Tag: republicans

Embattled Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales Bows Out of 2026 Runoff Race After Explosive Affair Scandal With Staffer Who Later Took Her Own Life

Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) suddenly announced Thursday that he will not seek reelection to Congress amid a rapidly growing scandal involving an alleged affair with a staff member, which has shaken Washington and prompted a House Ethics investigation.

The Texas lawmaker, who serves the 23rd Congressional District along the southern border, said he will complete his current term but will not run in 2026 after weeks of increased pressure from Republican leaders and grassroots conservatives.

In a social media statement, Gonzales stated he had made the decision “after deep reflection and with the support of my loving family” not to pursue another term in Congress.

“At 18, I swore an oath to defend our nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. During my 20 years in the military and three terms in Congress, I have fought for that cause with absolute dedication to the country that I love.

From confronting the border crisis to standing with my communities after the worst school shooting in Texas history, my philosophy has never changed: do as much as you can, and always fight for the greater good.

After deep reflection, and with the support of my loving family, I have decided not to seek reelection, while serving out the remainder of this Congress with the same commitment I have always had to my district.

Through the rest of my term, I will continue fighting for my constituents, for whom I am eternally grateful.

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Miami GOP Secretary’s Group Chat Pushes Antisemitism, ‘Killing N-ggers’

The recent uptick in antisemitic and racist language being disseminated by younger GOP activists nationwide has largely been fueled by a younger generation that follows extremist online influencers like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback.

It appears this has now spread to the Miami-Dade Republican Party.

In a disturbing series of group chat entries obtained by The Floridian, Miami GOP Secretary Abel Alexander Carvajal ran a group chat in which the N-word was used over 200 times and members celebrated the removal of an African-American activist from the FIU College Republicans.

Carvajal’s chat, titled “Uber Retards Yapping Inc.,” gives a shocking glimpse into the GOP’s younger element of college students who espouse hateful ideas. Even more concerning are the chat’s members: Carvajal, who is Secretary of the Miami-Dade GOP; Dariel Gonzalez, who is the FIU College Republicans Membership Director; and Ian Valdes, the FIU Turning Point chapter president.

For months, Carvajal created and served as the administrator of the chat. Many times he participated in the conversations. At no point did Carvajal close the chat or attempt to calm the narrative. He labeled his own control of the chat as “MaoTze Abel,” a joking reference to dictator Mao Zedong.

The chat goes beyond racist language. Sources have confirmed that Carvajal has recruited members of this racist and antisemitic element into the Miami-Dade GOP to serve as committeemen and committeewomen.

“Total Negro Death!” shouts Dariel Gonzalez, who has recently applied to become a GOP committeeman.

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House Ethics Committee Establishes Investigative Subcommittee Into Rep. Tony Gonzales Over Allegations Involving Staffer Who Later Died

The committee said Tuesday it “voted to establish an Investigative Subcommittee” to determine “whether Representative Tony Gonzales violated the Code of Official Conduct or any law, rule, regulation, or other applicable standard of conduct in the performance of his duties or the discharge of his responsibilities.”

According to the announcement, the inquiry will examine allegations that Gonzales may have “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office; and/or discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.”

The committee also emphasized that the step does not represent a finding of wrongdoing. “The Committee notes that the mere fact of establishing an Investigative Subcommittee does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred,” the statement explained.

The announcement comes after a prior probe by the Office of Congressional Conduct (OCC), the independent congressional ethics watchdog. Punchbowl News previously reported the OCC had been examining allegations of an extramarital relationship between Gonzales and a staff member, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, who worked in his office from 2021 until her death. Under House rules, members are prohibited from engaging in a “sexual relationship” with an employee under their supervision. 

Santos-Aviles, 35, died in September 2025 after pouring gasoline on herself and setting herself on fire at her home in Uvalde, Texas. She left behind an eight-year-old son and a husband, from whom she had been separated for several months. Family members maintained she did not intentionally start the fire. Surveillance footage obtained by investigators showed she was alone when the blaze began, and the Uvalde Police Department stated it did not suspect anyone else was involved or that foul play had occurred.

Reports about the alleged relationship emerged after her death. Gonzales has previously denied having an affair with Santos-Aviles.

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Nancy Mace lashes out as $1.9 million Capitol Hill home scandal implodes

Congresswoman Nancy Mace is under investigation for allegedly overcharging a taxpayer-funded program meant to provide out-of-town lawmakers for housing, meals, and travel expenses.

The House Ethics Committee is looking into whether Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, ‘engaged in improper reimbursement practices’ for her former $1.98 million Capitol Hill home she shared with her ex-fiancé.

Mace and Patrick Bryant, who broke off their 18-month engagement in 2023, were co-owners of a DC townhouse until 2024. That DC property is at the center of the new probe. 

Members of Congress are allowed to be reimbursed for housing expenses if they maintain a residence in their home district and Washington, DC.

But the program, launched in 2023, has drawn scrutiny because the reimbursement process does not require a detailed expenditures list for lawmakers to get their money back.

A new report by the Office of Congressional Conduct (OCC), a nonpartisan group that investigates misconduct on Capitol Hill, claims that Mace was overpaid $9,500 for her housing costs.

‘Information available to and reviewed by the OCC suggests that Rep. Mace was reimbursed more than the true costs for the property during several months in 2023 and 2024,’ the OCC report alleges. 

Mace did not speak with the OCC during their investigation, the report says. 

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SCOTUS Shuts Down New York’s Bid To Redistrict GOP Seat Ahead Of 2026 Midterms

The U.S. Supreme Court shut down a bid by New York courts to redistrict a Republican-controlled congressional seat ahead of the 2026 midterms on Monday.

In its 6-3 ruling, the high court granted an emergency application to temporarily stay (“pause”) a state judge’s efforts to redraw Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ congressional district. Malliotakis has represented New York’s 11th Congressional District since 2021 and won reelection by 28 points during the 2024 election.

As described by The Hill, “A state judge had ordered the boundaries be redrawn after ruling the district dilutes black and Latino voting strength in violation of the state constitution.” The Supreme Court’s Monday order “granted Malliotakis’s emergency application to block that ruling as the litigation proceeds, effectively restoring her existing district lines for the midterms.”

The high court noted that the New York court’s ruling “is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the New York state courts” and the filing of a petition at SCOTUS asking the justices to take up the case. The Supreme Court’s stay will terminate if it declines to hear the case or if it agrees to take up the case and renders a verdict on the matter.

Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied Malliotakis’ request for relief.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito authored a concurring opinion in which he expressed agreement with the court’s decision and blasted the New York judge’s directive “that blatantly discriminates on the basis of race.” He noted how the “New York Supreme Court (that State’s trial-level court) ordered the New York Independent Redistricting Commission to draw a new congressional district for the express purpose of ensuring that ‘minority voters’ are able to elect the candidate of their choice.”

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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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