Hey everybody. Welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Our top story today. Things keep getting worse for Ken Paxton’s campaign. The Wall Street Journal has a video of him at a New Year’s Eve party in Dubai. His girlfriend is there. So are two American fugitives under federal indictment for stealing 15 million dollars from a Chicago hospital. One of them had contributed 190,000 dollars to Paxton’s campaigns, including a check that arrived days after his indictment. This is the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in Texas. The man who’s supposed to be the state’s top law enforcement officer was ringing in the new year with people the FBI was looking for.
We’ll also get into the bipartisan backlash to Pete Hegseth’s plan to televise a military execution, the new White House press secretary’s brutal first press conference, Kimberly Guilfoyle’s resignation, and the DHS raid on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in D.C. yesterday morning.
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Let’s get to it.
1. Paxton’s Dubai Party Exposed
On New Year’s Eve 2024, Ken Paxton was in Dubai at a party. The Wall Street Journal has it all on video. Standing with him is Tracy Duhon, the woman his wife of 38 years named when she filed for divorce. And two men named Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail. Both had been indicted in Illinois months earlier for embezzling 15 million dollars from a Chicago hospital where Ahmed was the chief financial officer. Both had left the country. Ahmed has since been indicted again in a 195 million dollar Covid fraud scheme.
Now, about Ahmed. He’s donated 190,000 dollars to Paxton over the years. One check for 25,000 dollars came in just days after he was indicted. He has business interests in Texas, the state where Paxton decides who gets investigated and who doesn’t. Both men are now back in the country and in custody.
And it’s not the only story this week. The Washington Post found Paxton’s office wrote legal opinions that benefited his biggest donors. The Texas Tribune found the chair of the Texas Tech board gave Paxton’s Senate committee 274,000 dollars on a Tuesday, and on Wednesday the attorney general’s office threatened the Big 12 with 200 million dollars in damages over a Texas Tech football player.
Paxton’s campaign didn’t address any of it. The spokesman said that, like President Trump, Ken Paxton has been politically persecuted for years.
That’s the word Paxton used in 2015, when he was indicted for securities fraud and spent the better part of a decade avoiding a trial. It’s what he said in 2020, when his own top deputies went to the FBI and reported him for abusing the office to help a donor. It’s what he said in 2023, when the Republican-controlled Texas House impeached him for it.
So all of this stuff coming out shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s a man being exactly who he’s been for over a decade. The only difference now is Trump decided this is the guy Texas should send to the United States Senate.
2. Republicans Reject Hegseth’s Execution Show
Nidal Hasan is the former Army Major who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. A court martial sentenced him to death in 2013. Last week, Trump signed off on the method Hegseth recommended: a firing squad at the site of the shooting. Then Hegseth told OAN he wanted the whole thing livestreamed.
I released a video on this last week, and I encourage you to watch it if you want to hear my full thoughts. But in short: I have no sympathy for Hasan. And even though I’m on the fence about the death penalty, no one deserves it more than him. But when we take life in the military, we do it with solemnity. Killing is not something to be proud of, and it should never be entertainment.
Hegseth has turned it into a circus, and for once, Republicans are calling him out. GOP Senators Thom Tillis and John Curtis came out against it. Representative Austin Scott of Georgia made the obvious comparison to the live executions practiced by terrorists. Even Mike Johnson seemed uncomfortable. Have a listen:
The speaker actually makes a good point here. Hasan thinks he’s a holy warrior. A video of American soldiers shooting him on camera is the ending he wants, and the footage will play on extremist channels for years.
But I expect more from the speaker. This is the man that once flew the Appeal to Heaven flag outside of his office. Like many in the administration, he believes policymakers should keep christian principles in mind. One of those principles is the sanctity of life, which the proposed livestream would clearly violate.
The livestream is wrong on so many levels. You don’t have to be religious to see that. But for people like Vance and Johnson, who hold those principles dear and have real influence in the administration, the duty to speak up is even greater. I hope they’re doing so behind the scenes and getting this sick idea tossed out. Because abuses like this don’t end with the death of one man. The dilution of human dignity trickles down into our politics, into the way we treat friends and enemies alike. In this ugly chapter in our history, it’s the last thing we need.
3. White House Press Secretary’s Debut Disaster
The president’s new press secretary is Katie Zacharia, a former Fox commentator and employee at Trump’s media company. NPR calls her a “devoted fan of Trump and MAGA.” This morning she held her first briefing. It was supposed to be an easy introduction. It didn’t turn out that way. Have a listen to this little Freudian slip.
A good one indeed. Even when she wasn’t messing up, her delivery left something to be desired. Here’s another clip.
If you’re listening instead of watching, that was her staring down at the page and sounding like a robot. Reading off a script can be tough, especially when the pressure is on. But this is supposed to be the country’s top communications official, and she sounds like she’s running for student council.
