Republican Announces Senate Run—and Misspells State He’s Running In

MAGA Representative Mike Collins of Georgia has his work cut out for him as he enters the 2026 Republican Senate primary field.

His GOP challengers will include another MAGA candidate and likely also former college football coach Derek Dooley, who reportedly has Governor Brian Kemp’s support. Meanwhile, Democratic spokesperson Devon Cruz told Fox News that incumbent Democrat Jon Ossoff is “building massive momentum to take on whichever Donald Trump loyalist limps over the finish line.”

Collins, for his part, stumbled right out of the gate, with an early campaign video that misspells the name of the state he’s running in.

In the video ad, posted to Collins’s campaign account on X late Sunday, the lawmaker says, “We’ve got to be absolutely unrelenting. We’ve got to be unafraid to fight. We’ve got to be unafraid to call balls and strikes, a spade a spade. And I think y’all have seen I don’t mind doing that.” An audio clip of Donald Trump speaking approvingly of Collins plays, before the Georgia Republican chimes back in: “We’re gonna put the hammer down, and we’re gonna get it done.”

The video shows various B-roll footage, mostly of Collins, as text flashes on the screen accompanying his monologue. It all leads up to the end card, which absolutely bungles the landing: “GEORIGA, LET’S RIDE.”

“Oof, tough typo in an early Senate campaign ad,” wrote Amber Duke of the right-wing Daily Caller news site.

Critics of Collins relished the mistake in his replies, where some concerned supporters also pointed out the error: “Take it down! Quick,” pleaded one MAGA account on X, with another conservative writing, “Please correct the spelling of ‘Georgia.’ Otherwise, I approve this message.”

The egregious typo adds to a colorful digital footprint for the lawmaker who, in May, likened the addition of a halal restaurant in place of a Steak ’n Shake in the Rayburn House Cafeteria to “the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the 7th century,” and, during the 2024 campaign, shared a portrait of JD Vance in which the now vice president was digitally altered to appear more masculine.

One of the most shamelessly pro-Israel Democrats in Congress is beginning to change his tune, as Israel’s blockade has sent Gaza into famine, adding thousands to the death toll.

Torres told Jewish Insider in an interview published Monday that the relationship between the United States and the Israeli government “may be irreparable.” He later clarified that he meant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu specifically, citing the former’s “disrespect” for Barack Obama in 2016, rather than Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, which he still staunchly denies. “To see a foreign leader visibly disrespect [Obama] in the manner that Bibi Netanyahu did, I feel did irreparable damage to the relationship with the Democratic Party,” Torres claimed. He later added that U.S. public backing of Israel was “eroding, and anyone who denies it is ignoring the numbers.”

Torres is one of many domestic and international leaders who have suddenly begun to start caring about the assault on Gaza.

“Telling Palestinians in Gaza to ‘starve away’ is an evil thing to say,” Torres wrote Thursday on X, in response to a particularly abhorrent post from Republican Congressman Randy Fine. “The US must make every effort to secure the release of the hostages, end the war, enable new Palestinian self-governance in Gaza, build a durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and expand the Abraham Accords in the service of broader Israeli-Arab peace.”

While this sudden change in rhetoric is welcome, it comes far too late—especially as President Trump called on Israel to “finish the job” just last week.

Longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell is now begging the president and the Supreme Court to unravel her prison sentence.

Maxwell filed a petition Monday asking the nation’s highest court to consider whether plea deals made by U.S. attorneys “on behalf” of the entirety of the United States are legally binding, arguing that her sentence violated a nonprosecution agreement that Jeffrey Epstein had made with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida in 2007.

“We are appealing not only to the Supreme Court but to the President himself to recognize how profoundly unjust it is to scapegoat Ghislaine Maxwell for Epstein’s crimes, especially when the government promised she would not be prosecuted,” her attorney David Oscar Markus said in a statement.

Maxwell filed the appeal in April, but the sex trafficker made her final plea to the Supreme Court Monday, imploring it to take her case before it breaks for the summer recess. Lower courts have ruled that the deal was only applicable to the district it was made in and did not extend to the Southern District of New York, where Maxwell was tried.

“Rather than grapple with the core principles of plea agreements, the government tries to distract by reciting a lurid and irrelevant account of Jeffrey Epstein’s misconduct,” Markus wrote in the brief. “But this case is about what the government promised, not what Epstein did.”

The British socialite was sentenced in 2022 for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, including identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding in the victimization of hundreds of girls.

But the bold new request is opportunistically timed, arriving mere days after Maxwell met with the Justice Department and reportedly provided more than a hundred names allegedly related to Epstein’s criminal empire in a potential pardon quid pro quo.

