Justice Department charges 16 across multiple states with alleged illegal voting, election crimes
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced charges against 16 people in multiple states in connection with alleged illegal voting, voter registration and other election-related crimes, including cases involving noncitizens accused of casting ballots in federal elections. DOJ followed the announcement with a warning on social media, saying some of those charged allegedly voted in the 2022 and 2024 elections, and warning others against attempting to illegally participate in U.S. elections. “Let this be a warning to ANYONE trying to cheat and undermine our elections,” the DOJ wrote. “Spread the word!” According to DOJ, eight non-citizens residing in Texas were charged, while the other cases involved defendants in Idaho, Georgia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Michigan. SKID ROW FORGERIES, ILLEGAL VOTES AND A MAYORAL CANDIDATE: ELECTION FRAUD CASES PILE UP NATIONWIDE The allegations include noncitizens voting in federal elections, false claims of U.S. citizenship to register or vote, and false statements related to naturalization. During the investigations, the DOJ said authorities also uncovered alleged passport and identification fraud, wire fraud and firearm-related offenses. The cases are part of a broader Trump administration enforcement effort targeting alleged illegal voting and election-related crimes. WATCH: ILLEGAL ALIEN BUSTED IN BATTLEGROUND STATE AFTER ALLEGEDLY COMMITTING VOTER FRAUD In Georgia, DOJ said Analiea Milliscent Eccles, a Venezuelan national and DACA recipient, voted nine times between 2008 and 2024. She was charged with voting as a noncitizen and falsely claiming U.S. citizenship to vote. Avila Gomez, a Mexican national residing in Idaho, is accused of falsely claiming U.S. citizenship to register to vote and then voting in May 2022 and November 2024. The indictment also includes wire fraud, passport, identification-document and firearm-related charges. DOJ said Santana Coulibaly, a lawful permanent resident in New Jersey, registered to vote in 2016, voted in federal elections in 2018 and 2020 and submitted a provisional ballot in the 2024 presidential election. She also faces allegations involving statements made in her naturalization applications. Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the DOJ’s Fraud Division told Fox News that the Trump administration has now charged 50 non-citizens with illegal voting. ICE ARRESTS PERUVIAN NATIONAL ACCUSED OF ILLEGALLY VOTING IN 2024 ELECTION AS DHS CITES SIMILAR CASES “America’s elections are for Americans,” McDonald said. In a separate interview, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin said a broader investigation was underway. Mullin said officials have more than 1,620 open cases and have made 151 arrests. He also said authorities are looking into more than 300,000 suspected cases, a figure he said continues to grow. ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT ARRESTED IN INDIANA FOR ALLEGEDLY VOTING IN FEDERAL ELECTION: DHS Mullin asserted that “every single vote that was at the hands of an illegal [immigrant], canceled out a citizen that was legally registered and able to vote.” “One is too many, but the fact that we have 300,000 cases we’re looking into right now and 1,620 cases that are under investigation, and 151 arrests is unacceptable,” Mullin said. The Justice Department noted that the charges announced Friday are accusations and that all defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
NORAD F-16 intercepts aircraft that violated restricted airspace over Camp David with Trump present: officials
A NORAD F-16 fighter jet intercepted an aircraft that violated restricted airspace over the area of Camp David Saturday morning while President Donald Trump was there, according to officials. There is a permanent no-fly zone over Camp David in Maryland, with additional restrictions when the president is there. NORAD dispensed flares during the intercept to get the pilot’s attention and was able to safely escort the aircraft out of the area, the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) said in a release. NORAD F-16S INTERCEPT MULTIPLE AIRCRAFT VIOLATING TEMPORARY FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS OVER NEW JERSEY “Should NORAD aircraft intercept a general aviation aircraft, the pilot should immediately come up on frequency 121.5 or 243.0 and turn around to reverse course until receiving additional instructions on one of those frequencies,” the release said. NORAD F-16S INTERCEPT MULTIPLE AIRCRAFT VIOLATING FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS OVER NEW JERSEY Turmp left for Camp David Friday evening. “Pilots! @NORADCommand fighter aircraft intercepted an aircraft violating restricted airspace over Thurmont, MD, resulting in flares being deployed,” the First Air Force, part of NORAD, wrote on X Saturday. “Make sure to check NOTAMs before takeoff to ensure you have current information about TFRs in your area. Stay Safe, Fly Informed!” A plane was last intercepted over Camp David in June when Trump was staying there. That pilot was also safely escorted away.
