in place.

The bill in question cleared the Senate in an overwhelming 86-11 vote before senators left for their August recess, a rare show of bipartisan unity in an otherwise gridlocked Congress. Since then, it’s been sitting in the House, waiting for Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican leadership to schedule a vote that, as of this week, still hasn’t materialized.

Rubio made his case directly this week, telling reporters it would be “valuable for the president to have these tools available to him.” He didn’t stop at simply advocating for the bill’s substance either — Rubio took direct aim at House Democrats, accusing them of withholding additional tariff and sanctions authority from the president even while publicly claiming to support Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. It’s a pointed critique, and not an unfair one, given how much of the current holdup traces directly back to Democratic objections over specific provisions in the Senate-passed text.

The legislation itself is genuinely sweeping in scope. It would impose sanctions on Russian officials, financial institutions, so-called shadow-fleet vessels used to evade existing oil export restrictions, and state-owned energy projects tied directly to funding Putin’s war machine. Perhaps most significantly, the bill would authorize tariffs of up to 100 percent on the five largest purchasers of Russian oil and natural gas, a provision specifically designed to choke off the revenue streams keeping Russia’s invasion of Ukraine financially viable.

Despite the urgency Rubio and others have expressed, House Republican leadership has offered no clear timeline and hasn’t committed to bringing the Senate bill up unchanged. The legislation remains conspicuously absent from the House floor schedule, even as Ukrainian officials make direct pleas to Washington for swift action.

Vladyslav Vlasiuk, one of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s top envoys, traveled to Washington specifically to lobby House members on the bill’s importance, meeting with lawmakers from both parties. The Ukrainian Embassy described the meetings as focused on “the importance and urgency” of passing what it called the “bone crushing” sanctions package needed to keep pressure on Moscow and Tehran alike.

Yet House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the panel, told reporters after meeting with Vlasiuk that he still opposes the Senate bill as written, and that he doesn’t expect the House to act on it before the midterm elections at all. That’s a stunning admission given the stated urgency from Rubio, from Senate Republicans, and from Ukraine’s own government representatives directly appealing to Congress for action.

Not every Democrat agrees with Meeks’s go-slow approach. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, one of the bill’s lead sponsors, has called this a “moment of extreme urgency,” pointing to Russia’s deteriorating economic position as reason to strike now rather than wait. Blumenthal has cited figures showing Russia facing a looming $125 billion deficit, roughly 5 percent of its GDP, alongside a punishing 14 percent interest rate on its national debt — numbers that suggest additional sanctions pressure right now could meaningfully accelerate the economic strain already squeezing Putin’s war effort.

Even some House Democrats who share Rubio’s underlying urgency are pushing back on specific elements of the bill rather than its overall goal. Meeks has argued the tariff provisions could raise prices for American consumers while punishing U.S. allies who happen to still be purchasing Russian energy, and he’s raised concerns that the bill grants Trump too much discretionary authority to waive its provisions whenever he sees fit. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries acknowledged this week that Democrats haven’t yet reached a unified caucus position on the legislation.

But not every Democrat is dragging their feet. House Majority Leader emeritus Steny Hoyer told reporters after his own meeting with the Ukrainian envoy that he wants the House to pass the Senate bill exactly as written, without amendments. “Do I think the bill is perfect? I don’t,” Hoyer said. “But we don’t pass perfect bills here.” Hoyer specifically pushed back against efforts to bundle the sanctions bill together with additional Ukraine assistance legislation, warning that doing so would only slow things down further. “I want to pass it pristine,” he said.

Republicans on the Ukraine-focused wing of the House are similarly frustrated with the delay. Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, made clear he doesn’t want procedural squabbling over the tariff provisions to derail the entire package. “I would vote for it with tariffs, without tariffs,” Fitzpatrick said. “I’m not going to let the tariff piece stop my support for Ukraine.” He argued lawmakers should resist the temptation to let disagreements over secondary provisions block a bill that enjoys broad bipartisan support in its core mission. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick went a step further, suggesting that Zelenskyy himself should return to Washington and personally lobby House members the same way he successfully did before the Senate’s overwhelming vote in favor of the bill. “He was here for the Senate. He’s got to come for the House,” Fitzpatrick said. “We’re very determined to get that done.”

House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast has offered little clarity on timing, telling reporters simply that the bill “is being examined,” but that the review “is not an examination that’ll be done this week.” With the House expected to return for only a brief session later this month before breaking again for midterm campaigning, and Meeks openly predicting no action before the elections at all, the odds of swift movement appear increasingly slim.

That’s precisely the outcome Rubio is trying to prevent. With Russia’s economy already buckling under existing pressure and Ukraine’s envoys making direct, urgent appeals in Capitol hallways, the argument for striking now rather than waiting until after November grows stronger by the week. Whether House Republican leadership finds the political urgency to match Rubio’s own sense of the stakes remains very much an open question — and every week of delay is a week Vladimir Putin gets to keep operating without the additional financial squeeze this legislation was specifically designed to deliver.

Democrat admits they have to lie to the people to get elected

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Democrat admits they have to lie to the people to get elected

Everyone knew this was the case. But rarely do they outright say it.

