Uncensored Free Speech Platform

Embattled labor secretary has history of questionable spending that eluded Congress
This is performative politics again.

Public records spanning more than a decade suggest that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has long used funds derived from donors and taxpayers to cover luxury expenses, a now-relevant detail that did not come up during her confirmation hearing, the Washington Examiner has found. 

Chavez-DeRemer is facing allegations of improperly using the Labor Department to commit “travel fraud” by ordering her top staffers to “make up” official trips to select destinations so that she could spend time with friends and family on the public’s dime, according to a complaint reportedly filed with the DOL’s Office of Inspector General, the New York Post first reported. While the Labor Department has denied allegations of Chavez-DeRemer’s impropriety, her two top staffers have since been placed on leave pending an investigation, sources told NBC News.

A review of the congressional record shows senators did not raise concerns about luxury travel expenditures paid for by Chavez-DeRemer using her campaign and public accounts during her time in Congress and as mayor of a Portland suburb. Such payments have newfound relevance amid allegations that the labor secretary misused Labor Department funds for personal travel. 

Instead, senators on the health, education, labor, and pensions committee grilled Chavez-DeRemer on her approach to labor laws, her compliance with appropriations bills, how she would cooperate with the Department of Government Efficiency, and matters related to immigration and the minimum wage. She was ultimately confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 67 to 32, drawing bipartisan support and opposition following an aggressive push in her favor from the Teamsters due to her pro-union record.

“Whatever Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer does on her own time is her own problem to deal with,” Craig Holman, a veteran campaign finance lobbyist for Public Citizen, a left-of-center think tank, told the Washington Examiner. “But when she uses our money to pay for her luxury trips and other personal items, then it is our problem that the public must address. Chavez-DeRemer has a history of using the public dole for self-indulgence, and both the HELP-committee that selected her for the position, and Congress that confirmed her appointment, should have looked into her history and realized the same behavior would be forthcoming as Labor Secretary. Now that it is public record, Chavez-DeRemer should be removed from the office she never deserved in the first place.”

Mike …

Meet America’s most — and least — impactful voters
Trust is earned, not demanded.

Not all Americans’ votes are equal. And some have a way bigger impact than others.

Every four years, a small handful of swing states are bombarded with advertising, candidate visits and more when the country picks the next president, while a majority of other voters are mostly ignored. But even in the key swing states, some House contests, governor’s races and even legislative districts are far more competitive than others.

That’s why the nonpartisan nonprofit Power Moves is rolling out a new Voter Impact Index — the details of which were shared first with POLITICO — to help people take into account their voting power.

“We all learned in elementary school and middle school that every vote counts, and a vote is a vote,” said Heather Weston, one of the group’s co-founders. “But we kind of intuit that that's not true. So what we really wanted people to understand is how geography really is connected to the impact of your vote.”

The project utilizes all of America’s 41,000-plus zip codes to measure how much of an impact a voter can have, something the organization’s co-founders say is unique to their product.

To get the “Voter Impact” score, which ranges from 0-100, Power Moves has a complex methodology. But in short, it weighs the competitiveness of recent elections in the zip code for six public offices, ranging from the presidency to legislative races — and the higher the score, the more competitive elections an American has the opportunity to vote in.

It weights some of those offices as more important than others. For example, the competitiveness of the presidential election, Senate seat and House district in a given zip code each get 25 percent of the score, while governor’s races get 15 percent and state House and Senate seats only get five percent each.

No individual zip code got either a zero or a 100, based on their methodology. But voters in the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, zip code of 54703 came out on top with a score of 85. And most of Wyoming ties for the lowest score at 14. (Perhaps not coincidentally: The state with the highest statewide average is Wisconsin, and Wyoming is the lowest.)

With more than 40 million Americans moving each year — and some millions of college students moving to new states — the tool is aimed at helping people really understand where their vote can go the furthest.

People move for a variety of factors, and Power Moves emphasized that the tool is not supposed to be the only factor people weigh when deciding their new home. But as home-buying and renting tools like Zillow already factor things like walkability and school systems into their own algorithms, they hope voting can crack that list of priorities. Plus, because of the wonky ways district lines are drawn, apartments and houses that are just minutes …

Without a Border ‘Invasion,’ Texas G.O.P. Turns to an Old Enemy, Islam
Every delay has consequences.