Trump announces new ‘AI Force,’ vows to protect industry as AI czar announcement nears
President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he is creating an AI Force and plans to name an artificial intelligence czar as his administration pushes to accelerate the growth of AI in the U.S. Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social post that his administration would resist efforts to restrict the rapidly developing technology while using the existing criminal and civil justice systems to address potential wrongdoing. “We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry,” the post said. “Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!” GOP LAWMAKERS SMELL SOMETHING ELSE BEHIND BIG TECH’S AI DOOMSDAY WARNINGS: ‘SOMETHING ELSE GOING ON’ Trump added that the government would also be “looking for BAD” and said existing criminal and civil laws could be used to address problems with the technology. “For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term,” the president’s post continued. “To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI ‘Czar’ — Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!” Trump did not provide details about the structure, authority or membership of the proposed AI Force or identify potential candidates to serve as its czar. POWERFUL COLD WAR-ERA TOOL TRUMP COULD USE IN AN AI EMERGENCY IS SET TO EXPIRE IN DECEMBER Trump’s announcement comes as lawmakers grapple with whether and how to regulate the rapidly developing technology. Some Republicans have questioned calls for additional government oversight, while others have pushed for safeguards after AI industry leaders raised concerns about increasingly capable models. Earlier this week, Trump joined the debate by rejecting calls for additional government regulation of the industry, arguing that restrictions could hinder the U.S. in its competition with China. In Saturday’s post, Trump compared criticism of AI and data centers to several other political controversies and argued that opposition to data center construction had largely failed. RAND PAUL CLASHES WITH FELLOW REPUBLICAN OVER AI ‘KILL SWITCH’ AS SENATE GRAPPLES WITH ‘TERMINATOR’ FEARS Trump also predicted that AI could eventually account for as much as 25% of U.S. gross domestic product, though he did not cite a source for the estimate. “AI is the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet, but will be even larger and more impactful, possibly as much as 25% of our Country’s GDP,” he wrote. “We are leading China, and the rest of the World, and I intend to keep it that way!” In a separate Truth Social post, Trump asked people to choose within the post on what to call AI. “Many people think that the words “Artificial Intelligence” are inaccurate, and very ineloquent, relative to AI, or Artificial Intelligence. A far more elegant and accurate description of this new phenomena would be Superior Intelligence (SI) or, Extreme Intelligence (EI) or, Supreme Intelligence (SI),” he wrote. “This is a Poll, and I would appreciate everybody voting! Which is the best name for this ever growing “Revolution?” President DONALD J. TRUMP”
LA homelessness fraud cases expose deeper problem than stolen millions, oversight hawk warns
Federal charges alleging that millions of dollars were siphoned from Los Angeles homelessness programs are exposing what one lawmaker told Fox News Digital is a deeper failure in the way Washington funds and measures such programs. The latest cases out of Los Angeles fuel the concern of Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, that not only are corrupt providers stealing taxpayer money, but that the programs aren’t meeting their goal of getting people off the streets. “The only people really getting upward mobility in these programs, it would seem, is the people running the programs,” Cloud told Fox News Digital after a House Oversight hearing examining federally funded homelessness programs in Los Angeles, Seattle and elsewhere. “And that’s not really what the program’s supposed to be about.” LA REAL ESTATE VET COMES AT MAYOR BASS WITH RECEIPTS OVER DAMNING HOMELESSNESS REPORT: ‘SHE DOESN’T GET IT’ Federal prosecutors charged three defendants Wednesday in separate homelessness fraud cases involving alleged misuse of taxpayer funds, including money allegedly spent on a nightclub and adjacent bingo hall and bribes allegedly tied to fake housing referrals. Los Angeles’ homelessness agency paid one of the suspect nonprofits more than $75 million, according to federal prosecutors, leading Cloud to seek out the real culprits blazing the money trail. WHITE HOUSE PUSHES ‘WATERSHED’ FRAUD-FIGHTING REFORM IN CONGRESS AS VANCE CONVENES TASK FORCE Cloud said the fraud itself is only one piece of a broader problem and that the system appears to reward spending and program activity without adequately measuring lasting outcomes. Government too often judges success by “how much money we send out the door” instead of whether the spending is “actually helping people” or whether safeguards are in place to ensure taxpayer dollars are being used properly, Cloud said, describing the system as having been “incentivized for fraud.” “We’ve got to take those incentives out and get back to making sure that all these programs have incentives for oversight and that the dollars are managed well.” LETITIA JAMES FACES SCRUTINY AFTER NEW YORK CITY SPENDS $81,700 PER HOMELESS PERSON AMID SHELTER SCANDALS Some programs can keep a person “kind of in a cycle of dependency so that the program manager has job security, in a sense, and gets to live off the government dime,” Cloud said. “You [are seeing], as we begin to look into waste, fraud and abuse, why is it that these Democrat-led states are saying, ‘No, we don’t want the controls in place,’” he said, pointing to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ decision to step down from the LAHSA commission. Los Angeles is not alone, he said, citing what has been called the feds’ “Housing First” philosophy, generally prioritizing