Tag: republicans

Going to War, Again, for Israel

Once again, America is going to war for Israel. Once again, many will die for the Zionist state, including American service members. Once again, we will stumble blindly into a military fiasco. Once again, we will do the bidding of a foreign power whose interests are not our interests, but whose lobbyists have bought up our political class, including Donald Trump. Once again, we will violate the U.N. charter by attacking a country that does not pose an imminent threat.

This is not our war. This is part of Israel’s demented vision of Greater Israel, of dominating the Middle East. But Israel needs our military, our taxpayer dollars, our weapons to do it. And we have handed them the keys to our formidable arsenal.

The architects of the war with Iran, which the administration feels no need to justify to the American public or the international community, admit it will not be quick.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News on Saturday that the goal is not only to curb Iran’s nuclear program, but “dismantle their terror support network.”

“To do all that is going to take longer than the strikes on their nuclear program last summer,” Cotton said. “We’re probably looking at weeks, not days, of joint efforts by the United States, Israel and our Arab partners, who have also been attacked this morning.”

Israel’s lackeys in the political class, along with their courtiers in the media, including former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employee Wolf Blitzer, as well as academia, are shining examples of Israel’s transparent and often illegal meddling in the American political system. Forget Russia. Forget China. No foreign government comes close to exerting Israel’s influence.

Democratic Party leaders are not opposed to attacking Iran — they are opposed to attacking Iran without being consulted. Two dozen Democrats lept to their feet and applauded every time Trump threatened Iran, or lauded Israel, in his State of the Union address. The Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership made no effort to reinstate Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement. It focused instead on sustaining the genocide in Gaza. It cheered Israel’s decapitation of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Kamala Harris in her feckless and tone deaf presidential campaign promised to continue funding the genocide, which alienated many voters, and labeled Iran our most dangerous enemy.

Endless war is a bipartisan project.

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Republican Lawmakers Demand Answers on UK’s iCloud Encryption Backdoor Order

Two senior Republican lawmakers are demanding answers from the British government about its secret order forcing Apple to break its own encryption. The UK has until March 11 to respond.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast sent a joint letter on Wednesday to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, pressing for a formal briefing on the Technical Capability Notice (TCN) served on Apple under the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

It’s the latest move in a surveillance fight that began over a year ago and has rattled the US-UK relationship at the highest levels.

In January 2025, UK security officials secretly ordered Apple to build a backdoor into iCloud that would allow them to decrypt any user’s data, anywhere in the world. Not just suspected criminals, not just UK citizens. Everyone.

The order targeted Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature, the optional end-to-end encryption that ensures even Apple can’t read iCloud backups. Apple’s response was to pull ADP from the UK market entirely in February 2025, stripping strong encryption options from roughly 35 million iPhone users rather than comply with a demand it couldn’t legally discuss.

UK law makes it a criminal offense for companies to confirm or deny the existence of such orders, even to their own government.

Apple couldn’t tell the US Department of Justice that the order existed. The DOJ couldn’t verify whether it complied with the CLOUD Act, the bilateral agreement governing how the two countries share access to digital evidence. That agreement explicitly states it “shall not create any obligation that providers be capable of decrypting data.” The UK’s order appears to do exactly that.

The reaction in Washington was bipartisan. Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Andy Biggs slammed the order as “effectively a foreign cyber attack waged through political means.”

President Trump compared the UK’s conduct directly to China’s. Speaking to the Spectator after meeting Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said: “We actually told [Starmer] . . . that’s incredible. That’s something, you know, that you hear about with China.” DNI Secretary Tulsi Gabbard called any attempt to compel Apple to create security weaknesses an “egregious violation” of privacy and confirmed legal and intelligence teams were assessing the implications.

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Rep. Luna Believes Jeffrey Epstein Was Running an Intelligence-Gathering ‘Honey Pot’ Operation Based on New Testimony

Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna believed that the disgraced financier was not merely a predator, but the epicenter of a foreign intelligence-gathering “honey pot” operation, and that key women connected to his network should be questioned as co-conspirators in child sex trafficking.

Based on fresh testimony and files uncovered in the House Oversight Committee’s probe, Luna declared that the notorious sex trafficker was operating a sophisticated “honey pot” intelligence-gathering scheme, likely designed to blackmail powerful politicians and business leaders for economic and political leverage.

