Tag: 2026 elections

Texas Dem Ends Campaign After Previous Mortgage Fraud Conviction Comes to Light

Democrat Ericka Lomick has suspended her campaign for Texas House District 93 after questions surfaced about a federal felony conviction.

Lomick announced the decision Monday. “After careful consideration, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for House District 93,” she said. “Although this was not an easy decision, I am convinced that it was the right one for the people of HD 93.”

Her campaign said questions had arisen about her eligibility to serve as the district’s representative. It said she was stepping aside so voters could elect someone “without the burden of defending against attacks that would threaten to derail the business of the people.”

The scrutiny followed opposition research posted Sept. 17 by Protect and Serve Texas PAC. The PAC cited a federal mortgage-fraud case, a 63-month prison sentence, and an alleged $300,000 federal lien.

“Federal court records show Lomick, known then as Ericka Flood, was charged in 2010 as part of a federal mortgage fraud investigation in North Carolina,” Texas Scorecard reported. The outlet cited federal prosecutors as saying she was involved in the scheme as a mortgage broker and promoter.

Federal records reviewed by The Dallas Express indicated prosecutors charged her with mortgage-fraud conspiracy, bank fraud, money-laundering conspiracy, and concealment money laundering. Court records show she pleaded guilty in 2011 and received concurrent federal prison terms, including 63 months.

Lomick later sought to vacate the sentence, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel. A federal district judge denied the motion in 2012. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dismissed a later appeal as untimely.

Keep reading

NYC House Seat Goes To Mexico-First DSA Candidate Who Hails “Comrades” In Morena

A radical Democratic Socialists of America candidate who is poised to waltz into a deep-blue New York House seat used Mexican Independence Day to all but declare that she is Mexico First.

Claire Valdez, a card-carrying DSA member and New York State Assemblywoman who secured the Democrat nomination for the state’s 7th Congressional District, posted a tweet on X celebrating 215 years since Mexicans “fought an empire that demanded our land and our labor.” Valdez then went one step further, making the kind of declaration that should end the career of any Democrat or Republican who dared to utter something similar about a foreign country.

“I’ll carry that fight with me to Congress as New York’s first Mexican American representative,” Valdez wrote, before gushing that she is “strengthened not just by Mexico’s history but its present” and boasting about a meeting last month with her “comrades in Morena,” the leftist party that currently rules Mexico.

Valdez lauded left-wing radicals for “standing up to the empires and corporations that have always taken from us” and “building a government for the working class.” The DSA lawmaker capped off the post with a triumphant “¡Viva la Independencia, Viva México!”

Notably absent from Valdez’s message was any mention of cutting taxes for struggling New Yorkers, securing the southern border, or tackling the soaring grocery prices that have hammered working families. In their place was the rhetoric of a hard-left activist who apparently views the United States Congress as merely one more battlefield in a global class war, complete with “comrades” embedded in a foreign government. Valdez has claimed that she is “a dual citizen of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Nation and the United States.”

Valdez’s tweet quickly ignited a firestorm of condemnation online.

Keep reading

Arkansas Democrat Hallie Shoffner Doubles Down on Trading ‘Five Americans’ for One ‘Undocumented Immigrant’

Arkansas Democrat Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner’s campaign is defending her comments about immigrant farm labor after she said farmers would trade five Americans for one ‘undocumented immigrant,’ but the campaign did not say whether or not Shoffner herself employed illegal immigrants.

Shoffner, who is running to unseat Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), said on September 9, “Every farmer will tell you at one point, we did, or still do, employ undocumented immigrants, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that these folks are being rounded up because they’re hardworking people. They’re some of the best people we know, and honestly, we’d trade five Americans for just one of them because of how hard they work.”

“And why is it that there’s no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers? We pay them well. They spend money here. They have family here,” she continued.

Cotton’s campaign seized on the unanswered question.

“Shoffner’s campaign isn’t denying that Hallie Shoffner employed illegal immigrants. Nor did Hallie Shoffner’s campaign even try to walk back her claim that a single illegal immigrant is more valuable than five American citizens – in fact, they’re doubling down,” said Cotton campaign spokesman James Arnold. “Arkansans deserve to know how many illegal aliens Hallie Shoffner employed, how ‘well’ she paid them, and how long they worked for her.”