placing homeless in housing with less immediate regard for sobriety, mental health treatment or overall stabilizing services. WATCH: DR. OZ SAYS NEWSOM, OTHER BLUE STATES HAVE TURNED MEDICAID FRAUD INTO A ‘FEATURE’ Cloud did not use the term “housing first” during the interview, but he described the concern behind that critique, arguing that some homelessness programs define success in ways that leave people dependent on government rather than moving toward independence. Housing First is distinct from HUD’s “Continuum of Care” framework, which is the local funding and coordination structure through which nonprofit providers, state and local governments and other organizations receive federal homelessness money. WALZ ADMINISTRATION IGNORED FRAUD WARNINGS AS BILLIONS VANISHED, HOUSE OVERSIGHT REPORT ALLEGES In Los Angeles, LAHSA leads the local Continuum of Care, which HUD says received nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars over the previous five years. Under Secretary Scott Turner, HUD moved to suspend LAHSA this year, citing alleged failures involving financial management, internal controls and safeguards against conflicts of interest. LAHSA has challenged the federal action in court. “The ‘housing first’ experiment failed Americans by warehousing the vulnerable without results,” Turner said in June when HUD announced a $4.04 billion Continuum of Care funding opportunity. SIGN UP TO GET THE POLITICS NEWSLETTER “This ideology promised to end homelessness. Instead, billions of taxpayer dollars were spent while homelessness increased to record levels.” That funding will focus on organizations aiding treatment and recovery, while setting aside $1.3 billion for new projects prioritizing transitional housing and supportive services and adding measures intended to prevent fraud, waste and abuse.
Congressman Tom Barrett: ‘Being a socialist should disqualify him for people’s consideration in my district’
Control of Congress may very well run through Michigan’s seventh district. Anchored by Lansing, the state capital, it features a large blue city, surrounded by reddish suburbs, and deep red rural areas. It is consistently described as one of the closest swing districts in the country. Freshman Congressman Tom Barrett narrowly won the district in 2024, and is now locked in a tight race with William Lawrence, an activist and founder of the climate change-focused Sunrise Movement. Barrett is a 21-year Army veteran helicopter pilot, who served numerous deployments overseas, before returning to Michigan and spending nearly a decade in the state legislature. 7 REPUBLICANS REBEL AGAINST TRUMP, VOTE WITH DEMS TO REIN IN IRAN WAR POWERS The race has recently been roiled by a series of controversial social media posts. In some of them, Lawrence called the nuclear family “an isolating, violent way of organizing society” and praised campaigns to abolish the police. He now claims that his views have changed. Barrett argues that the newfound shift is about political expediency, not genuine conviction: “I think we got to take him at his word that this was his absolute true ideology and it wasn’t just this one statement that he made. He made repetitive statements against police, calling to not just defund but abolish the police altogether. He wanted to throw open the borders. He said if we’re a humane country, we’ve got to throw open the borders and redistribute all of the wealth. “He called the nuclear family a violent way to organize society, as you said. Countless other statements that he’s made and other things that he has done that show a pattern of behavior that this is not an isolated incident. “And obviously it’s clear to any neutral observer that he is doing this because he is running in a competitive district trying to get elected to Congress. He’s not running in Rashida Tlaib‘s district or AOC’s district where they’re far more sympathetic to these DSA-aligned socialist candidates. He’s running in the district that I live in where I’m raising my own nuclear family.” Barrett contends that the implementation of Lawrence’s border and immigration policies would pose a clear and present danger to the safety of Americans: “Well, the foremost obvious risk of these open border policies of my opponent is just starting with the public safety threat. So take out all of the other economic factors: just the physical threats to our communities are substantial. “There are criminal gang activities. We have cartels that were freely operating both ways across the border under the Biden administration. We had upwards of ten or even fifteen million illegal immigrants that came into our country completely unvetted.” Barrett also argues that the fentanyl crisis is directly tied to border and immigration policies as well. “The leading cause of death of Americans my age wasn’t cancer, wasn’t heart disease, it was fentanyl overdose deaths. People that I served with in the military that came home and survived combat and died of fentanyl overdose…because of drugs that were pouring across our border. “For the first time in my life, we have seen a significant decline in fentanyl overdose deaths, really because of the efforts…to secure our border, and my opponent, William Lawrence, would entirely reverse that, throw the border open again, abolish the police at the same time. “And we can only assume the outcome of that would be far more Americans dying of fentanyl deaths, as well as gang activity and other tragic circumstances that arise when you have an open border and no public safety to protect Americans.” William Lawrence is also a longtime member of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), but recently claims that he let his membership lapse. Barrett argues that Lawrence remains a fervent believer in socialist ideology, but is merely trying to downplay his true beliefs to win a competitive race: “Well, I think being a socialist should disqualify him for people’s consideration in my district. You look at the tenets of socialism and what they want to do and