Denver is among five cities named Monday by the Democratic National Committee as finalists to host the party’s 2028 national convention.
The 2028 Democratic National Convention will mark the 20th anniversary of the last time Denver hosted the event, when Barack Obamaaccepted the party’s 2008 presidential nomination in front of a crowd of more than 80,000 people at what was then known as Invesco Field at Mile High.
“I’m thrilled the Democratic National Committee is considering Denver as the host city for the 2028 convention,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said in a news release. “Denver not only offers everything a successful convention needs, but we are a shining example of how to lead America forward by dreaming big and delivering bigger.”
Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia were also named as finalists. Each city will receive a site visit by party representatives this spring “to assess the logistical and operational components of each city’s bid,” Democrats said.
Johnston’s office said it anticipates an economic impact measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars if Denver is selected as the DNC’s host city.
The 2028 DNC will follow the party’s yet-to-be-finalized schedule of presidential primaries and caucuses throughout the first half of the year, awarding the nomination to the candidate the party picks in its bid retake the White House from Republicans in November 2028. President Donald Trump is term-limited.
Prior to the 2008 event, Denver also hosted the Democrats’ convention in 1908. Colorado has never hosted a Republican National Convention.
Colorado was a battleground state when it hosted the Democrats’ 2008 convention, having delivered its electoral votes to the Republican candidate in nine of the previous 10 presidential elections, alongside an equally strong record of electing Democratic governors.
Since then, the Centennial State has shifted decidedly towards Democrats at the state and federal levels, a trend driven by the in-migration of younger, more progressive voters and the rapid growth of the Front Range suburbs. Republicans haven’t won a statewide contest in Colorado since 2016, and Democrats have captured large, durable legislative majorities at the state Capitol.
Colorado Democratic Party Chair Shad Murib said in a statement that the state party is “excited to show what Colorado can deliver for our party and our country.”
“Colorado is ready to lead, and our country is ready for a new direction,” Murib said. “Our mission to protect everyone’s family, freedoms and future has united people across our state — and that unity has built the infrastructure, energy and capacity to host at the highest level and share that mission with the nation.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent his confirmation hearings promising senators he’d stop drinking. Based on his news conference about the Iran war on Wednesday, that might not be such a great idea.
Reporting on dead American soldiers, Hegseth suggested, is becoming the “narrative.” The public, he said, should “cut through the noise” and focus on the mission.
The “noise,” in this case, is six American lives.
On Sunday, an Iranian drone struck a U.S. facility in Kuwait. The victims were Army reservists assigned to a logistics command. Their names, ranks, and ages:
Sgt. Declan Coady, 20
Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39
Capt. Cody Khork, 35
Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42
Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45
CW3 Robert Marzan, 54.
Hegseth’s complaint was that their deaths were dominating coverage of the war. During Wednesday’s White House briefing, when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins read Hegseth’s words back to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Leavitt didn’t flinch.
“The press does only want to make the president look bad,” she said. “That’s a fact.”
To this administration, a dead sergeant from West Des Moines is not a tragedy. He’s a political liability. News reporting on his demise is evidence of bias.
Consider the source. According to a sworn affidavit submitted to the Senate under penalty of perjury by a former sister-in-law, Hegseth once had to be carried out of a Minneapolis strip club by his own brother — drunk, in uniform, during a National Guard drill weekend. Wearing a uniform while intoxicated is a violation of military law.
NBC News also reported that 10 current and former Fox News colleagues said they had to “babysit” Hegseth before appearances because he smelled of alcohol. And a whistleblower complaint from his tenure at the veterans nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America described multiple occasions when he had to be removed from events after drinking to incapacitation.
It is some new pinnacle of irony that a man who required his own “babysitters” at Fox News is now lecturing the press on professional conduct and what is worthy of the front page. It would be more defensible had his diatribe been attributable to an altered state.
But this is a very recent discovery. Travel back to January 2024. Three American soldiers were killed in a drone attack in Jordan while Joe Biden was president. Republicans didn’t tell reporters to ignore the story. They blasted it across every microphone they could find.
Donald Trump called the deaths “the consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) demanded “devastating retaliation.” No one complained the coverage was unfair to the commander in chief.
Go back to August 2021. After the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate in Kabul, Republicans spent years invoking those 13 deaths. They held hearings. They issued subpoenas. They put Gold Star families on stage at the Republican National Convention. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the loss of life was grounds for impeachment.
The political rule seemed simple: When American troops die, the president must answer for it.
That rule apparently changed on Inauguration Day.
Trump launched a war with Iran that already has American casualties and, by his own admission, will produce more.
“Sadly, there will likely be more, before it ends,” Trump said Sunday. “That’s the way it is.”
For the White House, that may be a strategic reality. For the family of Nicole Amor — a Minnesota mother of two who was days away from returning home — it is not simply “the way it is.” It is the destruction of their world.