Keep reading

Pastor at James Talerico’s “Sanctuary Church” Admits to Harboring Illegal Alien for 8 Years, Says “We’re Not a Belief-Based Church”

The Reverend Carol Johnson from St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the home church of Democrat James Talerico, was caught on undercover video recently exposing the world to the community’s wackadoodle principles.

Brandon Waltens from Texas Scorecard released this video on Monday.

Rev. Johnson admits in this video that the church has been harboring an illegal alien from Guatemala for eight years. She also speaks proudly that the church is “not a belief-based church.”

This may explain a lot about the Democrat man-child, trans-kids-loving candidate from Texas.

Rev. Carol Johnson: We don’t have a lot of people who are religious here. Right. Yeah, it’s very interesting.

Don’t laugh at me. We’re not a belief-based church, we’re a values-based church. The beliefs are what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Loving each other, taking care of each other. Anti-empire. After the church became part of the Holy Roman Empire, suddenly Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount just went out the window and it became all about beliefs and whether you believe the right thing. Right?

And so we don’t spend time on that later stuff. We don’t spend time on creeds. Right?

We focus on the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve stood up for LGBTQ+ rights forever. Right, right. And racial justice. And we have immigration stuff and we actually have a person. There’s a gentleman living in our church who is from Venezuela… No, Guatemala. And he has lived here for 8 years.

Questioner: A Sanctuary Church. I’ve been following the Talarico campaign. I understand he goes to this church and speaks about it in interviews.

Rev. Johnson: Yeah, he grew up in this church.

Keep reading

Virginia Democrat Shannon Taylor Has Long History of Soft-On-Crime Advocacy

Shannon Taylor, the Democrat nominee in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District, said in newly unearthed clips she embraces the far left’s open-border, pro-criminal illegal alien agenda, campaigning with a Democrat who smeared Border Patrol as “White Nationalists” and advocating for Abrego Garcia, an illegal alien from El Salvador and an MS-13 gang member with a history of violence.

On video Taylor, the Henrico County Commonwealth Attorney fearmongered about Border Patrol agents “running down the hallway of public schools” and denigrated ICE agents who apprehended an illegal alien outside of a courthouse.

In April 2025, Taylor furiously described a case of ICE removing an illegal alien from a Virginia community and said she wants the incident investigated:

It was just 24 hours ago that we saw two, one masked gentleman and another gentle — I shouldn’t use the term gentleman, but two men who came into the Albemarle Court House without any identification… literally coming in and going hands on a young man who had just had his case dismissed…

A month earlier, Taylor spread lies about Border Patrol agents “running down the hallway” of public schools:

It’s the attorney general… that’s going to make the difference… whether that you all have children or grandchildren in public schools and they are in their classes learning, whether or not border patrol agents will be running down the hallway while they’re trying to learn or not.

Taylor has even camapigned alongside Texas Democrat Congressional candidate Bobby Pulido who smeared Border Patrol agents as “White Nationalists,” said border security is motivated by racism, and has maintained a “longstanding” relationship with Mexican drug cartel operative Julión Álvarez who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2017 for laundering money for drug traffickers.

Virginia Democrats, including Taylor, continue to pursue extreme sanctuary polices that continues to put Virginians in danger.

Just last week, police arrested Alexis Antonio Cedillos-Campos, a criminal illegal alien from El Salvador who crossed the southern border illegally in April 2024 under the Biden administration in connection with the brutal stabbing death of a 42-year-old mother near a park in Fairfax County.

In the same week, Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda, who admitted to fatally stabbing his roommate, was able to obtain a foreign passport, receive a 48-hour pass from a state mental hospital, stay at an apartment paid for by taxpayers, and then buy a one-way ticket to his home country of Tajikistan.

Taylor also has a record of lax plea deals for criminals and a DEI agenda that saw her fire prosecutors based on the color of their skin on her first day in office.

She also signed on to a 2021 letter that read in part, “tough on crime policies” have been an “anathema to justice,” and she has backed a laundry list of policies that would make it easier for violent criminals to avoid consequences.