Now this Democrat admitted they have to lie to the people to get elected.

Every so often a political candidate gets caught saying exactly what conservatives have suspected all along, and this week it happened to Nebraska Senate hopeful Dan Osborn in spectacular fashion. Leaked audio has confirmed what grassroots Republicans in the Cornhusker State have been warning about for months: Osborn knows his real positions are too radical for Nebraska voters, so he’s deliberately hiding them.

The Democratic-backed independent, who’s challenging Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts this November, was caught on tape openly admitting he can’t be honest about his actual views if he wants any shot at winning. Townhall published the recording Sunday, and it’s a remarkable window into how the modern left operates when they think nobody outside their bubble is listening.

“I have people recording me, so I can’t say I want to abolish ICE; I can’t say those words. I’ll be f-cked,” Osborn admitted on the recording. Read that again. A candidate for the United States Senate is on tape acknowledging he actually wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but he’s terms it politically toxic to say so out loud in a state like Nebraska. That’s not moderation. That’s calculated deception.

Osborn went on to lay out his cynical electoral math in cold, calculating terms, noting that Nebraska runs roughly 50 percent Republican, 26 percent Democratic and 24 percent independent, and that he’d need to peel off somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the Republican vote to have any chance of winning. In other words, his entire campaign strategy hinges on convincing a slice of Republican voters that he’s not the radical leftist his own words reveal him to be.

The audio doesn’t stop there. Osborn can be heard mocking the idea of being honest about transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, snapping, “How am I going to do that by f-cking saying, ‘Oh, I love trans people, and they should be able to play in sports!’ f-ck no, Jane, that’s not how I win.” The “Jane” in question is Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, who Osborn was apparently pushing back against as she pressed him to embrace more explicitly progressive positions.

According to reporting from The Plains Sentinel, the audio continues with Osborn telling Kleeb bluntly, “You gotta let me run my race, man. Like, I’m going to say some shit that is going to piss you off, but you gotta know at the end of the day it’s about beating Pete Ricketts.” So there you have it, straight from the candidate’s own mouth: whatever he says publicly during this campaign is calculated theater designed to win an election, not an honest reflection of his actual beliefs.

Kleeb, for her part, didn’t exactly deny any of it. She told The Plains Sentinel that the leaked audio “shows that Dan doesn’t answer to me. He answers to voters” — as if that’s supposed to be reassuring. What it actually confirms is that Osborn and Nebraska Democratic leadership both understand his true positions are unpopular with the very voters he’s courting, and their solution is strategic dishonesty rather than an honest debate about the issues.

Kleeb went further, explaining the party’s calculation for backing Osborn over a traditional Democrat: “We choose a mechanic over the billionaire Ricketts every day.” It’s a populist-sounding line, sure, but it doesn’t change what’s on the tape. Nebraska voters don’t just deserve a candidate with a working-class background — they deserve one who’s honest with them about what he actually believes.

This isn’t Osborn’s first brush with controversy this cycle either. He previously called for “preemptive” mental health checks targeting AR-15 owners, a proposal that raised alarm bells among Second Amendment advocates who see it as a backdoor path toward disarming law-abiding gun owners based on nothing more than the type of firearm they choose to own legally.

Osborn has also faced scrutiny over reports that his daughter allegedly ran multiple pornographic cam-girl accounts, adding yet another layer of controversy to a campaign that seems to generate one uncomfortable headline after another. Osborn’s campaign team did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment on the leaked audio.

The RNC’s research arm wasted no time amplifying the tape, with RNC Research posting the clip on X and framing it as proof that Osborn is, in their words, “too afraid to tell voters what he actually thinks.” Given what’s on the recording, it’s hard to argue with that characterization.

What makes this story particularly damaging for Osborn is that it’s not an opposition researcher’s spin or a selectively edited soundbite open to interpretation — it’s the candidate’s own voice, in his own words, admitting to a calculated strategy of concealment. Nebraska voters heading to the polls this November now have direct evidence, straight from Osborn himself, that the version of him running for Senate is not the version who actually shows up to strategize with his own party chair behind closed doors.

Pete Ricketts, for his part, doesn’t need to manufacture a contrast here — Osborn has done the work for him. Nebraskans who value straight talk and transparency from the people asking to represent them in Washington now have a clear choice: an incumbent whose positions are a matter of public record, or a challenger caught on tape admitting he’s deliberately obscuring his own.

New impeachment warning will leave a chill down Trump’s spine

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New impeachment warning will leave a chill down Trump’s spine

Democrats want to oust the president. That’s no secret.

And a new impeachment warning will leave a chill down Trump’s spine.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is sounding the alarm on what he sees as the Democrats’ clear intent if they seize the House this November.

The Louisiana Republican is warning voters that a Democratic majority would move immediately against President Donald Trump, turning the chamber into a weapon for political payback rather than a place for governing.

Scalise laid it out plainly in a recent Fox News Digital interview. He pointed to the open talk among Democrats about targeting the president the moment they gain power.

In his words: “Democrats aren’t even being shy about it. They’re telling you what they would do. I mean, they’ll impeach the president day one.”

This is not some whispered strategy or fringe fantasy. Scalise is highlighting how Democratic lawmakers and activists have already telegraphed their plans.

