Alternet.org

GOP primary voters press MAGA candidate on purchase of Epstein property

Feb 16, 2026Left

One Republican candidate running for statewide office in Texas is quickly drawing the ire of the MAGA wing of the GOP after he was found to have bought a sprawling multimillion-dollar ranch previously owned by convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.The Daily Beast reported Monday that Donald Huffines — who is running in the Republican primary for Texas comptroller — has not yet acknowledged previous reporting that he used a limited liability company to buy Epstein's notorious Zorro Ranch in 2023. While Huffines has posted multiple times to his official social media accounts since reports emerged that he was the mystery buyer, multiple self-described conservatives and Republicans have repeatedly commented on his posts demanding he explain the purchase of the property where it is alleged several bodies may be buried."Was gonna vote for you, but after the Zorro ranch revelation I will absolutely not vote for you," wrote conservative Texas-based X user Russ Scown. "At this point it’s probably too late for you to do the right thing and let investigators in. You tanked your reputation.""How can you put Texans first when you won’t even answer our question about Zorror’s[sic] Ranch? That only makes seem untrustworthy and unworthy of our vote," wrote another X user whose bio includes the phrase "America first.""Your actions have consequences and you lost my vote," one Houston-based X user wrote in response to one of Huffines' posts. "Do the right thing and open your Epstein ranch up to cadaver dogs and radar!""You are knee-deep in Epstein's cover-up! You have lost TEXANS VOTE," read another response from a self-described MAGA activist in Texas.According to the Guardian, the ranch was valued at more than $21.1 million in tax year 2023. However, Huffines disputed that assessment due to the property's "notoriety." The value of the ranch was later reduced to $13.4 million.Huffines is currently the front-runner in the GOP primary for Texas comptroller, and has been endorsed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Huffines is running as a hardline MAGA conservative who wants to "DOGE Texas," in reference to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's drastic cuts to federal agencies in early 2025.

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'Not mentally well': MAGA suspects Trump sabotaged by liberals armed with weather machines

Raw Story

1 hour ago

'Not mentally well': MAGA suspects Trump sabotaged by liberals armed with weather machines

Kylie Jane Kremer, the activist listed as the permit holder for the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol attack, has floated a new theory about Washington's summer heat: it's sabotage.In a post on X, Kremer claimed someone with an "extreme case" of Trump derangement syndrome "geoengineered" the weather in D.C. She pointed to the cold at Trump's inauguration as proof of the same plot."I’m telling y’all that someone with an extreme case of TDS geoengineered this weather in DC. Same way they geoengineered Trump’s inauguration to be one of the coldest in U.S. history. People with TDS hate Trump more than they love America," she wrote on X.Her post came in response to Washington Post meteorologist and reporter Ben Noll, who noted the nation's capital would be "hotter than 99 percent of the planet on Friday.""Only parts of Africa's Sahara Desert, the Middle East, China's Gobi Desert and a few spots in the Desert Southwest will be hotter," he wrote on X.Forecasters called the inauguration D.C.'s coldest in decades, and the ceremony was moved indoors. But whether progressives with weather machines were responsible is another matter. And the internet didn't spare her. Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger wrote that people pushing the theory are "not mentally well," while internet commentator Damin Toell reminded followers that Kremer was also a key figure in the 2020 "stop the steal" movement. Writer Joe Flood noted that a woman who helped host the Jan. 6 rally now believes liberals control the weather.Julian Andreone of Drop Site News leaned into the joke, sarcastically agreeing that July heat in D.C. is "very suspicious." Climate advocate Benji Backer flagged the contradiction."Climate change can’t be real but this can be. Got it. Trying to catch up," he joked.The claim echoes a pattern among MAGA figures, including Marjorie Taylor Greene's flood conspiracy theory and her bill to ban "weather modification" after the deadly Texas floods. Even fellow Republicans have stepped in to debunk the weather-control claims. Meteorologists have said cloud seeding cannot produce disasters.