The American press has reported every U.S. combat death for decades, under Republicans and Democrats alike. Those stories are not a partisan narrative. They are the public record of war.
The six names this week are Declan, Nicole, Cody, Noah, Jeffrey and Robert. Reporting them is not an attempt to make a president look bad, no matter how much Trump’s shameless sycophants whine.
Vice President JD Vance did not utter the word “tariffs” a single time during his upbeat speech at a Plover, Wisconsin, machining plant Thursday. The visit, aimed at shoring up vulnerable Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden ahead of the 2026 midterms, was part of a post-State of the Union victory lap Vance is taking to market the so-called Golden Age of prosperity Trump claims he and the Republicans have delivered to rural and blue-collar voters.
It’s a tough sell.
The latest Marquette University Law School poll, released the day before Vance parachuted into Wisconsin, shows Trump hitting a second-term low with Wisconsin voters, with 44 percent saying they approve of the job he’s doing and 54 percent saying they don’t approve. Across partisan affiliations, the rising cost of living is voters’ No. 1 concern, while 55 percent of respondents told pollsters tariffs are hurting Wisconsin farmers. Manufacturers are not happy, either.
“I can tell you from my experience running our company, from everyone I talk to in my networks — 95 percent of people in manufacturing — 99 percent do not support the tariffs,” said Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, a Wisconsin-based company with locations across the Midwest.
Shivaram spoke on a press call with Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin ahead of Vance’s speech Thursday. Many business owners, he said, are afraid to publicly share their criticisms of the Trump administration. When he meets other leaders of manufacturing companies in boardrooms, he said, “It’s like, look, we can’t say anything about how dumb the tariff policy is, because we’re going to be the next one whacked on X.” But, he added, “it’s costing all of them, all of us, a lot of money.”
Tariffs have caused “chaos and uncertainty” for businesses, agreed Kyle LaFond, owner and founder of American Provenance and Natural Contract Manufacturing, a small business that makes personal care products.
“Last year, when these tariffs were first instituted, I absorbed those costs as much as possible. I did that for about eight months,” LaFond said. “But that is not a sustainable business practice.” Ultimately, he said, businesses have to pass along the cost to their customers: “Tariffs are just attacks on the American consumer.”
Trump's failure to deliver the economic miracle he advertised, along with devastating cuts to health care and the safety net, pose a looming problem for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The solution they’ve hit on is a combination of bluster, bullying and straight-up lies.
There’s a reason slim majorities of Wisconsin voters chose Trump in 2016 and 2024. Vance put his finger on it in his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee: “When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.”
Wisconsin manufacturing workers and farmers suffered tremendously from global trade deals. Democrats and Republicans alike brushed aside their pain and tried to tell them that the booming stock market and increasing corporate profits were worth the crashing prices and job losses. Never mind the communities ruined and all the families that fell out of the middle class.
Trump and Vance spoke to those voters. In his convention speech, Vance cleverly tied global trade deals supported by both political parties to immigration: “Now, thanks to these policies that Biden and other out-of-touch politicians in Washington gave us,” he said, “our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor.”
But the immigrants who make up 70 percent of the labor force on Wisconsin dairy farms did not drive the collapse of Wisconsin’s small-farm economy. They, too, were displaced by globalization that drove down prices and accelerated a “get big or get out” economy that has taken a heavy toll on working people on both sides of the border. The arrival of immigrants willing to work long hours for low pay on farms that were forced to expand rapidly to stay afloat was a blessing to farmers who simply couldn’t find American workers to fill those jobs.
Today’s increasingly virulent, demagogic attacks on those hardworking immigrants should make everyone queasy.
Alex Jacquez, a former White House economic official in the Biden administration who also worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, sees Vance’s rise as a big win for the populist right. Vance’s criticism of global trade deals that hollowed out American manufacturing, and his appeal to the “forgotten” American workers who have never recovered from outsourcing, struck a nerve with voters across the industrial Midwest.
“But I think the question is whether the actual policies put forward are having the outcomes that they intend here,” Jacquez said in a phone interview Thursday.
Trump ‘s failure to deliver the economic miracle he advertised, along with devastating cuts to health care and the safety net, pose a looming problem for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The solution they’ve hit on is a combination of bluster, bullying and straight up lies.
In his Plover speech, Vance doubled down on Trump’s scapegoating of immigrants and Democrats in the State of the Union. Following up on Trump’s racist characterization of the entire Somali immigrant community in Minnesota as “pirates” responsible for plundering public aid, Vance blamed “‘illegal aliens” for fraud in public benefits programs and voting. He brought up Trump’s lurid descriptions of crimes committed by immigrants and, like Trump, excoriated Democrats for not standing up and cheering as the president subjected grieving parents to a gory rehash of violent attacks on their children.
The reason Democrats didn’t stand up during Trump’s speech, Vance suggested, is that “they answer to people who have corrupted this country. They answer to people who opened the border. They answer to people who got rich off of illegal immigrant labor. … We want American workers to get rich for working hard, not illegal aliens.”