the endorsement of that. MICHIGAN DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE TRIES TO JUSTIFY DELETED POSTS THAT REVEAL FAR-LEFT BELIEFS “My opponent…cleverly claims that he let his membership lapse, I don’t know, two weeks before the primary election on the eve of him winning…to face off against me in one of the most competitive congressional races in the country that will arguably decide control of the House of Representatives. “So he doesn’t disavow the democratic socialists…He has embraced all of their positions, gathered all of their support, really benefited from the support of the democratic socialist movement. “And then when the time comes to defend those positions, he wants to say, well I let my membership lapse so you can’t hold me accountable for all their positions. But I didn’t leave under any actual disagreement with them. I’m simply leaving for political reasons because he’s so focused on trying to win this election in a desperate attempt to not be accountable to his own record, but to distract away from the devastating effects of socialism and what that would mean for our country if he were to be elected.” Perhaps the most controversial of Lawrence’s statements involved a post expressing frustration and outrage with politicians on climate policy. Lawrence, specifically targeting West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, wrote: ‘Hurry up and die so that we can get started.” Barrett believes that this type of rhetoric should put the voters of the seventh district on high alert: “Obviously that’s entirely inappropriate, something that should really raise the attention of every single reasonable American to say that that’s not how we go about our rhetoric here in our country. Politics is a full contact sport…but I’ve never in my political life, in any campaign, called on political figures to ‘F you and hurry up and die.’ “And that shows the radicalization…He was a founding member of the Green New Deal Alliance in Michigan, calling to ban gasoline-powered vehicles that
Lawyer says 250-foot Trump arch disrupts historic sightlines cherished by veterans seeking burial at Arlington
President Donald Trump’s proposed 250-foot arch at Memorial Circle in Washington, D.C.—which he said would be the largest in the world—is being opposed by three Vietnam veterans who say the project would block views between the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and Arlington House, some of the most well-known views in and around the city. Veterans Michael Lemmon, Shaun Byrnes, and Jon Gundersen—along with architectural historian Calder Loth—have been engaged in a months-long legal battle with the Trump administration over the “Great Triumphal Arch”. “Our plaintiffs are three Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian. All of them have a deep personal relationship with Arlington National Cemetery,” Nicolas Sansone, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group representing the plaintiffs, told Fox News Digital. “Two of our veteran plaintiffs hope to be buried there.” DEMS UNLOAD ON TRUMP’S LATEST DC UPDATE WITH ‘CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST’ BROADSIDE, LEGAL PUSH Trump has said the arch should be built near Arlington National Cemetery, which serves as the final resting place for more than 400,000 military service members. Critics of the project contend that the planned structure is disrespectful to the solemn character of the cemetery. In addition, the Trump administration acknowledged in a planning document that the project will have “adverse effects on historic properties”. “Such adverse effects cannot be fully avoided while retaining the location-dependent purpose of the undertaking,” the National Park Service wrote in the document. The nation’s capital was designed to keep historic landmarks from being obscured by other structures, Sansone said. LINCOLN MEMORIAL’S HIDDEN 15,000-SQUARE-FOOT UNDERCROFT OPENS TO THE PUBLIC AFTER A CENTURY UNDERGROUND “One of the sort of central design features is that the capital has been laid out in a very deliberate way to create this uninterrupted view between the Lincoln Memorial on the east side of the Potomac River and Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial, on the west side in Arlington National Cemetery,” he said. “So our plaintiffs… are really sort of concerned about the impact that this sort of enormous structure is going to have on that sort of historic symbolic view that each of them finds really meaningful,” he added. GOLDEN EAGLES, LIONS AND A WINGED LADY LIBERTY TOP TRUMP’S PROPOSED 250-FOOT DC TRIUMPHAL ARCH DESIGNS Earlier this month, the administration announced that excavation work for the project would begin within the next two weeks. The plaintiffs have asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order to keep the project from moving forward, saying it can’t be built without authorization from Congress. TRUMP SIGNS ACT CLEARING THE WAY FOR MEDAL OF HONOR MONUMENT ON NATIONAL MALL The Trump administration has cited a 1925 law that originally authorized a pair of 166-foot columns in Washington, D.C., that were never built. Administration officials argue that past congressional approval grandfathers the triumphal arch project and allows them to avoid authorization from Congress. “The idea is that really it’s just an institutional question of who gets to decide: Is it one person, the person sitting in the White House, or should it be a sort of democratic deliberative process to sort of figure out what these monuments should look like, where they should be situated, what they should commemorate, and the like,” Sansone said. “Congress’s authorization to have a particular project built at a particular time subject to a specific price cap by a now-disbanded commission can’t reasonably be relied on to authorize a totally different independent project that’s going to cost way more money centuries into the future,” he added.
Who is Dario Amodei, the Anthropic CEO pushing independent AI oversight?