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Critics mangle MAGA’s crusade to make the nation 'sad and pathetic' like itself

Alternet.org

2 hours ago

Critics mangle MAGA’s crusade to make the nation 'sad and pathetic' like itself

Racism is an act of self-destruction, warns podcaster Wajahat Ali and independent reporter Joy Ann-Reid. But that destruction extends to everything around them when they manage to grab the levers of power.“I mean there's a big hole in the White House. The lawn where they built that ugly UFC ring is now brown. They've destroyed the Jackie Kennedy garden. [President] Donald Trump is supposed to be a builder but he physically destroyed D.C.,” said Reid. “And then that the poor pathetic little fair that he had, his little world's fair with the fake arch made of plastic. And they painted it. America right now is a laughingstock. I think we created 57,000 jobs last month. That is sad. It's a sad birthday.”But this is the mess that comes of a nation that “refused to acknowledge and uproot its dark sin of white supremacy,” said Ali. “We whitewashed our history books, made heroes of racist traitors, and decided to elect the most incompetent, corrupt vulgarian after electing the first Black president.”“Refusing to learn our lesson, we re-elected Trump, even though we could have had a competent Black woman as President. Now? America is turning into a s——hole,” Ali lamented. “Just look at the Reflecting Pool as a tragic example of our downfall. Take a trip to Washington, D.C., and see the absolute mess that is the White House. Our infrastructure is collapsing, our economy is ailing, and our public health is deteriorating. Measles, death, gun violence, and suicide are on the rise. But it doesn’t matter. White supremacy will destroy everything, including itself, instead of sharing power. It will burn everything down.”“The right wing is not satisfied with just having physically destroyed the country,” said Reid. “[They] destroyed the morale of the country on our birthday where we're sad and pathetic and can't even pull off a world's fair.”The Supreme Court, meanwhile, barely protected birthright citizenship with a six-to-three vote when all the justices had to do was read the Constitution and see that if you're born here, you're a citizen, said Ali.With the war on birthright citizenship and MAGA cries to sterilize brown immigrants, Reid said MAGA and Trump are laboring for a very specific kind of America.“If they were successful at removing everyone who looks like you and me — all the Blacks, all the browns, all the Muslims all the AAPI, all the Latinos — if they got their way, you know what America would look like? It would look like Trump’s pathetic American state fair,” said Reid. “That was a place where there were no Blacks. There were no gays. There were no brown people. It was just MAGA white folks. The one’s who weren’t broken by [Trump’s] economy, who could afford to get on a plane or drive to DC with these gas prices. It was an estimate that the first day was like a 1,000 people — only tens of MAGA could even afford to go there. … [because] they are the poor. They are broke. They're bored. And they're boring.”“There was no musical entertainment,” Reid raged. “That cultural anti-phenomenon that we saw at that pathetic Trump celebration supposedly of America’s birthday and Donald Trump — that is what's left when you get rid of all of us. If you really get rid of people of color then American culture is like sad Europe.”“Like a crusty, crusty mayo sandwich that has been left in the sun for two days,” added Ali.“One-hundred percent,” confirmed Reid. “You'd get no Janet Jackson, no Michael Jackson, no Prince, no Whitney Houston, no Aretha Franklin, no jazz, no gospel, no hip-hop. What do you actually have? What is your culture? What is this white culture that you're trying to preserve at all costs, at the cost of your own economy?”Ali added that even MAGA doesn’t like MAGA America.“When they move to the Southern states where do they move to when they move to Texas? Austin! When they move to Tennessee, they move to Nashville,” said Ali. “Even MAGA influencer] Nick Fuentes was like ‘yeah, I don't want to really move to a red state. So, they know that their mayo sandwich is s——. They know their potato salad sucks. They know their chicken is dry and has no spice. They know that they're bland and pasty and that they have no culture and no rhythm.”

