Fourteen months into Trump’s second term, the verdict is in. No mass deportations. No major immigration reform. And if Democrats return to power, they will rip the doors off the hinges again.

Trump did slow the flow and put a dent in some outdated visa programs. But the results remain too small relative to the scale of what came before him and what may come after him.

One day, red states will need to enact these deterrents. The only question is timing.

That leaves one durable partial solution: Use red-state supermajorities to deter illegal aliens from settling in those states when the next wave comes. States may lack the power to deport illegal aliens outright, but they can make daily life harder. They can deny jobs and benefits, impose criminal penalties, and create a lasting deterrent that survives any one presidency.

Ron DeSantis appears to understand this in Florida. Almost no other Republican governor does.

Idaho offers the clearest example of the problem. On paper, it looks like the kind of state where serious immigration enforcement should be easy. Republicans hold 61-9 and 29-6 majorities in the House and Senate. Conservatives gained ground in the House thanks to the Freedom Caucus. Yet when the time came to pass meaningful reforms, the GOP establishment folded.

The House moved several bills. The Senate is quietly killing them. Gov. Brad Little (R) remains publicly silent, apparently hoping the issue dies in committee while he cruises to re-election under Trump’s preemptive endorsement and keeps his donor class happy.

The bills now stalled in Idaho expose the fraud.

H704 would mandate E-Verify for all public and private employers and give the state attorney general real enforcement power. It passed the House 43-26 despite opposition from 17 Republicans. It now sits dead in the Senate State Affairs Committee under Chairman Jim Guthrie and Senate President Pro Tempore Kelly Anthon.

H700 would make it a misdemeanor knowingly to hire illegal aliens without using E-Verify. That bill is also dead in the Senate, and 22 House Republicans opposed it.

H659 would require all counties and cities to cooperate with ICE through 287(g) agreements. In a state with barely any elected Democrats, one might assume mandatory ICE cooperation would be the easiest of calls. Instead, the bill passed the House 41-27, with 18 lukewarm Republicans joining Democrats in opposition, and now sits dead in the Senate State Affairs Committee.

H660 would require police to inquire about immigration status after a lawful arrest and would mandate a twice-yearly report on crimes committed by illegal aliens. By definition, this involves people already suspected of some other offense. Even so, the bill passed only 40-30 and is now being blocked in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Blaze Media Illustration

H764 would create a state analogue to the federal statute that penalizes anyone who knowingly or recklessly conceals, harbors, transports, or materially assists illegal aliens. It includes misdemeanor and felony penalties, license revocations, and forfeiture provisions. In other words, it would build precisely the kind of standing deterrent red states will need when Democrats reopen the border. It has not even advanced out of committee.

S1318 would audit refugee-resettlement contractors in Idaho, including the number of refugees served, their demographic and language data, participation in language programs, housing use, geographic distribution, and relevant public-health statistics. It would also require disclosure if those entities aided illegal aliens. It remains blocked in the Senate State Affairs Committee.

H592 would require the state to track how many illegal aliens receive hospital services and how much that costs taxpayers. It would not deny care. It would merely quantify the burden. A similar law in Florida led to a drop in illegal-alien use of the health care system. Idaho’s bill has not moved.

H656 would do the same basic thing in schools by auditing the number of illegal aliens enrolled. It has gone nowhere.

How does this happen in a state so red? The answer is simple: Many Republican officials remain functionally progressive on immigration.

Little is deeply unpopular with the grassroots, but he neutralized the threat of a primary by securing Trump’s endorsement. Everyone knows he opposes these bills. He simply does not want to say so out loud. Better to let them die quietly in committee than risk angering the base or the business interests that still demand cheap labor.

Call it political Murphy’s law. DeSantis is term-limited in Florida. Brad Little gets a third term.

DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images

Even Florida has not gone far enough. It already has E-Verify, but lawmakers failed to remove the 25-employee exception. Similar attempts to strengthen E-Verify have failed in West Virginia, Indiana, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, all solidly red states.

A few bright spots remain.

Tennessee may pass some worthwhile bills, though lawmakers gutted legislation to charge illegal aliens tuition. Arizona’s legislature is close to passing SB 1421, which would bar illegal aliens from opening bank accounts, cashing checks, or obtaining loans by prohibiting financial institutions from accepting foreign ID cards or ITINs as sole identification. It would make life in the United States much harder without legal status. The bill passed the Senate and awaits a House vote. Unfortunately, Arizona has a Democrat governor who will likely veto it.

That only raises the harder question: Why is this not already law in the 22 Republican trifecta states?