They treat the presidency itself as illegitimate when it is held by someone outside their preferred circle. The goal is not oversight. It is removal.

For years, the left has treated Trump as an existential threat to their hold on institutions.

Impeachment has become their preferred tool whenever elections do not deliver the results they demand.

Scalise is reminding the public that this pattern has not changed. If Democrats control the House, the process begins on day one.

Right Populist voters have watched this movie before. The first two impeachments drained time, energy, and public trust while delivering no lasting legal consequence.

Now the same forces are preparing a third attempt the instant they regain the gavel. Scalise’s warning cuts through the usual media fog. Democrats are not hiding their priorities.

Control of the House would hand them the power to launch investigations, issue subpoenas, and force endless votes on articles of impeachment.

The legislative calendar would be rewritten around one man. Policy debates on the border, energy, inflation, and crime would take a back seat to political theater designed to hobble the White House.

Eric Swalwell got raided in a humiliating change in his fate

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Eric Swalwell got raided in a humiliating change in his fate

Swalwell tried to cast aspersions at Trump. But now the shoe is on the other foot.

And Eric Swalwell got raided in a humiliating change in his fate.

For years Eric Swalwell postured on cable news as one of the loudest and most self-righteous voices demanding accountability for anyone even tangentially connected to Republican wrongdoing. This week, the tables turned in dramatic fashion. The FBI stopped the former California congressman at San Francisco International Airport and seized his electronics, according to two sources who confirmed the encounter to the Daily Caller. Agents then executed a search warrant at his Washington, D.C. home.

Swalwell now sits at the center of a full-blown federal criminal investigation, a stunning fall for a man who once postured as a moral crusader against Donald Trump and the Republican Party while sitting on the House Intelligence Committee.

The scandal traces back to declassified documents released this week by the White House Transparency Task Force, which revealed that Swalwell had “physical relations” with Christine Fang — better known as “Fang Fang” — on at least two occasions. Fang was a suspected Chinese intelligence operative who spent years cultivating relationships with American politicians, and Swalwell’s ties to her have dogged him since the story first broke years ago.

Daily Caller White House Correspondent Reagan Reese broke the news of the airport confrontation on X, writing that two sources confirmed federal agents stopped Swalwell and seized his devices before executing the search warrant at his D.C. residence. The former congressman, she noted, is under criminal investigation for alleged sexual misconduct.

This latest chapter comes on top of an already spectacular unraveling for Swalwell, who resigned from Congress earlier this year after a wave of sexual misconduct allegations became too much to survive politically. At the time of his resignation, Swalwell had been considered a frontrunner in the crowded Democratic primary for California governor, a race that suddenly evaporated once the allegations went public.

One former staffer’s account of Swalwell’s conduct is particularly damning. She alleged that following a night out in New York in spring 2024, she woke up to find Swalwell having sex with her in his hotel room, and that he refused to stop even after she told him no. That allegation was serious enough to prompt the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to open its own investigation into the former congressman.

Swalwell has denied every allegation against him, insisting in a statement announcing his resignation that he would “fight the serious, false allegation made against me.” He had already suspended his gubernatorial campaign days earlier, citing what he vaguely described as “mistakes in judgment” — language that now looks even more calculated in hindsight given what’s since come to light.

It’s worth remembering exactly who Eric Swalwell built his political brand as. He spent years positioning himself as one of the most aggressive anti-Trump voices in Congress, a frequent MSNBC and CNN guest who never missed an opportunity to lecture the country on ethics and accountability. He served on the House Intelligence Committee despite his documented ties to a suspected Chinese spy, a scandal Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leadership conveniently swept under the rug for years rather than removing him from a position with access to sensitive national security information.

Now the same federal government he spent his career criticizing is knocking on his door with search warrants. The optics couldn’t be more fitting for a man who built his national profile smearing conservatives as threats to national security while allegedly carrying on relationships that raised legitimate counterintelligence concerns of his own.

Democrats who spent years defending Swalwell’s continued presence on the Intelligence Committee, waving away the Fang Fang connection as a Republican smear campaign, now have a lot of explaining to do. The declassified documents make clear the relationship was more serious and more recent than party leadership ever let on to the public.

This story is still developing, and further details about the scope of the criminal investigation are likely to emerge in the coming days and weeks. What’s already clear is that a man who spent his career in Washington demanding accountability from others is now facing the kind of scrutiny he never seemed to think would apply to himself.

For a Democratic Party still reeling from a string of scandals involving its own members, Swalwell’s unraveling is yet another reminder that the loudest voices lecturing the country on morality often have the most to hide. The FBI doesn’t seize electronics and execute search warrants on a whim, and Americans deserve to know exactly what federal investigators uncovered that triggered this dramatic escalation.

Swalwell’s political career is effectively over. Whether his legal troubles are just beginning remains to be seen, but between the sexual misconduct allegations, the criminal investigation, and the resurfaced questions about his relationship with a suspected foreign intelligence asset, it’s hard to imagine a more complete collapse for someone who spent a decade positioning himself as Washington’s moral watchdog.

Deranged political assassin learns his fate

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Deranged political assassin learns his fate

Politics can be dangerous. And some have crosshairs on their heads.