Speaking with reporters at his Scottish golf club Monday, Trump not only refused to say that a pardon for the convicted sex offender was off the table but underscored that he is “allowed” to give one. Actually getting to the point of aligning the Trump administration with Maxwell, however, has been a tricky play of political theater.

In an attempt to soothe his appalled base after claiming the Epstein affair was a Democrat-invented “hoax,” the Trump administration has opted not to release the relevant case files, which would ostensibly include the names of Epstein’s associates. Instead, it seems officials would rather lean on Maxwell as a potential source of “new” information.

But whether Maxwell—a reputed liar and convicted criminal—can be trusted at all is in doubt, or whether her testimony would be tampered with prior to being made public. It’s still unclear why the 63-year-old would choose to unveil supposedly new information related to Epstein’s associates now, after spending several years behind bars, rather than when the evidence could have been used to minimize or even prevent her initial sentence.

The renewed conundrum of involving Maxwell also casts confusion over the Justice Department’s July 6 memo, in which the agency claimed there was “no credible evidence” that Epstein blackmailed his clients and that there was no cause to bring investigations against “uncharged third parties.”

A staunch Senate moderate on Monday issued a remarkable statement regarding the hunger crisis in Gaza, saying he will not back U.S. support for Israel so long as its campaign of starvation continues.

The centrist Senator Angus King, an independent of Maine, stated, “I cannot defend the indefensible. Israel’s actions in the conduct of the war in Gaza, especially its failure to address the unimaginable humanitarian crisis now unfolding, is an affront to human decency.”

King, who has previously been critical of Israel’s actions, said the starvation gripping Gaza is “a deliberately induced famine among a civilian population—including tens of thousands of starving children” and “can never be an acceptable military strategy.”

The October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, King said, “cannot in turn justify the enormous toll on Palestinian civilians caused by Israel’s relentless bombing campaign and its indifference to the current plight of those trapped in what’s left of Gaza.” While condemning Hamas in no uncertain terms, King noted that “recent events have placed a moral burden on Israel to ameliorate the current crisis, a burden it has thus far totally failed to meet.”

“For these reasons, I am through supporting the actions of the current Israeli government and will advocate—and vote—for an end to any United States support whatsoever until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy. My litmus test will be simple: no aid of any kind as long as there are starving children in Gaza due to the action or inaction of the Israeli government.”

King’s statement comes amid horrific images and reports of starvation in Gaza thanks to Israel’s blockade. Meanwhile, the tide appears to be slightly turning, domestically and internationally, against Israel’s actions—which B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, on Monday deemed a genocide, joining other organizations such as Amnesty International.

President Trump wants to immediately depose media tycoon Rupert Murdoch regarding his $10 billion libel lawsuit over The Wall Street Journal’s article about his questionable birthday letter to the late serial sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s lawyers essentially argued that they needed Murdoch, who is 94 years old, in court ASAP because he could keel over and die at any second.

“[Murdoch] has suffered, but thankfully overcome, multiple health issues throughout his life,” they wrote to a federal judge on Monday, putting it a bit more politely. “President Trump is requesting only to conduct Murdoch’s deposition and have him produce documents associated only with his involvement in, and any discussions related to, the decision to publish the article.” They also referenced Murdoch’s various health episodes, such as fainting in London in 2023, a broken back, pneumonia, and a torn achilles tendon. They requested that Murdoch be deposed within the next 15 days.

The Journal reported earlier this month that Trump sent Epstein a 50th birthday letter in 2003 accompanied by a signed sketch of a naked woman and the strange caption, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump denied even writing the letter on the grounds that he had “never wrote a picture” in his life. That was proven false quickly, as he had drawn and auctioned off multiple sketches for thousands of dollars. Nevertheless, Trump insists that Murdoch and the Journal appear in court over it.

Murdoch has yet to respond.

Has Florida Representative Randy Fine’s shameless cheerleading for death gone too far for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee?

After winning Florida’s special election in April, Fine claimed that he was AIPAC’s “fastest-ever endorsement.” But on Monday, his name was mysteriously missing from AIPAC’s database of pro-Israel candidates.

It’s not clear why Fine’s name has been removed from the ranks of lawmakers championing consent for Israel’s catastrophic military campaign, which has killed more than 62,000 people in Gaza. However, one possible explanation is that Fine’s recent remarks on the widespread famine in Gaza are too grotesque for even the most staunchly pro-Israel.

Last week, ABC News reported that 15 people in Gaza had died from starvation within just 24 hours, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Fine responded to the report by wishing for more death and then claiming that it was all a hoax anyway.

