Rand Paul floats possible 2028 run, pushes back on Trump-era protectionism
Libertarian-minded Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is leaving the door wide open to a possible 2028 White House run. “We’ll decide after 2026,” Paul said in an interview that posted this weekend. Paul ran for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, but dropped out after a distant fifth-place finish in Iowa’s Republican caucuses. He won re-election later that year in the Senate, and was re-elected again in 2022. The senator, who for years has been a leading voice inside the GOP for fiscal conservatism, civil liberties and a non-interventionist foreign policy for America, has lamented the declining number of Republicans embracing such an agenda in a party dominated by President Donald Trump. And he’s pledged to try and bring such an agenda back. EARLY MOVES IN 2028 WHITE HOUSE RACE ALREADY UNDERWAY “The most important thing to me isn’t necessarily me or what my role is, but that there is someone who’s advocating that international trade is good and makes us rich. That big is not bad,” Paul said in an interview on “Sunday Night with Chuck Todd.“ Paul argued that “the populists also want to break up big business. They want to break up Google because they’re liberal or Meta because it’s liberal. I’m not one of those people, but that is sort of the Trump-Vance populist wing.” VANCE AMPLIFIES HIS 2026 MESSAGE WHILE LANDING KEY 2028 BACKING Pointing to Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who is perceived as the GOP frontrunner in the race to succeed the term-limited Trump, Paul emphasized that “there needs to be a free-market wing of the Republican Party. And I want to be part of trying to ensure that still exists.” Paul, who is a vocal GOP critic of Trump’s unprecedented use of tariffs and who voted last year against the president’s massive domestic policy measure because it added to the national debt, has been leaving the door open to a potential 2028 run in interviews since last summer. “I think in the Republican Party, though, there needs to be someone representing that international trade is good for America, that we get richer and more prosperous in the world we trade,” he told Kentucky’s Courier Journal newspaper last July. He added that it was “too early to tell” if he would run again for the White House. SUCCEEDING TRUMP IN 2028: SIX REPUBLICANS TO KEEP YOUR EYES ON In a September interview with Spectrum News, he said, “We’ll see over time what happens,” regarding another presidential bid. And Paul, in a December interview on ABC’s “This Week,” said he didn’t see Vance as the hypothetical heir to Trump and the 2028 GOP frontrunner. While any decision from Paul regarding a 2028 White House run won’t come until after this year’s midterm elections, the senator did generate some buzz last year by making stops in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, three crucial early voting states in the Republican Party’s presidential nominating calendar. “He’s keeping options open and looking at the landscape,” a strategist in the senator’s political orbit who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, told Fox News Digital.
Google Gemini declares only GOP senators violate hate speech policy, zero Democrats, author claims
EXCLUSIVE: Google’s AI chatbot Gemini flagged several Republicans — but no Democrats — when asked to identify senators who have made statements that violate its hate speech policies, author Wynton Hall told Fox News Digital. It’s just one example of what the author believes is a deeply ingrained bias against conservatives found in artificial intelligence tools. Hall used the “deep research” function on Google’s Gemini Pro. Fox News Digital reviewed a screen recording of Hall’s prompt and findings. Google did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. One of the Republicans flagged by Gemini in Hall’s research, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, was listed for characterizing “transgender identity as a harmful cultural ‘influence’ and has used ‘woke’ as a derogatory slur against protected groups.” Another, Arkansas’ Sen. Tom Cotton, was cited for cosponsoring legislation “to exclude transgender students from sports.” MUSK, XAI TOUT NEWEST GROK UPDATE AS ONLY ‘NON-WOKE’ PLATFORM: ‘DOESN’T EQUIVOCATE’ The finding stood out against a backdrop of inflammatory rhetoric from some Democrats in recent years. In 2023, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., warned that then-candidate Donald Trump was “destructive to our democracy” and needed to be “eliminated.” However, he quickly apologized for his comments, claiming that it was a “poor choice of words.” Last year, Texas Democratic House candidate Rep. Jolanda Jones made a throat-slashing gesture while rejecting former first lady Michelle Obama’s famous mantra, “when they go low, we go high,” on CNN’s “Outfront.” “If you hit me in my face, I’m not going to punch you back in your face. I’m going to go across your neck,” Jones said while making a slashing motion across her neck. “We can go back-and-forth, fighting each other’s faces. You’ve got to hit hard enough where they won’t come back,” she added. But for Hall, Gemini’s seemingly partisan answer underscored the central argument of his new book, “Code Red: The Left, The Right, China and the Race to Control AI.” In it, he argues that AI systems marketed as neutral are increasingly shaped by the ideological assumptions of the people and institutions who create them, which are far from