MAGA Feud in Central New Jersey Ends in Local Official’s Arrest

An amateur sting operation in a bitter feud between Republicans in a small town in central New Jersey has now resulted in the arrest of a local councilman.

The hustle, reports the New Jersey Globe, was organized and planned by a growing cohort of MAGA Republicans in Readington Township. Frustrated by the increasingly routine disappearances of their political placards, they decided to plant six repurposed boards from the district’s 2022 House race as bait, pinning them with Apple AirTags before planting them next to a group of signs supporting a pair of moderate conservatives running for Readington mayor.

The signs were then stolen, and the AirTags led the Donald Trump–aligned cohort to an unexpected location: the home of committeeman John Albanese.

Albanese, a member of the town’s Republican old guard and a former Readington mayor himself, was arrested May 17 and charged with “unlawfully taking or exercising control over certain moveable property,” according to a summons issued by Patrolman Brandon Griffiths.

Incumbent Mayor Adam Mueller and Committee Member Juergen Huelsebusch, both aligned with the town’s new conservative wing, issued a joint statement denouncing Alabanese’s alleged behavior. “The arrest of Committeeman Albanese, an elected official and former Mayor, is deeply troubling and indefensible,” the pair told the Globe. “Given the considerable damage and embarrassment this has caused to Readington Township and the Republican Party, we call for his immediate resignation from all elected offices. This is a necessary step to begin restoring trust and integrity within our community.”

Still, the election boards weren’t exactly the MAGA cohort’s property to be stolen. Originally, the House district signs belonged to the campaign for Representative Thomas Kean Jr., though the backs of the signs had since been marked as “Property of Readington GOP,” according to the Globe.

A spokesman for the Kean campaign declined to comment to the local paper, though the freshman lawmaker is backing Huelsebusch and Mueller.

The latest addition to Donald Trump’s horror show of vice presidential candidates is Senator Tom Cotton, The New York Times reports.

Trump reportedly thinks the Arkansas senator is a reliable communicator, and likes the fact that Cotton is a military veteran with undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard.

Cotton told Fox News on Monday that Trump has not discussed the vice presidency with him, and the two only discussed what the former president needs to do to be elected a second time.

“When we do talk, we talk about what it’s going to take to win this election in November—to elect President Trump to another term in the White House and elect a Republican Congress, so we can begin to repair the damage that Joe Biden’s presidency has inflicted on this country,” Cotton said.

Cotton may be on Trump’s shortlist for a different reason: his foreign policy hawkishness and itchy trigger finger.

Even before his political career began, he called for American journalists to be jailed for reporting on classified information. After becoming senator, he made a name for himself by constantly calling on the United States to attack Iran. But he’s also called for a brutal use of force domestically as well. In 2020, the Arkansas senator infamously called for invoking the Insurrection Act and sending in federal troops to quell Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Most recently, he again called for troops to be deployed against protesters, this time against demonstrators who oppose Israel’s brutal massacre in Gaza, which he continues to cheer on.

This year, he’s also made headlines for badgering TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew in a racist onslaught of questions about Chew’s background, repeatedly asking if the social media executive was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and ignoring Chew’s assertion that he was Singaporean.

To many Republicans in today’s Trump-led GOP, these disturbing stances are welcomed, not rejected. The question is whether the Republican presidential nominee thinks Cotton and his record would help him return to the White House.

Criminals of a feather flocked together on Thursday as Trump hosted two Brooklyn rappers out on bail for murder conspiracy during a campaign rally in the Bronx.

Rappers Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow were indicted in 2023, alongside some 30 other people, as part of a massive investigation into two rival Brooklyn gangs. Sheff G—real name Michael Williams—allegedly used his accomplishments to help fund widespread violence. According to the New York Daily News, Williams was released on a $150,000 cash or $1 million bond in April after being charged with conspiracy, multiple murder counts, criminal possession of a weapon, assault with a weapon, and 12 shootings. Williams’s lackey Sleepy Hallow—real name Tegan Chambers—was released with a $200,000 cash or $150,000 bond bail for conspiracy charges.

Trump proudly brought the rappers on stage with him to give remarks to the red behatted crowd on Thursday. Williams told the crowd, “They’re always going to whisper the accomplishments and shout your failures. Trump gonna shout the wins for all of us.”

Chambers kept it even more brief and simply shouted, “Make America Great Again.”

As the duo departed and before Trump resumed making promises to “turn New York City around,” Trump noted that he wants teeth grills similar to Sheff G’s, according to reporting from Daily News reporter Chris Sommerfeldt.

It’s unclear how the duo connected with the Trump campaign or why the Trump campaign felt it was a wise move to host a man accused, per the Brooklyn district attorney, of “using his fame and fortune to elevate gang violence in Brooklyn.”

Representative Byron Donalds won’t answer a simple question on whether he thinks the FBI wanted to assassinate Donald Trump while searching his estate for classified documents.

The contender for vice president kept dodging CNN’s Abby Phillip Thursday night when she tried to get a straight answer out of him regarding the conspiracy theory.

