Donald Trump Just Ousted One of His Biggest Supporters From the RNC

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel announced Monday that she will step down on March 8, ending a months-long standoff with Donald Trump over his demands for total loyalty.

“I have decided to step aside at our Spring Training on March 8 in Houston to allow our nominee to select a Chair of their choosing,” McDaniel said in a statement.

Her co-chair Drew McKissick also announced his resignation on Monday.

McDaniel was elected RNC chair in 2017, at first with Trump’s support—though the former president first insisted she drop her maiden name (Romney) to win his support and show loyalty. She was reelected four times—helping to transform the party into the mirror of Trump that it is now—but the GOP has soured on her over the past year. McDaniel was failing at the two main parts of her job: fundraising and winning elections—thanks in large part to her embrace of Donald Trump.

By the end of October, the RNC had a little more than $9.1 million in its coffers, the smallest amount in nearly a decade. But McDaniel insisted there was “nothing unusual” about the low funds.

Republicans also suffered wave after wave of bruising losses, from the 2022 midterm elections to, most recently, the special election for former representative and serial fabulist George Santos’s seat in New York. The party has largely blamed McDaniel for the defeats, despite the fact that the failed candidates mostly embraced Trump’s policies and talking points.

Trump himself has withdrawn his favor from McDaniel, despite reportedly supporting her as recently as the hotly contested 2023 RNC chair election. The biggest point of contention was the fact that the RNC refused to crown Trump, by far the Republican primary frontrunner, as the party’s presidential nominee and instead opted for a contested primary.

The former president has grown increasingly frustrated over the past few months with McDaniel for continuing to host RNC-backed primary debates. It’s tradition for the party without a White House incumbent running to host debates, and canceling them would have tacitly declared Trump the nominee. Trump refused to participate in any of the three debates.

Another reported reason why Trump and his allies want McDaniel out is that they hope to replace her with a loyalist who will use RNC funds to pay his massive legal bills.

Trump announced Monday that he wants North Carolina Republican Party Chair Michael Whatley to take over from McDaniel, and he tapped his daughter-in-law Lara Trump for co-chair. Trump’s choices make it clear that he wants to stack the RNC with stooges. Whatley, who has helped state Republicans chip away at voting access and gerrymander district maps, is a major proponent of 2020 election fraud conspiracies.

Lara Trump said two weeks ago, before McDaniel even officially announced she would resign, that her goal was to turn the RNC entirely into a pro-Trump machine.

“If I am elected to this position, I can assure you there will not be any more $70,000—or whatever exorbitant amount of money it was—spent on flowers. Every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC. That is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country,” she told Newsmax.

Self-identified Nazis were at CPAC—and for all of the event leadership’s political waffling, NBC News had the receipts to prove it.

On Saturday, NBC News reported that the fascists “didn’t meet any perceptible resistance” at the conservative conference, and mingled openly with Republican personalities and members of Turning Point USA, describing themselves as “national socialists” while discussing “race science,” skull measurements, and anti-Semititc conspiracy theories.

CPAC’s Chairman Matt Schlapp refused to comment on the article, but he did take to Twitter to instill his own spin, claiming that NBC had made the whole story up and that liberals were ideological Nazis—rather than his event’s attendees.

“Yawn. This is a tired old cliche,” Schlapp posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “The Neo-Nazis in our midst are the ones controlling our college campuses and major institutions and grossly populate the newsrooms of corporate media, calling for an Israeli surrender.”

In another post on Sunday, CPAC’s account described NBC’s reporting as “false, misleading, and grossly manipulative,” while condemning the report’s author, Ben Goggin, for his coverage of Gaza.

But Goggin had his evidence ready to go, dropping photos and clips of the Nazi cohort peacefully navigating the event and its conference hotel—including an image catching one of the Nazis shaking hands with Jared Taylor, the founder of the blatantly white supremacist publication American Renaissance.

