Politics
Bonta says Trump is 'spitting in the face of our democracy' as federal funds remain frozen
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta joined a coalition of more than 20 states Friday in asking a federal court to once again intercede and force the Trump administration to unfreeze hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds appropriated by Congress to the states.
In two separate legal motions, Bonta and 22 other state attorneys general alleged that the administration has ignored a previously issued temporary restraining order requiring it to unfreeze the funding. They asked for that order to be enforced, and for the court to issue an additional preliminary injunction further blocking the freeze and ensuring the release of the funds while the litigation plays out.
“The administration is creating widespread chaos and causing irreparable harm to our states and the American people,” Bonta said during an afternoon news conference. “By not complying with the court order, by attempting to usurp Congress’ constitutional responsibility to hold the purse strings, the president is spitting in the face of our democracy.”
The Trump administration has denied wrongdoing and said it is acting within its authority.
The latest legal sparring continues a debate that has raged since Trump’s budget office issued a memo Jan. 27 that purported to halt funding for an array of federal programs as the new administration determined which of the funding aligned with Trump’s political agenda.
The memo was met with immediate outrage from Democrats in Congress, which by statute controls the federal budget, and from state leaders, who started flagging disruptions to funding streams supporting vital services all across the nation — such as Medicaid disbursement systems.
The White House rescinded its memo days later, and the administration has maintained in court that funding restrictions have not been as widespread as the states have argued and that the administration regardless was acting well within its authority.
In one response in court, the administration wrote that Trump and his Office of Management and Budget “plainly have authority to direct agencies to fully implement the President’s agenda, consistent with each individual agency’s underlying statutory authorities.”
That was what Trump had done with his executive orders, and what OMB did with its since-withdrawn memo, the administration argued.
Trump administration officials have also repeatedly met state complaints about specific disruptions to funding with denials — while simultaneously lauding the administration’s efforts to slash federal spending through billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
State officials have said the White House is simply not telling the truth and that, regardless of what it is saying publicly, it is withholding funding illegally.
“One week ago, a court ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze $3 trillion in federal funds with critical state funding still blocked. The administration is not complying with that court order,” Bonta said.
Bonta said the $3 trillion in funding initially targeted by the Trump administration’s memo included funds amounting to more than a third of California’s budget — including $107.5 billion in Medicaid funding for about 14.5 million Californians, including 5 million children and 2.3 million seniors and individuals with disabilities.
He said funds remained frozen across an array of programs, including healthcare, child care and foster care; education; nutritional support programs for children and the elderly; funds for roads and bridge repairs; funds that support the state workforce, that reduce pollution and that provide rebates and subsidies for cleaner, safer, more affordable homes; and programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution along major California corridors — including one between Los Angeles and the Imperial Valley.
They also included funds allocated by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, he said.
“Those are just a few examples of the programs of the people that have been left high and dry because of the administration’s illegal and unconstitutional attempt to freeze funding,” he said.
He called the ongoing freeze on such funds “illegal and un-American,” reflecting a flagrant disregard for the rule of law on the part of the president.
“In our country, when a court of law orders you to do something, you must obey no matter who you are, including, yes, the president,” Bonta said. “Not liking aspects of the order doesn’t give you the right to plug your ears, turn your back to the judge, and pretend it’s not happening.”
Bonta said asking the court to enforce its existing order is “the best pathway to get compliance and get the money that should be flowing flowing,” and that he believed the states would be successful.
He said he was not “speculating” as to why the freeze has not been fully lifted in accordance with the existing order, but said the funding is “just not flowing” — so the states had to fight back.
Reports of frozen federal funding have proliferated in recent days, including in California. For example, St. John’s Community Health, a network of Southern California community clinics that provide care for low or no cost, said this week that a federal grant for its transgender health program had been terminated, resulting in a loss of more than $740,000.
The grant, which was expected to total more than $1.6 million over four years and covered education, case management and “wraparound services” such as prevention, testing and treatment for diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis C for transgender patients, made up just under a third of funding for the network’s transgender health program, according to St. John’s.
In a notice, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that as a grant recipient, the health center had to immediately terminate programs “promoting or inculcating gender ideology” supported with the grant. Jim Mangia, president and chief executive of St. John’s Community Health, denounced the move as “illegal and unconstitutional.”
St. John’s later reported that it was unable to draw down an additional $1 million in federal funding through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which was intended to support mental health services for transgender and nonbinary people. The healthcare network said the $1 million was the amount remaining from a $4-million grant allocation.
Republicans in Congress have generally supported Trump’s efforts, suggesting they are in line with the priorities of the American people. They also confirmed Russ Vought — an architect of Project 2025 and of Trump’s budget approach — as White House budget director this week.
“Russ is a conservative force against the radical left and the Washington establishment. With his help, we’ll restore fiscal sanity to our budgets and dismantle the regulatory state,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said Trump and Republicans in Congress are aligned, including on the budget.
On Friday, he wrote in a post on X about the federal budget that the “American people gave President Trump a mandate to deliver on his key priorities: securing the border, rebuilding our defense, and unleashing American energy. The time to act is now, and Senate Republicans are ready to roll.”