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei believes artificial intelligence (AI) companies need the help of independent outside watchdogs to safeguard their developing technologies. But one of the organizations he believes could do the job, METR, is closely connected to the same AI safety community that has ties to Anthropic’s start. Many of its leading figures have ties to a movement called “effective altruism (EA)” — the belief that evidence and careful reasoning can help maximize the good that companies and people can do with their time and resources. METR describes itself as an AI safety testing laboratory. ANTHROPIC CEO LIKENS AI FIGHT WITH CHINA TO COLD WAR, SEEKS ‘DISARMAMENT NEGOTIATIONS’ “METR evaluates frontier AI models to help companies and wider society understand AI capabilities and what risks they pose,” its website reads. Although its website and public materials don’t make mention of effective altruism, its founders have used it as a framing for their work. Beth Barnes, METR’s founder and CEO, worked at OpenAI alongside Amodei as the company developed early versions of ChatGPT. At an Effective Altruism Global event, she laid out her vision for how to maintain AI safety. “Our overall plan is — it sort of seems like it would be good if it was someone’s job to look at models and decide if they’re going to kill us, think through the ways that that might happen, anticipate them, figure out what the early warnings would be, that sort of thing,” Barnes said. Similarly, Paul Christiano, who led the research around OpenAI’s efforts to ensure its models followed acceptable strategies for delivering requested results, later founded the first iteration of METR. He too has framed parts of his approach to AI safety as a form of effective altruism. “My suspicion is that it is more important for the ‘effective altruism’ movement to have a fundamentally good product and to generally have our act together than for it to grow more rapidly,” Christiano said in a 2014 article. Figures like Barnes and Christiano provide informal links to Anthropic — a company that received funding from effective altruism’s largest supporters when it emerged as a way of thinking among tech moguls. Barnes and Christiano also both worked on evaluations involving Anthropic models, providing safety checks for Anthropic’s flagship AI, Claude. Most notably, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, led Anthropic’s 2022 Series B financing round before his company collapsed and he was convicted in a multibillion-dollar fraud case. Before FTX’s downfall, Bankman-Fried was one of the highest-profile proponents of the Effective Altruism movement, publicly saying it shaped his approach to earning and giving money. ANTHROPIC’S MORAL COMPASS ARCHITECT SUGGESTED AI OVERCORRECTION COULD ADDRESS HISTORICAL INJUSTICES RUTHLESS EXCLUSIVE: PENTAGON CTO REVEALS REASONING FOR ANTHROPIC REMOVAL Similarly, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn led Anthropic’s 2021 Series A financing round. Tallinn has been one of the Effective Altruism movement’s most prominent supporters, speaking at Effective Altruism Global conferences, helping found the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the Future of Life Institute, and donating more than $1 million to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, an organization focused on AI safety and alignment research. Amodei isn’t calling for the rest of the industry’s leaders to submit to the thinking of METR, specifically. But in a recent letter, he used them as an example of the guidance he believes the industry needs. Amodei proposed a plan: accountability could come through “embedded evaluators” that would supervise AI development companies. “Each frontier AI company commits to giving ongoing, employee-like access to a team of embedded third-party evaluators (such as METR) whose role it is to verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents and help assess the alignment of not just completed AI models but training pipelines and processes. “Regardless of what commitments we make, the public deserves to know what is going on. We are still the ones choosing what to include and omit. Embedded evaluators will change this dynamic,” Amodei wrote. Few figures in the AI space are as well known for their efforts on AI safety as Amodei. Amodei originally studied biophysics, earning a Ph.D. from Princeton in 2011. He would go on to become a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford University School of Medicine. After his studies, Amodei worked for a series of technology companies like Baidu, Google Brain, and, in 2016, OpenAI — the company that developed ChatGPT .During his time at Baidu, Amodei worked to develop speech recognition through machine learning, a kind of pattern identification. And at Google, he began working on safety while helping develop the company’s neural-net research, computer models that loosely mimics brain function. At OpenAI, Amodei continued those themes, eventually becoming vice president of research as the company developed its ChatGPT 2 and ChatGPT 3 models. In its early stages, the GPTs were asked to fill in blanks to sentences like: “Today, I went to the ______ and bought some milk and eggs,” and “I knew it was going to rain, but I forgot to take my ______.” But just as the company began to discover that it could amplify the power of its models through larger and larger language models, Amodei left OpenAI in 2020. He believed the company wasn’t doing enough to install guardrails on what he saw as a budding reality of the technology he had long theorized about. He also didn’t know if he could trust the company to set aside its financial interests. “When you feel that you can’t trust someone, when you feel that their values are not what they say they are, when you feel that they’re not honest, when you feel that they’re not in it for the reasons that they say, when you see disturbing patterns of behavior, dishonesty, that makes it very hard to continue to work with a company, to continue to trust the company,” Amodei said in an interview with Bloomberg earlier this year. Since leaving OpenAI, Amodei helped start Anthropic, a company that has made AI safety a