Luna, who has been at the forefront of this investigation as part of her role leading a task force on government secrets, didn’t mince words in her post on X:

“Based on our congressional investigation it is my professional opinion that Jeffrey Epstein was running a honey pot operation. I am calling on Oversight to bring these 4 women in for questioning as co-conspirators to child sex trafficking.”

During a fiery press conference following former President Bill Clinton’s closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee, Luna elaborated on her findings.

“What I will say is it has become very evident, even in the last 24 hours, through lines of questioning, that Jeffrey Epstein was running an intelligence-gathering operation. In my professional opinion, I do believe it was a honeypot operation,” Luna said.

She went further, suggesting that Epstein’s web extended to targeting high-profile figures like the Clintons themselves for sensitive economic intelligence.

“I do believe that Jeffrey Epstein was targeting many politicians, many influential people, especially in regards to economic policy,” Luna added. “I do believe that it was possible that not just (Bill Clinton), but Secretary Clinton as well as a number of other people were targeted.”

But Luna didn’t stop at vague accusations. She named names, calling out four women she believes were active participants in Epstein’s child sex trafficking network, not victims.

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Hillary Clinton Lashes Out at Comer and House Oversight Republicans After Her Epstein Deposition Photo Leaks

Hillary Clinton lashed out at James Comer and Republicans on the House Oversight Committee after her testimony on Jeffrey Epstein.

Clinton fumed over the leaked photo of her mid-testimony.

Hillary Clinton’s lawyers abruptly halted the Epstein deposition on Thursday after a photo of Hillary was leaked to conservative podcast host Benny Johnson.

The photo was provided by Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.

Clinton left the room over the leaked photo and when she came back, she sparred with Chairman Comer, according to MSNOW.

The deposition eventually resumed.

Clinton held an impromptu press conference and lashed out over the photo leak.

“I did not know Jeffrey Epstein! I never went to his island. I never went to his home. I never went to his offices,” Hillary said.

Hillary said Boebert violated the rules by leaking the photo.

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Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno seeks to ban welfare recipients from sending money abroad

U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) took to the Senate floor on Wednesday to request unanimous consent for his bill — one that would levy large fines against public assistance recipients in America who transmit money to foreign countries.

“If you are on any type of government aid, you are restricted from sending money overseas,” Moreno said during a speech today on the Senate floor. “We want to help Americans in need. But if they are in need, why do they have money to send oversees?

The “Stopping Transfers of Public Funds Abroad Act” would require anyone applying for federal benefits to sign a written declaration, under penalty of perjury, promising not to conduct any remittance transfers while receiving assistance.

Under the proposed law, any individual found to have sent money overseas while on those rolls would face a $100,000 fine.

“If an individual has enough cash to send money overseas, they have no business taking welfare benefits from hardworking Americans,” Moreno said in a statement. “The abuse ends now.”

The legislation targets programs defined under federal social security regulations, which generally include Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and other needs-based assistance.

While the bill aims to curb fraud, the policy would most directly impact American citizens and “qualified aliens”—legal immigrants who have cleared the mandatory five-year waiting period for federal benefits—who still maintain financial ties to family members in their home nations.

The bill defines “remittance transfers” as electronic transfers of funds to a person or business in a foreign country, a common practice for immigrant families supporting relatives abroad.

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LEAKED TEXT SCANDAL: House Republicans Call on Rep. Tony Gonzales to Resign After Messages Allegedly Show Repeated Requests for Nude Photos from Staffer Who Later Died By Lighting Herself on Fire

Several conservative House Republicans are demanding the immediate resignation of Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) following the release of damning leaked text messages.

The scandal centers on a series of leaked communications between Gonzales and Regina Santos-Aviles, a 35-year-old regional district director for his office.

She died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire at her home; her death was ruled a suicide by the Bexar County medical examiner’s office.

As The Gateway Pundit reported last year, Rep. Tony Gonzales, a married father of six, is accused of carrying on an extramarital affair with his senior aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, who tragically died after dousing herself in gasoline and setting herself on fire.

35-year-old Aviles, a married mother of an eight-year-old son who was separated from her husband, Adrian Aviles, was often seen by Gonzales’s side. Such appearances included high-profile events, such as Elon Musk’s 2023 tour of the Mexico border in Eagle Pass.

Gonzales discussed the rumored affair at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, telling a reporter there was no veracity to any affair while also denying knowledge of Aviles’ passing.

“The rumors are completely untruthful. I am generally untrusting of these outlets,” Gonzales stated.