But now a deranged political assassin learned his fate.

The unhinged left has spent years pretending that political violence is exclusively a right-wing problem, but the case of Benjamin Keebler proves once again that hatred for outspoken conservatives can turn deadly serious in a hurry. Keebler, an independent voter from Kentucky, was sentenced Friday to two and a half years behind bars after admitting he cyberstalked and threatened Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the most fiercely independent-minded lawmakers in Congress.

This wasn’t some idle internet troll blowing off steam. Keebler left a trail of chilling voicemails and phone calls to numbers tied to Massie’s office, at one point telling a staffer he planned to show up with bear mace. In one particularly disturbing February 2023 recording, Keebler snarled, “Live by the gun. Die by the gun, boy.” That’s not political disagreement. That’s a threat against a sitting member of Congress, plain and simple.

It got worse from there. In February 2025, Keebler called Massie’s office asking about the congressman’s next town hall so he could, in his own chilling words, “shoot [Massie] in the head.” He didn’t stop with Massie either — Keebler also allegedly threatened a U.S. senator with what he called a “hammer visit,” though that lawmaker’s name was withheld from court records.

Massie himself broke the news on X, writing simply, “man who threatened to shoot me sentenced to prison…” No theatrics, no self-pity — just a Kentucky congressman going about his business while a man who wanted him dead finally faced consequences.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Boone didn’t mince words in court, calling Keebler’s threats “inherently corrosive to a democratic society.” That’s putting it mildly. When Americans can no longer serve in elected office without fearing for their lives, the entire experiment in self-government is under assault.

Keebler’s defense attorney tried the now-familiar playbook of blaming untreated mental illness, arguing his client wouldn’t have made these threats if he’d been properly diagnosed with bipolar disorder. A court-ordered evaluation claimed Keebler’s “perception of the current aggressive and divisive political climate provided him with a reality-based ‘target’ to project his agitated depression and mania onto.” Convenient framing, but it doesn’t erase the fact that he chose Thomas Massie as that target — not some random figure, but a Republican congressman known for standing up to the establishment in both parties.

Keebler did offer something resembling contrition at sentencing, admitting his mental health struggles got the better of him and calling his actions a “complete embarrassment.” He told the judge, “I recognize that by my own hand I have brought consequences upon myself.” At least he owned it, which is more than can be said for plenty of activists on the left who cheer this kind of behavior from the sidelines.

U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning wasn’t buying excuses either, declaring that Keebler’s threats “completely crossed the line.” As part of the sentence, Keebler is barred from contacting Massie or the unnamed senator and must undergo mandatory mental health treatment while under government supervision.

This case doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s part of a disturbing pattern of political violence that has escalated dramatically in recent years, much of it aimed squarely at conservatives. President Trump has survived three separate assassination attempts. Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk was gunned down at a Utah Valley University event in September 2025, murdered simply for espousing conservative ideas on a college campus.

The violence hasn’t been limited to the right, of course. Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in his San Francisco home back in October 2022 by an intruder wielding a hammer. And Minnesota’s House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were murdered in their own home in June 2025 by a gunman posing as a police officer.

But let’s be honest about the imbalance here. For years, the corporate media and Democratic Party leadership downplayed and even excused threats against conservative figures while treating every perceived slight against their own side as an existential crisis. Thomas Massie has been a lightning rod precisely because he refuses to play by the swamp’s rules — he votes his conscience, challenges leadership in both parties, and doesn’t back down from a fight. That independence apparently made him a target in the eyes of a man disturbed enough to fantasize about murdering him.

Keebler’s sentencing sends a message that threatening a member of Congress carries real consequences, and that’s a good thing. But it should also serve as a wake-up call about the rhetoric coursing through our political discourse. When politicians and pundits spend years describing their opponents as existential threats to democracy, don’t be shocked when unstable individuals take that language literally.

Massie has weathered this ordeal with characteristic stoicism, refusing to let it distract him from his work representing Kentucky’s Fourth District. He continues pushing for government transparency, fiscal responsibility, and constitutional protections against an ever-expanding surveillance state — the same principles that have made him both beloved by grassroots conservatives and, apparently, hated enough by at least one man to threaten his life.

For everyday Americans watching from the outside, the takeaway is simple: political violence against conservatives is real, it’s escalating, and it deserves the same seriousness and prosecutorial vigor as any other threat to our democratic institutions. Benjamin Keebler is behind bars now. The climate of hatred that produced him hasn’t gone anywhere.

Americans are furious after Congress admitted they are doing nothing to stop this dangerous threat

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Americans are furious after Congress admitted they are doing nothing to stop this dangerous threat

Our government isn’t helping us. It’s like pulling teeth to get anything done.

And now Americans are furious after Congress admitted they are doing nothing to stop this dangerous threat.

Republicans in Congress have spent months thundering about the dangers of Flock’s automated license plate readers turning America into a surveillance state. So where’s the bill to actually kill the program? As of this week, it doesn’t exist. Not one piece of legislation currently before Congress would ban Flock-type cameras outright, despite growing bipartisan alarm over what these systems are capable of tracking.