neutral. His book starts out with a clear example. Less than 10 weeks before the 2024 election, a series of viral videos appeared to expose a strange double standard in American homes. When users asked Amazon’s Alexa why they should vote for Kamala Harris, the device delivered a polished endorsement. When asked why they should vote for Donald Trump, Alexa declined, citing a policy of neutrality. “I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate,” Alexa said. Hall says the concern extends beyond a single Gemini output. “AI’s Silicon Valley architects lean left politically, and their lopsided political donations to Democrats underscore their ideological aims,” Hall told Fox News Digital. To Hall, episodes like this show how AI can shape political perceptions while maintaining the appearance of objectivity. “Through algorithm throttling and shadow bans, Big Tech centralized control over which voices soar and sink across social networks. Now AI has put Big Tech’s consolidating control on steroids,” he writes. WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE? He argues that this imbalance reflects the politics of the people building the systems. The billionaires driving the AI revolution, he says, invest their money and political energy where their values lie. As PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel once put it, “Silicon Valley is a one-party state.” The money appears to bear that out. According to Hall, 85% of political donations from employees at Apple, Meta, Amazon and Google go to Democrats. After Trump’s 2024 victory, major tech companies made the customary $1 million inauguration donations. But Hall argues those gestures did little to hide where Silicon Valley’s loyalties had long been. Aside from Elon Musk, he says, most of Big Tech’s leading figures remained firmly on the left. Hall points to Democratic fundraising in 2024 as evidence of Silicon Valley’s political influence, citing major support from figures including Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs. But Hall argues the bigger issue is not campaign money. It is the growing influence of AI systems that many people assume are neutral and objective. He warns that users often trust those answers too much, even when they may be biased. To Hall, this bias is reinforced by the relationship between tech companies and legacy media. He argues AI systems are trained on enormous amounts of content from outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic and Reuters, while conservative outlets are largely excluded. The result, he says, is a closed loop: AI absorbs the assumptions of legacy media and repackages them as objective truth. Hall argues conservatives must respond by demanding transparency in training data and ending taxpayer-funded contracts for vendors whose systems show political bias. “Whoever wins the AI fairness battle,” Hall concludes, “will shape the minds and political attitudes of future generations. The time to act is now.”
Trump wants Judge Boasberg removed from cases after series of rulings
President Donald Trump lambasted federal Judge James Boasberg in a Sunday night Truth Social post, accusing him of exhibiting bias against the GOP and his administration, and asserting that he should be yanked from working on any cases pertaining to them. In the post, the president described Boasberg as “a Wacky, Nasty, Crooked, and totally Out of Control Judge … who suffers from the highest level of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), and has been ‘after’ my people, and me, for years.” “In case after case, Boasberg has displayed open, flagrant, and extreme partisan bias and contempt against Republicans and the Trump Administration,” the president claimed. BOASBERG BLOCKS SUBPOENAS AGAINST FED CHAIR JEROME POWELL “To preserve the integrity of the Judiciary, he should be removed from all cases pertaining to us, and suffer serious disciplinary action, as should numerous other Corrupt Judges that, unfortunately, our Country has had to endure!” the president said in the post. “What Boasberg has done on the ‘Too Late’ Powell case, and many others, has little to do with the Law, and everything to do with Politics,” the president said, referring to Jerome Powell, the chair of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System. Boasberg is the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. SCOOP: WHITE HOUSE BACKS IMPEACHING ‘ROGUE’ JUDGES ACCUSED OF PARTISAN RULINGS “He is exactly what Judges should not be! Boasberg would do better to focus on Justice and Fairness, not his own, and the Democrats’, Political Agenda, which has become LEGENDARY!” Trump asserted. Fox News Digital reached out to Boasberg’s chambers but was told that the judge had no comment. The president has been a repeated and vociferous Boasberg critic. He launched the Sunday broadside against Boasberg after the judge’s move last week in a case regarding subpoenas that the government served on the Federal Reserve Board. “The case thus asks: Did prosecutors issue those subpoenas for a proper purpose? The Court finds that they did not. There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will,” the opinion declared. AMERICANS MAY HAVE TO PAY TO BRING BACK ALLEGED MEMBERS OF ‘FOREIGN TERRORIST CARTEL’ TO US “On the other side of the scale, the Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President. The Court must thus conclude that the asserted justifications for these subpoenas are mere pretexts. It will therefore grant the Board’s Motion to Quash,” the opinion noted.