Archive link:
Republican officials and candidates in Texas have shifted their rhetorical attack lines from the border fears that dominated recent elections to the state’s growing Muslim population, with language that echoes the aftermath of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The attacks on Islam are a notable shift for a party that has spent the last several election cycles focused on the Mexican border. Warnings of migrant “caravans” and a criminal invasion have lost their sting with a Republican in the White House and new policies that have halted most border crossings.
That has left the G.O.P. looking for ways to address its voters’ concerns over the number of immigrants who came into the country during the Biden administration while avoiding the increasingly unpopular policy of mass deportations under Mr. Trump.
In Texas, concern about Islamic radicalism has recently been polling among the top issues for Republican primary voters, according to Republican campaign consultants. The state party put a resolution on its primary ballot asking whether Texas should “prohibit Sharia law,” a term that refers to Islamic religious rules but has long served as a catchall to signify expansions of Muslim culture and religion that opponents say threaten American values. Mr. Abbott has promised a “total ban” through legislation next year, though he has not said what that would mean in practice.
“Any event you go to, people ask about it. It’s like the border used to be,” said Dave Carney, the top political strategist for Mr. Abbott. “‘What are you doing about Shariah law? What are you doing about the Muslims taking over the state?’”
The resurgence of anti-Muslim sentiment can be traced, in part, to the suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth. Though Muslims make up around 2 percent of the Texas population, according to the Pew Research Center, the number of Muslim residents in those suburbs has grown significantly in recent decades. Mosques now dot a landscape once dominated by megachurches.
“It’s the hottest topic,” Brooks McKenzie, a Republican activist in Tarrant County, said, while waiting to hear from the candidate, Lt. Col. Larry Brock, an Air Force veteran who served two years in prison for entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Mr. Brock spoke for several minutes about Islam.
“We should ban the burqa, the hijab, the abaya, the niqab,” he said, referring to different head and body coverings worn by some Muslim women. “No to halal meat. No to celebrating Ramadan. No, no, no.”
Conclusion
“I don’t hate people — I have the love of Christ in my heart,” Mr. Forrester, who is running for the State House, said. “The problem that I see,” he added, “is we have that diversity without assimilation.”
But some Muslim Texans say the attacks have made them less likely to seek connections outside of their community and have soured them on the outreach efforts that many hoped would build understanding and tolerance.
“The model for us after 9/11 was go out and get to know each other, and every mosque had interfaith, every organization had an interfaith relationship,” …

Grassley: Biden DOJ bypassed constitutional safeguards by subpoenaing senator phone records
Equal justice apparently isn't equal anymore.

Phone records of sitting members of Congress were secretly obtained in a way that blocked lawmakers from invoking constitutional protections, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, alleged Tuesday during a hearing.
Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who is leading the hearing, signaled that their panel planned to grill hearing witnesses, who included executives from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, about the disclosure of the phone data.
Grassley noted in his opening remarks that the three companies received a total of 10 subpoenas for 20 current or former Republican Congress members related to Arctic Frost, the FBI probe that led to Smith bringing charges against President Donald Trump over the 2020 election.
JACK SMITH DENIES POLITICS PLAYED ANY ROLE IN TRUMP PROSECUTIONS AT HOUSE HEARING
Blackburn, in her opening remarks, called the disclosures an "invasion of privacy and violation of our constitutional rights." Blackburn pointed to the speech or debate clause, which gives Congress members an added layer of protection from prosecution.
"It’s critical that each of these carriers go on the record about the decisions they made and why — or why not — they enabled with Jack Smith’s weaponization of government," Blackburn said.
The hearing will offer the first public opportunity for Republican committee members, several of whom had a narrow set of their phone data turned over to Smith's team, to seek answers from each of the phone carriers on how they handled the subpoenas upon receiving them.
Grassley noted that a federal statute said phone carriers cannot be barred from giving notice to a Senate office about a subpoena unless the member is the target of an investigation. He also said Verizon, in particular, was under a contract that required it to notify the Senate Sergeant at Arms about subpoenas related to senators.
The subpoenas were accompanied by court-authorized gag orders, which ordered the phone companies not to alert the senators to the records request. Blackburn, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, are among those on the committee who had their records subpoenaed as part of Arctic Frost.
JACK SMITH TO TESTIFY NEXT WEEK AT A PUBLIC HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE HEARING
While the phone companies come under scrutiny, Grassley also blamed Smith. Smith received the greenlight from DOJ's Public Integrity Section to seek the senators' records as part of his investigation, according to emails, but an official from the section also floated that the subpoenas could expose the DOJ to constitutional …

Trump ‘stuck’ with ‘negative’ approval on the economy: Guy Benson
Transparency shouldn't be controversial.

