EXCLUSIVE: GOP Senator Introducing Bill To Yank Passports From Fraudsters Accused Of Swindling Taxpayers
'Fugitive fraudsters are fleeing justice and the country with stolen taxpayer dollars in tow'
Iowa primary: One Trump-backed candidate secures landslide victory, while another is narrowly defeated
Iowa voters cast their ballots in the primary election on Tuesday, determining two of the state’s highest-profile November matchups, including the open gubernatorial race and an open U.S. Senate seat.
Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) announced in April 2025 that she would not seek a third term. In Sept., U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst (R) announced that she would also not seek re-election.
'We now have the most Republicans ever. ... There is no excuse for [Democratic] turnout to exceed ours here, but if that happens again ... uh-oh.'
Five Republicans faced off in Iowa’s primary election, seeking to succeed Reynolds.
A survey conducted by JMC Analytics and Polling from May 27 to 28 predicted that the Republican gubernatorial primary may head to a convention, with none of the candidates able to secure the required 35% of the vote.
Of those surveyed, 24% stated that they would vote for businessman and former conservative political director Zach Lahn, 22% selected state Rep. Randy Feenstra, 15% selected former director of the state Department of Administrative Services Adam Steen, 8% selected former state Rep. Brad Sherman, and 4% selected state Rep. Eddie Andrews. However, 27% of those surveyed said they remained undecided.
Feenstra was endorsed by President Donald Trump, who called the candidate “MAGA all the way!”
Live ballot tabulations showed Lahn and Feenstra in a tight race on Tuesday evening.
With roughly 90% of the votes counted and Lahn leading by approximately 1,400 votes, BlazeTV’s Steve Deace stated, “I’ve seen enough. @ZachLahn will be the GOP nominee for governor in Iowa.”
Decision Desk HQ projected at 11:30 p.m. Eastern that Lahn would win the election against challenger Feenstra. With 98% of the votes counted, Lahn led Feenstra by less than one percentage point, according to the Associated Press. Lahn secured over 37% of the vote, avoiding a state party convention previously predicted by the polls.
Feenstra reportedly called Lahn Tuesday evening to concede.
Lahn will face uncontested Democratic nominee Rob Sand in the upcoming November 3 general election.
RELATED: A storm is brewing in Iowa — and Republicans should take note: 'There are danger signs'
Former state Rep. Jim Carlin and Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson went head-to-head on Tuesday seeking to become the Republican nominee to fill Ernst’s open seat in the Senate.
The same poll from JMC Analytics and Polling showed 58% of those surveyed were planning to vote for Hinson and that Carlin trailed behind by 39 percentage points. However, 23% of respondents stated they were still undecided.
On Tuesday, Hinson pulled off a massive victory against Carlin in the election. Roughly 30 minutes after the polls closed, Hinson was projected to be the winner by NBC News and the Associated Press. With 99% of the ballots counted, Hinson won by over 48 percentage points.
State Rep. Josh Turek won the Democratic primary race against state Sen. Zach Wahls to battle it out against Hinson on the November ballot.
RELATED: Pro-life senator announces she will not seek re-election
Heading into Election Day, Deace shared his thoughts on the Iowa races and their national implications.
“We better hope the Democrats follow their heart with Zach Wahls and not their heads with Josh Turek, because the latter has run the best and most inspiring messaging I’ve seen from a Democrat statewide in Iowa in many years,” Deace wrote in a post on X. “Wahls is a construct of every Leftist fetish normies vote against if the economy isn’t totally in the tank. But if Turek is their nominee, the US Senate race in Iowa will be a way tougher pull for our side this fall. He gives normies a reason to vote for him and not just against Trump.”
He noted that Democratic voter turnout nationwide has far surpassed Republicans, which he called an obvious “potential danger sign for November.”
“But here in Iowa, we now have the most Republicans ever and more than a 200,000 voter registration advantage. There is no excuse for their turnout to exceed ours here, but if that happens again ... uh-oh,” Deace added.
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Trump’s endorsement power keeps saving the wrong Republicans
For a decade, not one lukewarm Republican incumbent senator or governor has lost a primary and been replaced by a more conservative challenger under Donald Trump’s leadership of the GOP. That changed Tuesday night.
Four-term U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) did not merely lose to state Attorney General Ken Paxton. He got routed by 28 points.
The Paxton endorsement and Cornyn’s defeat should have marked a turning point in Trump’s political strategy. Instead, they look like the high point of the cycle.