Sucker-punching Democrats on immigration was a goal of the State of the Union speech. And Republicans will keep on punching. Their sanctimonious horror at the very idea of their colleagues not standing up and cheering for the victims of violent criminals is a way of changing the subject away from the spectacle of masked federal immigration agents spreading murderous mayhem in Midwestern neighborhoods, and, of course, the fact that none of this is making American workers better off.
As Jacquez pointed out, “Certainly Trump has cracked down on immigration, but that doesn’t seem to be redounding to the benefit of native-born workers. We’ve seen the unemployment rate creep up even while fewer immigrants are working these days on the manufacturing side.”
“We lost manufacturing jobs in every single month of 2025,” he added. “There has been no resurgence whatsoever in actual people getting jobs in manufacturing and, in fact, in many sectors, some of the trade policies that Trump has advanced have been actively harmful.”
At the end of his speech, Vance took questions from local media that reflected the immediate concerns of voters in western Wisconsin.
What can his administration do to stop the closure of rural hospitals that are creating a health care desert in the district he was visiting?
Vance blamed the problem on the Biden administration, although rural hospital closures did not begin under Biden and are severely exacerbated by Medicaid cuts under Trump. Vance also claimed the Trump administration is now turning things around with the rural hospital fund included in the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” — $200 million of which was awarded to Wisconsin in December.
Derrick Van Orden also pumped the rural hospital fund in remarks ahead of Vance’s speech, saying it’s “just a lie” that Democrats care about rural health care, because they didn’t vote for the massive tax- and spending-cut bill that contained the rural health care fund.
KFF projects the fund will only make up for about one-third of the Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid in rural areas. And that offset is temporary. The rural health fund expires in five years. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, 250,000 people are losing their health care coverage because of the Medicaid cuts and changes to the Affordable Care Act passed by Republicans. Those losses are concentrated in rural areas, and have a cascading effect on rural hospitals and entire rural economies.
Van Orden, who has spent his whole political career calling for the elimination of the Affordable Care Act, reversed course and voted with Democrats to extend ACA subsidies last month — right after voting to block the same measure when Democrats brought it up the day before.
In answer to a question on the health care worker shortage and the aging population of rural Wisconsin, Vance took a swipe at college students who major in women’s studies. The Trump administration — which has focused on repealing a pandemic-era pause on student loan repayment, resumed garnishing the wages of student debtors and imposed less affordable repayment plans — wants to make it easier for people to study to become doctors and nurses without getting “layered up with debt,” Vance declared.
Will the Trump administration withhold Medicaid money from Wisconsin as it recently announced it will do to Minnesota, as punishment for the state’s refusal to hand over the sensitive, personal information of food assistance recipients and of voters?
In answer to that question, Vance said it was outrageous that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Elections Commission have refused to hand over the data Trump is demanding, and left the open the option of withholding federal Medicaid money, saying Democrats “like to cheat” in “voter rolls and welfare rolls.”
Asked about farmers facing wildly fluctuating commodity prices, Vance celebrated the administration’s success in getting China to open up its market to U.S. soybeans. That’s a head-scratcher, since China was purchasing about half of all U.S. soybeans a year ago, before it stopped amid a trade war caused by Trump’s tariffs. That was a big problem for Wisconsin farmers who were suddenly stuck sitting on a bumper soybean crop after losing their biggest buyer. Even with the new deal, those farmers will not be made whole, Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, told Wisconsin Public Radio, and China has now found new markets, setting up a long-term business loss.
Among Vance’s many preposterous claims, perhaps the most incredible was the picture he tried to paint of a caring, empathetic Trump, who wakes up every morning asking what he can do to solve the problems of the American people. Do even Trump’s supporters buy the idea that the man who made $4 billion off the presidency after just one year in office is driven by selfless concern for the needs of others?
On one occasion, Vance said, during a discussion of the soaring stock market, Trump asked earnestly what could be done for people who don’t own any stocks. The answer, he said, was Trump’s brilliant plan to give low-income workers a $1,000 federal match for retirement. That idea was actually signed into law by Biden four years ago.
Asked for his further ideas for investing in rural communities, Vance said his administration will mostly “just listen” to voters. He held up Van Orden as the administration’s point man for keeping in touch with constituents in rural Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Van Orden is so notorious for avoiding in-person contact with voters, Democrats have made a regular practice of visiting his district to hold town halls from which he is reliably, notably absent.
The claim that either he or the Trump administration is concerned about solving the problems of Wisconsin voters is the biggest lie of all.