So why did Trump hire her? Well, he introduced her as an attorney, and she’s called herself one for years. She has a law degree. But that doesn’t make you a lawyer. You have to pass the bar, and there’s no record she ever has. When asked where she got licensed to practice law, she told reporters it was when she “moved to China.” That’s not how that works. And Trump was standing right next to her when she said it. He looked as confused as everyone else.
But then again, in this administration, making up BS on the spot is a pretty important skill. So maybe Trump made a good decision after all.
In any case, that’s the new voice of the White House. I’m expecting great things.
4. Guilfoyle Forced Out
Last week, we covered the bombshell report over Kimberly Guilfoyle’s leaked text messages. Guilfoyle, who had been serving as the ambassador to Greece, was caught red-handed selling access to cabinet secretaries and other top officials in the Trump administration.
Yesterday, Trump was asked if he’d fire her. “Well, we’re looking at it. We’re not happy.” And this morning, his new press secretary announced the White House had asked Guilfoyle to resign. But she couldn’t help adding that the ambassador “has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”
Shortly after, Guilfoyle announced that she’s stepping down, that the allegations are false, and that she intends to “vigorously defend” her name, reputation, and integrity.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the texts we saw last week were only the tip of the iceberg. The Journal kept digging and found many more offenses, like threatening Greek officials, accepting improper gifts, letting lobbyists from private companies sit in on diplomatic meetings, and bragging about luxury travel with energy executives. What a disaster.
Even in this White House, the laundry list of offenses was too long to ignore. And wishing her well on the way out tells you how they really feel about it. They aren’t mad about what she did. They just wish she hadn’t gotten caught.
5. Trump’s DHS Raids Ilhan Omar
Early yesterday morning, agents from the Department of Homeland Security executed a search warrant at Representative Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, D.C. Omar represents Minnesota’s 5th District, and like every House member, she’s up for reelection next month.
Officials have said little about why. The Justice Department says the search is part of an ongoing criminal investigation, and that a judge authorized the warrant. Sources have told news outlets that it’s tied to her immigration paperwork. Border czar Tom Homan had already confirmed a probe. But nobody has named a crime. And Omar hasn’t been charged with anything.
In a recent statement, Omar called it what it looked like. She said the search was “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” And she went on to blame Trump, saying, “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies... This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.”
Yesterday Trump insisted he wasn’t involved. But it wasn’t very convincing:
“That’s really up to the DOJ. I have nothing to do with it.” As if he doesn’t run the DOJ and its investigations into his political enemies. CBS News reports that his attorney general, Todd Blanche, knew about the search personally.
And in the same breath, Trump peddled attacks against her character. He called her “totally crooked” and a “terrible person.” And he said she comes from “a non-country.” That certainly doesn’t sound like somebody keeping his distance.
Here’s the bottom line. This breaks decades of precedent. The Justice Department has a longstanding unwritten rule against overt steps targeting candidates right before an election. It’s often called the 60-day rule. And the idea is simple: the government should never look like it’s tipping the scales.
But this administration doesn’t follow the rules that are written down. So it’s certainly not going to follow the unwritten ones. It’s spent a year tearing through every norm that stood between the president and his enemies. Omar is just the latest target.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
A federal judge says the Trump administration blindsided her court by tearing out more than 400 trees at a public D.C. golf course over the holiday weekend. In July, Judge Ana Reyes ordered officials to warn her before making major changes to East Potomac Golf Links. But the Justice Department filed plans to remove 529 trees on Friday evening. By Saturday morning, machinery was cutting them down. The government called the removal part of a broader restoration, but its lawyer could not explain the last-minute notice. At a four-hour emergency hearing Monday, Reyes said the move had “cost the government all of its credibility” with her. She halted further removal until Tuesday afternoon and ordered officials to testify on the spot. A senior National Park Service official said he had discussed Trump’s vision for a premier competition course with a political appointee at the Interior Department. Preservationists had sued in February to stop Trump from converting the affordable municipal course into a championship venue.
A Republican super PAC trying to defeat Maine Democrat Troy Jackson spent $25,900 running attack ads in the wrong Portland. From Thursday to Sunday, the YouTube ad from Defending Main Street reached more than a million viewers in Oregon and over 300,000 more in Washington State, according to Google’s ad data. The group’s CFO, Sarah Chamberlain, blamed its ad vendor, Cross Screen Media. “They screwed up,” she said. The vendor’s parent company confirmed the mistake and refunded the money. The ad attacks Jackson on taxes, the same line Sen. Susan Collins has leaned on as she seeks a sixth term. Jackson’s campaign responded that Collins and her allies are so out of touch they can’t find Maine on a map. According to FEC filings, the misfire is a rounding error next to the $946,500 the super PAC recently spent on TV and streaming ads against Jackson.