Democrats in Congress who have denounced the administration’s funding moves as illegal power grabs continued to do so Friday.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Friday that hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated by Congress were still being withheld by the administration — illegally.
“The president’s sweeping freeze is causing real pain for people in every part of the country — in red states and blue states and everywhere in between — and it must end right now,” she said.
Politics
Rubio sanctions Cuban groups with ties to US nonprofit network funded by communist donor Neville Roy Singham
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio put U.S. organizations on notice: they can no longer do business with a key Cuban organization that has spent over six decades – since the launch of Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in 1959 – cultivating relationships with U.S. activists and groups, many of them now funded by communist American tycoon Neville Roy Singham.
The sanctions target the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, known by its Spanish acronym ICAP, an organization founded by Castro in 1960 to spread Marxist ideology and support for Cuba. Long ago, U.S. officials and intelligence assessments concluded ICAP is a key component of Cuba’s intelligence apparatus.
“For decades, Cuba has been the world capital for radical left-wing terrorism,” Rubio said. “The regime in Havana has recruited, trained and backed violent Marxist and third-worldist movements across our hemisphere and beyond.”
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Marco Rubio moves to put sanctions on a group that Fidel Castro established in 1960 to spread Cuba’s communist influence in the world. (Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photography/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Earlier this year, ICAP worked with U.S. nonprofits, including the People’s Forum, Progressive International and CodePink, to organize a March “convoy” that included controversial Marxist streamer Hasan Piker landing in Cuba to support Cuba’s communist party.
The trip has since attracted federal scrutiny, with CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin confirming she received questions from federal officials about the trip, investigating whether she violated sanctions.
Late last month, Fox News Digital published a three-part series, reporting that federal investigators are examining Cuba’s alleged malign foreign influence operation in the U.S., investigating a network of 145 groups with collective revenues of about $1 billion, promoting Cuba’s agenda and communist ideology.
“Today, we are targeting the network that enables and funds Cuba’s subversive and radical operations,” Rubio said.
The groups working closely with ICAP include the People’s Forum, CodePink, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental, funded by Singham, a Marxist tech tycoon living in Shanghai. As reported, Singham has pumped $285 million into nonprofits since 2017 that have built very close relationships with ICAP and the communist government of Cuba.
Singham is married to CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans.
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ICAP is today led by Fernando González Llort, one of five former Cuban intelligence officers, known as the “Cuban Five,” convicted in the U.S. years ago on espionage-related charges and released after spending time in jail.
Critics say ICAP acts as a gateway for revolutionaries from around the world to get embedded in the propaganda, organizing tactics and strategic goals of the Communist Party of Cuba. ICAP has denied wrongdoing and says it’s a civil society organization.
ICAP was one of five entities that Rubio designated as off-limits under sanctions authorities established by President Donald Trump’s Cuba executive order. The sanctions also target Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), Minera La Victoria S.A. and the state-run tourism company Amistur Cuba S.A., which has arranged trips to Cuba with U.S. nonprofits in the Singham network.
Experts said the move signals that the Trump administration is focused not only on the Cuban government but also on U.S. institutions that U.S. officials believe help project Cuban influence internationally.
A declassified CIA report from the Cold War era, “Cuba: Castro’s Propaganda Apparatus and Foreign Policy,” described Cuba’s international propaganda and influence activities as a central component of Castro’s foreign policy strategy. The report named ICAP among organizations that act as important instruments for cultivating sympathetic political movements abroad and extending Cuban influence beyond the island.
DOJ, TREASURY INVESTIGATE NONPROFITS AND LEADERS ALLEGEDLY COORDINATING WITH CUBA IN INFLUENCE CAMPAIGN
One of the most notable examples was the Venceremos Brigade, a Cuba solidarity program established in 1969 that brought generations of American activists to the island through exchanges organized with Cuban authorities and institutions including ICAP.
The program became one of the most visible pipelines connecting American activists to the Cuban revolutionary government.
Today, the Venceremos Brigade operates as a fiscally-sponsored project of the People’s Forum.
Lawmakers and federal authorities are examining whether organizations funded by Singham have acted on behalf of foreign interests without properly registering and have helped amplify messaging favorable to the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of Cuba.
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel (C) listens to Progressive International’s general coordinator, David Adler, during an event at the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) in Havana, on March 21, 2026. (Ernesto Mastrascusa/AFP via Getty Images)
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During the recent convoy in March, Progressive International co-founder David Adler appeared alongside Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and ICAP President González at an official event hosted by ICAP.
Years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass participated in Venceremos Brigade trips, a connection that her mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt resurfaced during her campaign. Bass has denied any wrongdoing.
Supporters of such exchanges describe them as educational and humanitarian programs intended to foster international understanding. Critics argue they function as political influence operations designed to build support for the Cuban regime and its ideological objectives.
The Cuban government condemned Rubio’s sanctions shortly after the announcement.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel accused the United States of escalating economic pressure against Cuba and attempting to intensify tensions between the two countries.