Ruth Conniff is Editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner. She formerly served as Editor-in-chief of The Progressive Magazine where she worked for many years from both Madison and Washington, D.C. Shortly after Donald Trump took office she moved with her family to Oaxaca, Mexico, and covered U.S./Mexico relations, the migrant caravan, and Mexico’s efforts to grapple with Trump. Conniff is the author of "Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers" which won the 2022 Studs and Ida Terkel award from The New Press. She is a frequent guest on MSNBC and has appeared on Good Morning America, Democracy Now!, Wisconsin Public Radio, CNN, Fox News and many other radio and television outlets. She has also written for The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband and three daughters. Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
The Republican candidate for governor of New York was scheduled to speak at an event headlined by far-right extremists and rioters convicted over the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a Raw Storyinvestigation.
Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive running against incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, was featured on promotional materials for a January event associated with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.
🇺🇸 Stay Awake America National Tour THIS WEEKEND 🇺🇸 Mission: Unite, engage, activate local action for national impact!
Join 17+ nationally recognized experts in health, civics, faith, education, and more, including Bruce Blakeman, Treniss Evans, Dr. Judy Mikovits, Amir… pic.twitter.com/M4thJBBUjy — The America First Warehouse (@americafirstwh) January 7, 2026
The Stay Awake America event took place at the Trump-themed America First Warehouse in Ronkonkoma on Long Island from Jan. 10-11, though ultimately Blakeman did not attend, said Teresa Helfrich, director of operations for the America First Warehouse.
“He didn't end up showing up,” Helfrich said.
“Apparently, he was really busy, but unfortunately, he did not come, and people were a bit disappointed, but we tried our best.”
Helfrich said she was under the impression Blakeman was unable to attend because he was preparing for his inauguration the following day, for his second term as county executive.
In a statement to Raw Story, Blakeman attempted to distance himself from the event.
“Kathy Hochul told 5.4 million Republicans to leave New York,” Blakeman said through a campaign spokesperson, referring to 2022 remarks in which the governor named GOP figures including Trump, rather than every Republican in the state.
“Now she’s inventing distractions about events I never attended and people I’ve never spoken to because she can’t defend her tax hikes and soaring utility bills. She’s so bothered by her record she’s becoming delusional. I’m trying to make New York affordable.”
A poster for the event circulated by the America First Warehouse and Stay Awake America organizer prominently featured Blakeman as a speaker.
Flynn shared an X post promoting the event, which referenced Blakeman.
Long Island will be the focus on January 10–11 as the Stay Awake America Tour comes to the America First Warehouse in Ronkonkoma. This two-day gathering brings together powerful speakers, live music from the Caspar McCloud Band, and a special tribute honoring Tina Peters. It is a… pic.twitter.com/aRkvt5D0Cw — General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) January 2, 2026
Also featured were Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia leader whose 18-year sentence for sedition was commuted by President Trump; Treniss Jewell Evans III, who pleaded guilty to entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; and Ivan Raiklin, a Flynn associate who campaigns to punish Trump’s enemies.
The event was advertised as a tribute to Tina Peters, a Colorado county clerk sentenced to nine years in prison for her role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Trump is pressuring Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to grant Peters clemency.
Blakeman did recently speak at the Queens Village Republican Club’s Lincoln Dinner, on March 1. That event honored John Eastman, a now-disbarred attorney who advised Trump and played a central role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, Politico reported.
In a statement, Blakeman denied knowing “who John Eastman is or what he stands for.”
Jacob Neiheisel, an associate professor of political science at the University of Buffalo, told Raw Story “association means a lot in politics,” and candidates make calculations about the costs and benefits of being linked with individuals or groups.
“You can distance yourself quite a bit. Trump's been effective at it,” Neiheisel said.
“It works for Trump. It can work for other people.”
Amy Young, director and organizer of Stay Awake America, did not respond to requests for comment.
The January event at which he was advertised to speak promised more than 17 “nationally known expert speakers in health, civics, faith, education, threat of Islam in America and child sex trafficking.”
Being associated with far-right figures doesn’t help Blakeman’s chances of winning in the blue state, Neiheisel said, adding that Republican gubernatorial candidates in New York “have to at least outwardly appear centrist to the bulk of voters, but that's not where the energy in the party is. The energy is typically on the far right.”
But such associations do “make you viable for other positions elsewhere, and put you on the radar of other people in the party, particularly if MAGA is able to continue beyond Trump,” Neiheisel said.
“I think that this also might be a play [by Blakeman] to stay relevant and stay in some of those circles even after he loses.”
Trump endorsed Blakeman in December after Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), dropped out of the Republican primary.
Larry Levy, a former political journalist and associate vice president and executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said “at some point, Blakeman will have to pivot to the middle — there just aren’t enough Republican voters in the state for him to win without a goodly number of moderate independents and soft Democrats — and Gen. Flynn certainly wouldn’t help him build bridges to them."
Flynn was briefly national security adviser to Trump in his first term before being fired for lying about contacts with Russian officials.
The Stay Awake America Tour is inspired and endorsed by Flynn and grew out of an earlier roadshow, the ReAwaken America Tour, that prominently featured his work as a far-right campaigner and promoted conspiracy theories and Christian nationalism.