“Congressman, I just want to note that you are not responding to a very simple question about a conspiracy theory that you voiced,” Phillip said, at times talking over Donalds.

“What conspiracy theory?” Donalds replied, sounding clueless.

“That the FBI, by having on a document that they are authorized to use deadly force, was trying to harm or assassinate Donald Trump,” Phillip replied. “That is false. Will you acknowledge that?”

“Can I be very clear with you?” Donalds asked, talking over Phillip, who tried in vain to get him to acknowledge the truth of the situation. “I’m not sure what Merrick Garland is trying to do these days, because it is clear that the Department of Justice is being weaponized against Donald Trump.”

Phillip and Donalds argued throughout the rest of the interview, with Donalds spending more than three minutes trying to steer their discussion back to his assertion that the Justice Department is being weaponized, and Phillip trying to pin down the congressman on how there was no plot to kill Trump, as the former president claimed on a Truth Social post earlier this week.

A former president claiming their successor tried to kill them is unprecedented, according to The Washington Post. The FBI has already testified that it chose to search Mar-a-Lago on a day that Trump would not be there in order to prevent any conflict. The FBI and Merrick Garland each confirmed that standard procedure for searches includes a deadly-force policy and that the same policy was used when President Biden’s homes were searched for classified documents.

Donalds and other Trump allies are all seizing upon this conspiracy theory to distract from the recent news that more classified documents were found in Trump’s bedroom at Mar-a-Lago four months after the FBI’s initial search. Meanwhile, the actual case against Trump remains in limbo thanks to Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon’s indefinite stay.

Donald Trump rallied at a park in the Bronx on Thursday to an adoring crowd of hundreds of current and future Florida residents, alongside rappers accused of murder, while rambling about putting his pants on.

During his speech, Trump referred to imaginary business executives while reliving his glory days as a racist housing developer. “Some of the greatest days of my business career were in the toughest times,” Trump said from prewritten remarks. “But I enjoyed waking up every single morning and—go to battle,” he continued, veering off script.

“A lot of people say to me today, the toughest business people, people that you know about, ‘Could I ask you a question: How do you do it?’ I say, ‘Do what?’”

Trump then proceeded to have an imaginary conversation with himself and unnamed Toughest Business People begging him to tell them how he puts his pants on. “‘How do you get up in the morning and put your pants on? Why do you put those pants on?’ ‘I’ll explain it to you someday’ ‘How do you do it? How do you get up? How?’”

The tangent appeared to be intended to boast of Trump’s strength but ultimately served as a conduit for his greatest weakness: his tendency to ramble incoherently. The stumble is one in a series of particularly nonsensical gaffes the 77-year old Trump has had lately, raising questions about his mental acuity. Recent polling shows six in 10 Americans have doubts about Trump’s—and Biden’s—aging mental capability.

The presidential candidate who stood and watched as scores of his supporters rampaged through the U.S. Capitol is being proactive about security for the Republican National Convention in July.

The Trump campaign has decided that the Secret Service’s current security plans don’t provide enough clearance between the GOP event and its liberal protesters. In a letter to Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle, the campaign described the current programmed distance between the Milwaukee event and its protesters as an “unacceptable” and “critical flaw.” Specifically, it requests that the agency add the inclusion of a nearby park—effectively an extra one-block cushion area—to the security perimeter in a preemptive effort to keep thousands of the event’s anticipated detractors far away from its attendees.

Trump is not the only politico to request the change, though he’s almost certainly the loudest. Some of the biggest GOP lawmakers in the country have already made the special request, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Senators Ron Johnson and Rick Scott.

“To date, the local USSS team has been unresponsive to the RNC’s reasonable proposal, as set out in my April 26 letter, to alleviate these safety risks through a very modest alteration of the Perimeter—namely, to expand a small portion of the Security Perimeter approximately one block to the East to encapsulate the Park,” wrote Republican National Committee counsel Todd Steggerda in the letter.

The city of Milwaukee did not agree with the Trump campaign’s assessment of the security perimeter. Milwaukee’s director of communications Jeff Fleming told ABC News that the city did not identify “any critical flaws” in the security plan and that it is coordinating with “multiple agencies” to ensure a safe event for everyone involved.

A border bill negotiated by Republicans and Democrats has died in the Senate—with the help of lots of opposition from Republicans, including the bill’s main author.

Senators voted 43–50 to take down the bill, an attempt to renew a border proposal that was tanked earlier this year thanks to Donald Trump.

In February, Republicans killed an attempt to pass a bill for border security, also a product of bipartisan negotiations. Back then, several Republicans called out Trump and the rest of their party for killing a bill that essentially gave the GOP what they wanted: rather draconian immigration restrictions. Back then, Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump were more afraid of handing the Democrats a win than they were of a supposedly insecure southern U.S. border. Months later, that again seems to be the case.

This time, even the bill’s authors, such as Senators James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent for herself, voted against advancing the legislation. The GOP, hypocritically, also sees the vote as a political boost to President Biden.