The same problem appears in commercial trucking. Amid the rash of crashes involving illegal-alien drivers, very few states have acted seriously. Oklahoma alone passed a law requiring proof of citizenship to reciprocate out-of-state commercial driver’s licenses. Florida appears to be the one state seriously enforcing the English-language requirement and checking for illegal aliens at truck stops.

Iowa let a bill die in committee that would have required driver’s license exams to be administered only in English. Indiana passed an English-only testing bill, but still failed to address out-of-state CDLs, even after two illegal aliens killed Indiana residents in separate incidents in less than two weeks in February.

One day, red states will need to enact these deterrents. The only question is timing. Will Republicans build them now, during the lull, or will they wait until hundreds of thousands of new invaders flood back in under a future President Gavin Newsom?

That choice will tell us whether Republicans ever meant a word they said about immigration.

Is your baby formula safe? Florida finds heavy metals in 16 of 24 top brands

Most parents who purchase baby formula trust that if the product is on the supermarket shelf, it must be safe for their child, but according to findings from the Healthy Florida First initiative, many of the top formula brands tested positive for heavy metals.

The state-led program, spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis (R), first lady Casey DeSantis, and Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo through the Florida Department of Health, aims to build a healthier Florida through independent testing and publication of contaminants in everyday foods.

On a recent episode of “Conservative Review with Daniel Horowitz,” Horowitz interviewed Casey DeSantis about what Florida’s health initiative uncovered about 24 top-selling baby formulas and what parents can do to ensure that their children are receiving the best nutrition.

A Consumer Reports investigation released in March 2025 found potentially harmful levels of heavy metals, including arsenic and lead, in some of the 41 baby formulas tested. Around the same time, HHS and the FDA announced Operation Stork Speed, which increased testing for heavy metals and contaminants, reviewed nutrient standards, and strengthened oversight of infant formula safety.

Despite this initiative, DeSantis says that according to infant formula testing conducted by Florida’s Department of Health, “there hasn’t been much change at all.”

“And honestly, since we had our results coming out, I haven't heard anything from some of these baby formula manufacturers. And so it's like at what point in time is enough enough?” she says, calling metal toxicity in baby formula “unconscionable and unacceptable.”

Out of the 24 baby formulas tested, Florida’s Department of Health found that 16 contained one or more heavy metals exceeding current safety standards.

“Could you give us a summary of those shocking findings?” asks Horowitz.

“Sixteen out of the 24 had high levels of mercury. Two had lead. These are problematic heavy metals, right? They don't just leave the body. They're there for a while,” says DeSantis, “and our surgeon general said, you know, when you're exposed to this early in life in these quantities over the course of a year or two, your risk of getting cancer goes up exponentially.”

“I would encourage moms and dads and grandparents to go to exposingfoodtoxins.com because there you can see specifically which ones are better than others,” she adds.

“Don't tell me it's the manufacturing process and there's nothing that we can do, because certainly there are some manufacturers that are doing it better. So we should, as consumers, push to drive change because that's the right thing to do on behalf of families.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the full interview above.

Florida Gubernatorial Candidate Accused of 'Grooming' Minor May Not Even Be Eligible For Election

James Fishback, the 31-year-old alleged groomer and head of a troubled asset management firm who is running an insurgent campaign to succeed Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.), claimed a Washington, D.C., condo as his primary residence through 2025 and voted in the district in 2020, records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. The documents raise questions about Fishback's eligibility to serve as governor, given that Florida's constitution requires gubernatorial candidates to have lived in the state for the preceding seven years.

The post Florida Gubernatorial Candidate Accused of 'Grooming' Minor May Not Even Be Eligible For Election appeared first on .

DOGE didn’t die — it moved to the states

The media and conservative pundits may have buried the Department of Government Efficiency, but they have yet to carve a date of death on its tombstone. While DOGE in Washington may have appeared to insiders as a vanity project, voters saw it as a mandate — one that Republicans at the federal level have largely set aside in favor of politics as usual.

But activists have not forgotten. In red states across the country, they are still demanding accountability. And in Idaho, that pressure is finally producing results.

If Idaho can succeed and follow Florida’s lead, there is no serious reason other red states cannot do the same — unless they are prepared to admit they never intended to keep their promises.

For what appears to be the first time, state legislators serving on Idaho’s DOGE Task Force concluded their 2025 work with a meeting that departed from months of cautious, procedural discussion. Members asked harder questions, voiced long-simmering frustrations, and issued a recommendation that could reshape the state’s fiscal future: urging the full legislature to consider repealing Medicaid expansion, a costly policy that has drained taxpayers of millions.