On a recent podcast, Young said the tour came about as a result of a conversation between Flynn and Caspar McCloud, an English musician who performs at the events, about the need to mobilize support for Trump.
‘Secretary of Retribution’
Rhodes, whose name was originally listed at the bottom of the January event poster but whose photo is the first featured for a Stay Awake America event on March 20, founded the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group that recruited military veterans and retired law enforcement during the Obama administration.
The Oath Keepers, alongside the Proud Boys, provided the engine for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Rhodes was freed from prison after Trump’s second inauguration but did not receive a pardon.
Raiklin, then an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, promoted the so-called “Pence Card” argument, holding that Vice President Mike Pence possessed the authority to set aside the results of the 2020 election.
The expectation that Pence would comply inflamed Trump’s supporters and helped fuel the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, when the former vice president refused to bend to pressure.
As Trump mounted his 2024 election bid, Raiklin launched a campaign as self-appointed “secretary of retribution,” featuring veiled threats of violence against perceived enemies.
Retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin and self-styled "secretary of retribution" Ivan Raiklin at the Republican National Convention (Jordan Green/Raw Story)
Evans pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol and drinking Fireball whisky in a congressional conference room.
During the 2024 campaign, he joined Raiklin for a press conference, calling for “live-streamed swatting raids” against Trump’s enemies.
Raiklin met with law enforcement officials in Texas to detail his plans for recruiting sheriffs to arrest Trump’s enemies, Raw Story reported.
As Nassau county executive, Blakeman has hired armed citizens as special deputy sheriffs — what critics have called an unlawful personal militia, the New York Timesreported.
In January, Rhodes and Raiklin held a press conference at the White House calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to stop Democrats winning the 2026 midterm elections and retaking Congress.
Raiklin has worked closely with Flynn, serving on the board of America’s Future, an organization led by Flynn and his sister. Raiklin took part in a 2024 tour to promote a documentary about Flynn.
Trump supporters storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS
Helfrich told Raw Story the America First Warehouse supports those who participated in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and she said she believes “the real insurrection happened on November 3 of 2020 when the deep state and the powers that be tried to overthrow a US presidential election.”
“We are 100 percent behind our fellow Patriot brothers and sisters who took a First Amendment stand that day to let Congress know that they didn't want a stolen election to be certified,” she said.
“We are extremely supportive advocates of the J6 community, and we do not see them as felons. We see them as politically persecuted patriots.”
Conspiracy theories
Stay Awake America’s “sizzle reel” to promote upcoming events features Cathy O’Brien, a conspiracy theorist who claims to be the victim of government mind control, and Judy Mikovits, a controversial virologist who equates vaccination with "extermination and sterilization.”
Mikovits was billed on the event where Blakeman was scheduled to appear.
Flynn appeared in the promotional video encouraging people to participate in the Stay Awake America movement.
Helfrich told Raw Story, “We love the people at the Stay Awake American tour,” and the warehouse has “the same mission.”
“The reason why we love their work is because we do believe that there's a lot that America is facing right now,” Helfrich said.
“Obviously, all of us are big President Trump supporters, and we love what he's doing, but he's only in office for another three years, and we do believe, a lot of us, that the country needs to stay awake and keep fighting beyond this term.”
Young’s X posts promoting the Stay Awake America tour frequently include the phrase “blitz 2026 midterms.”
Young frequently reshares posts from X accounts that promote the QAnon conspiracy theory, including one that in January revived the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that Democrats ran a child sex trafficking operation in the basement of a DC pizzeria.
Q the Plan video 2018 then Out of Shadows film & Fall of the Cabal series exposed everything. This was & is the wake up call. 🎥🎞️☎️ Stay Awake America ⚔️🇺🇸 the battles have just begun. Unite, Engage and activate local action for national impact. This is how we Take Back our… https://t.co/PvLG8jgyHd — 4everYoung (@4everAYoung17) February 2, 2026
Young shares QAnon beliefs with staff at the America First Warehouse, the Trump-themed event space in Ronkonkoma.
Speaking in January on the podcast she co-hosts at the America First Warehouse, Helfrich said she decided to go to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 after a friend admonished her: “Where we go one, we go all.” Helfrich said she and her co-host, “Angie the Patriette,” have that QAnon slogan “tattooed on our bodies.”
Young has also re-shared posts on X that promote election denialism, celebrate Russian President Vladimir Putin, and push Islamophobia and antisemitism.
One post from QAnon promoter Liz Crokin that Young re-shared less than a week before the Ronkonkoma event insinuates that illegal tunnels discovered underneath the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn link Jews to child exploitation.
The tunnels were reportedly built by a radical offshoot of the Hasidic Jewish movement seeking to expand the site. There is no evidence of human trafficking at the site.
