MAGA Rep Weighs in on Sydney Sweeney Jeans Debate With Weird AI Ad

Unlike Sydney Sweeney, MAGA Representative Mike Collins of Georgia needed AI to generate his great jeans.

Collins shared a cringey AI-generated video on X Wednesday, as a nod to the controversial American Eagle denim campaign that is being fiercely defended by the right, including by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

The video made by Brenden Dilley, a far-right podcaster and seemingly self-proclaimed lead of Trump’s “meme team,” showed Collins’s head pasted on a male model’s denim-clad body. The figure brushes his hand through his hair, glowering at the camera before he turns, strutting away as Charlie Boy’s 2009 song “I Look Good” plays in the background.

The onscreen caption reads, “Mike Collins Has Great Jeans,” but the Georgia Republican added his own message in his repost.

“The Georgia cotton industry supports over 53,000 jobs, has a $3 BN economic impact, and makes some of the finest jeans around. I will always fight for our farmers, growers and producers, and Georgia’s rural culture and economy,” he wrote.

Users on X accused Collins of copying former Senator David Perdue, who donned a faded denim jacket in an attempt to appeal to everyday Georgians in his 2014 campaign ad “The Outsider.” The Washington Post even credited the ad with winning Perdue his seat. In 2020, Perdue wore his campaign-winning jacket again—but was defeated by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff.

Notably, Collins didn’t actually summon up any folksy charm—a computer did it for him.

Collins recently launched his campaign to “take back control” of one of Georgia’s Senate seats from Ossoff with a video that misspelled the name of his own state.

NPR has obtained police bodycam footage of Trump Justice Department official Jared Wise calling on January 6 rioters to kill police officers.

“You guys are disgusting, man. You guys are disgusting,” Wise can be seen and heard saying on the footage. “I’m former law enforcement, you’re disgusting. You are the Nazi, you are the Gestapo, you can’t see it, cuz you’re chasing your pension.”

“Yeah! Fuck them, yeah! Kill ’em, yeah!” he later cheers as rioters push their way forward.

Wise’s incendiary statements, which he admitted to under oath in January, first made headlines in July after he was appointed senior counselor to Ed Martin, who was working to help January 6 rioters fight against “improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions.”

Wise defended his speech as a heat of the moment action influenced by what he saw as “police brutality” on the part of the Capitol officers.

“Those are terrible things to say. Of course. I shouldn’t say those things,” he said in court. “I think I was careless and used, like, terrible words when I was angry.”

Wise worked for the FBI from 2004 to 2017 before moving on to the far-right propaganda machine Project Veritas, where he infiltrated teachers’ unions across the Midwest. Wise was charged with two felonies and four misdemeanor counts in 2023, including trespassing and disrupting the orderly conduct of government, for his actions on January 6. All of his charges (and the charges of hundreds of other rioters) were dropped by Trump.

Wise’s pardoning and senior appointment show that Trump truly sees no wrong in what happened on January 6, and he won’t even pretend to. Rather than display any level of accountability, he rewards and uplifts those, like Wise, who called for violence against police and against the country in his name.

President Donald Trump announced his plan to conduct a new U.S. census that excludes undocumented immigrants on Thursday.

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. 

“People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” he continued.

The census is counted every 10 years and is the gold standard for population tallying. It’s used to determine how many House seats each state has and allocate federal funding. The census counts everyone living in the U.S., including “foreign-born” residents like naturalized citizens, people with green cards, undocumented immigrants, refugees, and students here on visas. 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration lawyer with the American Immigration Council, called Trump’s proposal  “wildly unconstitutional.”

“The Constitution makes clear that all people must be counted. Not all citizens. People,” he wrote. 

Trump has attempted to alter the census before: In his first term, he tried to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census and was blocked by the Supreme Court. 

The president’s hope to conduct the census sooner also aligns with his gerrymandering scheme, as redistricting is only meant to take place once every decade, after the census is completed. 

Detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz” are being kept in a “human-sized kennel,” according to a former corrections officer at Donald Trump’s wetland-themed concentration camp.

In an exclusive interview with NBC6, Lindsey, who was identified by only her first name, said that people being held at the hastily constructed immigrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades were being treated like animals. 

“It’s inhumane the way that they’re keeping their residents,” she told NBC6. 

Lindsey described each tent at the facility as having eight large cages, housing 35 to 38 inmates, so around 300 per tent. “They have no sunlight. There’s no clock in there. They don’t even know what time of the day it is. They have no access to showers. They shower every other day or every four days,” she said. 

Detainees have previously alleged identical horrific conditions, claiming that they had no access to water and had not been allowed to bathe.  

Lindsey said that rain had been a problem, sending water pouring into the tents. Last month, there were reports of extensive flooding at the facility. 

She also reported that there had been similar problems with the employee housing, which was a shared trailer. “We had to use the porta-johns. We didn’t have hot water half the time. Our bathrooms were backed up,” Lindsey said.

Human Rights Watch reported nearly 72 percent of people detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement had no criminal history. Lindsey similarly told NBC6 that “not everybody there is a criminal.”

Lindsey said she’d worked at the facility for about a week before contracting Covid-19, after which she was fired, having been accused of “altering medical paperwork” submitted to Gardaworld, the private security company responsible for staffing “Alligator Alcatraz.” She said she was “pissed off” about being fired. 

“But more so than ever, like, they’re doing wrong,” she added.

Judges overseeing lawsuits against the facility are still attempting to determine who has actual authority over it, as the federal government has failed to produce an official agreement between Florida’s Division of Emergency Management and the Department of Homeland Security. 

The FBI has agreed to help hunt down Texas Democratic lawmakers, according to Republican Senator John Cornyn, who made the request.

“I am proud to announce that Director Kash Patel has approved my request for the FBI to assist state and local law enforcement in locating runaway Texas House Democrats,” Cornyn said in a statement Thursday. “I thank President Trump and Director Patel for supporting and swiftly acting on my call for the federal government to hold these supposed lawmakers accountable.”

The Texan Democrats fled their state in an attempt to prevent Republicans from drawing new districts to help their own party gain more seats in the House. Many Democrats are currently sheltering in New York and Illinois, and they’ve advertised their whereabouts.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker doesn’t believe that the FBI has any grounds to arrest the state lawmakers—they’re not doing anything illegal under federal law—but figures the federal law enforcement agents may attempt to intimidate the representatives.

“The FBI agents might show up just to, I don’t know, again, to put a show on,” he said Wednesday.

There have been no criminal warrants filed against the Texan Democrats, though the speaker of the Texas House has issued civil warrants in an attempt to force the lawmakers to return. Cornyn requested assistance from the FBI in a letter on Tuesday, asking for federal assistance in the enforcement of a state issue rather than alleging a federal crime had been committed.

“Governor Abbott and Texas state law enforcement officers are doing what they can within the confines of the law, but federal help may be necessary,” Cornyn wrote.

So far, it’s not clear whether the FBI has taken action in the case. But it could spark a conflict between the Trump administration and Illinois electeds, as the redistricting war grows into a larger battle between Democratic state leaders and the Republican administration.