“Here’s a post from one mentioned in my piece wearing a CPAC badge. In the next video, he’s giving a Nazi salute in the lobby of the conference hotel,” Goggin wrote. “There was a notable presence at the conference whether CPAC was aware of it or not.”

“Either CPAC is lying about having no idea about this, or they simply don’t have a grasp on who they approved to come to their conference,” he continued.

At best, it appears that CPAC was willfully ignorant of the Nazi presence inside their walls—at worst, they knowingly allowed it. But either way, their quiet navigation of the event points to a deeper horror: that Nazis at CPAC have become so commonplace that they simply do not illicit shock anymore. Instead, they are now a banal presence within the conservative conference.

“Nazis, antisemitism, the great replacement theory, Fuentes, have become so common among conservatives that I think attendees, even journalists, didn’t think too deeply about them being at CPAC. There was very much an ‘oh them’ attitude about the Nazis,” Goggin wrote online following the initial release of the article.

“It really illustrated how successfully extremists have shifted the Overton window. This year, they were expected, and their presence was tolerated,” he added.

At least one major embryo shipping company has temporarily halted business in Alabama, after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that embryos created through in vitro fertilization are considered children. This will make it harder for IVF patients in Alabama to pursue that health care, even out of state.

Cryoport, one of the leading embryo shippers, told Alabamian fertility clinics on Friday that it is “pausing” shipments into and out of the state until it determines the effect of the court ruling, The New York Times reported.

“Until the company has further clarity on the decision and what it means for Cryoport, clinics and intended parents, it is pausing all activity in Alabama until further notice,” the company said in an email received by a clinic and shared with the Times.

The New Republic reached out to Cryoport for confirmation but did not hear back by time of publication.

A source familiar with the situation, who asked to remain anonymous, told TNR that Reprotech, another major embryo shipper, was also pausing shipping in and out of Alabama. But Reprotech told TNR on Monday that this was not the case.

“ReproTech will continue to accept embryos from Alabama for long-term storage at our facilities. Patients can rest assured that we will continue to offer safe, reliable shipping to and from Alabama,” the company said in a statement.

At least one other embryo shipping company will continue to operate in Alabama, though. The CEO of IVF CRYO, Don Fish, said in a statement Friday that his company “will continue to service patients and clinics in the state of Alabama regardless of the increased legal complexity and risk that our business now take[s] on.”

The Alabama high court’s ruling is only one week old and yet is already kneecapping the state’s fertility industry. The state Supreme Court ruled last week that embryos created through IVF can be considered children and are thus protected under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Since it’s common for fertilized eggs not to survive the IVF process, the ruling puts doctors and clinics at risk of being charged for wrongful death of embryos.

At least three fertility clinics have already ceased IVF treatments to avoid potential legal repercussions. The CDC lists a total of eight clinics in the state that provide assisted reproductive technology services.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s medical school announced Wednesday that it is pausing IVF treatments. The next day, the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Medical Center, which was a defendant in the Supreme Court lawsuit, and Alabama Fertility Specialists announced they were also halting IVF treatment.

Patients could still ship their embryos out of state and continue seeking IVF treatment elsewhere. But if shipping companies keep halting their business, that leaves Alabama IVF patients—who have already invested time, resources, and their own health in the process—few options left.

The president and CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association, Barbara Collura, lamented Cryoport’s decision but laid the blame squarely on the state Supreme Court.

“Since the court’s ruling, doctors have been forced to deliver devastating news to their patients, who dream of becoming parents and whose plans are on hold indefinitely, all because of the court’s disregard for science. And now, this slight window of hope for Alabamans currently undergoing IVF to continue their family-building treatment in other states just slammed shut,” Collura said in a statement.

“Thousands of Alabamans trying to build their families are being held hostage by this destructive ruling.”

This story has been updated.

After trying and failing to salvage Republicans’ crumbling impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan at last, finally, conceded on Friday that Alexander Smirnov’s story might not be totally accurate.