“Release the hostages. Until then, starve away,” Fine wrote on X. The post continued, “(This is all a lie anyway. It amazes me that the media continues to regurgitate Muslim terror propaganda.)” The same day, Fine was appointed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The American Jewish Committee condemned Fine’s statement. “The serious humanitarian situation in Gaza must not be taken lightly, especially by those at the highest levels of government. Implying that starvation is a legitimate tactic is unacceptable,” AJC wrote on X. “All those in need of humanitarian aid should receive it promptly and safely. Our leaders must focus less on scoring political points and more on doing their jobs.”

But Fine doubled down Sunday, writing on X, “There is no starvation. Everything about the ‘Palestinian’ cause is a lie.”

If not his comments on Gaza, perhaps it was his bloodthirsty statements advocating violence against protesters that lost him AIPAC’s support?

In another post Sunday, Fine revealed that the only thing he really supports is murder, pushing for a bill that would allow drivers to run over pro-Palestinian protesters blocking bridges and roads with impunity.

“The Thump Thump Act will allow Americans to run over these Muslim Terrorists,” he wrote. “They don’t try this in Florida because of the bill I helped pass in the Legislature to allow them to be run over. It’s time to take it national. Thump thump.”

“To be clear, the Thump Thump Act will also allow you to run over BLM, Antifa, illegal immigrants, and anyone else who intentionally blocks roads! Thump thump!” he wrote in a separate post.

AIPAC has not returned The New Republic’s request for comment. Just a few months ago, the lobbying group celebrated Fine. Crucially, AIPAC poured more than $126,000 into Fine’s campaign, according to FEC filings.

But Fine insisted he didn’t need AIPAC’s money to be a bigot. “And for the haters who said they bought me, I have news for you,” Fine wrote on X in April. “They had me for free.”

A federal judge on Monday blocked components of the “big, beautiful bill” that would effectively defund Planned Parenthood.

The new order by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani states that the federal government must continue to reimburse Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the country, despite federal efforts to nix the health care provider’s funding via recent legislation. The decision expands on a preliminary injunction, issued last week, that narrowly applied to affiliates in states where abortion was legal and where services did not exceed an $800,000 revenue threshold.

“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani wrote in her Monday order, rejecting the language of the bill on the grounds of the First Amendment. “In particular, restricting Members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs.”

The order gives the green light to patients using Medicaid to continue to seek services at Planned Parenthood.

Talwani specified that the court was not intervening in the federal government’s capacity to regulate abortion and was not ordering the public funding of elective abortion services. Instead, the order blocks the federal government from excluding specific groups from Medicaid reimbursements when they are legally entitled to them, and when their lawsuit has an overwhelming likelihood of success.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, but that’s not the only service it offers. The nonprofit additionally provides critical services such as physicals, cancer screenings, STI testing, and birth control access, and it does not use public funds to provide abortion care.

Donald Trump’s tax bill will gut $880 billion from Medicaid and other crucial social programs—a detail so little favored by Americans that conservative lawmakers stopped holding town halls due to their constituents’ staunch opposition to the line item. But neither that nor the fact that the legislation is estimated to add upward of $6 trillion to the debt stopped Republicans from passing it through Congress, ushering Trump’s key agenda item to his desk.

Shortly after Trump signed the tax bill into law, Planned Parenthood filed suit, arguing that the conservative initiative had specifically targeted its practice in hopes of punishing Americans who either provide or seek abortion care.

“The prohibition specifically targets Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member health care providers in order to punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds,” Planned Parenthood wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed in Boston federal court last week.

Reacting to Talwani’s most recent order, Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon told The Hill that the Trump administration “strongly disagrees” with the court’s decision.

“States should not be forced to fund organizations that have chosen political advocacy over patient care,” Nixon said in a statement. “This ruling undermines state flexibility and disregards longstanding concerns about accountability.”

Paul Dans, the architect of the far-right plan Project 2025, will primary Republican Senator Linsdey Graham in South Carolina next year. Dans’s campaign muddies the ideological waters of MAGA, as he admonishes Graham for being a “swamp critter” while President Trump has already given Graham his endorsement.

Yet Dans and his campaign are parroting Trump-aligend talking points while running against the guy who Trump backs.

“What we’ve done with Project 2025 is really change the game in terms of closing the door on the progressive era,” Dans told The Associated Press. ”If you look at where the chokepoint is, it’s the United States Senate. That’s the headwaters of the swamp.”

“I want to run for our children,” he said Monday to NBC News. “I want to run to stop World War III. I want to run to make the American dream affordable for the next generation, but really to keep this great country in shape for another 250 years. This time, the patriots stood up and said, ‘Enough is enough.’ We need to have a government of, by, and for the people again. Not by swamp critters like Lindsey Graham.”

Dans also called Graham a “warmonger,” an increasingly common dealbreaker for MAGA Republicans, who want an “end to endless wars” (and have gotten nowhere with that thus far).

