Ohio Republicans Cook Up Yet Another Sinister Plan After Losing Abortion Vote

Ohio Republicans are considering a bill that would incentivize donations to anti-abortion facilities, just a week after residents voted to protect abortion rights in the state Constitution.

The state Senate Finance Committee discussed a Republican bill on Tuesday that would give tax credits to people who donate to “qualifying pregnancy resource centers.” There are more than 175 such facilities in Ohio, although only donations to nonprofit centers would qualify for the tax credit. The bill proposes Ohio credit a total of up to $10 million.

Pregnancy resource centers, also called crisis pregnancy centers, are run by anti-abortion activists with the intention of convincing people not to get an abortion. The centers, which are often faith-based, do provide some resources for pregnant people. But they don’t provide a full range of reproductive health care and are instead meant to “scare, shame, or pressure” patients out of getting an abortion. They also often spread harmful misinformation, such as saying that the abortion pill is reversible.

There are more than 2,500 crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S., according to the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, an organization that works to share accurate information about the fake clinics. Crisis pregnancy centers outnumber actual abortion facilities by nearly three to one.

The Ohio bill comes a week after residents voted overwhelmingly to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. The bill would make it appealing to donate to anti-abortion facilities and could drown out pro-abortion donations. This could render the amendment moot: Protecting reproductive rights doesn’t mean anything if Ohioans can’t access the proper care.

Since their landslide loss last week, Republicans seem to be working overtime to circumvent democracy. This week’s bill is their second attempt post vote to overthrow the will of the people. Just two days after the election, a group of Republican state representatives proposed blocking the courts from implementing the amendment.

And that’s not even taking into account everything Republicans did to try to stop the vote from happening at all. In August, they tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments to a 60 percent vote instead of a simple majority.

When that failed, the Ohio Ballot Board voted 3–2, along party lines, to change the text of the amendment on the ballot to a Republican-authored summary littered with inflammatory and fearmongering language.

The effort to oust disgraced Representative George Santos has new fervor, with several congressmen calling for Santos’s removal following the release of a bombshell ethics report.

Representative Michael Guest, chair of the House Ethics Committee, said he is planning to file another motion to expel the New York Republican, moments after the release of an ethics report that found “substantial evidence” that George Santos violated federal criminal laws.

“I do intend to file tomorrow a motion to expel from Congress and the pro forma session, and then we’ll work with leadership to try to see when they intend to bring that to the floor,” Guest told Politico’s Olivia Beavers.

Representative Robert Garcia also announced on Thursday that he would introduce a privileged resolution to expel Santos.

Several representatives in both parties who voted against expelling Santos earlier this month have also changed their minds, including Jamie Raskin, Greg Murphy, Kelly Armstrong, and Dusty Johnson.

New York Representatives Marc Molinaro and Nick LaLota, two of Santos’s earliest critics, have again called for his removal.

The House Ethics Committee’s 56-page report found that Santos blew campaign funds on personal expenses, including Botox injections and trips to Atlantic City with his husband. He also appropriated campaign funds into a personal account to spend on OnlyFans, an online content service primarily used by sex workers.

The report discredited Santos’s origin story for his wealth. Instead of finding evidence supporting what Santos claimed was an influx of money from previously held high-level finance jobs, the report found that Santos was “frequently in debt, had an abysmal credit score, and relied on an ever-growing wallet of high-interest credit cards to fund his luxury spending habits.”

Confusing his financial history was also a part of the plan, the report contests. To cover his tracks, Santos crafted a “fictional” financial narrative surrounding what he called his “family’s firm,” the Devolder Organization. Yet that group turned out not to be a financial institution but an LLC that almost exclusively received bank deposits and transfers from other accounts operated by Santos.

“At nearly every opportunity, he placed his desire for private gain above his duty to uphold the Constitution, federal law, and ethical principles,” the report read. “Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”

The bipartisan House Ethics Committee said that Santos should be publicly condemned for his actions, which the report notes were “beneath the dignity of the office and … brought severe discredit upon the House.” They opted against recommending any sanctions against Santos, predicting that the process would have dragged on for months, reported Roll Call.

In a sprawling online statement, Santos rejected the report wholesale, condemning it as a “disgusting politicized smear” while demanding a constitutional convention.

The fabulist congressman also noted he would not be seeking reelection in 2024, claiming his family “deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time.”

The House Committee on Ethics released its long-awaited report on serial fabulist George Santos Thursday, and every single line is more damning than the last.

Santos, a freshman representative, has caused nothing but controversy since he took office. He fabricated the vast majority of his personal and professional background, and in October, he was federally indicted for financial fraud and identity theft.

“The evidence uncovered by the Investigative Subcommittee (ISC) revealed that Representative George Santos cannot be trusted,” the report stated. “At nearly every opportunity, he placed his desire for private gain above his duty to uphold the Constitution, federal law, and ethical principles.”

The ISC warned that Santos’s “lies go far beyond inaccuracies on a resume.” The report lays out clearly (and sometimes hilariously) how Santos repeatedly used his campaign to solicit donations, only to use that money for personal expenses. He filed false financial statements and continuously lied to voters, donors, and even his staff members.

One section details how Santos deposited campaign funds into his personal account. He then spent the money on designer goods, makeup, and “smaller purchases at OnlyFans.” Santos also spent campaign money on “spa services and/or cosmetic procedures,” including Botox.