Dem’s data center attack in critical Senate race hits snag when money trail surfaces: ‘Jekyll-and-Hyde’
FIRST ON FOX: Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is targeting Republican Sen. Jon Husted over Ohio’s growing data center industry in a new campaign ad that features a facility owned by Google — whose corporate PAC and lobbyists have contributed thousands of dollars to Brown’s campaigns. The Sept. 4 ad features an Ohioan blaming Husted for spearheading “the push to bring data centers to Ohio” and linking their expansion to “higher electric bills.” The facility featured in the ad, which opened in Lancaster in 2023, is owned by Google. Campaign finance records reviewed by Fox News Digital show Google’s corporate PAC contributed $20,000 to Brown over his political career. Brown also received thousands of dollars from individuals who lobby for Google, including two whose firms have worked on permitting, grid reliability and energy affordability issues. WATCH: GOP SENATOR UNLOADS ON ‘CREATURE OF WASHINGTON’ CHALLENGER IN CRITICAL SENATE SHOWDOWN “Apparently Google is terrible enough to put in a campaign attack ad, but perfectly acceptable when the political contributions are coming in,” Mehek Cooke, a GOP strategist and attorney in Ohio, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “That is the contradiction Brown needs to answer. If Google’s Lancaster investment is so bad for Ohio, why was Google political money acceptable to Sherrod Brown?” Among the contributors are Google lobbyist Lisa Kountoupes, who donated $3,500 in March, and Google lobbyist Michael D. Smith, who donated a total of $10,200 to Brown since 2017, according to Federal Election Commission records. The contributions were made to Friends of Sherrod Brown, Brown’s principal campaign committee. Kountoupes’s firm, Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid, was hired by Google in December to lobby on “issues related to permitting reform” tied to the company’s data center needs, Politico previously reported. Smith’s firm, Cornerstone Government Affairs, reported lobbying for Google on “issues related to permitting reform for grid reliability and energy affordability,” according to federal lobbying filings. FEC records show Brown also received a combined $6,000 over the past decade from three additional Google lobbyists. In a statement to Fox News Digital, Lauren Chou, a spokeswoman for Brown’s campaign, highlighted Brown’s opposition to Ohio’s data center expansion, saying Husted “led the charge,” but did not address Brown’s past campaign contributions. “Husted is a ‘chief reason’ Ohio has 226 data centers and is ‘the face of data centers’ in Ohio,” Chou wrote. “Ohioans shouldn’t be forced to subsidize these costs and Ohioans – not Jon Husted and his billionaire friends – should get to decide if data centers are built in their community.” Cooke accused Brown of acting like his “Google relationship in Washington does not count,” calling it “Jekyll-and-Hyde politics.” FOX NEWS POLL: ECONOMIC ANXIETY AND CANDIDATE CONCERNS DEFINE OHIO SENATE RACE “For nearly five decades, Brown has sold himself as the plaid-shirt, working-class populist,” she said. “He lost in 2024, and now he is back running the same playbook: say one thing to Ohioans while his Washington record tells a very different story.” Brown, who is seeking to return to the U.S. Senate in the high-stakes race against Husted, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 before losing his reelection bid in 2024 to Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio. But this isn’t the first time Brown’s comeback campaign has faced questions over conflicting positions. FOX NEWS POLL: DEMOCRATIC UNITY, REPUBLICAN CROSSOVERS SHAPE OHIO SENATE RACE In 2015, Brown celebrated the construction of an Amazon data center in central Ohio, saying in a press release the new facility “is great news for New Albany and central Ohio.” Despite his public praise, Brown has become an outspoken critic of Ohio’s growing number of data centers, a defining issue in Ohio politics ahead of the midterms. President Donald Trump has pushed to expand the facilities, warning that communities that block them would “end up being backwards and poor.” But Cooke said this about more than one local data center. “America is in a global race for AI, computing capacity and energy infrastructure,” she said. “China is not slowing down because American politicians discovered that attacking data centers makes a convenient campaign commercial.” In a statement to Fox News Digital, Husted campaign spokesperson Amy Natoce said that Brown failed Ohio families during his 32 years in Washington and is “once again resorting to lies instead of facing his abysmal record head-on. “ “The House overwhelmingly passed Sen. Husted’s bipartisan legislation requiring data center companies to pay for the power they use, but Senate Democrats blocked it,” Natoce said. “Sherrod Brown and his friends would rather play politics and stick Ohio families with higher electric bills than pass a commonsense solution. It’s despicable.”