“‘Regina’s family has asked for privacy. If it was your family or any of our families, I would argue that you would want privacy as well, he added. “I don’t know exactly what happened. Nobody has contacted me. I haven’t contacted anyone.”

“I’m waiting for a final report. I think that would make a lot of sense.”

Gonzales, a so-called Republican who has repeatedly betrayed conservative principles by voting for radical gun control measures after the Uvalde tragedy and cozying up to the Biden administration on border issues, now finds himself at the center of a MeToo-style scandal that reeks of hypocrisy and moral decay.

The leaked texts, obtained by outlets like 24Sight News, paint a picture of a predatory boss exploiting his position for personal gratification.

In one exchange, Gonzales reportedly demanded “sexy pics” from Santos-Aviles late at night, inquiring about her favorite sexual positions and pushing her into uncomfortable territory while she was vulnerable and married.

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Pro-Amnesty GOP Candidate For Texas-19 Proclaimed “My Heart Is In Mexico,” Attacked Trump

Abraham Enriquez — who is running for Congress as a Republican for Texas-19 in the March 3 primary — said on his podcast that his “heart is in Mexico” (51:50 mark).

It’s an odd thing to say if you’re claiming to be “America First” and seeking to represent American citizens in the United States Congress, but perhaps not so odd for Enriquez, a longtime advocate for so-called “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Townhall reported last month that Enriquez once tweeted support for Rep. Maria Salazar’s (R-FL) Dignity Act, an amnesty bill that would provide a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

He also supported the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act, which the Heritage Foundation said “would simply increase the U.S. capacity for processing illegal aliens in order to release them into the interior of the country, acting as a direct incentive for yet more illegal immigration.”

After launching his campaign, Enriquez deleted his pro-amnesty tweet advocating for the bills.

On his podcast in December 2020, Enriquez discussed his Hispanic heritage and described how his grandparents live in Mexico, saying he travels there frequently and that his ties to the country are inseparable from his identity.

“We should be proud of saying that we’re Latinos,” Enriquez said, arguing that Americans “refusing not to understand my values and my culture, is refusing to understand my story and accepting my story as an addition to the American story.”

That same year, Enriquez criticized Donald Trump in the anti-Trump magazine The Atlantic.

Referring to Trump’s 2015 comments that Mexico is sending people to the U.S. who are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people,” Enriquez said, “Did he word it correctly? No, but he did emphasize that, you know, it wasn’t all Mexicans.”

In 2024, Enriquez joined the board of the Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino (FRIENDS).

The organization has since promoted radical transgender political activists and drag queens, including Sylvia Rivera and José Julio Sarria, the latter of whom is known as The Grand Mere Absolute Empress I de San Francisco.

FRIENDS also reposted last month a statement by Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto attacking the Trump Administration, falsely claiming ICE agents “are oppressing Americans” and “brutalizing U.S. citizens and law-abiding immigrants.”

Curiously, Enriquez failed to disclose his position on the FRIENDS board when he filed his Financial Disclosure Report as a federal candidate in December 2025. This is a major ethics violation and raises questions about what else Enriquez is attempting to hide from Texas voters.

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Democrats Claim GOP ‘Gutted’ Medicaid. Federal Data Shows The Opposite

etween now and the November midterm elections, Democrats and their allies will spend countless hours and energy claiming Republicans “cut” Medicaid in last year’s reconciliation legislation. Don’t you believe it. 

A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report demonstrates how Republicans’ reforms in that law merely attempted to slow an unsustainable Medicaid program following a Biden-era spending explosion. But for good or for ill, the program’s spending continues to grow inexorably higher, notwithstanding those reforms.

Scaling Back Biden’s Spending Binge

Last January, I wrote about that Biden-era Medicaid explosion. From June 2024 to January 2025, CBO increased its estimates of Medicaid spending by $817 billion, or 12 percent, and cited five factors driving such rapid spending growth. Democrat policy priorities, most of them imposed by the Biden administration unilaterally, were at the root of those factors: administrative actions to expand eligibility and prevent states from cracking down on fraud, a mandate on states to cover anti-obesity medications, greater incentives for states to expand Medicaid to able-bodied adults, and policy changes allowing states to bilk the federal government out of additional Medicaid matching funds.

