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Corey Lewandowski accused of running pay-to-play schemes at DHS: report

Mar 20, 2026Far Left

Corey Lewandowski, who served as de facto chief of staff to ousted Department or Homeland Security's Secretary Kristi Noem, allegedly demanded kickbacks from companies seeking to do business with the DHS, according to NBC News reporting based on industry sources. GEO Group founder George Zoley met with Lewandowski during the presidential transition and later in March 2025, where Lewandowski allegedly demanded payments described as "success fees" or kickbacks, which Zoley declined. After GEO Group refused the arrangement, two of its federal contracts shrank and facilities sat idle despite Trump administration investment in mass deportation operations. A marketing firm abandoned pursuit of two DHS contracts after receiving requests to indirectly pay Lewandowski through consulting firms. Government contracts expert Jessica Tillipman called the arrangement "a blazing red flag of procurement integrity concern." White House officials aware of "pay to play" allegations have taken no action against Lewandowski, fearing Trump's response. Lewandowski and Salus denied the allegations.Watch the video below. Your browser does not support the video tag.

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Melania gives Congress private deadline as she works around Trump's team: report

Raw Story

2 hours ago

Melania gives Congress private deadline as she works around Trump's team: report

First lady Melania Trump gave Congress a private deadline to pass her signature foster care bill, and she is pursuing it largely outside the usual White House channels, according to a new report in Politico. At a bipartisan roundtable with the House Ways and Means Committee in April, the first lady publicly called foster care legislation a "moral imperative." Then, behind closed doors, she set a target, Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) told the outlet: "I want this on Donald's desk by the August recess." The Fostering the Future Act, which expands housing, education and workforce help for young people aging out of foster care, passed the House unanimously.The Senate has not moved it out of committee, and lawmakers are set to leave Washington around Aug. 10. At a White House picnic the day the House passed the bill, both Trumps urged the Senate to hurry. "Hopefully, it will quickly pass in the Senate," the president said. He has not publicly pressed senators since.The deadline reflects a first lady who increasingly operates on her own track. Her office, not the State Department, has led her effort to reunite children displaced by the Russia-Ukraine war, negotiating directly with Moscow and Kyiv, the White House said. She has also shown a willingness to diverge from the administration's message. She broke with the White House on Epstein, calling for survivors to testify as the president's team tried to move past the scandal, and last week put her own spin on a Supreme Court ruling her husband celebrated, voicing support for the LGBTQIA+ community.A recent book recounted how she resisted Trump's overhaul of the White House grounds and lost.

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REPORT: Acting DNI Bill Pulte Fires Dozens of ODNI Staff for Politicizing Intelligence, Insubordination, Gross Misconduct

The Last Refuge

2 hours ago

REPORT: Acting DNI Bill Pulte Fires Dozens of ODNI Staff for Politicizing Intelligence, Insubordination, Gross Misconduct

The funniest part of the MSNBC report about the issue is their claim that Pulte has not been in office long enough to know who the Deep State embeds are. “I have a real question of how he would know this. This isn’t a guy who is familiar with intelligence,” said the former official, who […] The post REPORT: Acting DNI Bill Pulte Fires Dozens of ODNI Staff for Politicizing Intelligence, Insubordination, Gross Misconduct appeared first on The Last Refuge.

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Fox host warns Trump will pay for his 'breathtaking' corruption

Alternet.org

2 hours ago

Fox host warns Trump will pay for his 'breathtaking' corruption

On Friday, Fox News host and political analyst Brit Hume offered a prediction that President Donald Trump is unlikely to appreciate. If the Democrats come out ahead in the midterms, the chief executive could find himself paying big for his "breathtaking" crypto corruption. Hume's forecast comes in the wake of the president's 2025 financial disclosures earlier in the week, which revealed that his family raked in a shocking $1 billion from its cryptocurrency ventures while Daddy Trump regulated the market. As Mediate explains, "The filing reported roughly $500 million in income from World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded with his sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump, along with approximately $635 million from sales of the $TRUMP meme coin through CIC Digital LLC. The disclosure also detailed hundreds of millions of dollars in income from Trump’s real estate holdings and millions more from licensing deals and other business ventures. The president made more than $2 billion overall."Another Fox News host, John Roberts, called the numbers "eye-popping," prompting Hume to respond, "It is, John, and I think the right word for this is unseemly, for a president to profit while in office.”He continued, "Now, it’s not fair to say that he profited from the office, although, you know, that’s surely gonna be subject to investigation — particularly if the Democrats get control of one or both branches of Congress. But, if you wanted seemliness in the White House, Donald Trump was not your man, and if you wanted a guy that wasn’t very rich in the White House, he wasn’t your man for that either. The fact is that he’s a very rich guy, and when you hold the kind of holdings he has, you do get richer. This amount from crypto seems breathtaking, but as the point was made by you and [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent, not illegal. So, the people that don’t like Trump won’t like this. The people that do like Trump won’t care very much, in my judgement."Hume is only partly true in regards to that last assertion. While much of MAGA has remained loyal to the president regardless of his financial improprieties, he's had pushback from some high-profile supporters. The New York Post, for example, which is typically complimentary toward Trump, declared that a recent story involving his sons' profiting off a Kazakhstan mining deal their father struck "stinks to high heaven." According to the Post, "The Lutnick [sons of Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick] and Trump boys have been sloshing around in the muck since their dads came to power 18 months ago. They’ve profited handsomely from cryptocurrency deals while the government their fathers control were setting crypto policy.”