Blue state proposal targets Trump-era ICE hires, banning them from joining local police forces
Rhode Island Democrats have introduced a bill that would bar police departments from hiring ICE agents brought on during President Donald Trump’s second term, escalating the state’s pushback against federal immigration enforcement. Immigration enforcement agents, including those within ICE, have come under fire in recent months from Democratic lawmakers and governors opposed to the tactics involved in Trump’s mass deportation agenda, which the president has said are necessary due to the open-border effects of the Biden era. In Rhode Island, companion bills in the House and Senate dubbed the ICE OUT Act would amend the Law Enforcement Officers’ Due Process Accountability and Transparency Act to add a section denoting the new restriction. CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS PROPOSE LEGISLATION PROHIBITING CAR RENTAL COMPANIES FROM SERVING ICE AGENTS “A law enforcement agency… shall not employ any individual who was hired as a sworn officer of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency on or after January 20, 2025,” the bill reads. The policy would take effect in October 2026 and would not affect any officers already hired out of ICE’s ranks. The bill’s top sponsor in the House, Democratic state Rep. Karen Alzate of Pawtucket, said during a recent hearing that the policy would help bolster public-police relationships in Rhode Island, according to the Providence Journal. ANTI-ICE LAW SET TO TAKE EFFECT IN MAINE AS GOVERNOR FACES INCREASED CRITICISM FOR ALLOWING IT AMID SENATE RUN An official with the Rhode Island Women’s Bar Association, which supports the bill, also told the paper that the alleged “relaxed hiring standards” of Trump-era DHS would not suffice in the Ocean State. Meanwhile, Rhode Island police officials warned in recent state legislative testimony on a broader group of Democratic-led police reform bills, which include the ICE OUT Act, that officer recruitment will take a hit, according to the Fall River Reporter. Another such bill from state Rep. Joshua Giraldo, D-Central Falls, would ban ICE from being within 200 feet of a polling place. During the session, Giraldo said that when conjecture about stationing federal immigration enforcement near polls arises, “particularly in the current climate; immigrant communities hear a message that is aimed at intimidation.” DHS officers on duty are already banned from the city proper in the state capital under a January executive order from Providence Mayor Brett Smiley that makes parking lots, schools, parks and government buildings restricted areas. “[Providence] has the responsibility to manage such property in a manner that ensures public trust, access and delivery of essential city services for all residents,” the mayor’s order read in part. Fox News Digital reached out to Gov. Dan McKee for indications as to whether he would sign the ICE OUT Act if it reaches his desk, and to DHS for comment.