Red states can’t stall forever

Idaho may not be Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ DOGE-style reforms have produced consistent wins for fiscal sanity and limited government. But it is doing more than other red states, such as North Dakota, where a DOGE committee stacked with Democrats predictably ignored the voters’ mandate.

The Idaho meeting exposed growing dissatisfaction with the task force’s approach. Over the summer and fall, the committee — charged with identifying inefficiencies — repeatedly deferred to state agencies for suggestions on cuts. Unsurprisingly those agencies offered little beyond cosmetic changes.

Idaho state Rep. Heather Scott (R-LD2, Blanchard) gave voice to that frustration. “What is the goal of this committee?” she asked, pressing colleagues to offer recommendations that actually matter. “Twenty thousand here, 50,000 there, or removing old code is not meaningful efficiency,” Scott said. Repealing Medicaid expansion, she argued, would be one of the “best decisions” the state could make.

Nibbling at the edges

Scott’s experience on the Idaho task force stands in stark contrast to the early federal DOGE efforts, which moved aggressively to slash U.S. Agency for International Development’s workforce, freeze fraudulent payments, and cancel billions in corrupt contracts. By comparison, Idaho’s task force had mostly nibbled at the edges. This recommendation marked its first serious step toward substantive reform.

Another revealing moment came from co-chairman state Sen. Todd Lakey (R-Nampa), who read a letter from a small-business owner offering health insurance to employees. Workers routinely request schedules capped at 20 to 28 hours per week to preserve Medicaid expansion benefits — even though full-time work would require only a modest contribution toward employer-provided coverage.

The result is a perverse incentive structure: businesses struggle to find full-time workers while taxpayers subsidize underemployment. The government fuels workforce shortages through welfare, then spends more taxpayer dollars trying to fix the shortages it created. This welfare-workforce vortex is the opposite of efficiency, and it is spreading nationwide.

The meeting’s most explosive moment came from state Rep. Josh Tanner (R-Eagle), who described Idaho’s Medicaid reimbursement structure as resembling “money laundering.”

Citing analysis from the Paragon Health Institute, Tanner explained how provider assessment fees allow states to inflate Medicaid spending to draw down larger federal matching funds, cycling the money back through enhanced payments. Paragon has described these arrangements as “legalized money laundering” — schemes that shift costs to federal taxpayers while enriching connected providers or funding unrelated priorities.

Nationally supplemental payments now exceed $110 billion annually, siphoning hundreds of billions from taxpayers over a decade.

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

DOGE’s second life

My sources tell me that hospital lobbyists went into panic mode after the meeting, urgently contacting Capitol officials to contain the fallout from Tanner’s remarks.

For the first time, the task force aired real frustrations, documented real harms, and named real abuses. That alone offers reason for cautious optimism.

Idaho now has committed conservatives in positions of influence. With the task force’s recommendation to revisit Medicaid expansion heading to the legislature, the state has an opportunity to govern as it campaigns — preserving liberty, restoring accountability, and expanding opportunity.

If Idaho can succeed and follow Florida’s lead, there is no serious reason other red states cannot do the same — unless they are prepared to admit they never intended to keep their promises in the first place.

Red-state inaction is the soft underbelly of border politics

Redistricting Debacle Proves GOP Is Too Squishy For An Article V Convention

Is your baby formula safe? Florida finds heavy metals in 16 of 24 top brands

Florida Gubernatorial Candidate Accused of 'Grooming' Minor May Not Even Be Eligible For Election

Florida Joins Texas In Ending American Bar Association’s ‘Gatekeeper’ Grip On Law Schools

DOGE didn’t die — it moved to the states

Red states can’t stall forever

Nibbling at the edges

DOGE’s second life

The strategy to win elections hasn’t changed in 2,000 years

Abigail Spanberger Is Playing Blindfolded Darts With Her Lame SOTU Response

Republicans Will Keep Losing Until They Realize Power Isn’t Evil

‘Presidents Day’ Is George Washington Erasure. America 250 Is The Perfect Time To Fix It

If leftists can’t cancel 1776, they’ll cancel the founders one frame at a time

Valley Forge Park Preserves A Crucible Of The American Revolution

To Celebrate America’s 250th, Read Her Founding Documents In Person

Without George Washington, America Wouldn’t Have A 250th Birthday

Red states can’t stall forever

Nibbling at the edges

DOGE’s second life

We’ll keep you informed with top stories for conservatives who want to become informed decision makers.