Plenty of lawmakers, overwhelmingly Republicans, have introduced or promised bills addressing automated surveillance in some fashion. None of them go all the way to an outright ban on the technology that’s quietly blanketing American communities with government-adjacent tracking capability.

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna announced back on July 22 that she was drafting legislation to ban Flock cameras entirely. “I’m working on legislation to ban these,” Luna posted at the time. Nearly a month later, that bill still hasn’t materialized, and her office didn’t respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s questions about the delay.

Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett has gone further than most, introducing the Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act in July, which would bar federal agencies from purchasing or operating Flock cameras or any similar automated surveillance system designed to “identify, track, or record individuals.” It’s a serious step, but it only covers federal agencies — leaving the thousands of local police departments already running these systems untouched.

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced the Surveillance Accountability Act back in April, requiring federal and local agencies to obtain a warrant before conducting surveillance on American citizens. That bill would block warrantless facial recognition scanning in public spaces and restrict use of license plate readers like Flock, but again, it stops short of a full ban. Massie has separately promised legislation to strip federal funding from any local municipality or police department using Flock or similar automated license plate reader systems. “I’ll soon be introducing a bill to withhold all federal funding for cameras used to track American citizens,” he said.

Texas Rep. Keith Self, joined by Arizona Rep. Eli Crane and Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde, introduced a bill in July requiring law enforcement to get a warrant before accessing state and local surveillance data, while also restricting federal funds for purchasing or installing the systems. Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman has vowed to pursue his own legislation after a Flock camera falsely flagged his license plate and got him pulled over — a personal experience that clearly radicalized him on the issue, though his bill remains in the early stages. “The repeated misidentification of innocent Americans and warrantless surveillance of millions are my two largest concerns with Flock cameras,” Stutzman told the DCNF. “No matter who you are or what you do, areas with Flock cameras are tracking you.”

Flock itself, unsurprisingly, wants Congress to stop short of a ban. A company spokesperson told the DCNF that lawmakers should pursue “strong, clear safeguards” rather than outlawing the technology outright, insisting that “more than 40 courts across the country have considered LPRs in the context of the Fourth Amendment and ruled overwhelmingly that the use of these tools in public spaces does not require a warrant.” Convenient for a company raking in government contracts nationwide.

But the real-world abuses tell a different story than Flock’s corporate talking points. Mike Fox, a legal fellow at the libertarian CATO Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice, warned the DCNF that these systems have “abysmally high false positive rates” that put innocent Americans directly in harm’s way. “How many people is this going to happen to? What if someone gets killed? What if an officer gets a false positive from someone who’s armed and one of them dies? Because that’s a real possibility. It’s only a matter of time before either a citizen, a cop or both get killed because of this,” Fox said.

That’s not hypothetical fear-mongering — it’s already happening. The Institute for Justice documented 30 separate instances of police officers using license plate readers to stalk romantic interests. One former Milwaukee officer secretly used the Flock system to track his romantic partner’s location 124 separate times. An innocent Wisconsin driver was held at gunpoint in early August after a camera made an outright mistake.

None of this should surprise anyone who’s paid attention to how federal surveillance powers have been abused in the past. Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty in 2020 to altering an email used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump’s own 2016 campaign. The FBI abused Section 702 of FISA nearly 300,000 times between 2020 and early 2021, running over 23,000 searches after the January 6 Capitol riot alone, hitting Jan. 6 suspects, congressional campaign donors, and Black Lives Matter protesters in the process. Despite that documented abuse, congressional Republicans largely supported extending Section 702 anyway — only 19 House Republicans, including Burchett, Massie and Boebert, voted against reauthorization in June.

Where are Democrats in all this? Largely silent or worse. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi called for an investigation into Flock’s cybersecurity failures back in November, but neither introduced actual legislation to fix the problem. Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, whose state hosts Flock’s Atlanta headquarters, hasn’t made any public statements on the cameras despite widespread use of the systems throughout Georgia communities. His office didn’t respond to the DCNF’s request for comment either.

It’s also worth noting where Flock’s money has gone. The company spent $920,000 on lobbying in 2025 and another $430,000 in the first half of 2026, employing seven lobbyists to protect its interests on Capitol Hill. Company employees have made political donations overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates and causes — including Flock CEO Garrett Langley’s $1,000 contribution to a leadership PAC affiliated with Sen. Ossoff — with over $15,000 of the company’s $17,260 total in donations going to Democrats like Fair Fight and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Even President Trump himself has hedged on the issue, saying Monday only that Flock cameras have “pros and cons” — hardly the kind of full-throated opposition grassroots conservatives worried about government overreach are hoping to hear from the man they elected to rein in the surveillance state.

The bottom line is simple: for all the tough talk from Capitol Hill Republicans about Flock cameras threatening American privacy and constitutional rights, not a single piece of legislation currently before Congress would actually ban the technology. Americans concerned about warrantless tracking, false accusations at gunpoint, and officers stalking their exes using taxpayer-funded surveillance tools are still waiting for Washington to match its rhetoric with real action.

Socialist Democrat says he’ll go even further than Bernie Sanders

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Socialist Democrat says he’ll go even further than Bernie Sanders

The Left has plenty of bad policies. But some go way too far.

And now a socialist Democrat says he’ll go even further than Bernie Sanders.