Washington Examiner senior columnist Guy Benson said Republicans have to “turn around” approval on the economy ahead of the midterm elections. 

Benson’s comments on Fox News’s Special Report with Bret Baier were in response to President Donald Trump’s interview with NBC News, where Trump revealed he will be on the road ahead of the 2026 elections “pitching” the administration’s economic developments. 

“The question — and this is the big one that’s been hanging over this whole issue — will people truly feel the benefits, if the positive developments in fact come,” he said. “Will they feel them and internalize them enough, let’s say by the summer, to move the needle on approval?” 

Benson highlighted that polls have shown Americans assign economic outcomes, “fairly or unfairly,” to the sitting president. Because of this, he argued, the Trump administration needs to improve messaging on the economy so the midterm elections are “competitive.” 

“Right now, the president — still pretty stuck in negative territory and sentiment on that overall issue set,” he said. “They definitely need to turn that around if the midterms are gonna be competitive.”

Voters said Trump is spending “too much” time on immigration and not enough time on the economy, with 7 in 10 people saying the economy is in “bad shape,” according to a January Fox News poll. 

He said the White House, Republicans, and economists have indicated that there are “green chutes economically” coming soon. 

DONALD TRUMP’S COVETED ENDORSEMENT ISN’T CLEARING THE FIELD IN GOP PRIMARIES

“[Trump] is owning [the economy],” Benson said. “He’s not saying, ‘Oh look at all this mess I inherited,’ which, of course, he did.”

“But he’s saying, ‘This is my economy now,’ and he agrees with voters on that point,” he added.

Maryland Gov Wes Moore in hot seat after report questions claim about grandfather and KKK
This is why trust is collapsing.

Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, widely believed to have White House ambitions, is facing questions over the accuracy of a story about his family’s background involving being forced to flee the state of South Carolina due to threats from the Ku Klux Klan. 
"I am literally the grandson of someone who was run out of this country by the Ku Klux Klan, right?" Moore told Time Magazine in 2023 in a conversation about how he "reconciles Patriotism" with the country’s "racist past."
"Right? So the fact that I can be both this grandson of someone who was run outta this country by the Ku Klux Klan, and also be the first Black governor in the history of the state of Maryland."
Moore has frequently referenced his grandfather, James Thomas, as the figure in this story, including during a 2020 appearance on the Yang Speaks podcast titled "Wes Moore on how the KKK ran his family into exile," where he detailed how his grandfather was a minister in Winnsboro, South Carolina, who fled to Jamaica after being threatened by the Klan.
ANTI-ICE LEGISLATION HEADS TO DESK OF RISING STAR DEMOCRAT GOVERNOR, TESTING HIS PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS
However, a Washington Free Beacon report last week cast doubt on the specifics of that story.
The report claims that historical records from the Protestant Episcopal Church and contemporary newspaper reports indicate that Thomas’s departure was not a secret, middle-of-the-night escape, but an orderly and public professional transfer after he was appointed to replace a deceased pastor in Jamaica.
Additionally, archival data and the diocese's own historical accounts suggest that the White community in Pineville, S.C., actually held Thomas’s church in high regard for its medical services, with no mention of racial animus or Klan interference during his tenure.
WES MOORE WARNS NOEM 'FEDERAL OCCUPATION' OF NEW ICE COMPOUND NOW UNDER STATE INVESTIGATION
Fox News Digital has not independently verified the claims in the report and Moore's office pushed back in a statement to Fox News.
"We’re not going to litigate a family’s century-old oral history with a partisan outlet," Moore spokesperson Ammar Moussa told Fox News Digital, in reference to the Washington Free Beacon report. "The broader reality is not in dispute: intimidation and racial terror were pervasive in the Jim Crow South, and it rarely came with neat documentation. Even Bishop William Alexander Guerry — whom they cite to suggest there was no hostility — was later murdered amid intense backlash tied to his racial equality work. The Governor is focused on doing the job Marylanders …

The Epstein files are creating headaches for New Hampshire’s most powerful political dynasties
What's the endgame here?