​​“Today is not a bill, today is a prop,” said Lankford on the Senate floor before the vote. “Everyone sees it for what it is.” This is especially ironic, considering that Lankford was among those Republicans who called B.S. the last time a border deal failed.

Some Democrats also voted to kill the bill due to other issues. “It fails to address the root causes of migration or to establish more lawful pathways,” Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, told the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Republicans still use fearmongering and racist tropes whenever the issue of immigration comes up, especially when they are up for reelection. No matter how much danger they claim Americans are in from an unsecure southern border, they still would rather use it as a talking point against Democrats instead of actually doing something about it.

On Thursday, former Trump White House attorney Ty Cobb accused Judge Aileen Cannon, the federal judge overseeing his ex-boss’s classified documents case, of “incompetence,” insisting that there’s more than enough evidence—and time—to take the case to trial before Election Day.

“I don’t think this case will move at all,” Cobb said on CNN. “And I think the fact that she’s scheduling hearings, multiple hearings, sort of one or two motions at a time, is compelling evidence of that. Most federal judges would have long ago ruled on all the pending motions.”

“And frankly, this is a case that should’ve started trial yesterday or two days ago when the original trial date was set,” he continued. “This case could have easily gotten to trial. Only her incompetence and perceived bias has prevented that.”

Earlier this month, the Trump-appointed judge ordered a stay on the GOP presidential nominee’s legal requirement to give the government advance notice of which classified materials will be discussed—but offered no expiration date for the theoretically temporary reprieve. Legal analysts have worried that a strategy of continual delays could be the Trump-appointed judge’s way of surreptitiously dismissing the trial altogether.

Cobb also accused Cannon of simply failing to understand the case—or the determination of the serial fraudster being tried.

“Trump has a consistent record of lying about the judicial process, and his perception of that process is really odd,” Cobb said, pointing to Trump’s accusation that the Biden administration had authorized the FBI to shoot him during its search and seizure of Mar-a-Lago—a claim that was, in actuality, a wild, willful misread of a standard policy statement regarding the use of deadly force.

Louisiana Republicans have passed a draconian bill classifying abortion pills as schedule IV “controlled dangerous substances”—and threatening anyone in possession of the pill without a prescription with prison and thousands of dollars in fines. The legislation is expected to be signed by Republican Governor Jeff Landry.

The soon-to-be law will go after both mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known simply as the abortion pill. Prior to its final passage in the state Senate on Thursday, health care providers warned the bill will make it more difficult to treat miscarriages, as the legislation requires special licensing and controlled distribution of abortion pills.

Under Louisiana law, possession of a schedule IV controlled dangerous substance includes a fine up to $5,000, jail time from one to five years, or both. Distribution or possession with intent to distribute carries a fine up to $15,000 and imprisonment up to 10 years.

Louisiana legislation has steadily restricted access to the abortion pill in recent years. Legislation passed in 2022 banned abortion pills by mail, required abortion pills to be administered by a physician—not a nurse or other health care worker—and mandated any administration to be reported to the state’s Department of Health. When that law took effect, two abortion providers in the state shut down.

Conservatives have been working to ban abortion pills, used to terminate pregnancy in its first 10 weeks, since the overturning of Roe. The two-part abortion pill was first developed in France in the 1980s, with the Food and Drug Administration finally approving its distribution in the U.S. in 2000. By 2023, chemically induced abortions accounted for 63 percent of abortions nationwide. Anti-abortion activists have falsely claimed the pills are dangerous and that their effects can be reversed, while health care professionals insist they are the safest way to terminate early term pregnancies, including miscarriage.

Handing a major win to a manufactured conservative campaign to dismantle safeguards for equality, the governing board of North Carolina’s 17 public university systems on Thursday banned its diversity, equity, and inclusion policy.

The move follows a last-minute plea from lawmakers, students, and business leaders who gathered at the state legislature on Wednesday to urge against the ban and extol the virtues of DEI programs.

“Our world has become so different, and it’s changing so rapidly, and North Carolina is evolving alongside these global changes,” state Representative Maria Cervania said during the last-minute meeting on Wednesday. “Our businesses know this. They’ve told us they want a workforce that can keep up with our new, globalized world. DEI is actually the best program that’s helping equip our students for that.”

The Board of Governors for the UNC system unanimously approved the university DEI policy in 2019, according to local news outlet WRAL. Following the anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests of 2020, conservatives have sharpened their knives to dismantle hallmarks of racial progress. Those attacks resulted in a manufactured crisis over critical race theory, arguing it’s bad to teach college students factual—but ugly—U.S. history. Soon after, the same people targeted DEI by arguing it’s “reverse discrimination,” a concept that does not exist.

UNC’s board—which initially approved its DEI policy unanimously—plans to replace DEI with a new policy that prohibits universities from “endorsing pro-diversity views—or any other social or political messaging,” WRAL reported Wednesday, an all-or-nothing claim that, if precedent is any indicator, will more than likely only be enforced in one direction.