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Trump scammed MAGA — and they 'admire' him for it

Alternet.org

3 hours ago

Trump scammed MAGA — and they 'admire' him for it

In the wake of financial disclosures showing that President Donald Trump has profited wildly off his presidency over the past year, the Newsweek editors have published a detailed analysis in which they assert that he is “raking in eye-watering sums of money from cryptocurrency gamblers, most of whom were losers in this trade, and also his supporters.”According to Newsweek, while his supporters theoretically set out to “drain the swamp” in corrupt Washington, “The truth is, MAGA always knew Trump was like this. In fact, it’s a big part of why they backed him in the first place.”As Newsweek details, “Trump’s 2025 disclosure lists CIC Digital LLC, described as wholly owned by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, receiving royalties from a license agreement with Celebration Coins and reports the amount as $635,068,835. The same filing reports $236.25 million in token-sale proceeds distributed by World Liberty Financial, plus $65.6 million from the sale of equity in its holding company. Those numbers are politically explosive… because they involve a sitting president, his family business network and an industry his administration is figuring out how to, and if it should, regulate.”Critics say crypto is “a haven for criminals and scammers,” and Newsweek suggests it’s the most “Trumpian” of Trump’s grifts yet. “The $TRUMP coin launched days before Trump returned to office and surged from under $10 to as high as $74.59 before falling back, with four-fifths of its supply held by CIC Digital and an entity called Fight Fight Fight,” explains Newsweek. “The coin described itself as ‘an expression of support,’ not an investment or a security — a distinction that should have cooled anyone foolish enough to be treating it as a retirement plan.”Ultimately, “there were losses, though not for Trump. Roughly two-thirds of investors in the memecoin are underwater, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the Reuters tally put buyers’ collective losses near the family’s $2.3 billion in gains.”As Newsweek notes, “No supporter deserves to be fleeced because a favorite leader put his name on a speculative asset,” but “the naivete defense has limits.” Experts and regulators have long warned not only about the “exceptionally volatile and speculative” nature of crypto, which poses a significant risk of total loss, but about the shady nature of Trump’s dealings. With that in mind, “a voter can call Trump’s crypto dealings unseemly all they like, but a speculator who bought a president-branded token after years of such warnings has a hard time arguing the house owed him a win.”According to Newsweek, “It is easy to see the new crypto numbers as a betrayal of Trump’s voters, many of whom are struggling middle-and-working class voters who can never hope to own even a tiny fraction, if that, of what these deals alone made for him. But this is the kind of transaction many Trump supporters were primed to admire… The problem was not his instinct for aggressive self-interest, in Trump’s telling, but stupid leaders who failed to turn pursuit of self-interest into national advantage.”Whether all the crypto corruption scandal will impact Trump depends on “how his voters parse it, especially those who bought the coin and experienced losses — as personal betrayal, or as the cost of playing near power. Will the Trump supporters among the two-thirds of memecoin buyers now sitting on losses begin to defect, or simply shrug and stay with him?”

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Penn Dems boot GOP Rep from House floor for patriotic suit despite encouraging ‘Pride’ attire

BizPac Review

4 hours ago

Penn Dems boot GOP Rep from House floor for patriotic suit despite encouraging ‘Pride’ attire

A Pennsylvania state representative is calling out Democrats after he was kicked off the House floor for wearing patriotic clothes. Rep. Eric Davanzo showed up to work […]

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Wes Moore on democratic socialist gains: Voters want ‘someone who is going to fight for them’

The Hill News

4 hours ago

Wes Moore on democratic socialist gains: Voters want ‘someone who is going to fight for them’

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) on Friday argued the recent rise in democratic socialist candidates stems from an appetite within the Democratic Party for fighters, but not necessarily for direct challengers to President Trump. “I actually don’t think people are looking for someone who can fight against the president,” the Democratic official told The Hill’s Judy…

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

Alternet.org

7 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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The Democrat Party Is Literally Communist, and the Voters Admit It! (VIDEO)

The Gateway Pundit

7 hours ago

The Democrat Party Is Literally Communist, and the Voters Admit It! (VIDEO)

Recent polling shows that Democrat voters openly want socialist candidates. The post The Democrat Party Is Literally Communist, and the Voters Admit It! (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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

Raw Story

8 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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GOP primary voters press MAGA candidate on purchase of Epstein property

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GOP primary voters press MAGA candidate on purchase of Epstein property

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