Kirk family has powerful evidence — but Utah law could derail wrongful death case: experts
A Utah government immunity law could upend the Kirk family’s efforts to bring a wrongful death lawsuit against Utah Valley University over alleged security failures surrounding Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Attorneys for Kirk’s family filed a notice of intent to sue on Sept. 9, one day before the anniversary of his death. The filing alleges a series of security failures by the university, including declining additional police officers, failing to adequately address concerns from Kirk’s security team and not having an adequate security plan in place for his visit. But legal experts say the Kirks face an uphill legal battle because Utah law grants government entities — including their officers and employees — broad immunity from lawsuits arising from a lengthy list of circumstances, including the performance or failure to perform discretionary functions and claims involving assault, battery, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution and civil rights violations. “Unfortunately, Charlie Kirk’s family is going to have a very difficult time prevailing in a wrongful death case in Utah,” Tenielle Brown, a University of Utah law professor, told Fox News Digital. “And that’s because Utah’s government immunity statute is phrased in such a way that says even if the state and UVU were reckless, they retain immunity in cases that arise out of a battery, and that would include gunshot wounds.” JUDGE IN ACCUSED ASSASSIN TYLER ROBINSON’S CASE EXPLAINS WHY DEATH PENALTY REMAINS ON TABLE IN WRITTEN ORDER Kirk, 31, co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 and grew the conservative youth organization into a major force on high school and college campuses nationwide. He was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem on Sept. 10, 2025. Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Fox News Digital that wrongful death claims against the government are already difficult for plaintiffs to win because government entities generally enjoy broad immunity from lawsuits stemming from assaults or batteries committed by third parties. “I’ve handled lack of security cases, including lack of security cases against the government,” Rahmani told Fox News Digital. “They are tough because you are trying to hold the police or city, county or state responsible for someone else’s criminal actions.” But Rahmani suggested the Kirk family’s strongest evidence could be a message from UVU Police Chief Jeffrey Long acknowledging concerns about rooftop access to the Sorenson Center, a building located “pretty close” to where Kirk was scheduled to speak. The Sorenson Center sits directly west of the Losee Center, where prosecutors say Tyler Robinson fired the shot that killed Kirk. In response to the security concerns, Long messaged Kirk’s team, “I got you covered.” TYLER ROBINSON HEARING ENDS WITHOUT RULING AS EVIDENCE DISMANTLES CHARLIE KIRK CONSPIRACY CLAIMS “That means they’re gonna argue that they assume the responsibility to make sure Charlie Kirk was safe, and they failed to do so,” Rahmani said of the Kirk family. “In cases where you have the government taking on a duty, that tends to be better than simply arguing that the government has a duty to protect everyone because we know that murders happen all the time, and you can’t sue the government just because someone is killed.” But Brown said Utah law can shield government officials from lawsuits even when they fail to perform their job functions. “There have been a number of cases where the plaintiffs and the family of the victims have sued for either wrongful death or battery,” Brown told Fox News Digital. “And in some cases, the government did behave recklessly, and they could show carelessness and recklessness and the plaintiffs were not able to prevail because it arose out of a battery. And that’s unusual. Most states don’t have that broad of a statute.” Brown pointed to the case of Mika Scott, a 19-year-old Utah Valley University student who sued Utah County and the Utah County Sheriff’s Office after Shawn Leonard, a prisoner with a violent criminal record who had escaped from a work-release program, raped her in 2010. “They were supposed to screen inmates to make sure that they weren’t violent,” Brown told Fox News Digital. “And then when they went out in the community on the job sites, they were supposed to make sure that they were policing the boundaries so that these inmates couldn’t escape and in a really terrible situation.” “And she could have shown carelessness and maybe even recklessness, but because of the government immunity statute and because this claim arose out of a battery, she was not able to prevail against the state,” Brown continued. CHARLIE KIRK SUPPORTERS RETURN TO SITE OF ASSASSINATION 1 YEAR LATER: ‘WE ARE STILL STANDING’ The Utah Supreme Court addressed the statute’s language in its 2005 decision in Wagner v. Utah, which held that civil battery does not require an intent to cause physical or psychological injury. “The court said, it may not be prudent for the state to continue to retain immunity here,” Brown told Fox News Digital. ” And they’re kind of signaling to the legislature that the legislature should probably change the statute to allow for suits in cases like Charlie Kirk’s.” “But the state has not revised the statute and so it still says very clearly that you can’t sue the state if the claim arises out of a battery,” Brown continued. Brown said state workers who are not elected cannot be held accountable at the ballot box for failing to do their jobs. “The president of UVU, the campus police, those people are not elected, and so if you were to say sovereign immunity is all about letting people decide whether they’re state actors or careless at the ballot box, then you vote them out of office,” Brown said. “That doesn’t work,” Brown continued. “That argument doesn’t for the UVU president because nobody can vote them of office, nobody is having any political check on the campus police.” Astrid Tuminez, who served as the school’s president at the time of Kirk’s assassination, stepped down from her position in May 2026
