Missing Republican Rep. Has Racked Up Some Odd Travel Expenses

Representative Tom Kean Jr. has claimed he’s too sick to do his job in Congress—but he has apparently been perfectly fine traveling, approving staff expenditures, and trading stocks.

The New Jersey Republican has been missing in action since March 5, skipped 88 House votes so far, and hasn’t been seen in Washington for more than 75 days. Yet he has also taken Amtrak and used several rideshare apps around San Francisco, according to pre-primary reports that Kean filed with the Federal Election Commission.

All the trips occurred in mid-April—several weeks into Kean’s unexplained disappearance.

Kean’s staff have also been traversing the country with their boss’s express approval. His chief of staff, Dan Scharfenberger, has obtained Kean’s signature twice since early March for trips funded by special interest groups. They include a jaunt to Las Vegas, paid for by the Republican Main Street Partnership, and a trip to Middleburg, Virginia, for a “spring issues conference” sponsored by the bipartisan policy organization Center Forward, NOTUS reported Friday.

The 57-year-old has also continued trading stocks during his prolonged absence, buying and selling shares of Amcor, Chubb Limited, First Citizens BancShares, Johnson & Johnson, and PepsiCo, according to congressional financial records obtained by NOTUS. The combined value of the trades ranges from $50,008 to $190,000.

Kean initially offered a meager explanation late last month for his sudden disappearance, confessing to House Speaker Mike Johnson (after a small pressure campaign fronted by journalists and tristate lawmakers effectively forced him to pipe up) that he had been dealing with an unspecified “personal health matter.”

At the time, Kean promised that he would return to work shortly. It has been nearly four weeks since.

On Thursday, Kean told the New Jersey Globe that his health prognosis was “good” and that he would be transparent about his illness soon. He also said that he planned to return to Washington—and the campaign trail—in the coming weeks.

“My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery,” Kean said in a lengthy phone interview.  “I understand the need for public transparency, and I appreciate the support of my constituents.”

But the clock is ticking on Kean’s return: Johnson is in the midst of advancing a partisan budget reconciliation that faces total opposition from the Democratic Party. The speaker can spare just two Republican votes on the measure, if all Democrats are present and oppose it.

Kean was elected to represent New Jersey’s 7th congressional district in 2022, and is months away from being thrust into a contentious midterm reelection cycle. He is currently unchallenged in the Garden State’s Republican primary, scheduled for June 2, but is likely to face tremendous opposition from Democrats come November. Over the last several months, his district has shifted from a “lean Republican” advantage to a total toss-up, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report.

President Donald Trump personally called Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to voice his displeasure with the latter’s decision to pull U.S. troops from Poland last week.

The president was reportedly shocked by the move, raising questions around who exactly is calling the shots in the White House.

Trump also announced he was sending more troops to the longtime U.S. ally.

“Based on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, who I was proud to Endorse, and our relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 troops to Poland,” Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Trump called Hegseth to ask why he had withdrawn the troops, and that he should be kinder to one of America’s oldest allies. This implies that Hegseth was acting independently, or at least without the knowledge of the president—a shocking notion given the significance and unpopularity of the decision to pull troops from Poland. Is Hegseth acting alone? Is Trump too mentally unstable to be looped into these decisions?

“More evidence that DoD is running its own foreign policy, often directly contradicting what Trump wants,” Brookings Institute fellow Tom Wright wrote on X. “This is not the first time it has happened.”

Last year, Hegseth paused aid to Ukraine multiple times, all apparently without Trump’s approval.

Republicans are going all out to convince the American people that President Trump’s $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund for his MAGA allies is actually a good thing.

Representative James Comer proclaimed that there’s a “need” for the slush fund.

“The things they tried to convict him of—it was a joke,” he said Friday. “So I think that there is a need for it. What the president needs to do to be able to get this through is to explain it and have a plan.”

Representative Ralph Norman appeared to have no problems with paying those convicted of assaulting police officers, saying Thursday that “January 6 is an issue that was made up in the first place” and a “staged thing from day one.”

Representative Jody Arrington called Trump “one of the biggest victims of weaponization” and argued that the slush fund is “an appropriate use of tax dollars.” Representative Dan Meuser went as far as to call the slush fund “reparations to those who were wronged by Biden.”

Even House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, defended the slush fund.

“Having your own personal lawyer, at this point, become [attorney general]—AG is the only person who could’ve gotten rid of these audits, right?” CNBC’s Joe Kernen asked Emmer, referring to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s related settlement agreement that the IRS cease all audits of President Trump and his family. “It just looks … smells bad.”