The budget reconciliation bill Republicans passed last year undid many of those changes. It repealed the additional incentives Congress passed in 2021 for states to embrace Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, blocked several costly Biden-era mandates, cracked down on state abuses of the Medicaid financing system, and instituted work requirements for able-bodied adults. But it made no explicit changes to the benefits provided to the vulnerable populations — seniors, individuals with disabilities, and children — for which Medicaid was originally designed.

The Other Half of the Story

Last week, CBO released its annual report on the budget and economic outlook, its first fiscal update since the reconciliation measure last July. It estimated that last year’s bill would reduce Medicaid spending by $1.184 trillion, a fact Democrats will dutifully repeat ad infinitum between now and Nov. 3.

But the welfare-industrial complex won’t bother to mention several other important Medicaid facts to voters. First, even after taking into account the changes in the reconciliation bill, CBO now estimates Medicaid will spend more under Donald Trump than it estimated during the last year of Joe Biden’s presidency. You read that right: From 2026 through 2034, CBO now estimates that Medicaid will spend $7.124 trillion, versus an estimate of $6.862 trillion in June 2024.

In part, that dynamic occurs because, notwithstanding the changes Republicans enacted into law last year, Medicaid spending continues to climb ever higher. Even as it reduced Medicaid spending by nearly $1.2 trillion to reflect legislative changes from the reconciliation bill, CBO cited “technical changes” to increase spending by $700 billion over the coming decade. While noting lower-than-expected enrollment growth in 2025, “[c]osts per enrollee grew by 16 percent in 2025 — significantly more than CBO had anticipated,” and a trend the budget gnomes expect to continue.

Contra claims about Medicaid “cuts,” program spending will continue to grow every single year over the coming decade. From 2026 through 2036, CBO believes Medicaid spending will grow by a total of 39 percent, due to both growth from inflation and 18 percent growth in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) spending per beneficiary.

Democrats will cite the estimated 14 percent reduction in Medicaid beneficiaries as evidence of the likely harm caused by the budget reconciliation measure. But even here, CBO notes that the number of individuals “losing” coverage “includes 1.5 million enrollees whose records indicated enrollment in more than one state and who would retain Medicaid eligibility in their current state of residence.” This “cut” reflects not individuals being harmed but “enrollees” who never should have had duplicate coverage to begin with.

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Thomas Massie, Who Loves to Talk About His ‘Principles,’ Just Made Quite the Admission to Politico

Thomas Massie gave an interview to Politico yesterday, in which the publication said he goes “toe-to-toe” with high-ranking members of the Trump administration including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

There was one passage that stood out among many conservatives, one that dealt a major blow to the claims that Massie is operating on principles. Namely, Massie’s vote was contingent on whether or not Speaker Mike Johnson would publicly praise him for releasing the Epstein files.

“One day, they needed my vote, and I offered to give them my vote if he would issue a press release thanking me for my good work on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. That’s all I required to get my vote. And I think he probably went and gave somebody else a bill to pass instead of doing the public statement,” Massie told Politico.

Wow.

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Texas Senate Race Thrown Into Turmoil After Stunning ‘Doxxing’ Allegation

Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) campaign is under fire after a top staffer posted Rep. Wesley Hunt’s 2016 provisional ballot on social media, exposing personal details. Hunt announced that he has filed a police report accusing the campaign of “doxxing” his family just days before early voting begins.

The controversy is the latest in a fiery primary race between the three candidates.

Cornyn communications director Matt Mackowiak allegedly posted images of Hunt’s 2016 Harris County provisional ballot on his X account on Friday. He alleged that Hunt lied about his military discharge date and 2016 voting record.

The unredacted document included Hunt’s home address, driver’s license number and the last four digits of his Social Security number. Cornyn’s campaign deleted the post and then reposted the images with redactions of Hunt’s personal information.

Hunt slammed the Cornyn campaign, characterizing the post as dangerous and unlawful. He said sharing his and his family’s information crossed the line between opposition research and doxxing. He filed a criminal complaint with the Harris County Constable’s Office. Law enforcement intends to subpoena X to retrieve the deleted post, according to Fox 26 Houston.

The lawmaker further claimed that his 2016 provisional ballot was never counted and that Cornyn is using it to claim he committed voter fraud.

A spokesperson for the Hunt campaign told Townhall, “In this current climate of political violence, doxxing the home address of a sitting Member of Congress or his family isn’t ‘hardball politics.’ It’s reckless, dangerous, and illegal. It puts lives at risk.”

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