Tag: republicans

Florida Gov. DeSantis Designates Terrorist Groups After Judge Pushes Back

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced the state’s intent to implement its new statutory authority to identify, designate, and combat terrorist organizations operating in Florida, marking the first use of powers established by HB 1471. DeSantis signed the bill into law during a ceremony on the University of South Florida campus in Tampa on April 6, 2026, and the law took effect Wednesday, July 1.

Under HB 1471, Florida’s chief of domestic security within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement may designate qualifying organizations as domestic or foreign terrorist organizations. The governor and Cabinet then approve or reject each designation by majority vote before publication in the Florida Administrative Register.

“Today, we are officially designating terrorist organizations under Florida law. In addition to CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, we are adding Antifa to the list, along with more than 90 Foreign Terrorist Organizations, including cartels,” DeSantis said in a statement. Among the named foreign designations are the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and cartels, including Cartel de Sinaloa, Tren de Aragua, Cartel del Noreste, and Cartel del Golfo.

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Florida Officials, Political Operatives Charged in Alleged Counterfeit GOP Voter Guide Plot

Five people, including two St. Johns County commissioners and a St. Augustine Beach commissioner, were charged Monday in connection with an alleged scheme to distribute counterfeit Republican voter guides during the 2024 primary election.

County Commissioners Sarah Arnold and Christian Whitehurst, St. Augustine Beach Commissioner and former Mayor Dylan Rumrell, political consultant Briana Jordan, and Jamie Lynn Johnson were each charged with one count of creating an unauthorized voter guide and one count of conspiracy. Jordan was also charged with felony tampering with physical evidence after prosecutors alleged she destroyed or concealed voter guides while an investigation was pending.

The charges come months after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) signed a confidential executive order assigning the case to an outside prosecutor. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated the case, and 8th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Brian Kramer ultimately filed the charges after prosecutors in both the 7th and 4th Judicial Circuits recused themselves.

According to a sworn FDLE affidavit, investigators allege Jordan organized the scheme after the St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee endorsed a slate of candidates who were not represented by her consulting operation. Prosecutors say she created a counterfeit voter guide using the county GOP’s name and branding without authorization while omitting the disclaimer required under Florida law. Jordan’s bond was set at $12,000, and it is unclear when the defendants will make their first court appearances.

Investigators allege the counterfeit guides were assembled at a St. Augustine campaign headquarters before being mailed to thousands of Republican voters from post offices in Jacksonville and Orlando to conceal their origin. The affidavit alleges Jordan purchased more than 10,000 voter guides and approximately 20,000 postage stamps, while Whitehurst, Arnold and Rumrell helped prepare the mailers by placing labels and stamps on the envelopes.

Prosecutors also allege Jordan later burned remaining voter guides and searched for commercial shredding services after the operation became public. The fake voter guides became one of the biggest controversies of the 2024 Republican primary in St. Johns County. While the official St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee endorsed one slate of candidates, the counterfeit guide promoted a competing slate that included Whitehurst and several other local Republicans.

The competing endorsements reflected a broader intraparty fight over growth and development in one of the nation’s fastest-growing counties. The candidates featured on the counterfeit guide largely mirrored those backed by the Trump Club of St. Johns County, while President Donald Trump later endorsed the three incumbent county commissioners on Truth Social during the closing days of the campaign.

Ann-Marie Evans, who narrowly lost the Republican primary to Whitehurst, previously said she was “appalled” and “shocked” by the counterfeit mailers and blamed them for confusing voters during the race. Republican Party of Florida Chairman Evan Power also welcomed the charges, saying the party takes the unauthorized use of its branding seriously.

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Massie Introduces Resolution to Honor USS Liberty Crew, Declassify All Records.

America First GOP Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced a resolution today honoring the crew of the USS Liberty, which Israel attacked 59 years ago as the ship patrolled international waters.

The resolution, which condemns the “unprovoked” Israeli attack, names the 34 dead, and calls upon the president to declassify records related to the attack.

It also condemns Israel.

Top U.S. military officials at the time called the attack deliberate, while Israel weakly claimed the attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”

Weeks ago, Massie called for a new investigation into the attack. Those who oppose discussing the Liberty or investigating it often call questions about it “antisemitic.”

The Unprovoked Attack

Sailing in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the Sinai Peninsula on June 8, 1967, the Liberty was collecting signals intelligence related to Israel’s Six-Day War with nearby Arab states, notably Egypt.

The ship flew an American flag and was otherwise clearly marked.

Israeli reconnaissance aircraft surveilled the ship for more than six hours, flying as low as 200 feet, the Liberty Association website explains. Despite that surveillance, Israeli jets attacked the ship relentlessly for almost 25 minutes.

