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Far-right Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback lost a prominent campaign volunteer in spectacular fashion after word got back to her that he had called her an obscure internet slur.

According to the Miami New Times, "Gianna Tagliarini had returned home after a day of campaigning for far-right Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback at the Hillsborough County Fair when her phone started dinging with texts from him. 'Come here,' Fishback wrote in a message that arrived at 10:34 p.m., a screenshot of which was shared with New Times. Tagliarini, a 30-year-old single mom who held an unpaid volunteer position as the campaign’s Hillsborough County chair, asked where, then began calling other members of the campaign."

A conservative writer at The Bulwark unloaded on House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday, casting his entire tenure as a study in surrender and branding it with one cutting word: "impotence."

In a piece titled "Mike Johnson, Lollygagger of the House," reporter Joe Perticone argued that the Louisiana Republican stands apart from his recent predecessors because he has made handing power to the White House his defining act.

The internet erupted on Thursday after a new report revealed President Donald Trump's plan to create a billion-dollar fund to pay his allies.

ABC News reported that Trump is considering dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the release of his tax returns during his first administration, in exchange for creating a $1.7 billion fund to pay his allies who claim they were wrongfully prosecuted by the Biden administration. The report indicates that Trump himself won't qualify for payments under the initiative, but entities tied to the president can be paid.

A Republican gubernatorial candidate in Colorado claims that thousands of members of the Venezuelan transnational criminal gang Tren de Aragua are operating in the state — but dozens of law enforcement officials beg to differ.

According to 9 News, state Rep. Scott Bottoms "said Colorado is under siege from a 'foreign criminal army' of 45,000 to 50,000 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) operating in Colorado." The problem is, that would be about ten times as many Tren de Aragua members as exist in the entire world, according to the most liberal estimates of the National Counterterrorism Center.

FBI Director Kash Patel snorkeled at the USS Arizona Memorial in August without public disclosure, according to government emails obtained by the Associated Press.

The memorial, which entombs over 900 American sailors and Marines killed in the 1941 attack, is nearly entirely off-limits to the public.

A Texas law that would allow state and local police to arrest people suspected of having crossed the southern border illegally is once again halted, a day before it was supposed to take effect.

Senate Bill 4, passed in 2023, makes the illegal crossings of the Mexico-Texas border a state crime. It also requires state magistrate judges to order those arrested for illegal entry to leave the country for Mexico if they are convicted, or in lieu of prosecution.

Democrats are fretting as several members of their caucus were absent for a crucial vote on President Donald Trump's war powers in Iran, Axios reported on Thursday.

"Any lawmaker could have tipped the outcome — and half a dozen were absent," noted the report, with Democrats privately raging and one member telling Axios, "People cannot miss votes."

President Donald Trump is expected to drop his massive, $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, but not for reasons some might expect, according to a new report.

ABC News reported on Thursday that Trump plans to drop the lawsuit in exchange for creating a $1.7 billion fund that he can use to pay allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration. Those allies include recently pardoned Jan. 6 rioters like the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers, as well as lawmakers who were investigated by Biden's Department of Justice.

Former U.S. Special Envoy Jonathan Winer warned that President Donald Trump may deploy Presidential Emergency Action Documents, or PEADs — secret directives never reviewed by Congress or courts — to interfere with the 2026 midterm elections.

PEADs were designed to bypass Congressional authorization during national emergencies, authorizing actions such as seizing private property or arresting citizens, with legal challenges arising only after implementation.

A former lawmaker from a red state warned that something ominous is hiding behind the latest "five-alarm fire" from the Supreme Court, according to a new report.

G.K. Butterfield Jr., a former Democratic representative from North Carolina, told The Atlantic recently that the Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais is a "five-alarm fire" for voting rights. The ruling allowed states to gerrymander their maps for partisan purposes, even if there is a racially discriminatory effect from the move, which effectively gutted the last remaining section of the Voting Rights Act that protected minority voters.