US ‘locked and loaded’ to destroy Iran’s ‘crown jewel’ ‘if we want,’ Trump warns
President Donald Trump said Sunday the United States is “locked and loaded” to destroy Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub, but has chosen not to do so. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump referenced previous U.S. strikes on the island, which he described as the country’s “crown jewel,” leaving only the section that handles oil pipelines intact. “We can do that on five minutes’ notice. We have it all locked and loaded and ready to go if we want to do it,” he said. “We chose not to do it. I chose not to do it again. We’ll see what happens.” Trump suggested the threat is intended to pressure Iran into talks, saying Tehran wants to “negotiate badly” but is not yet ready to make the concessions the United States expects. TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST ENVOY REVEALS WHAT LED TO BREAKDOWN IN IRAN TALKS BEFORE OPERATION EPIC FURY “I don’t think they’re ready to do what they have to do. But I think they will be at some point,” he told reporters. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with CBS News on Sunday that his country has not asked for a ceasefire or negotiations in the now three-week conflict. “We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes,” Araghchi explained. “And this is what we have done so far, and we continue to do that until President Trump comes to the point that this is an illegal war with no victory.” TRUMP SAYS IT’S AN ‘HONOR’ TO KEEP STRAIT OF HORMUZ OPEN FOR CHINA AND OTHER COUNTRIES U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) struck Kharg Island on Friday in a large-scale precision attack as part of Operation Epic Fury. The strikes hit more than 90 military targets, including naval mine storage facilities and missile bunkers, while leaving the island’s oil infrastructure intact, according to CENTCOM. Axios reported that Trump has discussed the possibility of seizing Kharg outright, which one U.S. official reportedly said would amount to “an economic knockout of the regime” by effectively cutting off a key source of Iran’s oil revenue. IRAN WAR JEOPARDIZES TRUMP ECONOMIC BOOM BEFORE KEY MIDTERM ELECTIONS Seizing the island could require deploying U.S. troops and risk Iranian retaliatory strikes on oil infrastructure across the Gulf, especially in Saudi Arabia. “There are big risks. There are big rewards. The president isn’t there yet and we’re not saying he will be,” the official told Axios.
Dem candidate’s unearthed ‘winter Texan’ comment could haunt campaign
Bobby Pulido, a Latin Grammy winner and music star, once said he would pursue Mexican citizenship and described himself as a “winter Texan” for spending much of the year south of the U.S. border, drawing scrutiny for his time spent internationally as he pursues a seat in Congress. “It gets hot here, bro. Like real hot — like real hot. I’m a summer Mexican,” Pulido told interviewers in 2023. “It sounds better: winter Texan. It sounds better to say, ‘I’m a winter Texan.’” His comments, which Pulido says he made in jest, run counter to statements he made to NBC News earlier this month. TEXAS BORDER DISTRICT DEM CUELLAR BEATS BACK PRIMARY CHALLENGERS “I live in Texas. We’ve always lived in Texas. Since COVID, really — that’s just not true,” Pulido said, responding to accusations that he only sometimes lived in the district he is running to represent. Pulido is best known for his Tejano and Mexican–Spanish folk-style songs, such as “Desvelado” and “Se Murió de Amor,” and has received five nominations for a Latin Grammy Award. He won Best Tejano Album in 2022 and 2025. Pulido’s career still takes him south of the border on a regular basis, leading him to tell local newspapers in Mexico that he was considering dual citizenship in 2015. “I’m going to be Mexican because I want the same Mexican passport you have,” Pulido told El Norte, a Mexican outlet. His last five concerts have been in Mexico, according to his tour website. Pulido made headlines last fall when he announced a congressional bid in one of the country’s most competitive districts. Shortly afterward, he also drew scrutiny for a resurfaced history of posting links to explicit websites on his personal X account — as well as for a social media post of what appeared to be him urinating on President Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star. TRUMP’S PARDON OF HOUSE DEM CUELLAR BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT AS HIS BROTHER FACES INDICTMENT He has also received backlash over his past vulgar attacks against Trump, including posting the Spanish translation of “f— your mother.” “I’d like to give you the biggest ‘f— you” you piece of s—, a–hole, d— head, son of a b—-,” Pulido said to Trump in another post. Despite those controversies, Pulido recently captured the Democratic nomination to run in Texas’ 15th Congressional District — a seat currently held by Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas. De La Cruz, a two-term incumbent, needled Pulido over his time spent in Mexico through a post to X. She quipped that Pulido “only belongs at quinceañeras,” referring to the lavish, coming-of-age parties traditionally thrown for girls turning 15 in Latin cultures. “Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Pulido shot