“Shannon Taylor’s brain must have been broken by the woke mind virus because no one in Virginia wants criminal illegal aliens and violent repeat offenders given lax deals and released back onto the streets. Extreme Democrats have turned Virginia into a pro-criminal violent hellscape, and nut jobs like Taylor are to blame,” said RNC Spokeswoman Emma Hall.

Keep reading

Denver Socialist Mayoral Candidate Says Prior Arrest for Theft of Food Stamp Benefits ‘Actually Qualifies’ Her to Hold Office 

Shontel Lewis, a Democratic Socialist running in the Denver mayoral election, has a unique spin on her prior arrest for the theft of food stamps. She says it makes her more qualified to hold office.

In 2008, while she worked at the Department of Human Services East Food Stamp Office, Lewis used that job to take public benefit money that belonged to other people.

According to the police affidavit reported by the Denver Post, she searched EBT systems for inactive accounts that still had money and reissued benefit cards from those accounts.

She then gave cards to a roommate to use for food and cash benefits.

Investigators tied her to at least five to seven cases accessed over about five months starting in March 2008.

Although she initially denied wrongdoing, she later admitted it and said she was struggling financially. Initially, she was charged with more serious counts, but pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft. A felony theft count was deferred and later dismissed in 2011.

She served 18 months of probation and was ordered to pay more than $6,000 in restitution.

Keep reading

NYC candidate endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America promises to fight for Mexico in Congress

laire Valdez, a socialist running for New York’s 7th Congressional District seat, said if she wins in November, she would “carry that fight” of Mexicans who fought for independence against Spain to Congress. 

“215 years ago, Mexicans fought an empire that demanded our land and our labor. And we won. I’ll carry that fight with me to Congress as New York’s first Mexican American representative,” Valdez wrote on Instagram Thursday. 

Valdez is one of a slate of socialists running for office in the midterms this year, The Post Millennial reported. She is running to fill the seat left open by departing Democrat Rep. Nydia Velázquez. 

Valdez has received the endorsement of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as support from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 

Keep reading

Biden’s Counterterrorism Director During Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal Running for NY House Seat

A national security expert is calling on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-endorsed Democrat congressional candidate Cait Conley to account for her record in the Biden administration when Iranian support for Hamas increased, terrorism intensified in the Middle East, and antisemitic incidents reached record levels in the United States.

Conley, the Democrat challenging Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in New York’s 17th Congressional District, served as the Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council (NSC) from April 2021 to March 2023. Conley states that it was her job to “counter Middle East terrorism, and non-state actor threats.” She was also responsible for countering the “domestic and global use of emerging technologies.”

Her tenure at the NSC also coincided with the Biden administration’s August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Fox News reported that the administration’s evacuation plan “has been faulted for failing to anticipate the swift collapse of Afghanistan’s government” and for “not ensuring adequate security precautions for U.S. service members and citizens against terror threats.”

The withdrawal culminated in a terrorist attack outside Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghans. Fox News also reported that Conley has not commented publicly on the withdrawal since launching her congressional campaign. That silence mirrors Biden’s own omission of the 13 fallen service members from his 2022 State of the Union address.

During Conley’s time at the NSC, Iranian financial support for Hamas increased.

Iran’s cash flows to Hamas spiked following the May 2021 conflict, which occurred during Conley’s tenure at the National Security Council. In early 2022, Hamas’s leader said Iran had provided the group with $70 million to develop missiles and defense systems, while Israeli sources said Iran increased its overall funding to Hamas from $100 million to $350 million per year in 2022.

Across the Middle East, there was also a “relatively steady increase in the number of incidents and fatalities” from October 2022 to October 2023, culminating with the October 7 attack which occurred shortly after Conley left her NSC post.

Antisemitic incidents in the United States also rose sharply while Conley was at the NSC.

The Anti-Defamation League recorded 3,697 antisemitic incidents in 2022, up 36 percent from 2,717 in 2021. At the time, it was the highest number recorded since the organization began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979.

The number continued to rise in 2023 when the ADL recorded 8,873 incidents, a 140 percent increase from 2022.