The decisive factor was obvious: Trump finally endorsed the challenger instead of the RINO incumbent. Now, imagine what the party might look like if he had done that over the past five election cycles.
The point is not to dwell on missed opportunities. Upcoming primaries in red states will determine whether conservatives retain any real statewide fighters.
Paxton’s victory proves Trump could finish his term by draining the swamp. Sadly, he more often sides with the swamp or stays silent long enough for moneyed interests to crush more principled candidates.
Most insurgent challengers lack Paxton’s name recognition. But if Trump’s endorsement could move Paxton from a close race to a 240-county rout, it could make lesser-known challengers competitive against weak incumbents. In open seats, a grassroots conservative with Trump’s backing would be nearly unbeatable.
Several upcoming races offer conservatives a chance to make red states actually govern like red states. Too often, Trump is absent or on the wrong side.
Start with Iowa.
Gov. Kim Reynolds is retiring, and Democrats have fielded a credible challenger pretending to be a moderate while running against land grabs. Republicans need a non-corporatist nominee who does not carry the baggage of the status quo Republicans in Congress.
Betting markets have RINO Rep. Randy Feenstra as the heavy favorite for the GOP nomination because he has the most money and name identification. Conservatives have fielded multiple candidates, but with only days until the election, Zach Lahn has the most traction and the clearest message against data centers and land grabs.
Thankfully, Trump has not endorsed Feenstra. But if he endorsed Lahn, Lahn could win outright without a runoff.
The Iowa Senate race shows the opposite problem. Former state Sen. Jim Carlin challenged Sen. Joni Ernst after she obstructed Pete Hegseth’s nomination. Trump should have endorsed Carlin. Instead, he encouraged Ernst to run again. Then, when Ernst retired thanks to Carlin’s hard work, Trump endorsed RINO Rep. Ashley Hinson, ensuring no improvement over Ernst.
RELATED: Trump-backed candidate easily wins primary to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky
Trump made a similar move in Louisiana. Sen. Bill Cassidy was already politically wounded, with conservative challengers in the race. Trump could have helped finish him. Instead, he helped clear the field for Rep. Julia Letlow, a carbon capture supporter backed by major AI money who declined to run when the race looked difficult.
South Dakota presents the next major red-state test.
Sen. Mike Rounds represents everything MAGA claims to hate on social, fiscal, and national security policy. Yet Trump endorsed him last year, clearing the field and guaranteeing no serious opposition. This has become a familiar pattern. A Trump endorsement effectively cancels the primary.
The biggest prize in South Dakota is the governor’s race. After MAGA Inc. promoted Kristi Noem as a conservative champion, many of us warned she was a capricious establishment Republican. Her lieutenant governor, Larry Rhoden, took over the term and now seeks a full one. Rep. Dusty Johnson, former leader of the RINO Main Street Partnership, is also running. So is wealthy businessman Toby Doeden, who claims the MAGA label while pushing data centers.
Speaker Jon Hansen is the only conservative in the race. He led the fight against carbon capture land grabs, helped build a conservative majority in the state House, and fought the abortion amendment, marijuana amendment, and COVID tyranny in South Dakota. Now, he is fighting data centers.
A Trump endorsement would likely win the race for Hansen. Instead, conservatives have to worry that Trump might intervene on the wrong side if the race heads to a runoff.
Anyone who thought Trump’s late endorsement against Cornyn signaled a strategic turning point should look at South Carolina. Trump recently reaffirmed his endorsement of Sen. Lindsey Graham ahead of the June 9 primary against Matt Lynch and several other candidates.
Trump’s endorsements of Graham in 2020 and again now have driven off stronger challengers. That is clearly why, barring a miracle, one of the most obnoxious Republicans in the Senate will probably remain there until he dies.
Even when conservatives cannot defeat incumbent RINOs, they should at least ensure that open seats produce better Republicans. Montana shows how hard the establishment works to prevent that.
Trump and the RINO establishment that runs the Montana GOP helped execute a sleazy scheme around Sen. Steve Daines’ retirement. Daines announced his retirement on the filing deadline while the establishment had U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme lined up to walk into the seat without a primary. The goal was obvious: avoid a competitive race from a member of the Montana Freedom Caucus.
Meanwhile, Gov. Greg Gianforte, another RINO Trump ally, is at war with the state Freedom Caucus and is spending heavily to defeat conservative incumbents in the legislature next Tuesday.