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Dem-run city urges residents to snitch on those who break out sparklers on the 4th

BizPac Review

5 hours ago

Dem-run city urges residents to snitch on those who break out sparklers on the 4th

Not only is the city of Alexandria, Virginia, apparently not celebrating America’s 250th anniversary on the Fourth of July, but the DC suburb is also encouraging residents […]

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MAGA reporter declares: 'Uncool' State Fair debacle is the 'end of Trump'

Alternet.org

6 hours ago

MAGA reporter declares: 'Uncool' State Fair debacle is the 'end of Trump'

On Friday, a prominent MAGA journalist called it: “The State Fair debacle is the end of @realDonaldTrump as a cultural force.”Alex Berenson – a veteran journalist who gained MAGA fame for his vocal COVID denial and voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 – posted this declaration to social media along with a photo of an almost completely empty National State Fair, at the center of which stood a mini mockup of the Commander in Chief’s crumbling triumphal arch. “Trump has always been uncool in a cool way,” Berenson continued. “He’s so in love with himself and his own awful taste you appreciate him even if you hate him. But this is just a box-office bomb, and it makes him look so old.”His dismal assessment comes amid rampant reports of the fair’s many disappointments. The event – much touted by Trump in the weeks preceding it – has been characterized by thin to nonexistent crowds, prompting the crowd-size-obsessed president to fly into a rage and fret that no one will show up to his 4th of July rally. His own supporters have called it “really disappointing,” “unnecessarily vanilla,” and “like a silent protest.” Even Fox News ditched the affair after wasting too much airtime on “live shots of empty grass.”The National State Fair is part of the wider celebrations marking the United States’ 250th birthday, which have been plagued by controversy, scandal, and failure for months. In May, the fair concert series fell apart within hours of its lineup announcement as musicians quit, saying they’d been misled about the event’s pro-Trump connotations. Somewhere along the way, Trump decided the Reflecting Pool needed to be painted, and that debacle spun out into Algaegate. This and other projects have been riddled with accusations of no-bid contracts and shady dealings. Berenson’s assertion that the end of Trump is nigh comes as the MAGA movement descends into “civil war.” The president has lost some of his most important political and media allies, like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. The ‘Relectant Right’ who played a key role in his 2024 election have soured. And even the white working-class voters who are his most loyal support base have drifted away. Overall, Trump’s approval ratings have plunged to historic lows, increasing to just 37 percent in recent days.

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Pay-to-play cycle behind GOP's corporate tax cuts exposed in new report

Raw Story

6 hours ago

Pay-to-play cycle behind GOP's corporate tax cuts exposed in new report

Major American corporations that benefited from tax cuts enacted last year by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are donating to the campaigns of GOP lawmakers who made the windfall possible.A report published Friday by Unrig Our Economy spotlights seven House Republicans who voted for the sprawling and unpopular GOP budget package, which extended tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Americans while inflicting unprecedented cuts on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance—with disastrous consequences for millions of low-income families across the country.Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), one of the lawmakers featured in the new report, has received campaign donations from corporate PACs representing 3M, Amazon, Walmart, AT&T, and other companies that collectively received billions of dollars in tax breaks from the Republican law, which restored a provision allowing businesses to immediately write off new investments.Amazon saw its US income taxes fall by more than half last year due to the GOP law, even as the company’s profits grew. Unrig Our Economy noted that Amazon, whose PAC donated thousands to the Republicans spotlighted in the new report, has an effective federal tax rate of 1.37% following enactment of the budget law.Miller-Meeks, who has received at least $57,000 in donations from the PACs of companies that benefited from the 2025 law, issued a statement Thursday bragging about supporting “the largest tax cuts in American history,” not mentioning that the benefits will disproportionately flow to profitable corporations and the richest people in the country.“Thanks to the Republican tax law, corporations are receiving tax breaks, House Republicans are getting campaign cash, and working families are getting stuck with the bill,” the report states.Another Republican lawmaker featured in the report, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, received $2,500 in campaign donations from the PAC of FirstEnergy, which reaped $500 million in depreciation deductions thanks to the GOP tax law.“Bresnahan voted to give FirstEnergy hundreds of millions in tax breaks even after the company raised utility prices for his constituents,” Unrig Our Economy’s report observes.The report also points out that Bresnahan “owned stock in every single one” of the companies who contributed PAC money to his campaign following passage of the Republican budget package last summer.“This comes after Bresnahan has already faced scrutiny for dumping stock in Medicaid providers and selling off bonds in Pennsylvania hospitals before voting to slash Medicaid and put rural hospitals at risk,” the report notes.Leor Tal, Unrig Our Economy’s campaign director, said in a statement that “one year ago, House Republicans ripped away healthcare and food assistance from millions of Americans, so that corporations could get massive tax breaks.”“Now, many of those companies are dishing out PAC money to the Republicans listed in this report,” said Tal. “Republicans in Congress sold out many of their own constituents to help corporations get even richer. It’s time that House Republicans step up, do the right thing, and start fighting for working Americans—not giant corporations.”

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Hegseth reportedly pulled plug on troop cuts in europe

BizPac Review

8 hours ago

Hegseth reportedly pulled plug on troop cuts in europe

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reportedly pulled the plug on plans to reduce U.S. troop counts in Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported. Hegseth’s plans were cancelled […]

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The Supreme Court ruled seven years ago. Taxpayers are still paying the price

Washington Examiner

9 hours ago

The Supreme Court ruled seven years ago. Taxpayers are still paying the price

In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas that Tennessee’s two-year residency requirement for alcohol retailers was unconstitutional. This marked the first time since the 2005 Granholm v. Heald decision that the Supreme Court directly addressed the relationship between the 21st Amendment and the dormant Commerce […]

Center Right

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Corey Lewandowski accused of running pay-to-play schemes at DHS: report

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Corey Lewandowski accused of running pay-to-play schemes at DHS: report

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