When it was over, 34 Americans were dead and 171 wounded. Captain William McGonagle received the Medal of Honor for heroism in secret. His citation says he received the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War. It does not name the country that attacked the Liberty. 

Fighter jets sent to defend the ship from two American aircraft carriers, the USS America and USS Saratoga, were recalled.

Recalling the aircraft, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer wrote for the Houston Chronicle in 2004, “was the most disgraceful act I witnessed in my entire military career.”

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Ohio Sen. Moreno Rips GOP Gov. DeWine for Putting Haitian Migrants over Americans

Ohio’s Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno blasted his state’s governor, Republican Mike DeWine, for the governor’s support of the thousands of Haitian migrants Joe Biden imported into the state as the Trump administration moves to revoke their temporary protected immigration status.

DeWine went on left-wing CNN and attacked the Trump administration for working to revoke the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of some 300,000 economic migrants from Haiti, thousands of whom flooded into the Buckeye State during the Biden years. On CNN, DeWine insisted that the Haitians have been an integral part of Ohio communities.

“It is not in the United States’s interest, certainly not in Ohio’s interest,” DeWine told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “to have people who are working every single day, who are supporting a family, who are buying houses, fixing up old houses, starting businesses, and then put deep roots in this country and really are contributing, and yank them out!”

DeWine painted a picture of Haitians who are important and contributing greatly to America and Ohio both.

But Sen. Moreno begged to disagree. In fact, Moreno said that these thousands of Haitians are a net drag on Ohio, and not a boon to the state’s economy at all.

Moreno said that housing has become more expensive because of all these migrants, that car accidents have soared, and that these Haitians are sucking up billions in welfare that should be going to Ohioans, not economic migrants.

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Pro-Amnesty RINO AZ Congressional Candidate Jay Feely Defends DACA, Points to His Record of Importing Haitians Under TPS in GOP Debate

Ex-Arizona Cardinals Kicker and Arizona RINO Congressional Candidate Jay Feely came out in defense of mass migration and DACA during his GOP Primary Debate last week. 

Feely faces Arizona State Representative Joseph Chaplik, the only Trump-aligned candidate in the race, in the July 21 Primary election. Mail-in voting started on June 24.

Despite his pro-amnesty stance, a history of close ties to the Clinton family and the Clinton Foundation, support for Barack Obama, and attacks on Trump, Feely was endorsed by Trump, leaving Arizona Trump supporters scratching their heads.

During the debate on Thursday, when the candidates were asked about Obama’s controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which gives amnesty to illegal aliens who arrived in the US as children, Feely appeared to defend the program.

Chaplik responded to the question of “How do you balance the humane behavior there with coming down hard on criminals?” by emphasizing the need to continue strict immigration enforcement. “The criminals, the violent drug dealers, the rapist, the murderers that are in our country, we need to get them out immediately,” he said.

Chaplik continued, “We need to make sure that we have strong workforce labor, but the criteria is American. We do not want anti-American people in this country. It does not help our country. And so, when people come across that border, and they’re chanting ‘Death to America, that’s not the person I want working in the fields, and I don’t want that person working anywhere in this country.”

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RINO Ohio Governor Mike DeWine Caught in a Big Lie as He Defends the Large Number of Haitian Migrants Living in His State on TPS

On Sunday, RINO Ohio Governor Mike DeWine could stop himself from lying in an effort to defend the presence of Haitians in Ohio on Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

DeWine appeared on State of the Union with Jake Tapper to weigh in on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed President Trump to end TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians.

As a result, 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians will lose their status and have to return home.

Ohio will be particularly impacted by the ruling. Reports indicate that roughly 30,000 Haitians live in the Buckeye State, with almost half of those residing in Springfield.

As TGP readers know, the presence of thousands of Haitians in Springfield rightfully sparked fury from both residents and conservative politicians. They have ‘culturally enriched’ the city with activities, including committing DUIs and dining on wildlife in medieval fashion.

While most sane individuals would welcome sending these Haitians back, DeWine argued that this would be wrong due to how many are ‘working’ and ‘supporting’ families.

“It is not in the United States’ interest, certainly not in Ohio’s interest, to have people who are working every single day, supporting a family, buying houses, starting businesses, and yank them out,” he told Tapper.

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With Friends Like This: GOP Senator Joins Forces with Elizabeth Warren to Push the Largest Tax Hike in Over FOUR DECADES

The one thing conservatives could generally count on from Republicans was their consistent opposition to tax increases. But one GOP Senator has decided to toss that principle aside and join forces with one of America’s most notorious leftists.