“I don’t know, maybe the guy did lie,” Jordan said at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.

The House Judiciary chair spent the better part of the week attempting to twist and tweak Smirnov’s testimony, insisting, as he had for months, that Smirnov’s allegations—that Biden had reaped millions off of a business deal between his son and the Ukrainian company Burisma—still held weight, and could prove the most viable pathway to successfully charge the sitting president. That is, even after Smirnov was indicted for lying to the FBI about those claims—and then reportedly admitted to prosecutors that the story had been drawn up with the help of top Russian intelligence officials and the whole thing was a bed of lies.

Still, Jordan couldn’t totally put the theory to rest at CPAC on Friday, attempting instead to distract from the dumpster fire probe by claiming the Department of Justice was operating under a double standard by arresting Smirnov for lying to investigators.

“But there sure is quite a contrast for—Christopher Steele can give false information about President Trump, and he continues to get paid. This guy, this Mr. Smirnov, can give false information—what they’ve said is false information—and he gets arrested,” Jordan added, referring to former British spy Christopher Steele and his private report of raw intelligence on Trump’s suspected ties to the Russian government, better known as the Steele Dossier.

Trump and his allies have attempted to claim that the dossier served as the basis for Trump’s impeachment inquiry. In reality, a Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee (which Jordan has sat on since 2019) helped prompt an FBI investigation with its memo on former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos.

The Ohio lawmaker’s confession also comes two days after one of his colleagues, Representative Ken Buck, revealed that Jordan and House Oversight Chair James Comer had both been warned ahead of time that the story sold by their primary witness was full of holes.

“Obviously, this witness—and we were warned at the time that we received the document outlining this witness’s testimony—we were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known,” Buck told Kaitlin Collins on CNN’s The Source.

A Republican representative is outraged by the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling restricting IVF—despite supporting a federal bill that would have done just that.

“As someone who struggled to get pregnant, I believe all life is a gift. IVF allowed me, as it has so many others, to start my family,” California Representative Michelle Steel tweeted on Thursday. “I believe there is nothing more pro-life than helping families have children, and I do not support federal restrictions on IVF.”

Steel’s solidarity with Alabaman IVF patients rings pretty hollow considering she co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act. The measure, which was introduced first in 2021 with 166 co-sponsors and then again in 2023 with 124, would have established that life begins at fertilization. The bill has not advanced since.

Like the Alabama ruling, the Life at Conception Act would have severely restricted—if not effectively banned—IVF treatments as well, because it grants “equal protection” to “preborn” humans, including embryos. Since it’s common for fertilized eggs not to survive the IVF process, the act would put doctors at risk of being charged for wrongful death of embryos. That risk would be enough to scupper the IVF industry.

And that is exactly what is happening in Alabama. The state Supreme Court ruled 7–2 last week that embryos created through IVF can be considered children and are thus protected under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Since then, at least three fertility clinics have ceased IVF treatments to avoid potential legal repercussions.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s medical school announced Wednesday that it is pausing IVF treatments. The next day, the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Medical Center, which was a defendant in the Supreme Court lawsuit, and Alabama Fertility Specialists announced they were also halting IVF treatment. The CDC lists a total of eight clinics in the state that provide assisted reproductive technology services.

Other Republican lawmakers have also spoken out against the Alabama decision, and their responses are just as hypocritical as Steel’s, although for a different reason. Party leadership is rushing to preserve the GOP’s supposedly pro-family reputation, and on Friday, the Senate Republican campaign arm sent a memo to GOP candidates, urging them to “clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF.”

In the memo, the National Republican Senatorial Committee slammed the all-conservative Alabama court’s decision as “fodder for Democrats hoping to manipulate the abortion issue for electoral gain.”

Republicans are frantically scrambling to save face as an allegedly pro-family party, following a devastating ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court that has effectively restricted in vitro fertilization across the state.