Former MLB player Mark Teixeira is heavy favorite in GOP primary to succeed Chip Roy in Congress
by Olivia Borgula, The Texas Tribune February 10, 2026
WASHINGTON — In his first-ever run for elected office, former Major League Baseball player Mark Teixeira is overpowering the field of a dozen Republicans competing to replace Rep. Chip Roy in Congress, pumping millions of his personal wealth into his campaign and locking up key endorsements, including a recent nod from President Donald Trump.
Roy, R-Austin, is running for Texas attorney general this year, leaving Texas’ 21st Congressional District up for grabs. The seat, which includes parts of San Antonio and several ruby red Hill Country counties, would have gone for Trump by nearly 22 points in 2024 under its new boundaries — meaning the Republican primary will likely decide the next representative.
Teixeira, a former Texas Rangers and New York Yankees first baseman, has raised more cash than any other candidate, loaning $2.5 million of his own money to his campaign and pulling in another $545,000 from donors. Aside from Trump, he is endorsed by Gov. Greg Abbott — whose push for private school vouchers Teixeira recentlysupported — and nine of the 25 Republicans from Texas’ congressional delegation. The sheer number of candidates increases the chances of the March 3 primary going to a runoff, which happens when no candidate receives a majority of the votes. But Jon Taylor, political science and geography department chair at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said Teixeira’s endorsements and ability to blanket the district in ads give him a major leg up.
“It seems like it's a slam dunk that he'll end up winning the Republican nomination,” Taylor said. “But with [11 other] primary candidates, getting 1 or 2% of the vote here, or 4 or 5% of the vote here, it's possible that … there's just enough people in the primary with enough votes to force a primary runoff.”
Among the other candidates are Daniel Betts, an Austin-based defense attorney endorsed by the San Antonio Express-News; former Bexar County Republican Party vice chair Kyle Sinclair; Trey Trainor, former chair of the Federal Election Commission and prominent GOP lawyer; and former Kendall County GOP chairman Mike Wheeler. Betts and Wheeler, along with Navy veteran Jason Cahill and engineer Paul Rojas, are the only candidates aside from Teixeira who have raised at least $100,000 for their campaigns.
Teixeira’s rivals have painted him as a carpetbagger and cast doubt on the authenticity of his vow to “fight for the conservative principles that make Texas and America great,” as Teixeira said in a TV ad recently aired in the district.
Drafted by the Rangers in 2001, Teixeira spent his first five seasons in Arlington. He retired after the 2016 season, finishing his career with an eight-year run on the Yankees, and moved back to Texas in 2021, according to his campaign website. He now lives in Bee Cave, a small town west of Austin.
At a January debate in San Antonio, volunteers opposing Teixeira passed out flyers highlighting comments he made a decade ago about athletes needing to be outspoken about climate change, according to the San Antonio Report. Teixeira made those comments as a board member on the Emerald Corridor Foundation, an Atlanta-based environmental nonprofit working to restore greenspace and waterways.
But in his congressional campaign, Teixeira has positioned himself as a staunch conservative candidate aligning with the Trump administration on border security, cuts to government spending and gun rights. After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good last month, Teixeira wrote on X, “I stand with ICE.”
While Teixeira is currently the frontrunner, there are several candidates who have a shot at competing against him if the race goes to a runoff, said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.
“It's going to be a race where we're going to see Teixeira finish well ahead of the pack, and then it'll be whichever of those other candidates is able to do well in the home stretch,” Jones said.
About a month after Teixeira launched his campaign, Trainor, the former FEC chair, announced his bid for the seat.
Trainor has served as general counsel to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office and the Republican Party of Texas and as a lawyer for former Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign. As a legislative aide, he worked on Texas’ 2003 congressional redistricting effort that drew several Democrats out of their seats.
Trump’s endorsement of Teixeira was a blow for Trainor, who, as general counsel for the platform committee at the 2016 Republican National Convention, helped quell an anti-Trump uprising on the floor. Trump later appointed him to serve on the FEC. Trainor has pledged to “stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Trump” in Washington if elected.
Wheeler, the former Kendall County GOP chairman, is another one of the handful of candidates with political experience. He currently serves on the State Republican Executive Committee — the Texas GOP’s governing board — and previously worked in global finance, which led to his Trump appointment as a senior advisor to the Small Business Administration in 2024.
Sinclair, the former Bexar County GOP vice chair, previously ran for Congress in the neighboring 20th Congressional District. He secured the Republican nomination in 2022 before losing to Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro in the solidly blue district.
Betts is running on what he describes as an evidence-based conservative platform. A former chemist, he says on his campaign website that combating fentanyl is one of his top priorities, including designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and expanding access to addiction treatment. He unsuccessfully ran for Travis County district attorney in 2024, losing by a wide margin in the heavily Democratic county.
Cahill, a Navy veteran and oil and gas businessman, has put in $250,000 to his campaign. He’s never held elected office and is running on a platform similar to Teixeira’s, describing himself as a political outsider akin to Trump.