On Tuesday, Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) and Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren (D-MA) wrote an editorial published by the far-left New York Times, which outlined their plan to ‘save’ Social Security.

Moreno and Warren correctly note that Social Security is facing a major funding crisis. By late 2032, the fund from which most Social Security beneficiaries are paid will be severely depleted unless Congress takes action.

If Congress does nothing, Social Security benefits could be cut by more than 20 percent.

The Senators write that instead of reducing the benefits, the government should adopt what they call a common-sense solution: lifting the Social Security payroll tax cap.

Warren and Moreno say that this is one way to make the payroll tax and solve the Social Security funding crisis for “another generation.”

More From the New York Times:

For 2026, the payroll tax cap, or taxable maximum, is $184,500. Workers and their employers each pay 6.2 percent on wages up to that amount. (Self-employed individuals pay 12.4 percent.) Today, the maximum Social Security withholding for one worker is $22,878, or 12.4 percent of $184,500. Not a penny more, even if an individual’s salary far exceeds $184,500.

Since the vast majority of Americans make less than that, most people are paying Social Security taxes on 100 percent of their earnings, while the highest earners are paying on only part of theirs.

Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck than a wealthy corporate lawyer? This is doubly unfair in an economy in which top earners’ wages, over time, have pulled far ahead of those of the average worker.

According to one estimate, eliminating the payroll tax cap would inject around $3 trillion into the program over the next 10 years. Lifting the cap so that all income is treated the same would generate substantial revenue that would extend the solvency of Social Security for another generation.

But what Warren and Moreno do not tell readers is that lifting the payroll tax cap would result in the largest tax increase in more than four decades.

This proposal would have a particularly devastating impact on sole proprietors, and costs would fall entirely on working Americans.

Moreover, the plan is more radical than any tax hike Joe Biden proposed.

Here is the National Review with the damning details:

That would represent a $3.4 trillion tax hike over a decade. As a share of gross domestic product, it would be the largest tax hike in over 40 years — eclipsing Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase, according to the Tax Foundation.

Not only would it represent a stunning betrayal of his own voters, as Moreno signed the Americans for Tax Reform’s pledge against any tax increases — it would even violate the $400,000-a-year Joe Biden threshold for tax increases.

Such a massive tax increase would also have crushing economic effects. Employers who don’t want to absorb the increase in payroll taxes will have to hire fewer workers or keep wages lower. It would place a significant burden on small business owners who operate as sole proprietors and pay self-employment taxes. And at a time when affordability has become a major issue, these costs would fall entirely on working-age Americans.

What makes Moreno’s turn to the hard left more distressing is that he has been one of the Senate’s most reliable MAGA warriors, particularly on immigration.

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ICE Says 51 People Died in Custody Under Trump. Experts Say That’s an Undercount.

amuka Artmeladze, a 43-year-old Georgian national, was found dead on June 4, 2026, in federal immigration custody. Though his name did not appear in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) online death records by the time this article was published, Artmeladze was reported as the 50th person to die in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office. One of two recent deaths at a notorious immigration prison in Louisiana, Artmeladze’s death is one of the latest signs that the president’s mass deportation campaign has predictably created a human rights crisis inside a sprawling system of immigration jails and camps.

At least 51 people have died while in ICE custody since Trump began his second term, federal records show. At least 19 deaths occurred between January 1 and June 4, 2026, an average of about one death every eight days over the first six months of this year.

Additionally, at least two disabled people died this year from exposure shortly after being released by immigration officials in freezing winter weather, including a 31-year-old Haitian woman who died after being left at a Pittsburgh bus stop for 30 hours in early March. While medical examiners determined both deaths to be homicides, ICE does not include them in its official tally, and experts say the 51 deaths reported since January 2025 could be an undercount.

For months, protesters, federal inspectors, and Democrats in Congress have sounded the alarm about the dangerous conditions of confinement faced by more than 68,000 adults and children swept up in Trump’s crackdown. While ICE claims to provide proper care for detainees, oversight data shows a clear pattern of abuse, medical neglect, and preventable deaths inside its jails and camps. Critics say the unprecedented number of deaths is the predictable result of Trump administration policy, including fighting in court to incarcerate immigrants for as long as possible while aggressively expanding privately run jails and prison camps.

“Using the windfall in funding from Congressional Republicans, they are inflicting as much pain as possible no matter the cost,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigrant rights group America’s Voice, in a statement on June 22.

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Trump loyalist Jim Jordan linked to group that received ‘dark money’ from ICE detention contractor

Jim Jordan is among the most famous names in this stretch of Ohio.

The congressman and chair of the powerful House judiciary committee is considered among the most conservative and influential members in Congress, and is a longtime loyalist of Donald Trump.