On Friday, the Senate Republican campaign arm issued a memo urging its political candidates to “clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF.” The National Republican Senatorial Committee derided the all-conservative court’s decision in a deep red state as “fodder for Democrats hoping to manipulate the abortion issue for electoral gain,” according to a copy of the memo obtained by Axios.

And like clockwork, a flurry of Republican candidates across the nation issued their own renewed stances on the issue.

“One in six Americans struggle with fertility issues,” posted Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, slightly downplaying how common infertility is in the United States, which affects about one in five women.

“In the Senate, I will advocate for increased access to fertility treatment for women struggling to get pregnant. IVF is extremely important for helping countless families experience the joy of parenthood. I oppose restrictions,” Lake continued.

Over in Ohio, Senate candidate Bernie Moreno defended IVF treatments on the basis that his “goal is to promote a culture of life.”

“We have a crisis in this country of people not having enough kids at replacement levels,” Moreno posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “I’m in favor of anything that promotes people having more babies & strong families.”

Other Republicans similarly flipped their stance on the issue, robotically miming their support for IVF despite having co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which hoped to recognize fertilized eggs as children at the federal level—or, as one of the bill’s 166 House Republican co-sponsors, West Virginia Representative Alex Mooney, initially put it, “establish personhood at the moment of conception.”

“As someone who struggled to get pregnant, I believe all life is a gift. IVF allowed me, as it has so many others, to start my family. I believe there is nothing more pro-life than helping families have children, and I do not support federal restrictions on IVF,” posted California Representative Michelle Steel on Thursday, despite signing on to the controversial bill in 2021.

But not every lawmaker seemed to be in on the reversed messaging.

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, who is up for reelection in 2026, mentioned at CPAC on Thursday that he was “all for” his state’s decision, referring to the judicial ruling as a “bill” before admitting that he didn’t consider restricted access to the assisted family conception procedure a “big conversation” and hadn’t actually looked into it.

They say a magician never reveals his tricks, but Paul Carpenter is ready to reveal this one: The New Orleans–based illusionist says a Democratic consultant affiliated with the Dean Phillips presidential campaign paid him to make a digitally manipulated recording of Joe Biden.

The weekend before the New Hampshire primary, New Hampshire Democrats received a robocall that used a digitally faked recording of the president to urge them to “save” their votes and not write Biden’s name on their ballots. Biden ultimately won the Democratic primary through a write-in campaign.

Carpenter told NBC News in a story published Friday that he was hired by Steve Kramer to make multiple imitations of politicians’ voices, including the one of Biden, using A.I. software. Kramer has worked on ballot access for Phillips, the Minnesota representative running a long-shot Democratic presidential campaign against Biden.

“I created the audio used in the robocall. I did not distribute it,” Carpenter said of the Biden deepfake. “I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it. There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.”

“It’s so scary that it’s this easy to do,” Carpenter said. “People aren’t ready for it.”

Carpenter, whose political views appear to span the spectrum from pro–conspiracy theory to anti–Donald Trump, says he and Kramer met through a mutual acquaintance. He provided NBC with texts, emails, and Venmo payment receipts detailing their relationship.

Kramer first hired Carpenter in September to make two A.I. recordings of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. In January, Kramer asked Carpenter for the fake recording of Biden. Carpenter told NBC he had never heard of Phillips. Instead, he believed Kramer was working for Graham and Biden, and that their campaigns had authorized the voice projects.

Kramer’s father, Bruce, paid Carpenter $150 via the electronic payment platform Venmo for the Biden deepfake. It is not clear why Kramer had his father send the payment.

Carpenter says Kramer directed him to delete all of their email correspondence after the news of the Biden robocall broke. Those emails included instructions for creating the A.I. recording and the script Carpenter followed.

Phillips’s campaign denied knowledge of or involvement in the deepfake robocall plot. The campaign told NBC that Kramer had completed his contract to help Phillips get on the ballot in certain states several weeks ago and was no longer in communication with him. The campaign also said it would consider taking legal action against Kramer if the allegations are true.