RELATED: JD Vance might be unstoppable in 2028
This pattern keeps repeating. Trump elevates, preserves, and empowers statewide GOP leaders who hate conservatives. Those leaders then turn their guns on freedom caucus members in their own legislatures.
Idaho proved the point last week. Trump’s endorsement of Gov. Brad Little for a third term helped keep him in power. Little then spent hundreds of thousands of dollars helping defeat five conservatives in the legislature.
North Dakota shows the same dynamic. Trump cleared the field for governor two years ago and helped install Rep. Kelly Armstrong, one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress. Armstrong is not up for re-election this year, so he is using his money and clout to target the few conservatives in a legislature with almost no official Democrats but plenty of undocumented ones.
Trump has generally stayed out of state legislative races. But his long shadow of RINO endorsements now creates a greater headwind against conservative candidates than ever before.
And don’t even get me started on Trump’s endorsement of Byron Donalds in Florida to replace the greatest governor of this generation.
The Paxton endorsement and Cornyn’s defeat should have marked a turning point in Trump’s political strategy. Instead, they look like the high point of the cycle.
From here, conservatives have every reason to worry that Trump will return to his old habit: rewarding the swamp, clearing the field for weak Republicans, and leaving the movement’s best fighters to fend for themselves.
Biden administration snuck $90 million to Planned Parenthood by using ghoulish code word, says GOP senator
U.S. Senator Jon Ernst (R-Iowa) recently obtained access to Biden-era Small Business Administration communications revealing a "potential cover-up obscuring $90 million in taxpayer funds Biden officials gifted to Planned Parenthood," America's largest abortion provider and a leading supplier of sex-rejection hormones.
According to the pro-life lawmaker, Biden officials at the SBA — allegedly operating under the direction of former top SBA lawyer Peggy Hamilton — used the code word "Benghazi" to refer to discussions of Planned Parenthood and its receipt of forgivable COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program loans in the wake of congressional objections to those very loans and demands for greater transparency.
'Just when we think the Democrats’ extremism can’t get more shocking.'
The use of a wholly unrelated term — the name of the Libyan city where four Americans were savagely murdered by Islamists in 2012 — is believed to have been employed strategically to ensure that future congressional or public record requests wouldn't turn up the relevant and possibly damning documents regarding the funding of Planned Parenthood, a potential violation of the Federal Records Act.
"What does Benghazi have to do with Planned Parenthood? It appears the Biden SBA used it as a code name to hide the $90 million in taxpayer funds they gifted to the abortion provider," Ernst said in a statement on Tuesday.
"This potential cover-up demands answers."
In her letter asking acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to open an investigation into the matter, Ernst raised the possibility that the Biden White House may have been involved in the alleged effort to conceal official federal records and highlighted numerous emails sent by Hamilton in which "Benghazi" appears to have been used as a stand-in for the abortion giant.
In one instance, Hamilton made clear her intended meaning, writing, "Can I schedule a meeting so we can decision Benghazi (Planned Parenthood)?"
"Recipients and respondents in the SBA email chains knew Planned Parenthood was not in or even remotely related to Benghazi, yet by continuing the email chain and scheduling meetings, it appears several Biden political appointees, and some SBA employees, were knowingly concealing or attempting to conceal their records relating to Planned Parenthood," Ernst stated in her letter.
She added, "With the records detailed here, and many more I’ve obtained, perhaps now we know why the Biden administration did not want to share its Planned Parenthood records with Congress."
"Just when we think the Democrats’ extremism can’t get more shocking, we see the lengths they’ll go to in protecting the Big Abortion industry," Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement. "They knew letting Planned Parenthood help itself to taxpayer-funded COVID loans was illegal — so they tried to cover their tracks using, of all things, the national horror of Benghazi."
These revelations come just months after the SBA issued letters to 38 affiliates of Planned Parenthood demanding proof that they were eligible to receive millions of dollars in PPP loans. The agency noted that affiliates found to have provided fudged or false eligibility certifications may face "severe penalties, including repayment of the loan, ineligibility for loan forgiveness, and possible referral for civil or criminal penalties."
SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said in a statement, "Planned Parenthood Federation of America was never eligible to receive a dime in pandemic-era relief from taxpayers. As part of the review under way, not only will we expose the Planned Parenthood affiliates who took advantage of the American people — we will take every necessary step to force every bad actor to pay them back."
Planned Parenthood did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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