Why the House let out early is a matter of debate after Johnson says chamber has ‘done its work’
It’s a matter of debate as to why House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sent the House home a day early this week. This is in addition to the House lopping off two additional weeks from its schedule later this month and into early October. “We’re going to modify the House schedule by a day. And let me explain to you why. The House has done its work,” Johnson said as House members fled Capitol Hill early Wednesday night. “House Republicans are going now back to our districts. We’re going to make the case to the American people on what we have delivered on their behalf.” The House isn’t scheduled to reconvene until Nov. 9, just after the midterms. But outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., believes there’s a different reason Johnson cut everyone loose early. The Kentucky Republican introduced eight articles of impeachment for Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. Because Massie’s push for impeachment is “privileged,” the House had 48 hours max to consider the articles. THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO MASSIE SAYING JOHNSON IS SENDING THE HOUSE HOME EARLY TO PREVENT HEGSETH IMPEACHMENT “I figured out why we canceled tomorrow,” Massie said. “Tomorrow would be the vote on impeaching Secretary of Defense Peter Bryan Hegseth. And it looks like that vote’s not going to happen.” A senior House Republican leadership source insisted to Fox last week that members would be on Capitol Hill “for a full week.” But, by Wednesday, the House had synced up with the Senate and passed the Russia sanctions bill. It OK’d legislation to protect consumers from high electricity and water bills associated with data centers, foisting the cost on tech companies. Yes, there were calls by bipartisan lawmakers that the House should remain in session to address intensifying concerns about AI. But the House was running out of floor traffic. Except for Massie’s measure to impeach Hegseth. REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: HOUSE CONTROL COULD HINGE ON WHETHER THE OLD POLITICAL RULES STILL APPLY Now you can determine for yourself why Johnson dismissed lawmakers a day early — to say nothing of the plan for the House to cut town two weeks sooner than originally planned. But you can imagine what Massie thought. “Exactly what I predicted,” Massie said on the House floor. “Why did he just cut another day off the calendar?” I found Massie off the floor after he concluded his speech. “Do you think they adjourned the House because you have the votes on Hegseth?” yours truly asked. “Chad, they cut two weeks off of the calendar to keep me from getting to 218 votes on the Epstein discharge petition. And then we came into this week, and I introduced eight articles of impeachment against Peter Hegseth, and they have 48 hours to vote on that,” Massie replied. “He cut off the day tomorrow to avoid the vote.” Here are the parliamentary mechanics. The House was compelled to consider Massie’s impeachment articles if it met this past Thursday. Otherwise, the resolution covering the eight impeachment articles would expire. The 48-hour window associated with such privileged resolutions disappears. Sure. Massie could bring them up when the House next meets in November. But that is seven weeks from now. But let’s say the House met on Thursday and was forced to bring up Massie’s impeachment articles. Republicans would likely have offered “a motion to table.” This is an effort to kill Massie’s gambit. Thus, the vote would not have been on impeaching Hegseth, but whether or not to set aside Massie’s plan. If the House voted to table Massie’s articles of impeachment, the gig is up. It’s done. The House never even considered the actual impeachment resolutions. The vote was one step removed from a straight, up/down vote on actually impeaching Hegseth. But let’s say the motion to table was to fail? That means the House immediately skips to the articles of impeachment. The possibility suddenly exists that Hegseth could face eight impeachment votes even through there’s been no investigation. No committee hearings. No “process.” Nowhere does it say in the Constitution that Congress is required to wrestle with the usual parliamentary volutions to impeach someone. If a simple majority in the House votes to impeach you, you’re impeached. Nuff said. REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: CONGRESS MEETS AI AS FEARS OF HUMAN EXTINCTION JOLT CAPITOL HILL This is why Republicans likely would have moved to table Massie’s impeachment articles. A vote to table inoculates members from having to take a challenging vote on the underlying issue. Keep in mind that there are a number of House Republicans who are aggravated with Hegseth and beside themselves about the war in Iran. This vote would have put them in an interesting position, especially since many if not all Democrats may have voted to impeach. So, I asked Massie the following about the motion to table. “That would have put (members) in a tough spot. Or, if they had to vote on that, would it have passed?” I asked. “A vote on a motion to table? He may not have survived that vote,” Massie declared. In other words, Massie believes the House could have defeated the motion to table. That would have triggered votes on actually impeaching Hegseth. And, from Massie’s standpoint, that’s why Johnson sent the House home. You might remember that there was a bipartisan effort last summer by Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., to go around Johnson and deposit a measure on the floor, forcing release of the Epstein files. Johnson let the House out early for summer break then. Later, Johnson kept the House out of session for most of the 43-day government shutdown as the special effort to bring action on the resolution loomed. The House voted to reopen the government in mid-November. And one of the first things the House did after that? Voted 427-1 to require a release of the files. The lone nay vote against releasing the files? Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La. Even though there aren’t votes until early November, Massie is still a member