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said he wants to push past Bernie Sanders’ public-ownership model for major artificial intelligence companies, telling a left-wing podcast in June that “some system of public control” over the industry doesn’t go far enough on its own — comments now drawing fresh scrutiny as he carries his brand of politics into a marquee general election.

Asked on the June 12 “Head in the Office” podcast whether he backed Sanders’ public ownership proposal for major AI firms, El-Sayed didn’t hesitate. “I want to actually take it a step further,” he said. “I agree that we need public ownership, but I also agree that we need some system of public control.”

A Democratic Nominee Pressed On How Far “Public Control” Goes

El-Sayed stopped short of calling for the government to seize or take ownership of private AI companies outright, instead pointing to measures like public representation on corporate boards or a dedicated oversight body. “I just think it’s really important for us to be thinking what is democratic control over this industry? What does it look like?” he said, framing AI as an “existential” risk that demands aggressive public oversight.

He cast the fight in populist terms, accusing tech companies of trying to sidestep democratic accountability in Washington. “Democracy is supposed to fix these problems, and, right now, they’re trying to slip democracy, and we cannot allow that,” El-Sayed said. “We need leaders who both understand the technological risk and are not bought off by the AI industry itself.”

Senior Democrats Have Tried To Soften The Socialist Label

The comments surface at an awkward moment for Democratic leadership, which has worked to downplay how far its rising socialist wing wants to go. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., recently argued that young Americans identifying as socialists aren’t embracing traditional Marxist doctrine, telling reporters he didn’t believe they meant “I want to socialize the means of production,” and characterizing the movement’s goals as “greater equality and opportunity” rather than “dialectical materialism” or the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

That framing sits uneasily next to more explicit language from some of the movement’s leading figures — including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who told a 2021 Young Democratic Socialists of America conference that one of the movement’s core beliefs was the “end goal of seizing the means of production.”

A Test Case For How Far The Party’s Left Flank Can Go

El-Sayed, who has drawn frequent comparisons to Mamdani, now heads into the general election against Republican Mike Rogers carrying a platform built around “Medicare for All” and calls to abolish ICE — with his June remarks on AI industry control adding another data point for Republicans arguing that his brand of politics sits well outside the mainstream in a state President Trump narrowly carried in 2024.

The resurfaced comments also feed into a broader argument Republicans have made throughout the midterm cycle: that whatever Democratic leaders in Washington say publicly about the limits of their party’s socialist wing, some of its highest-profile candidates are, in their own words, pushing to go further still.

Leftist media network host makes a wild claim about the GOP

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Leftist media network host makes a wild claim about the GOP

The mainstream media has lost their minds. But that isn’t anything new.

And a leftist media network host made a wild claim about the GOP.

Michael Steele just reminded everyone why so many Americans tuned out the mainstream media years ago.

On a recent broadcast of MS NOW’s “Deadline,” Steele launched into a familiar rant against Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration, accusing them of abandoning the troops.

Steele claimed Republicans “don’t give a d*mn about” things that occur to U.S. troops.

That line alone should tell you everything about where his head is these days. The same party that has spent decades pushing higher defense budgets, stronger readiness, and respect for those who wear the uniform is suddenly, in Steele’s telling, indifferent to service members.

He did not stop there, saying, “This Congress is inept. It is the height of buffoonery. It needs to go. It is a danger to the American people.”

According to Steele, the military used to be a core Republican priority.

“I mean, the military Republicans used to beat their breast and beat up everybody else who was not down with USA, USA, military and service and all of that, and they treat the military as an afterthought. It’s just another pawn in the play for them. They don’t give a damn about what happens to these men and women,” he said.

“How much outrage have we heard about the Lincoln from Republicans? Seriously, where is the bank of microphones and the leadership standing there condemning what’s happened on this ship and holding the administration, the secretary of DOD, accountable for it?”

The “Lincoln” reference appears to be Steele’s attempt to manufacture a scandal around a naval vessel and pin it on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump.

Yet the actual record shows an administration that has prioritized lethality, recruitment recovery, and ending the social experiments that hollowed out readiness under the previous team.

Steele then turned his fire on the Pentagon’s top civilian:

“The Secretary of Defense should have his TV-groomed behind on that deck, talking to those sailors and letting them know, ‘I got you.’ But he can’t, because the only person he’s got is Donald Trump, and the only person who’s got him is Donald Trump. That’s it.”

That last shot reveals more about Steele than about Hegseth. Loyalty to the elected president is somehow a character flaw in Steele’s world.

In the real world, a defense secretary who answers to the commander-in-chief is how the system is designed to work.

The GOP is in an uproar and now everyone is picking sides

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The GOP is in an uproar and now everyone is picking sides

The Democrats have had their issues. But now Republicans are too.

And the GOP is in an uproar and everyone is picking sides.

A South Carolina special election that was supposed to be a formality is instead exposing real fault lines inside the Republican Party, after Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, publicly suggested that Sen. Darline Graham — appointed last month to fill her late brother Lindsey Graham’s seat — represents establishment interests rather than the outsider energy that swept President Trump back into office.

