Tag: republicans

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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Justice Department ‘Should Take About 20 Years’ To Reschedule Marijuana, GOP Congressman Says

The Justice Department should “take about 20 years” to finish the marijuana rescheduling process, a GOP congressman who staunchly opposes cannabis reform tells Marijuana Moment.

With the proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) still pending, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) is in no rush to have DOJ see the process through—despite President Donald Trump’s December executive order directing the attorney general to quickly finalize the rule.

“Last I looked, it hasn’t been rescheduled. The president said to look into it,” Harris said in an interview on Thursday, adding that he hasn’t directly communicated with the Justice Department about the issue but that “everybody understands what I want it to look like.”

“I don’t think I’ve been subtle about it,” Harris said. “All I know is every day that goes by and it’s not rescheduled is another good day.”

The prohibitionist congressman said he isn’t sure if internal disagreements within DOJ are to blame for the delayed rescheduling action, but “the wheels grind a little slowly around here sometimes.”

“On this one, they should take about 20 years to grind,” he said.

In December, Harris separately said Trump doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally reschedule marijuana via executive order. But while lawmakers could overrule any administrative move to enact the reform, it would be a “heavy lift” in the Republican-controlled Congress, he acknowledged.

For what it’s worth, the congressman may be at risk of being unseated in November due to redistricting in his state.

The Maryland House of Delegates earlier this month approved a congressional redistricting proposal that would leave anti-cannabis Harris especially vulnerable in the next election, according to analysts, giving Democrats an advantage in the state’s first congressional district for the first time since the last map was drawn in 2011. It remains to be seen whether the Senate will follow the House’s lead to pass the legislation, however.

Meanwhile, another GOP lawmaker on the other side of the debate, Congressional Cannabis Caucus co-chair Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), recently told Marijuana Moment that while marijuana rescheduling might not be at the top of the agenda for the Justice Department or White House amid competing interests, he and bipartisan colleagues will be ready when “opportunity does present itself.”

Joyce separately said last month that he doesn’t think the attorney general would seek to undermine the president’s executive order to move marijuana to Schedule III despite any personal reservations she may have about the policy change.

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‘He was Created… He’s Not Organic’ — Rep. Tim Burchett Claims Barack Obama Was ‘Created by the Deep State’ — Alleges Jeffrey Epstein Operated Freely During Obama Years

Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett just went there.

In an explosive interview with Benny Johnson, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) didn’t hold back, tearing into Barack Obama’s sudden political rise and his administration’s alarming proximity to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

While the mainstream media continues to run cover for the Democrat elite, Burchett is asking the questions they refuse to touch: How did Jeffrey Epstein operate so freely while Obama was in the White House?

The conversation kicked off with breaking news regarding Kathryn Ruemmler, Obama’s former White House Counsel, who recently resigned from Goldman Sachs.

Ruemmler’s name has surfaced repeatedly in connection to Epstein, raising serious questions about the access the disgraced financier had to the highest levels of the Obama administration.

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Anna Paulina Luna Blows Up Disgusting RINO Lisa Murkowsky – Catches Her in an Outright Lie on Her Voting Rights Record

Senator Lisa Murkowski is as dishonest as she is two-faced, pro-choice, far-left, pro-choice senator from Alaska who runs as a Republican and votes with Democrats when it counts.

On Tuesday, Lisa Murkowski posted on X that she was against Democrats changing voter laws in 2021 and today she’s against Republicans changing voter laws in 2026.

Murkowski posted this on X:  “When Democrats attempted to advance sweeping election reform legislation in 2021, Republicans were unanimous in opposition because it would have federalized elections, something we have long opposed. Now, I’m seeing proposals such as the SAVE Act and MEGA that would effectively do just that. Once again, I do not support these efforts. Not only does the U.S. Constitution clearly provide states the authority to regulate the “times, places, and manner” of holding federal elections, but one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington, D.C., seldom work in places like Alaska.