“Joe, I think it’s unfair to say it’s just the president who’s upset. Americans are upset. They don’t wanna see their government be used against anyone, Donald Trump or anybody else,” Emmer replied, not engaging with Kernen’s actual point. “It was so egregious what they did to Donald Trump and his family. It’s one of the reasons that he’s back in the office. America wants this cleaned up, and Donald Trump is gonna make sure it is.”

Emmer is really arguing that the majority of Americans want their taxes to go towards a slush fund for MAGA sycophants, January 6 rioters, and any other individual or group that felt “targeted” by the Biden administration. He continued pushing this narrative later in the interview.

“So we’re all clear, you support the settlement that the president made with—some people would say he made with himself, others would say it was with the AG—you’re supportive of that, you feel like that was totally on the up and up?” Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Emmer.

“Let’s see what it is when it comes over to the House. The Senate’s gotta get their work done, Andrew, and you’re asking me to pass judgment on something—”

“No, no, no,” Sorkin interrupted. “The settlement unto itself. I’m not talking about the justice fund. The settlement that was made between the president and the administration.… Do you look at that and say ‘that’s totally fine,’ you support how that was done?”

Emmer claimed ignorance.

“Well, I wasn’t in the room, so I don’t know what the details are. But I can tell you this: No one knows weaponization of government against him and his family better than Donald Trump. He was absolutely raked by these people for years, and the American public knows it,” he concluded.

Trump was “targeted” because he incited an insurrection. Now he wants you to pay his damages, and the GOP is acting as if it’s a completely reasonable thing to do—all as this widely unpopular president approaches midterm elections.

Donald Trump just admitted that he was, actually, involved in the creation of the Justice Department’s “anti-weaponization” fund.

The DOJ created a $1.8 billion slush fund for Trump’s allies earlier this week at the same time that the president opted to drop his waning $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. Despite the coincidental timing, Trump told reporters Wednesday that he “wasn’t involved in the settlement.”

In the few short days since its launch, the initiative has received significant blowback from the public, which is tasked with paying for the unprecedented cash stash. But mounting opposition from House and Senate Republicans forced Trump Friday to attempt to shore up legislative support.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump put his foot down on the matter, claiming that he had given up “a lot of money” to allow the creation of the fund—but in doing so, he also blatantly admitted that he was responsible for the whole thing.

“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward. I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune,” Trump wrote. “Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE! President DJT.”

The honeypot payments are effectively reparations, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, to virtually any right-winger that felt targeted by the previous presidential administration.

The DOJ slush fund was the result of an unprecedented deal that Trump made with himself. And the arrangement came with a curious addendum from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, immunizing Trump from further federal prosecution. The government of the United States, Blanche wrote Tuesday, is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump, his family, or his business.

Hundreds of Trump’s MAGA-aligned allies have already lined up for their slice of the pie. They include MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Republican lawmakers. A slew of pardoned January 6 rioters are also in the queue, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, a sex offender who bear-sprayed cops, and a convicted child molester who told his victims he would give them money from a Trump payout in exchange for their silence.

Legal experts have questioned whether or not the scheme is legal at all. If the arrangement is allowed to stand, Trump will have effectively thwarted the powers of both the legislative and judicial branches, and soiled the constitutionally defined separation of power.

For more than a decade, Stephen Colbert entertained Americans as CBS’s Late Show host, leading more than 1,800 episodes. On Thursday, he hosted his last one, a decision that CBS executives chalked up to financial reasons.

But the longtime comedian did not go out quietly. Instead, Colbert capped his exit with an eyebrow-raising copyright joke by ramping up the tunes—licensed tunes, to be exact.

The Late Show host was in the midst of running through the headlines during his “Meanwhile” segment when he mentioned that the owner of the Peanuts catalog had recently sued several entities—including the U.S. Department of the Interior—over the unlicensed use of the show’s iconic music, written by American jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi.

Cue the music: “Linus and Lucy.”

“Is the band right now playing the same Peanuts music that I just said people are being sued for for using without permission? Is that what they’re doing?” asked Colbert.

“Yeah,” Louis Cato, the show’s band leader, responded with a shrug.

“Oh no, I hope this doesn’t cost CBS any money,” Colbert deadpanned.

Colbert’s show—the most popular in its time slot—was cancelled in August, three days after the comedian criticized Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Donald Trump. He claimed that the company’s payout to quell the president’s groundless lawsuit targeting Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview looked like a “big, fat bribe.”

The copyright gag will likely do no damage, however. Networks like CBS typically use broad blanket music licenses prearranged through entities such as ASCAP and BMI, which allow them to legally broadcast any copyrighted material within the catalog. The Peanuts tune that Colbert’s band played is within that fold.

Despite the bedlam consuming Trump—so much so that he has to miss his son’s wedding this weekend—he was quick to celebrate Colbert’s end, jeering on Truth Social that “Colbert is finally finished at CBS.”