However, Phillips has been linked to weird A.I. before. A pro-Phillips PAC created an A.I. version of the candidate that The New Republic’s Tim Noah found much more engaging than Phillips himself.

This isn’t the first time Kramer has been associated with political scandal. He helped Kanye West get ballot access during his highly controversial presidential campaign in 2020.

The following year, Kramer’s client Sara Tirschwell sued him. Tirschwell had been running as a Republican for New York City mayor, but she was kicked off the ballot in April 2021 after she failed to get enough signatures to qualify. Tirschwell accused Kramer of sabotaging her campaign by gathering signatures that mostly ended up being invalid. Kramer has denied the accusations, and the case is currently ongoing.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson won’t be called a liar—at least not by Republicans’ Biden corruption witness Tony Bobulinski.

At a House panel last week, Republicans revealed Bobulinski, one of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, as their new star witness in their Biden impeachment crusade. During that panel, Bobulinski derided Hutchinson as an “absolute liar and a fraud,” taking issue with a section of her book, Enough, that recollected an “out of sight” meeting between him and Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, at a 2020 campaign rally in Rome, Georgia.

As Hutchinson describes it, Bobulinski chose to wear a “ski mask” to conceal his identity while Meadows handed him a “folded sheet of paper or small envelope.”

“[Meadows] didn’t hand me a single thing,” Bobulinski insisted at the House panel.

But on Friday, Hutchinson called Bobulinski’s bluff, sharing photographic evidence of the “suspicious” encounter.

In the photo, the pair appear to be standing between a couple of SUVs outside of a Trump rally, with Meadows in a red cap and Bobulinski in a black Penn State hat and mask.

“Mr. Bobulinski claims under oath that he was not wearing a mask, that Mr. Meadows did not hand him anything, and that Ms. Hutchinson was ‘fabricating facts,’” Hutchinson’s lawyer wrote in a letter addressing Bobulinski. “Perhaps Mr. Bobulinski’s memory is impaired about the meeting, and a picture would help refresh his recollection.”

But Bobulinski refused to yield, even while caught red-handed.

“We will see to it that Ms. Hutchinson soon gets her day in court to tell her story in front of a jury and the truth will prevail,” Bobulinski’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, wrote in a statement to ABC News.

Tennessee has passed a law that, despite being just one sentence long, completely annihilates marriage equality in the state.

Republican Governor Bill Lee signed House Bill 878 into law on Wednesday. The measure simply states, “A person shall not be required to solemnize a marriage.”

This means that any government official can refuse to certify a marriage license for any reason whatsoever. Current Tennessee law states that before a marriage is legally recognized, the couple must have their marriage license solemnized by a “minister or officer.” Marriages can be solemnized by religious leaders or government officials including judges, notaries public, and elected officials.

The new law does not affect anyone’s ability to obtain a marriage license. Republican state Senator Mark Pody, who sponsored the measure in the state Senate, argued last month that the bill was not discriminatory because people can still get marriage licenses.

“It just says that a person shall not be required to solemnize a marriage,” Pody said.

But that, critics say, is exactly what undermines marriage equality. The law gives officiants the right to refuse to solemnize any marriage they disagree with. This means LGBTQ, interfaith, or interracial couples could be unable to officially marry in the eyes of the law.

“Let’s be clear—this bill is intended to exclude LGBTQ+ folks from equal protection under the law,” Molly Whitehorn, associate director of regional campaigns for the Human Rights Campaign, said last month.

Republican lawmakers introduced H.B. 878 last year. The original version of the bill stated that officials didn’t have to solemnize a marriage if that person had “an objection to solemnizing the marriage based on the person’s conscience or religious beliefs.”

Although marriage equality has been codified into federal law since December 2022, the original bill exploited a major loophole. The Respect for Marriage Act had been amended during the congressional debate process to say that religious organizations do not have to marry same-sex couples, nor are states required to actually issue same-sex marriage licenses.