back. His campaign said Pulido asked local quinceañeras if he could attend them, drawing nearly 1,000 invites to parties in the district. Pulido’s ties to Mexico extend beyond his music career. A person familiar with Pulido’s background said his wife still lives in Mexico along with children from previous marriages. He also owns a house there and told interviewers in 2025 that he goes to Mexico for healthcare. “We live on the border. My wife and I have a house in Mexico. So, we travel there, and we spend time over there. And I’ve had a pretty unique perspective of experiencing healthcare over there and healthcare here,” Pulido said. TRUMP ENDORSES CUELLAR OPPONENT AFTER PARDONING DEM REP His campaign confirmed that Pulido does not have dual citizenship. “Bobby has one citizenship — American, and he’s proud of it. And, frankly, there’s nothing wrong with people having ties to family and heritage across borders,” Pulido’s spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Hawaii Dem reveals why she stayed seated during Trump’s viral SOTU moment about prioritizing Americans
Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, said she had no hesitations about remaining in her seat at the 2026 State of the Union when President Donald Trump challenged lawmakers to stand if they agreed the U.S. government should prioritize its citizens’ safety over that of illegal aliens. Like every single one of her Democratic colleagues, Tokuda, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, stayed put as Republicans stood for over a minute and a half, applauding in a show of support for the president’s statement. A voter approached Tokuda about the moment two weeks later, pressing her on why she didn’t stand. “The statement was: ‘The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.’ I noticed you did not stand,” a voter who identified herself as Arline said. TRUMP SHAMES DEMOCRATS IN VIRAL STATE OF THE UNION CHALLENGE ON MIGRANT CRIME: ‘FIRST DUTY’ “I’d like to know your reasoning why you did not stand.” After a brief smattering of applause from the audience, Tokuda thanked Arline for the question, noting that lawmakers don’t always get easy questions at town hall events. “But that decision was easy for me,” Tokuda said. She said her reaction was based on her interpretation of Trump’s challenge, stating that she believed the president had no intention of fielding the support for the statement. “If it had been a genuine question, a true question — not a ploy to be able to put on some commercial later on to say ‘look at all those Democrats who don’t believe in protecting Americans’ — I absolutely would have stood,” Tokuda said. DEMOCRAT SLAMMED FOR STAYING SEATED DURING TRUMP SPEECH HONORING VICTIMS’ FAMILIES Tokuda did not reference the moment in her immediate reactions to the State of the Union. Instead, on her website, she focused on Trump’s tariffs. “If you consider tariffs and the hundreds of billions of dollars that tariffs have taxed on everyday Americans … the hundreds of billions of dollars he’s collecting in tariffs have been a tax on everyday people,” Tokuda said, highlighting comments made to a local outlet. In the past, Tokuda has criticized Trump’s immigration crackdown efforts for hitting close to home. “We’re all one degree of separation from knowing somebody who is right now living in fear, worried that they could be picked up off the streets, or they could be deported, even if they have no grounds to,” Tokuda told the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last year. DEMOCRATS’ BIG MISFIRE AT STATE OF THE UNION HAS GOP STRATEGISTS SALIVATING: ‘HUGE MOMENT’ “There [are] too many looking over their shoulder and fearing for their lives right now.” Tokuda’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
String of attacks connected to naturalized citizens raises national security questions
The United States is left vulnerable even by its own naturalized U.S. citizens from hostile foreign lands, proving a free country can be exposed to security risks by the very freedoms the Constitution endows, an expert warned on Fox News. “That’s partially because of legal reasons: They can’t just monitor constitutionally protected free speech and opinions after they become a naturalized citizen, indefinitely, just to keep tabs on them,” Mauro Institute president Ryan Mauro told Fox News on Saturday. “They legally can’t do it, and they also don’t have the resources to do it.” Just this month alone, the U.S. has experienced four attacks with ties to naturalized citizenship. TULSI GABBARD WARNS OF ‘DIRECT THREAT’ FROM SUSPECTED TERRORISTS NOW LIVING IN UNITED STATES “There’s a bit of a jihad olympics going on, which is where you have the Sunni radicals like ISIS competing with the Shiite radicals of the Iranian regime because they need attention in order to survive and in order settle the argument of who has Allah’s blessing so that they can trigger the apocalypse,” Mauro said. “That’s what they both want to do,” Mauro said. NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT URGES DHS TO RAISE TERROR THREAT LEVEL, WARNS OF SLEEPER CELL RISKS IN US The process of citizenship revocation has been a hotly debated topic during the second Trump administration, and the spate of four terror attacks amid the latest Israel-U.S. war on Iran may increase scrutiny