Other candidates in the race include Jacques Dubose, a Navy veteran and former Boerne Chamber of Commerce chair; Marine Corps veteran Zeke Enriquez; Weston Martinez, who has represented Jan. 6 clients as an arbitrator; Heather Tessmer, an attorney; and Peggy Wardlaw, a petroleum engineer.
Disclosure: Rice University and University of Texas at San Antonio have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The Justice Department finally arrested a suspect in the Jan. 6 pipe bombing case, potentially resolving a five-year mystery of who targeted both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions with improvised explosive devices right around the time a pro-Trump mob was storming the Capitol to try to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. Brian Cole Jr. of Virginia has reportedly already confessed in what is shaping up to be a slam-dunk case.
But President Donald Trump's U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C. may yet well blow the whole thing with her antics, national security analyst Marcy Wheeler wrote on X Friday.
Wheeler, who runs the "Empty Wheel" blog, responded to an update by Lawfare editor Roger Parloff, who wrote that U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh "rule[d] that accused pipebomber Cole must be detained. Oddly, he still hasn't ruled on whether to accept Cole's superior court indictment. I don't see how he can detain him unless he accepts that indictment."
"I think this is going to be appealed where Cole will force his probable cause hearing," wrote Wheeler. "I should say: I do think it likely he did it. I also think DOJ played procedural games bc Jeanine Pirro was too busy partying to do things right."
Pirro, a former judge and prosecutor in New York who spent years as a right-wing firebrand commentator on Fox News before being appointed by Trump to replace his scandal-plagued first choice for top prosecutor in D.C., has run into a number of problems with other cases she has tried to prosecute since taking office.
Among other things, Pirro had to downgrade initial overly zealous felony charges she brought against a protester and Air Force veteran who threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer — only to then lose the case when trying it as a misdemeanor. Some experts have even accused Pirro of knowingly bringing unwinnable cases to just make a statement against people who haven't broken the law, a serious violation of prosecutorial ethics.
A neo-Nazi who embraces terrorism has been ordered held in pre-trial detention as a danger to the community by a federal magistrate judge following his arrest for illegally possessing a firearm.
Mathew David Bair, a leader of the neo-Nazi accelerationist group Injekt Division, was arrested in Pennsylvania by the FBI last week.
A former Marine who was court-martialed out of the service for larceny and sale of classified materials, Bair joined the riot at the U.S. Capitol as a member of First Capitol Proud Boys, as Trump supporters attempted to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6.
From his time as a Proud Boy, Bair increasingly gravitated to a violent brand of white supremacist extremism. He toldRaw Storyin 2024 that “the fascist pipeline is very real,” and that he had been “in a direct pipeline chapter.”
Bair’s radicalization led him to Injekt Division, a neo-Nazi accelerationist group whose former leader was arrested in May 2021 for allegedly plotting to carry out a mass shooting at a Texas Walmart.
“I would say they’re very much in line with the Terrorgram milieu,” Hannah Gais, a senior researcher and journalist at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Raw Story. “I think obviously given their origin, they have clear ties to violence.”
Terrorgram Collective is a global network that has encouraged mass shootings, political assassinations and infrastructure attacks through online propaganda, which inspired a deadly school shooting spree in Brazil, a fatal mass shooting at an LGBTQ+ bar in Slovakia and a mass stabbing in Turkey, as well as assassination attempts and thwarted attacks on electrical substations. Dallas Humber, one of the group’s leaders, is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to soliciting hate crimes and murder.
In 2023, Bair posted a video depicting a flyer reading, “Shoot your local judge.” Asked about the flyer by Raw Story, Bair brought up an incident in which an extremist went to the home of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas and fatally shot her son. Salas has frequently spoken out against threats directed at judges who cross President Trump over the past year.
Extremist researchers and antifascist activists have closely monitored Bair due, in part, to his provocative online presence. They include a Telegram message showing members posing in tactical gear and skull masks outside what appears to be a power plant while displaying firearms and their group flag.
Another Telegram message linked to Bair shows a ballistic vest, flags and pistols draped over a car seat accompanied by text indicating the author was traveling to Washington, DC on Jan. 24, 2025, a date that coincides with the March for Life. The annual event typically draws both far-right extremists and left-wing counterprotesters. Carrying firearms is prohibited in Washington, D.C., with a few exceptions that include law enforcement.
An indictment returned on March 4 alleges that Bair possessed an Aero Precision rifle and Ruger pistol while knowing that he had been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than a year. Bair pleaded not guilty following his arrest on March 11.
A magistrate judge in Harrisburg, Pa. ordered Bair to be held in pre-trial detention, partly on the basis that his release poses serious danger to a person or the community. The magistrate also cited Bair’s prior criminal history, prior parole violations, prior failures to appear in court, and the strength of evidence supporting the gun charge.