“Amazing that he lasted so long! No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person,” wrote the president after Colbert’s final episode ended.

“You could take any person off of the street and they would be better than this total jerk,” Trump added. “Thank goodness he’s finally gone!”

Trump further insinuated that Colbert’s pink slip was anything but a coincidence. In another post Friday morning, Trump claimed that Colbert’s firing would be the “beginning of the end” for “untalented, nasty, highly overpaid, not funny, and very poorly rated Late Night Television Hosts.”

“Others, of even less talent, to soon follow. May they all Rest in Peace!” he wrote.

The Trump administration considered banning voting machines in over 50 percent of the country by deeming Dominion Voting Machine software—used in 27 mostly blue states—a national security risk.

The plan, first reported by Reuters Friday, was spearheaded by White House adviser Kurt Olsen, whose primary job is to find ways to prove President Trump’s false rigged election claims to be true. Olsen’s plan was to force states to switch to hand counting ballots, a method many experts say leaves more room for potential cheating.

The plan advanced far enough last year that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other department officials began working to find a justification to implement it, but ultimately failed to do so, as there is no good reason to swap out the voting method of millions of people—especially right before a midterm election. There is no proof that voting machines have ever been hacked, despite the president’s repeated allegations.

The Trump administration appears desperate to gain an upper hand ahead of the midterms. In December, the Justice Department sued and raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, and has filed lawsuits to gain voter rolls in more than 30 states. This is all aimed at creating chaos and doubt so that Trump can declare any election he loses fraudulent.

Both Secretary Lutnick and Olsen have yet to comment.

Jeffrey Epstein’s former assistant has provided the House Oversight Committee with the names of three new alleged co-conspirators.

Sarah Kellen appeared before the committee in a closed-door hearing Thursday. Committee Chairman James Comer described her participation as forthcoming, and shared that her testimony was “what we’ve been waiting for.”

“Sarah Kellen has been very helpful. Of all the people we have interviewed thus far, this was by far the most substantive and productive interview that we’ve had,” Comer told reporters after the hearing. “She was very brave coming forward. I can’t imagine how difficult it was for her to go into detail about the abuse that she endured at the hands of Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell.

“One very positive thing today is she gave us three names of people that were involved in abuse. These were new names for us,” Comer continued.

The Kentucky Republican said that the committee would be releasing the transcript of Keller’s testimony as soon as possible, but that it would need to first redact the names of several mentioned victims.

“As far as the men that were the abusers—alleged abusers—the whole world will see that,” Comer said.

Kellen began working for Epstein in 2001 and stayed on his payroll for more than a decade, during which time she said she was “sexually and psychologically abused” by the pedophilic financier. It was only through years of therapy that she said she had come to realize that she too was a victim of Epstein’s grooming and manipulation.

“The abuse happened on average on a weekly basis, and was at times violent,” Kellen told the committee, according to her opening remarks.

“It included Jeffrey entering my room in the middle of the night and putting his fingers inside me, waking me up from my sleep,” she said. “It included an occasion in Palm Beach when he trapped me in the gym by lowering the metal hurricane shutter … choked me, and violently raped me.”

Kellen explained she stayed on as Epstein’s assistant for so long because she had “nowhere else to go.”

“I had no money, no family, no education, and no sense that I deserved any better.”

Kellen was named as a potential co-conspirator in Epstein’s 2008 sweetheart deal with federal prosecutors, which shielded him from federal sex-trafficking charges.

“I was not told this was happening,” Kellen said in her opening remarks of her co-conspirator status. “I was not asked about it. No one from law enforcement ever spoke with me, ever heard my side, ever asked me a single question.

“I want to start turning some of the pain and trauma into something good that can help others and bring awareness to this important topic,” Kellen told MS NOW ahead of her appearance on Capitol Hill.

Dani Bensky, another survivor of Epstein’s abuse, described Kellen’s situation to MS NOW as “complicated.”

“When you are victimized and then you are put in a position where you are manipulated to recruit, that is a very sticky, complex situation,” Bensky said. “People really need to understand what sex trafficking is and what it looks like.… It really is like a pyramid scheme.”

The charges against the remaining “Broadview Six” protesters were dropped Thursday, in a win for anyone who has protested ICE activity under the Trump administration.

The six protesters were hit with felony conspiracy charges carrying a maximum sentence of six years in prison after they surrounded an ICE agent’s car in the Chicago suburb of Broadview in September, in an attempt to slow it down. It was alleged the protesters “pushed and scratched and otherwise damaged,” the vehicle, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. But like many charges brought by the feds against anti-ICE protesters, they failed to hold up in court.

The government first dropped charges against two of the protesters, Catherine Sharp and Joselyn Walsh. Then it threw out the conspiracy charges against the other four—Brian Straw, Michael Rabbitt, Andre Martin, and former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh—and instead tried to convict them of one misdemeanor count each for impeding a federal agent.