on the vetting process. “A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if the person becomes a member of, or affiliated with, the Communist party, other totalitarian party, or terrorist organization within five years of his or her naturalization,” the U.S. Grounds for Revocation of Naturalization reads. ODU GUNMAN WHO KILLED ROTC INSTRUCTOR HAD PRIOR ISIS CONVICTION, WAS RELEASED EARLY Mauro’s institute is not constrained by federal law in vetting potential terrorist ideology of naturalized citizens like the Justice Department is, he noted. “That’s why I personally have set up a civilian intelligence team that does do that type of thing,” Mauro said. “And why we’ve been so successful is because whereas the government has to be very careful not to launch investigations based off of just a mere suspicion or an unpopular opinion, civilians are free to comb through social media and just find people and report them.” U.S. freedoms even protect suspected terrorists, he added. “If they do come across someone who is expressing support for a terrorist organization, it still gets tricky,” he lamented. “You would think, oh, at that point you can revoke it and just get rid of the people because that would make sense, but the question is membership and affiliation. “I mean, there’ll be a lot of headaches just over those words. At what point does it go from, oh, I agree with them, versus actually being affiliated with them as like a unit?” Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department, the FBI and multiple agencies within the Department of Homeland Security for comment on this story. The State Department redirected us to the latter two federal departments.
Top California librarian questioned about missing $650K tied to Dolly Parton child literacy program
California state librarian Greg Lucas is facing scrutiny from lawmakers after roughly $650,000 tied to a statewide literacy program connected to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library could not be accounted for. The issue surfaced during a Thursday Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 1 on Education hearing, which examined how funds were distributed for California’s participation in the book-gifting program. Documents shared by the subcommittee as part of its hearing agenda claim that a nonprofit created to help administer the program reported spending roughly $1.2 million, while bank statements provided to Senate budget staff showed $555,000 in expenditures, leaving about $649,000 without supporting documentation. “I find this to be incredibly concerning,” said state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena, chair of the subcommittee. “There’s $650,000 that’s been unaccounted for in a program, a bipartisan effort that was intended to increase literacy among children. This is incredibly serious.” TRUMP ADMIN UNCOVERS ‘STAGGERING’ $8.6 BILLION IN SUSPECTED CALIFORNIA SMALL BUSINESS FRAUD State Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, also criticized the lack of documentation, saying the situation raised serious concerns about transparency and oversight. “That makes no sense,” Grove said during the hearing. “And that reeks of horrific no transparency and potential fraud.” The California state library did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. Lawmakers said Senate budget staff had requested financial records from the Strong Reader Partnership, the nonprofit created to help administer the program, multiple times, including receipts, invoices and bank statements to corroborate expenses. EX-NONPROFIT BOSS ALLEGEDLY SWIPED $1.2M MEANT FOR HOMELESS PROGRAMS TO FUND LAVISH LIFESTYLE, DA SAYS According to the subcommittee, those requests were made on several occasions between November 2025 and February 2026, but the documentation had not been provided. During the hearing, Lucas acknowledged that lawmakers had received bank statements accounting for roughly $555,000 in spending but disputed the claim that the funds were unaccounted for. “I don’t believe that’s correct,” he said. “I mean, we received a final report on the disposition of the money by the Strong Reader Partnership, which has expressed, and we’ve passed this on to you as well, the difficulty in obtaining some of this information because they no longer have any money or members of the partnership since the money was transferred to the Imagination Library.” He added that his agency has repeatedly asked the nonprofit for additional records and pledged to continue requesting the information. PROPOSED CALIFORNIA WEALTH TAX DRIVES BILLIONAIRE EXODUS TO FLORIDA REAL ESTATE, LOCALS CONFIRM A spokesperson for the state library told ABC10 in a statement: “The California State Library takes seriously its responsibility to ensure transparency and accountability in the taxpayer dollars entrusted to it. The State Library has provided the Legislature with all documentation in its possession and has repeatedly requested additional records from the Strong Reader partnership. The California State Library remains committed to cooperating fully with all legislative oversight and maintaining accountability in the administration of public funds.” Pérez gave Lucas seven days to produce the financial records, saying the subcommittee expected invoices and receipts detailing how the money was spent.