Graham finished first in the Aug. 11 special primary and now faces second-place finisher Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., in an Aug. 25 runoff that has quickly become a proxy fight over what kind of Republican the party wants representing South Carolina.

A House Conservative Takes A Shot At The Appointed Incumbent

Davidson, a longtime member of the House Freedom Caucus known for his skepticism of Washington insiders, didn’t mince words in a Monday post on X. “Ralph Norman will work to drain the swamp. The swamp wants allies not adversaries. The swamp appointed an ally. These are the stakes in South Carolina,” he wrote — a pointed reference to Gov. Henry McMaster’s decision to appoint Graham to the seat following her brother’s death.

The comment reflects a broader argument Norman’s allies have made throughout the runoff: that Graham, whatever her merits, arrived in the Senate through appointment rather than a grassroots campaign, and that Norman’s record as a reliable fiscal conservative in the House makes him the tougher watchdog on spending and bureaucratic overreach.

Trump Doubles Down On His Pick

Complicating the “swamp” argument, however, is the fact that President Trump — hardly a defender of establishment Republicans — is the one who recruited Graham to run in the first place and has continued to back her heading into the runoff. “SOUTH CAROLINA: GET OUT AND VOTE FOR DARLINE GRAHAM ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 25TH. DARLINE HAS MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT — SHE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” Trump wrote in an Aug. 14 Truth Social post.

Trump’s endorsement carries real weight in a deep-red state where his support has proven decisive in past GOP primaries, and it puts Davidson’s critique somewhat at odds with the president’s own judgment on who best carries forward his agenda in the Senate.

A Fractured Field Consolidating Behind Graham

Graham has also picked up support from Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., who placed third in the special primary and has urged his voters to back her in the runoff — a sign that much of the establishment and grassroots GOP infrastructure in the state is consolidating behind the appointed incumbent even as Norman continues to make his outsider case. Fox News Digital reached out to Graham’s campaign for comment on Davidson’s remarks.

Whichever candidate emerges from the Aug. 25 runoff will be heavily favored to hold the seat in a state Trump carried decisively in 2024, meaning the real stakes of this intra-party clash may be less about the general election and more about which wing of the Republican Party — Trump’s hand-picked choice or the House Freedom Caucus’s preferred outsider — carries more weight with South Carolina’s conservative base going forward.

Leftist operative goes off on his fellow party members

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Leftist operative goes off on his fellow party members

Democrat infighting continues. It may never stop.

And a leftist operative went off on his fellow party members.

James Carville has never been shy about speaking his mind, and on Monday night he delivered another classic performance on Jesse Watters Primetime.

The leftist operative took aim at the Democratic Socialist candidates who keep scoring victories in party primaries, writing them off without hesitation.

He labeled them “silly” and a “pack of fools.” That blunt assessment came as Watters pressed him on the direction of the Democratic Party and the rising influence of its furthest-left wing.

Watters said, “[D]o you think that you guys should run AOC? Another woman? You guys have not done well running women, James.”

“Well, first of all, I don’t know if I feel bad about the Democratic Party. We are ahead eight points in aggressive generic — Trump is at 32% in the polls. And so I don’t know about you — if I’m worried about the Democrats right now, I’m not. We’re going to win the House, and we are going to win the Senate,” Carville said in response.

The confidence was pure Carville. In his view, the map looks so favorable that internal squabbles barely register.

Watters kept pushing, asking directly, “You’re not worried about the communists taking over the party?”

Carville’s answer left no room for doubt: “No, no. They’re a bunch of silly people. Those people you had on there, those DSA people, they are a pack of fools. No one pays attention to them. They could do anything.”

He treated the Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow travelers as little more than background noise, a sideshow that serious Democrats can safely ignore.

Yet he made a careful exception for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

“Now, if you ask me about AOC, I do think she’s very talented. She’s certainly to the left of me. But you know what she’s doing, but I think good politicians do, she is growing into the job. She’s not the same person she was when she was elected in 2018.”

“And when people change a position from what I think is a more naive position to a more realistic position, I’m going to praise them. I’m a guy — I like converts in my church. I can’t get you to come in to it, but I will try somebody else.”

That line about converts may play well inside Democratic circles, but it does nothing to address the hard reality facing voters outside them.

Democratic Socialists have been winning real primaries and claiming real nominations. Calling them fools does not erase those results or the platform they run on.

Hakeem Jeffries betrays one Democrat with an attack no one saw coming

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Hakeem Jeffries betrays one Democrat with an attack no one saw coming

The Democrat Party is crumbling. It could be over before you know it.

Now Hakeem Jeffries betrayed one Democrat with an attack no one saw coming.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries drew a public line this weekend between himself and the socialist wing of his own party, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” he does not support Medicare for All or the broader agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America — a notable retreat from a Democrat who co-sponsored the legislation as recently as 2021, and one that immediately exposed how divided his caucus has become.

The comments came as Democrats try to project unity heading into November following a summer of primary upsets that have installed DSA-aligned nominees in high-profile races from Michigan to New York City, and as Jeffries himself works to recapture the House majority.

Jeffries Draws A Line His Party Isn’t Fully Behind

Asked point-blank by host Kristen Welker whether he personally backed Medicare for All, Jeffries didn’t hedge. “No, i — as you indicated, I haven’t cosponsored the Medicare for All legislation that has been introduced over the last several years,” he said. “I do think we need to figure out how to fix our broken health care system and then build something better once we repair the damage that has been done.”