Iran unveiled its Shahed-136 drone in December 2021 while Conley was serving at the NSC, where her responsibilities included countering the domestic and global use of emerging technologies.

The drone has since become a “fixture of modern warfare” and is “central to Iran’s retaliation strategy against the U.S. and its regional allies” including Israel. Despite the use of Patriot defense missiles against the drones, “many” of the Shahed drones “have still managed to hit their targets.”

The threat continued into March 2026, when Iran announced that their Shahed-136 drones destroyed a U.S. E-3 AWACS surveillance aircraft and damaged multiple refueling tankers, amounting to over $1.3 million in losses.

CNN military analyst and former U.S. Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton called the loss of the surveillance aircraft a “serious blow to [U.S.] surveillance capabilities.” A Center for a New American Security report described the AWACS as the “‘quarterback’ of the battlefield” and an “indispensable asset for U.S. military operations.”

Conley is also backed by J Street, which said following a House vote that there is “broad agreement” among Democrats that the United States should take a “fundamentally different American approach” to its relationship with Israel. J Street has expressed support for members who voted for an amendment that would cut off U.S. aid to Israel.

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) and democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have endorsed Conley; both representatives had voted for the amendment to halt aid to Israel.

Conley has not said whether she would have joined Ryan and Ocasio-Cortez in voting for the measure.

Keep reading

Arkansas Democrat Hallie Shoffner: ‘We’d Trade Five Americans’ for One ‘Undocumented Immigrant’

Hallie Shoffner, who is running to unseat Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), defended “undocumented” farm workers as exceptionally hardworking, after previously saying she grew up around “undocumented” farm workers, discussing Mexican H-2A employees on her family farm, defending farmers’ reliance on foreign-born labor, and leading a nonprofit that assisted “undocumented Hispanics.”

“Every farmer will tell you at one point, we did, or still do, employ undocumented immigrants, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that these folks are being rounded up because they’re hardworking people,” Shoffner said on Free Arkansas with host Andy McNeill. “They’re some of the best people we know, and honestly, we’d trade five Americans for just one of them because of how hard they work.”

“And why is it that there’s no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers? We pay them well. They spend money here. They have family here,” Shoffner said.

“We’re acting like all Republicans like what’s happening with ICE, and Tom Cotton’s basically saying you, Andy, if you’re a Republican and you disagree with my position on ICE, or if you’re asking any kind of questions about it, well, you must be anti-American and anti-safety,” Shoffner said. “And I’m like, I have a seven-year-old boy. All I think about is safety.”

Laura Loomer highlighted the interview on X, writing, “The facts are clear: Farmer Hallie loves putting illegal aliens first, which is why she is UNFIT to serve in the U.S. Senate.”

Keep reading

Abdul El-Sayed Refuses to Return Donations From Groups Linked to Terrorism.

WHAT HAPPENED:Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed defended accepting campaign contributions from donors affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), rejecting calls from Republican opponent Mike Rogers to return the money. On Tuesday, El-Sayed was asked whether he would give back donations from CAIR-linked individuals, and insisted he would not.

 DETAIL: El-Sayed’s campaign received more than $115,000 from at least 41 people who have worked for, previously worked for, or held leadership positions with CAIR. Rogers has argued that the contributions should be returned, citing CAIR’s history of alleged ties to Hamas and its designation as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as Florida and Texas. CAIR was also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case. El-Sayed claims CAIR is a civil rights organization and accused Rogers of attempting to make the Senate race about his ethnicity and Muslim faith. The controversy comes as El-Sayed also faces scrutiny over his association with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who has previously said “America deserved 9/11” and openly supported the terrorist Houthis. 

 KEY QUOTE: “That civil rights organization [CAIR] exists because people like Mike Rogers want to make this race about the color of my skin or how I pray.” – Abdul El-Sayed IMPACT: The controversy could intensify scrutiny of Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign financing and his relationships with Islamic advocacy groups as the Michigan Senate race moves toward its fall debates. It also gives Republicans an opportunity to focus the campaign on questions surrounding terrorism-related allegations and associations.

Keep reading