Latino voters are ‘no longer sleeping,’ Univision president warns GOP, Dems
Ahead of the 2026 midterms, Televisa Univision President Ignacio Meyer is calling for a revamping of political priorities with the key Latino voting bloc, “a sleeping giant that is no longer sleeping.” “Hispanic voters are largely sophisticated, are largely independent, and they want to be swayed by issues,” Meyer told Axios publisher Nicholas Johnston on Saturday at a SXSW event in Texas, urging both major political parties to “look at how they’re speaking to Hispanic voters.” “They do not want to be spoken to about partisan politics.” With the 2026 midterms prepped to set the table for the U.S., Congress and the White House, Meyer added the Latino vote is “largely up for grabs” and there is a “big disconnect” with it. DEMOCRATS HAD MAJOR ELECTION VICTORIES IN 2025, BUT WINS DON’T ERASE PARTY’S CRITICAL WEAKNESSES “The Hispanic population has been called the great sleeping giant,” he added. “It’s no secret that it’s no longer sleeping. They’re awake. They’re influential, the largest growing demographic in the United States across culture, sports, news, any one of the segments.” President Donald Trump‘s border security and legal immigration policies are a lot more popular with Latino voters than Democrats might have imagined. Trump won more than 48% of the vote in his sweeping 2024 presidential election, winning all of the key battleground states. Meyer pointed to the recent Texas primaries, saying addressing Hispanic voters in their language is key, urging spending early and often – a boon for his network. HEALTHCARE, ECONOMY AND THE ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL’: WELCOME TO THE MIDTERMS “Those that did their homework won,” he said, adding those that didn’t “lost, and they lost big.” “I’m not a huge expert on politics,” he admitted, trying to play both sides to keep the campaign funds flowing in the political battlegrounds, but “balance of power in both the House and the Senate is going to be swung by very few races this year.” “Out of all of those races, every single one has a high-density Hispanic population. Every single one of those voting blocs is up for grabs, and they want to be spoken to about the issues that are important to them.” HOUSE GOP CAMPAIGN CHAIR WANTS TRUMP ‘OUT THERE ON THE TRAIL’ IN MIDTERM BATTLE FOR MAJORITY Univision is the largest American Spanish-language television network, targeting Latino audiences, and is the way to speak to Hispanic voters “in their language,” which politicians do not do enough, according to Meyer. “Why would our civil servants not speak to us in the language and the culture that we deserve to be spoken to, and talk to us about the issues that we deserve to be spoken to?” he asked. “I think people would like to oversimplify what it’s like to be a U.S. Hispanic in the United States. When you come from another country, you have to fight for your place with different circumstances, different language.” MARK HALPERIN: TRUMP STRATEGY SUPER SESSION PLOTS MIDTERM SURVIVAL AS HISTORY STALKS GOP Latinos should not be a “check-the-box” voting bloc to reach. “Big growing population, check the box, spend X amount of money, spend it late – only in that window – and let it go: It’ll work,” he said of miscalculating political campaigns. “Well, there’s no magic.” “It takes commitment.” Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, who also spoke on the panel, said Democrats’ losses among Latino voters reflect a broader disconnect with working-class concerns. He argued the party must focus on economic issues such as lowering prices and improving household finances to regain support.