Dawn Clark, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, declined to comment in response to questions about why the government argued that Bair is a danger to a person or the community, or whether the government is concerned that Bair has attempted to intimidate judges.
Beatrice Diehl, an assistant federal public defender assigned to represent Bair, also declined to comment.
An undated photo of Mathew Bair from an Injekt Division Telegram chatVia Telegram
While becoming increasingly immersed in violent neo-Nazi activity, Bair remained committed to Trump. In July 2024, shortly after Trump accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention, an Injekt Division Telegram channel linked to Bair posted video of a rally in Michigan in which neo-Nazis chanted, “We love Hitler, we love Trump.”
In late 2023, Bair joined 2119, a teenage neo-Nazi gang, after four of its members, ages 15 to 18, were arrested in Pensacola, Fla. for a hate-fueled vandalism spree that included brick attacks on two synagogues. 2-1-19 is an alphanumeric code that stands for Blood and Soil, with 2 representing B for “Blood,” 1 representing A for “And” and 19 representing “S.” for “Soil.” Blood and Soil is the English translation for Blut und Boden, a popular phrase during the Third Reich that suggests a mystical bond between a racialized ideal and the land of Germany.
The group previously went by the moniker Revolutionary White Brotherhood, or RWB.
Then 34, Bair was by far the oldest member of 2119, which was the focus of a February 2024 investigation by Raw Story. Bair posted a photo on the social media platform Telegram that showed his 4-year-old son posing next to 2119 graffiti.
In March 2024, the [2119] Sons of Pennsylvania Telegram channel, likely operated by Bair, posted a video of two men driving a pickup truck to the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in York, and depositing a brick inscribed with the letters R-W-B at the front door, declaring as they departed: “White f------ power.”
2119 went into decline following the Raw Story investigation. By mid-2014, the group had disbanded as its leader lowered his profile and members found themselves caught in the middle of intra-movement rivalries between larger white nationalist organizations. Injekt Division likely contributed to 2119’s demise by doxxing a leader of 2119’s California chapter after he admitted to “snitch[ing] on” another member.
Bair is not the only associate of 2119 who has faced arrest in recent months.
Aiden Cuevas, an Alabama neo-Nazi who enthusiastically promoted 2119, was indicted alongside Andrew Nary for conspiracy to traffic firearms after allegedly buying machine guns from an undercover FBI employee while planning to start a paramilitary and requesting training to “take out” so-called “high-value targets.
Cuevas and Nary both entered not guilty pleas before a federal magistrate judge in Huntsville, Ala. last week.
Last month, David William Fair, a probationary member of the racist skinhead group Vinlanders Social Club, was indicted in North Carolina for felony soliciting gang activity and contributing the delinquency of a minor.
Fair had administered a Telegram chat that Bair joined in 2023. That same year, following the Pensacola arrests, Fair counseled Cuevas in another Telegram chat that 2119 should exercise more discretion to avoid criminal prosecution.
The story previously stated that Bair and a second man deposited a brick outside the York Police Department. The story has been corrected to reflect that they deposited the brick outside a Pennsylvania State Police barracks in York.
A MAGA betrayal is heating up and now "young GOP leaders are fighting like rats in a sack over the alleged betrayal of one of their own," according to media reports.
Trump-appointed official Gavin Wax reportedly turned on his allies in the Young Republicans, allegedly obtaining the recent racist texts and leaking them after a feud over a photo opportunity with President Donald Trump, reported The Daily Beast.
Wax, who is the chief of staff in the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department, is now experiencing the fallout after the Politico report earlier this week detailing the Young Republican leaders' Telegram chats that included racist, antisemitic and homophobic comments, rape fantasies, and suggestions on how to drive their opponents to suicide.
"Multiple sources with knowledge of the matter told the Daily Beast that the 31-year-old obtained and leaked the messages to settle a longstanding feud with Peter Giunta, the former chair of the New York State Republican Club, who was implicated in the report," The Beast reported.
The two former friends apparently had a rocky moment in May 2024 over a photo opportunity with Trump during a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey. Sources told The Beast that Wax, former president of the New York Young Republican Club, was left out of a photo with Trump in "a miscommunication" and allegedly blamed Guinta for the mixup.
"It wasn’t until this year — while Giunta was running on a pro-Trump slate to lead the Young Republican National Federation — that he discovered Wax had never fully recovered from the incident, and was allegedly enacting revenge through support for Giunta’s opponent, Hayden Padgett," The Beast reported.
Guinta has publicly blamed Wax for the leak, but Wax has denied any involvement.
“It’s just stupidity at this point,” a source told The Beast. “It’s a race, a race to see who destroys who first. And it’s just really disgusting.”
Retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin and self-styled "secretary of retribution" Ivan Raiklin at the Republican National Convention (Jordan Green/Raw Story) 
Trump supporters storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS 
An undated photo of Mathew Bair from an Injekt Division Telegram chatVia Telegram