Critics of the original version of the Tennessee bill said it was completely unnecessary. Tennessee law already says that religious leaders do not have to officiate weddings they object to. It appears state Republicans were listening, as they amended the bill to remove the redundant reference to religious objections, and now officials can refuse to officiate marriages for any reason, not just religious ones.

Because the bill is so broad and vague, it is unlikely to stand up to scrutiny in court. But not before it likely wreaks havoc on LGBTQ people’s ability to get married.

“Tennessee House Bill 878 would be patently unconstitutional,” Camilla Taylor, the deputy legal director of litigation for the LGBTQ legal advocacy group Lambda Legal, told CNN. “The Constitution prohibits public officials from discriminating against members of the public based on their personal beliefs.”

“Government officials can’t target people based on who they are and require them to use a different process to obtain marriage licenses relative to everyone else. The effect of forcing same-sex couples to go through a different process relative to everyone else—whether by demanding that they use a different door, or that they wait for a different public official to issue them a license would be to stigmatize them and communicate that their government thinks their marriages are less worthy than everyone else’s.”

Even Florida Representative Matt Gaetz seems to be growing tired of the impeachment probe into President Joe Biden, admitting on Thursday that the inquiry’s strongest line against Biden was overhyped.

“A few of those characterizations might have been a little oversauced,” Gaetz said on CNN.

The GOP impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has crashed and burned in a spectacular way since its main witness, an informant who claimed Biden had pocketed millions of dollars from a Ukrainian oligarch, was indicted by the Department of Justice for lying to the FBI. Since then, Alexander Smirnov has reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president, and was taken back into custody on Thursday after a judge reversed an order that would have allowed him to roam free ahead of his trial.

Still, Gaetz didn’t seem totally ready to give up the goat just yet, claiming that the probe should pursue another angle in spite of previous comments he had made that shot down the probe from the get-go.

“But here’s the thing, you just acknowledged there’s actually no evidence of bribery,” responded CNN anchor Abby Phillips.

“I did not acknowledge that,” Gaetz threw back.

“You acknowledged that there’s no proof—there’s reports of bribery, but there’s actually no proof of bribery actually being consummated,” Phillips said.

“Here’s what you said, congressman, this was in October at a private fundraiser,” she continued. “You said, ‘I don’t believe that we are endeavoring upon a legitimate impeachment of Joe Biden. They’re trying to engage in a “forever war” of impeachment. And like so many of our forever wars, it will drag on forever and end in a bloody draw.’ Honestly, it seems like maybe you were right the first time.”

“When you’ve heard me speak about issues important to me, I haven’t led with impeachment,” Gaetz started, before Phillips interrupted to ask if House Republicans should drop the impeachment probe.

“I disagree with Jordan that this is what’s most corroborating,” Gaetz said, referring to the Burisma allegations founded on Smirnov’s lies.

“I think what’s most corroborating are the payments to Hunter Biden, and Frank Biden, and James Biden. I was deposing James Biden, and the way that they took money from the Chinese government would make your skin crawl,” he added, failing to connect his allegations to the sitting president.

“Everything that you’ve described is an inference. It’s basically saying, ‘Well, it must be,’ but … you haven’t actually given any proof of what you’re alleging,” Phillips replied.

“Is this impeachment inquiry even going anywhere if you cannot provide enough evidence?” Phillips continued, prompting Gaetz to respond to a quote from Jonathan Turley, a conservative attorney who testified before the House Oversight Committee that there was “not enough evidence” to support the impeachment.

“Yea, when Jonathan Turley said that, we should have asked Jamaal Bowman to pull a fire alarm. It was a devastating moment for House Republicans,” Gaetz conceded.

Gaetz’s Republican colleagues are still scrambling to revive the probe. On Wednesday, Jordan insisted to reporters that Smirnov’s indictment “doesn’t change the fundamental facts,” even though those “facts” were lies fed by the Russian government.