In the end, the administration couldn’t even do that. Chicago’s top federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, dropped the charges with prejudice in front of U.S. District Judge April Perry, meaning the case cannot be refiled in the future.

Boutros remained petty to the end. He called the protesters’ actions “unacceptable in a civilized society,” adding: “It is for the grace of God that that agent moved at two miles per hour.”

Perry was unimpressed. “You are significantly undercutting your mea culpa here by standing behind the charges and continuing to vilify these particular defendants,” she told Boutros.

Boutros had already annoyed the judge once before, when his assistants took transcripts of themselves explaining the conspiracy laws to the grand jury pool, then apparently redacted some of the transcripts when Perry asked for them. She discussed this with them in a private hearing. Boutros later insisted to Perry that “no one acted with the intent to mislead your honor.”

ICE came to Chicago in Operation Midway Blitz, a deportation campaign beginning in September 2025, a few months before Operation Metro Surge took over Minneapolis. The campaign resulted in protests, arrests, and the fatal shooting of one resident, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez.

Even members of Congress are taking the opportunity to cash in on Donald Trump’s slush fund.

The DOJ created a $1.8 billion honey pot earlier this week, offering “anti-weaponization” payouts to virtually any right-winger who felt targeted by the previous presidential administration—at cost to U.S. taxpayers.

The money is apparently worth more to lawmakers than the negative impacts it will have on their constituents. Republican Representative Andrew Clyde came out in favor of the executive branch’s creation, suggesting to Politico Thursday that he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of taking money from the account himself.

The Georgia Republican argued that he had been previously targeted by the IRS and had to forfeit assets to the tune of $1 million. Clyde won most of the money back after he took the IRS to court, but he told Politico that he still has considerable legal fees from the endeavor.

There are others far beyond Capitol Hill who are interested in milking the fund, such as the financially ruined CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, who lost most of his net worth for spreading unfounded conspiracies about the 2020 presidential election.

Hundreds of pardoned January 6ers are also in the queue, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, a sex offender who bear-sprayed cops, and a convicted child molester who told his victims he would give them money from a Trump payout in exchange for their silence.

Trump leveraged the promise of payouts to his success on the campaign trail. In January—months before the slush fund became a reality—Democrats attempted to stave off such payments, introducing the “No Rewards for January 6 Rioters Act.” But the bill never went anywhere, and has made no progress since.

The slush fund was the result of an unprecedented deal that Trump made with himself. Rather than settle his $10 billion lawsuit against his own administration, Trump opted to drop the case entirely earlier this week and, in turn, extracted a pledge from the DOJ to financially assist his allies.

The arrangement came with a curious addendum from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, immunizing Trump from further federal prosecution. The government of the United States, Blanche wrote Tuesday, is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump, his family, or his business.

Legal experts are questioning whether the scheme is unconstitutional. If the arrangement is allowed to stand, Trump will have effectively thwarted the powers of both the legislative and judicial branches, and soiled the constitutionally defined separation of power.

Ahead of a meeting with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the White House sent a document to GOP senators on Thursday explaining why President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund is actually a great idea.

The document says the fund is about “seeking accountability” for millions of Americans “who were victims of lawfare and weaponization.” It falsely claims the president cannot profit from it, lets senators know they can get a piece of the action themselves (wink, wink), and even attempts to paint the fund as a bipartisan win. “Democrats can submit claims, too,” the document states happily.

Unsurprisingly for the most corrupt presidential administration in history, the document greatly contradicts the legal agreement that actually established the fund. Journalist Adam Klasfeld found nine different instances where the document differs from the agreement.

For example, the document claims the fund can be audited by a third party, while omitting the fact that Blanche gets to choose the auditor and can veto the audit at will. The document also claims there is no “partisan restriction” to the fund, despite the legal settlement defining the “weaponization” in question as being committed exclusively by Democrats.

Even Republican senators realize this fund is incredibly corrupt. Just a few hours after receiving the White House document, the GOP canceled its plans to vote on a budget bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security though the end of Trump’s second term, largely due to fears Democrats would force Republicans to go on the record about whether or not they support the fund.

The fund was announced on Monday as a result of a massive legal settlement between Trump and the IRS. It is expected to be doled out to Trump allies—including January 6 rioters and members of Trumpian super PACs—who claim they were unfairly targeted by past administrations. Of course, no one except Blanche will actually know who is awarded the bounties, and how much they’re getting.

The fund has come under intense public scrutiny since it was created. One legal watchdog called it “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” Democrats have bashed it as clear fraud, and a few Republican legislators have similarly gone on record to say it unfairly benefits the president.