Election Day is fast approaching. Imposing new federal requirements now, when states are deep into their preparations, would negatively impact election integrity by forcing election officials to scramble to adhere to new policies likely without the necessary resources. Ensuring public trust in our elections is at the core of our democracy, but federal overreach is not how we achieve this.

There’s only one thing wrong with Murkowsky’s statement. The Alaskan senator DID VOTE for the Democrat Party’s attempt to pass open elections and remove safeguards from our national elections! She was the ONLY Republican to do so! She just lied about that too!

Rep. Anna Paulina called out Murkowsky’s cute trick, saying “Just gonna leave this here Lisa.”

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Trump Pushes To End Senate ‘Blue Slips’ As GOP Confirms Judges At Record Pace

In just the past week, the Senate confirmed half a dozen of Trump’s judicial nominees, continuing a streak that’s left Democrats visibly frustrated.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, 33 judges have sailed through confirmation — already eclipsing his entire first-term total. By comparison, during Trump’s first year in office, the Senate confirmed 19 Article III judges, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. 

While Senate Republicans are moving fast and confirming judges at a blistering pace, there are mounting calls to scrap one of the Senate’s oldest customs — the “blue slip.” 

The century-old practice has long allowed home-state senators to weigh in on judicial nominations before they advance, but Democrats have been abusing it, turning it into a de facto veto on nominees they don’t like.

Trump has wanted the tradition gone because of the way Democrats have abused it.

Last year, he reportedly told Senate Republicans to “get rid of blue slips, because, as a Republican President, I am unable to put anybody in office having to do with U.S. attorneys or having to do with judges.”

Some Republicans sympathize with Trump’s view, seeing the blue slip as an outdated relic that slows confirmations.

But others see danger in dismantling another institutional guardrail.

“Nuking the blue slip would be a huge mistake,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told Fox News Digital, joining several colleagues warning that a short-term rules victory could backfire the next time Democrats control the Senate.

For them, the issue isn’t about speed — it’s about reciprocity.

They argue the GOP will one day need the same courtesy they’re now being pressured to destroy.

While that is certainly true, like the filibuster, it is likely to be nuked by Democrats the next time they’re in power if they feel this guardrail hampers their ability to get what they want. In fact, that’s exactly why the blue slip started to get abused in the first place. In 2017, Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley was forced to reshape the practice after Democrats used it as a veto on Trump’s judicial nominees during his first term. 

Grassley noted at the time that the blue slip began as a “courtesy to get insights on federal court nominees from home-state senators in an era when such information was hard to come by.” It was never, he argued, meant to give senators “veto power over the president’s judicial nominations.” Grassley also reminded Democrats that their predicament was self-inflicted. “Democratic senators’ recent calls for an ahistorical interpretation of the blue slip courtesy stem from a decision they made in 2013 to end the 60-vote filibuster for lower court nominees. This move, often referred to as the ‘nuclear option,’ effectively silenced half of the Senate during confirmation votes.

At the time, many Democratic senators argued it was unfair for a minority of senators to block nominees with majority support.” he wrote.

“Now that they are in the minority, Democrats are scrambling to cope with the fallout from their decision.”

That history lesson seems lost on much of Washington. For now, the tension within the GOP shows no signs of easing, and despite his earlier move, Grassley remains a proponent of blue slips in theory.

“Because it’s a question of 110 years, and everybody in the Senate wants to maintain the blue slip,” Grassley said.

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House passes GOP’s SAVE America Act

he House of Representatives on Wednesday night passed the new Republican-led Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which requires individuals to present proof of citizenship to register to vote and requires Americans to show ID when voting.

The House passed the legislation, which combined two bills, in a 218-213 vote. The bill saw little support from House Democrats, with Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar being the sole Democrat to join Republicans in passing the legislation. 

“It’s just common sense,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters of the legislation. “Americans need an ID to drive, to open a bank account, to buy cold medicine, to file government assistance. So why would voting be any different than that?”

The legislation will now head to the Senate for passage before it can be signed by President Donald Trump.

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