Santos has repeatedly faced questions about the source of his money. He claimed he worked high-level finance jobs and had a family business.

In reality, according to the report, “Representative Santos was frequently in debt, had an abysmal credit score, and relied on an ever-growing wallet of high-interest credit cards to fund his luxury spending habits.”

The report also noted that “at no point does Representative Santos appear to have owned a Maserati, despite telling campaign staff otherwise.”

The ISC warned that the worst part of Santos’s repeated fabrications is that the “fraud on the electorate is ongoing.”

“He continues to propound falsehoods and misrepresentations rather than take responsibility for his actions,” the report concluded.

Democratic Representative Robert Garcia submitted a privileged resolution to expel Santos immediately after the report was released. Democrats had already submitted a motion to censure Santos over the summer, but they ultimately shelved the measure.

New York Representatives Marc Molinaro and Nick LaLota also called for Santos to be removed in light of the ethics report. The two freshman Republicans were some of the first members of the GOP to demand Santos resign when news of his serial lies first broke. They also co-sponsored a motion to expel Santos in October, but the measure failed to pass a vote.

“George Santos is a total fraud who stole an election to get to Congress. Now, his election should be invalidated by the House using its Constitutional expulsion powers,” LaLota told Politico reporter Olivia Beavers.

In addition to misusing campaign funds and lying about his employment history, Santos has falsely claimed that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, his mother died in the 9/11 attacks, and four of his employees were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting. He also lied about founding an animal rescue charity and producing the disastrous Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

Santos has been federally charged with 23 counts of various types of financial fraud. He pleaded not guilty to the initial 13 in May, and he has denied the additional 10 that were filed in October in a superseding indictment. Earlier this year, he also agreed to a deal with Brazilian authorities investigating him for financial fraud so he could avoid prosecution.

Read the full House Ethics Committee report on George Santos here.

U.S. tensions surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict are continuing to boil.

On Wednesday, a Democratic congressman opted to describe a lock-on protest at the DNC calling for a cease-fire in Gaza with inflammatory language, snubbing it as “pro-terrorist.”

“Was just evacuated from the #DNC after pro-terrorist, anti-#Israel protestors grew violent, pepper spraying police officers and attempting to break into the building,” said California Representative Brad Sherman on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Sherman immediately received blowback online from journalists and protesters alike, who categorically refuted the claims in Sherman’s post and argued that the mass-recorded event at the Democratic National Committee headquarters illustrated no evidence of protesters spraying police, but rather the other way around.

“Yeah, Sherman is wrong. I was outside the building and saw a USCP officer spray protesters, not vice versa,” responded Semafor’s David Weigel, linking a video that shows officers shoving and spraying an aerosol into a tightly packed crowd several times before walking into their own line of fire.

“They blocked the entrances; they didn’t try to storm the offices,” Weigel continued in another post.

A Democratic strategist also questioned the validity of a statement issued by Capitol Police following the protest, which noted that officers were “treated for injuries—ranging from minor cuts to being pepper sprayed to being punched.”

“So did the police at the DNC protest injure … themselves?” posted senior Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, who had previously worked for Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, sharing a clip documenting a Capitol Police officer hitting another officer in the back while setting up a metal blockade.

Protest organizers estimate that at least 90 people were injured in the clashes with police.

The war between Israel and Hamas is now halfway through its sixth week. Only 31 members of Congress have called for a cease-fire, and a report indicated that many Democratic congressmen are actively ignoring phone calls from constituents asking for a cease-fire.

Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that more than 11,100 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict so far—or one out of every 200 people—with most of the dead being women and children. Approximately 240 hostages still remain in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attack, killing 1,200 people.

Nevada’s attorney general is investigating six Republicans, including the state Republican Party chair, who pretended to be state electors in 2020 to hand the election to Donald Trump.

Democratic state Attorney General Aaron Ford had previously said he would not investigate the case. But in recent weeks, investigators from his office have begun asking witnesses about the six operatives’ efforts to present themselves as legitimate electors, Politico reported Wednesday.

Ford has kept the investigation relatively quiet. Neither he nor his office has yet to publicly comment on the probe.

After Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Republicans in seven highly contested states launched attempts to overturn the results. GOP operatives signed certificates falsely stating they were the state’s Electoral College representatives and tried to claim that Trump had won their state.

Many of the fake electors were highly ranked state Republicans. The Nevada fake electors included Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald.

Nevada is now the fourth state to launch an investigation into the fake electors scheme. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged 16 people in July with felonies for pretending to be 2020 electors. The accused include state Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock and state Republican National Committeewoman Kathy Berden.

There are also investigations going on in Arizona and Georgia, where Trump and his allies have also been indicted for trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. The other states where Republicans tried to overthrow the results—New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—have yet to publicly announce whether they will probe the fake elector plot.

The plan to use fake electors was initially thought of by lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who was indicted in Georgia, and then eventually taken over by Trump lawyer John Eastman. An internal memo reveals that Chesebro knew his “bold, controversial strategy” would “likely” be rejected by the Supreme Court.

But the point of Chesebro’s plan was not actually to pass legal and judicial scrutiny. Instead, the goal was to increase the spotlight on the baseless claims of voter fraud and to give Trump’s campaign more time to win its multiple lawsuits challenging the vote results. Judges threw out every single one of those lawsuits because they had no basis.