But a report released last month by Pogo Investigates, a nonprofit newsroom, highlighted the close ties between Jordan and a company profiting from the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown, which has sometimes been violent and even deadly.

The report found that the American Liberty Foundation, a political action committee (Pac) tied to Jordan, last year received $250,000 in “dark money” payments from Geo Group, the Florida-headquartered company that runs dozens of detention centers on behalf of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the country.

The money transfer came 11 days after the passing of the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last July, which saw the federal government’s budget for ICE and other immigration enforcement efforts trebled to $170bn – an amount greater than the GDP of Morocco.

“A company and or a company’s political action committee is permitted to contribute funds to a Super Pac, but a federal contractor [such as Geo Group] is not,” says Nick Schwellenbach, the author of the Pogo Investigates report.

“Geo Group’s Pac had not disclosed this. Only American Liberty Foundation had. Both have legal obligations to disclose. This raises a lot of questions about the broader universe of dark money contributions from Geo Group or other private prison companies.”

Campaign Legal Center, a litigation advocacy organization, has since filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against Geo Group, alleging it violated federal campaign finance laws by making an illegal, misreported contribution.

Critics say that taxpayer money is helping to create a “deportation-industrial complex” that puts Geo Group, which runs ICE detention facilities across 16 states, including Delaney Hall in New Jersey, at the forefront of the benefactors.

All the while, conditions at many of the 52 detention centers that Geo operates on behalf of ICE have been reported as being very poor. Detainees at Delaney Hall last month launched a hunger strike to protest against the state of their living conditions and accused the contractor of denying them access to medical care. This month, the state of New Jersey sued Geo Group, seeking full access in order to inspect the facility.

In Michigan, family members and friends of the estimated 1,500 immigrant detainees held at the North Lake Processing Center have reported being verbally abused by staff and refused permission to see their detained family members.

Repeated emails sent by the Guardian to Geo Group asking why the company donated to Jordan’s Super Pac and if it believes the money represents a conflict of interest were not responded to.

Some rights groups have suggested that the poor living conditions are a tactic to force immigrants to self-deport. Trump’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi, previously worked as a lobbyist for Geo Group before joining the Trump administration.

According to reports, ICE is Geo Group’s biggest source of revenue, with 41% of its 2024 income coming from ICE. That figure is likely to have risen significantly under the Trump administration, with a host of new contracts signed.

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Moreno to Subpoena Newsom Over California Election Failures

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) appeared on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast Triggered on Monday, and he had a lot to say about Sunday’s election run-off in Colombia. Moreno, who is, of course, a Colombian immigrant, was back in his home country over the weekend as an international election observer. 

What he saw impressed him. 

In case you missed it, the right-wing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella (aka El Tigre), beat out far-left president Gustavo Petro’s hand-picked successor, Iván Cepeda. Thankfully, El Tigre won. The numbers showed a tight race, a country divided. While it is a country divided, many say it’s not that divided, that there are many other factors at play here, but I’ll save that for another day. Petro is also carrying on about how it’s not a done deal and Israel and something else no one cares about blah blah blah, but it’s pretty much a done deal.

The right-minded world, including Marco Rubio, congratulated El Tigre almost immediately to show that we are watching. Plus, Petro’s hands are a bit tied with OFAC sanctions and other reasons why he doesn’t want to make Donald Trump and Rubio mad, so he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. He may make some short-term noise, but he’s gone in August and has his own personal agenda. 

But what struck Moreno and many of us who have been paying close attention to this situation is that despite all of that, the elections in Colombia actually went pretty smoothly. The country was able to have results ready in hours, thanks to its “world-class” system, which includes:  

  • Voter ID and proof of Colombian citizenship 
  • Paper, in-person ballots that are hand-counted. 
  • No widespread mail-in voting (Colombians living in other countries are allowed to vote)
  • Biometrics at some sites for additional security 
  • Transparent, observed elections that result in 99%-plus ballots counted the same night 

It’s the complete opposite of what we’ve seen recently in California, and Moreno wants to put an end to that and show people in the United States that it doesn’t have to be this way.  

“We made the decision, and I’ve talked to [Sens.] Rick Scott, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson about this, we’re going to bring in the people who ran the Colombian election, we’re going to subpoena Gavin Newsom, and we’re going to have a hearing: California vs. Colombia,” Moreno said. “Why can Colombia run an election at that high level, and California is so incompetent? And I think the American people need to see this, Don — we’re going to put this right in their faces and say, ‘Look, the SAVE AMERICA act says prove you’re an American citizen and show who you are when you vote.’ And we can’t get 60 out of 100 Senators to vote for that? That’s a disgrace.”  

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