Dans left the Heritage Foundation last year after backlash to Project 2025 grew too overwhelming for him to bear and Trump unconvincingly washed his hands of Project 2025. Now he wants to join the Senate to be the Trump ally that he doesn’t think Graham truly is.

“There is no amount of lipstick that you can put on Lindsey to make MAGA fall for him, OK? That show is over. The jig is up. And it’s essentially ‘Sunset Boulevard’ for Lindsey at this stage,” Dans told The Post and Courier, referring to Graham being booed on stage in his home state in 2023 during a Trump rally.

Graham’s campaign doesn’t seem to feel threatened by Dans.

“After being unceremoniously dumped in 2024 while trying to torpedo Donald Trump’s historic campaign, Paul Dans has parachuted himself into the state of South Carolina in direct opposition to President Trump’s longtime friend and ally in the Senate Lindsey Graham,” Graham’s senior adviser (and former Trump senior adviser) Chris LaCivita said to NBC. “Like everything Paul Dans starts, this too will end prematurely.”

Donald Trump dodged an easy question Monday about his rift with alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

During a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, the president was asked to explain what caused the “breach” between the president and his Palm Beach neighbor. Trump’s answer only skimmed the surface.

“That’s such old history. Very easy to explain, but I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it,” Trump said.

“But for years I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein, I wouldn’t talk, because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help. And I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again,’” Trump said.

“He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again. And I threw him out of the place,” Trump continued. “Persona non grata. I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, to tell you the truth.”

Trump’s supposedly “easy” answer isn’t all that easy to understand.

Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s alleged victims, has said she was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell to become Epstein’s traveling masseuse while she was working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in 2000. She was 16 at the time.

But Trump and Epstein reportedly didn’t have their falling out until four years later, when they fought over an oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach that they both wanted to purchase—with Trump ultimately winning out at auction, according to The Washington Post. Four months later, a woman filed a police report alleging that Epstein had paid her 15-year-old stepdaughter $300 to massage him while partially undressed.

Trump later claimed he’d banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago for misconduct, calling him a “real creep,” former Trump aide Sam Nunberg said in 2019.

During the press conference Monday, Trump weirdly said he’d “never had the privilege of going to [Epstein’s] island,” and that he’d turned down the offer in one of his “good moments.”

Trump’s defense of his friendship with Epstein has only gotten increasingly baffling since the Justice Department claimed at the beginning of the month that Epstein kept no client list—after previously promising to release such a list. In the intervening time, evidence has continued to mount that Trump and Epstein had a close relationship, as the president has maintained he was not involved in the sex offender’s alleged sex-trafficking ring.

But perhaps Trump’s defense isn’t as “easy” as he’s made it out to be.

In 2023, Epstein’s brother Mark said that he’d seen an unaired interview between Jeffrey and Steve Bannon, in which the disgraced financier claimed he’d “stopped hanging out with Trump when he realized Trump was a crook.”

And this is far from the first inconsistency. In 2016, Trump Organization attorney Alan Garten claimed that the two had no relationship: “They were not friends and did not socialize together,” he said of his boss and Epstein. But in August 2017, Epstein described himself as the president’s “closest friend” during an interview with biographer Michael Wolff.

Donald Trump on Monday suggested that he turned down invitations to travel to the late notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s island. “I never had the privilege of going to his island,” he told reporters.

During a press conference with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump continued his ongoing efforts to deflect attention from his past relationship with Epstein, as his administration faces criticism for its lack of transparency about the case of the disgraced financier.

“By the way, I never went to the island,” Trump said, while noting alleged trips by notable figures such as former President Bill Clinton.

“And many other people that are very big people, nobody ever talks about them. I never had the privilege of going to his island,” the president said. “And I did turn it down. But a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go to his island.”

Observers on social media were swift to question Trump’s characterization of such trips as a “privilege.” The seemingly sarcastic but extraordinarily tactless choice of words comes as Trump frantically tries to escape the mounting Epstein scandal—yet, with each public remark, only becomes further mired in it.

Moments earlier, for instance, the president offered details about his falling out with Epstein in the mid-2000s, which culminated in the financier being banned from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. However, the president’s story cut against his administration’s recent insistence that Trump booted his former friend “for being a creep.”

Instead, Trump claimed that the relationship soured because Epstein repeatedly poached Trump’s employees. “He did something that was inappropriate,” Trump said. “He hired help. And I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again. And I threw him out of the place.” (Past reports, meanwhile, indicate that they had split over an oceanfront property in Palm Beach for which Trump outbid Epstein.)

Then there are the president’s comments about convicted Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell—who has met Trump’s deputy attorney general in much-scrutinized closed-door meetings last week. Trump conspicuously refuses to rule out pardoning Maxwell, simply telling reporters that he is “allowed” to do so, which he reiterated on Monday.