A New Hampshire magnate with ties to power players in both parties has appeared in successive batches of the Epstein files, roiling politics in his home state and threatening its two most influential political dynasties.

Documents recently released by the Department of Justice suggest that entrepreneur Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway and other devices, kept in contact with Jeffrey Epstein long after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008, with emails indicating he visited the disgraced financier’s Caribbean island in 2013. Kamen has not been accused of wrongdoing and did not respond to requests for comment through his companies Monday.

The recently released files indicate a closer relationship between the two than was previously known. The disclosures have prompted Kamen’s organizations to launch investigations into their ties. And the situation has ratcheted up scrutiny of the New Hampshire politicians who have worked with him, received campaign contributions from him or helped his organizations secure tens of millions in federal funds.

That includes members of the Shaheen and Sununu families, the best-known and most powerful clans in the state’s Democratic and Republican parties. Both have scions running for Congress this year: House candidate Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and former Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.), the son of a former governor, who is seeking to return to the Senate.

They now face Epstein-fueled attacks from their lower-polling rivals.

“Anywhere Epstein pops up these days, it’ll become a campaign issue,” said Ryan Williams, a GOP strategist who has worked with Sununu and his father. “And there are certainly politicians who have worked with Kamen in New Hampshire, taken his money and associated with him. And those who did will have to answer for it.”

Kamen is a New Hampshire institution and local celebrity — often described as a quirky one — in a state that has few big-name figures but exerts a powerful hold on the presidential nominating process. The pioneering inventor and entrepreneur who developed the first portable insulin pump and a wheelchair that can climb stairs, Kamen is also widely credited for driving the transformation of Manchester’s old mill district into a technological and health care hub. He was lauded as a “hero” for helping secure 91,000 pounds of protective equipment for first responders and health care workers at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when such resources were scarce.

Kamen has donated roughly $90,000 to federal candidates and campaign committees on both sides of the aisle over the past four decades, according to federal campaign finance filings. That includes over $7,000 apiece to Sununu, Sen. Shaheen and Kelly …

Why Wisconsin’s voters are America's most valuable
Confidence requires clarity.

Not all Americans’ votes are equal. And some have a way bigger impact than others.

Every four years, a small handful of swing states are bombarded with advertising, candidate visits and more when the country picks the next president, while a majority of other voters are mostly ignored. But even in the key swing states, some House contests, governor’s races and even legislative districts are far more competitive than others.

That’s why the nonpartisan nonprofit Power Moves is rolling out a new Voter Impact Index — the details of which were shared first with POLITICO — to help people take into account their voting power.

“We all learned in elementary school and middle school that every vote counts, and a vote is a vote,” said Heather Weston, one of the group’s co-founders. “But we kind of intuit that that's not true. So what we really wanted people to understand is how geography really is connected to the impact of your vote.”

The project utilizes all of America’s 41,000-plus zip codes to measure how much of an impact a voter can have, something the organization’s co-founders say is unique to their product.

To get the “Voter Impact” score, which ranges from 0-100, Power Moves has a complex methodology. But in short, it weighs the competitiveness of recent elections in the zip code for six public offices, ranging from the presidency to legislative races — and the higher the score, the more competitive elections an American has the opportunity to vote in.

It weights some of those offices as more important than others. For example, the competitiveness of the presidential election, Senate seat and House district in a given zip code each get 25 percent of the score, while governor’s races get 15 percent and state House and Senate seats only get five percent each.

No individual zip code got either a zero or a 100, based on their methodology. But voters in the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, zip code of 54703 came out on top with a score of 85. And most of Wyoming ties for the lowest score at 14. (Perhaps not coincidentally: The state with the highest statewide average is Wisconsin, and Wyoming is the lowest.)

With more than 40 million Americans moving each year — and some millions of college students moving to new states — the tool is aimed at helping people really understand where their vote can go the furthest.

People move for a variety of factors, and Power Moves emphasized that the tool is not supposed to be the only factor people weigh when deciding their new home. But as home-buying and renting tools like Zillow already factor things like walkability and school systems into their own algorithms, they hope voting can crack that list of priorities. Plus, because of the wonky ways district lines are drawn, apartments and houses that are just minutes …

Maxine Waters becomes latest Democrat to face generations-younger primary challenger
This feels like a quiet policy shift.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) is the latest Democrat to face a reckoning over her age, after a generations-younger primary challenger entered the race.