Pressed on whether democratic socialists belong under the Democratic Party’s tent at all, Jeffries again declined to embrace the movement even as he acknowledged its growing presence within his ranks. “I don’t support the DSA agenda as has been articulated by the DSA itself,” he said, though he stopped short of trying to exclude DSA-aligned members who win their primaries: “You’re going to have individual members who have been elected in Democratic primaries, and if they are elected in the general in November, will be part of the House Democratic Caucus. It’s going to be a broad caucus. There will be progressives. There will be New Dems. There will be Blue Dogs.”

An Inconvenient Paper Trail

Jeffries’ current position sits awkwardly alongside his own legislative history: he formally co-sponsored the Medicare for All Act in both 2019 and 2021, with the New York City DSA’s Healthcare Working Group at the time crediting a months-long pressure campaign for helping secure his support, while noting his position was qualified because he also backed a public-option alternative. He was, notably, absent from the list of more than 100 House co-sponsors when the bill was reintroduced in April 2025 — a sign, in retrospect, of where his thinking was already headed.

The DSA’s newer “Workers Deserve More!” platform goes well beyond health care, calling for abolishing ICE and the Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court with bodies subordinate to Congress, and redirecting police funding as a step toward eliminating police departments and prisons entirely — positions well outside the mainstream that Jeffries appears determined not to be tied to as his party heads into a competitive midterm.

A Caucus Pulling In Opposite Directions

Not everyone in Democratic leadership is playing it safe. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., broke publicly with Jeffries in a separate “Meet the Press” segment the same day, calling for an outright House vote on the measure if Democrats retake the majority. “Medicare for All is arguably the most important priority,” Khanna said. “The case for Medicare for All has never been clearer or more urgent. Congress must pass Medicare for All.” Khanna pointed to a Yale analysis he’d commissioned projecting that a single-payer system could cut annual national health spending from $5.28 trillion to $4.24 trillion — a projection conservative health economists have long disputed on grounds ranging from provider reimbursement cuts to the difficulty of achieving projected administrative savings.

Former MS NOW host Mehdi Hasan piled on from the left, accusing Jeffries of being out of step with his own party’s base: “A reminder that the vast majority of Democrats across the country support Medicare for All. This man is so out of touch with his party. How is he their leader??”

The split comes as seven incumbent House Democrats have already lost primaries this cycle to DSA-backed or affiliated challengers, including Jeffries-endorsed Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat in New York — a trend that Republicans are watching closely as they build their case that today’s Democratic Party, whatever its leader says on Sunday shows, is being pulled steadily further left by its own base.

Key Trump official resigns in a huge shock to everyone

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Key Trump official resigns in a huge shock to everyone

The Trump administration has been in turmoil. Now it’s going even further.

And a key Trump official resigned in a huge shock to everyone.

Karoline Leavitt, one of the most visible faces of the Trump White House and the youngest press secretary in U.S. history, is stepping away from the podium at the end of the month, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday. Rather than exiting the political arena, Leavitt will pivot to an outside advisory role focused on the party’s midterm push.

Trump framed the move as a family decision, not a falling-out, praising her tenure in personal terms while signaling she’ll remain in his inner circle heading into a pivotal election year.

A Trusted Aide Steps Back, Not Away

“Our wonderful White House Press Secretary, and one of my most trusted aides, Karoline Leavitt, will be departing her role at the end of the month so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect!” Trump said in a statement.

Rather than a clean break, Trump made clear Leavitt would remain a fixture in his political operation. “Karoline will now be one of my top outside advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party, as we work to defy History, and conclusively win the Midterm Elections,” he said.

The president leaned on her track record dating back to his 2024 campaign to make the case that her influence would only grow from outside the West Wing. “Karoline has been a real leader in the White House, and has done a phenomenal job fighting for Justice, Liberty, and Freedom, since 2018, including our Historic Re-Election Campaign of 2024,” Trump said. “Karoline has been one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office. Thank you, Karoline, for a job well done!”

A Vacancy At A Critical Moment

Trump’s statement did not name a successor at the podium, leaving one of the administration’s most high-profile communications posts unfilled as the White House heads into a stretch dominated by immigration enforcement fights, the ongoing socialist surge inside the Democratic Party, and preparations for the fall midterms. Allies of the administration, including senior adviser Stephen Miller, quickly offered public praise for Leavitt’s tenure following the announcement.

Leavitt built a reputation during her time behind the podium for combative exchanges with the press corps and unflinching defenses of the president’s agenda, becoming a favorite among the administration’s supporters even as she drew regular criticism from Democrats and mainstream outlets.

What Comes Next

With Leavitt shifting into an advisory capacity, her new role is expected to place her closer to the party’s 2026 campaign strategy rather than day-to-day press briefings — a move that keeps a proven communicator in Trump’s orbit without the daily grind of the briefing room. The transition comes as Republicans look to defend their House and Senate majorities against a newly energized progressive wing of the Democratic Party, a dynamic that has dominated headlines out of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota in recent days.

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