Waters, 87, is facing a challenge from nonprofit executive Myla Rahman, 53, after 35 years in Congress and 50 years as an elected official. A star of the resistance during President Donald Trump’s first term, known for her inflammatory rhetoric against the president and his administration, Waters has largely taken a back seat from the limelight in Trump’s second term. Part of the reason is a wave of dissatisfaction with the advanced age of members of Congress, something Rahman is looking to exploit.

“The community has said that they’d like new energy, a new perspective,” Rahman told Politico in an interview. “And the reality is, the average age is 36 years old in the district. The average person is a renter in the district. So we’ve got a lot of issues that are relatable to my life experience.”

The new political upstart is painting herself as ideologically aligned with Waters, but “more energetic, younger, more relatable in terms of the experiences that people face in the district.”

Rahman faces a daunting challenge in breaking Waters’s hold on the district. Since first entering her current office in 1990, Waters has handily won every election with nearly 70-80% of the vote, winning her most recent election with three-quarters of the vote at age 86.

The new challenger acknowledged the difficulty of breaking Waters’s hold on power, speculating that voters’ attachment to her could be a problem.

“I’m sure I’ll get a lot of calls. I’m waiting for ‘how dare you? The audacity of you, who do you think you are?” Rahman said. “And what I can say is that there’s a choice, and this is a democracy. That’s why we have elections, and the voters can decide.”

Despite her overall less active role, Waters remains influential as the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.

Rahman was previously noted as an elected city clerk, though she had to resign her first day on the job after receiving a second breast cancer diagnosis. She’s looking to channel this experience into a focus on healthcare.

WHITE HOUSE AND DHS DISMISS ‘LUNATIC’ MAXINE WATERS’S CRITICISMS

The congressional hopeful filed the FEC paperwork to run on Feb. 3, but only announced it to Politico on Tuesday.

Though much less active in Trump’s second term, Waters has still won her fair share of headlines through verbal sparring with the …

Unearthed docs undercut Dem warnings of harm from Trump executive order blocking trans surgery for minors
Who benefits from this decision?

FIRST ON FOX: Conservative lawfare group America First Legal (AFL) has been filing records requests after 15 Democrat-led states and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, D, sued to block President Trump's executive order banning sex changes for minors, in an attempt to find out whether the harm being alleged in their lawsuit is actually happening. 
Fox News Digital reported last month on how AFL's more than a dozen records requests to state departments of health were either ignored, or did not include any responsive records documenting the harms the Democratic states' lawsuit warns stem from the president's executive order.
One of the states that AFL said ignored its records requests, Connecticut, did subsequently return to them with responsive records. However, according to AFL, the documents provided by Connecticut's health department continue to lend evidence that the harm being cited in Democrats' multi-state lawsuit is nonexistent.
"I don't see any impact to HSS funding or federal grants related to this executive order," said an email that was among what appeared to be three records that the Connecticut Department of Public Health provided to AFL, plus an additional final page that was entirely redacted.
CALIFORNIA AG SUES HOSPITAL THAT ENDED GENDER TRANSITION TREATMENT FOR MINORS TO COMPLY WITH TRUMP POLICIES
The email came from Elizabeth Frugale, a Section Chief for Health Statistics and Surveillance at the Connecticut public health department, in response to a question from a grants management and budget supervisor, Aaron Knight, inquiring whether President Trump's executive order on transgender surgeries "adversely impacts any of your Federal grants." 
Frugale's response stands in contrast to claims in the lawsuit against the president's executive order on sex changes, which argued the directive had "immediately" jeopardized federal funding and disrupted public health systems. 
"If Connecticut was not financially impacted by the Executive Order, it should have declined to join a lawsuit," said Dan Epstein, Vice President of America First Legal. "To challenge, without cause, Executive Order 14187’s assurance that taxpayer dollars are not used for chemical and surgical mutilation of children, forces the courts to adjudicate political grievances, not actual disputes. AFL will continue to expose unfounded attempts to clog the federal courts as part of state lawfare against the Administration."
MAJOR CONNECTICUT HOSPITALS BEGIN 'WINDING DOWN' YOUTH GENDER PROGRAMS CITING 'EVOLVING LANDSCAPE'
The third record given in response to AFL's records request was …