Hasan Piker, a Democratic Socialists of America member, and CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans meet in Havana, Cuba, as part of a “United Front” supporting the communist regime. (CodePink via Storyful)
“The Treasury Department has added new names of Cuban leaders, organizations and companies to an illegitimate sanctions list,” Díaz-Canel wrote on social media. “They are aimed at reinforcing the blockade measures and the scenario of conflict between Cuba and the United States.”
Rubio’s warning extended beyond the sanctioned entities.
The action signals that the administration is increasingly focused on the networks, partnerships and influence channels that U.S. officials believe have helped advance Cuban interests abroad long after the Cold War officially ended.
“Anyone providing services to these sanctioned actors is at risk of sanctions themselves,” he said. “Foreign banks and other companies that provide services to these entities should freeze those activities.”
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Fox News Digital’s Reagan Schroeder contributed to this report.
Politics
Commentary: No, Mr. Hilton, our elections are not ‘a joke.’ It’s time for you to stand up to Trump
Well, that didn’t take long.
A day after California’s primary election, President Trump took to social media with baseless claims of election fraud — predictable, but also dangerous.
“Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote,” Trump wrote in one post.
“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” he wrote in another, apparently enamored of his latest juvenile slur.
Never mind that his candidate, Steve Hilton, is in the lead — for now anyway.
California has once again become the main dish on Trump’s buffet of bull-hockey as he continues to undermine democracy and consolidate authoritarian power, using this disingenuous and patently untrue narrative that American elections are rigged by shadowy Democratic forces working in collusion with illegal immigrants.
That last part is called the Great Replacement Theory, the idea that “elites” are replacing white people — and white voters — with Black and brown immigrants in a bid to destroy white culture. It’s at the heart of Trump’s voter fraud allegations.
The twist this time is that Hilton, the man who wants to represent all Californians, seems to be jumping on the election fraud conspiracy train with the president. I get it, there’s the MAGA base to feed, and it’s a base that feasts on outrage and fakery. Serving up resentment glazed with lies and propaganda has been the MAGA playbook for years under Trump, a strategy that no one can deny has been heartbreakingly effective.
But Hilton is a smart man and must certainly know that voter fraud is rare, to the point of being inconsequential to election outcomes. Hilton by his own admission understands voting patterns, and that in this cycle, Republicans have voted early and often by mail, despite Trump’s claims that all vote-by-mail should be suspect. So Hilton understands that early votes have skewed his way, and that later vote tallies will likely favor Democrats.
And Hilton is definitely intelligent enough to expect that in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly three to one, he will not keep the top spot in this primary, and a slim chance remains that he will not make it into the top two. That’s just simple math.
So if Hilton truly seeks to represent this state as its top elected executive, now is the time to renounce election fraud myths and stand up to Trump’s lies. If Hilton can’t say that he believes our recent election was free and fair, then he has no business being our governor.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the path he’s taking, even as it seems increasingly likely that he will advance to the general election.
This week, speaking with far-right podcaster and former Turning Point USA creative director Benny Johnson (who was allegedly duped into working for a Russian influence operation), Hilton said that while “so far we’re not seeing any signs” of cheating, “we’re going to be all over it. We’re not going to let them do that.”
Hilton was responding to a question from Johnson on whether Hilton will sue over “cheating.”
On a post-election appearance with Laura Ingraham, the conservative Fox News host who has repeatedly promoted the Great Replacement Theory, Hilton delved into more conspiracy.
“Just to really underline the point that you made about the corruption,” he told Ingraham an anecdote about supposed fraud in a previous election cycle when a “whistleblower” at the post office told him that they were instructed that a handwritten postmark was acceptable when sorting ballots to deliver to the county registrar.
“It’s just unbelievable, and of course, that’s why so many people don’t believe the results, but it just undermines confidence,” he told Ingraham, certainly knowing that the post office forwarding a ballot on to a county registrar in no way means it will be certified or counted. Would we really want the USPS deciding which ballots to deliver? Disingenuous on Hilton’s part at best.
“The whole thing is a joke,” Hilton went on to say of California elections, which of course, is absurd.
Thursday, when I asked Hilton’s team to speak with him about his views on voter fraud, they sent back a response that focused on the slowness of the California vote count; voter rolls Hilton has described as “wildly inaccurate,” which is a wildly inaccurate claim; and two instances of actual fraud with voter registration — not examples of votes that were counted.
To be sure, all those items are important. Any malfeasance should be punished, and the system should always strive to improve.
But how hard is it to simply be against fraud, while accurately acknowledging that it is rare and our current system provides accurate results?
I am against voter registration fraud. I am against vote fraud. I am absolutely pro-democracy, including policies such as mail-in voting that increase participation.
I do not believe that there is widespread fraud in the California primary, or in American elections in general, because the evidence does not support that conspiracy. I do not believe that Democrats are running a decades-long, nationwide conspiracy to replace white voters with votes from Black and brown undocumented immigrants, because that is both false and racist.
Pretty basic stuff, and statements in line with the values and common sense of the majority of Californians Hilton says he will represent.
If Hilton can’t come out and clearly say that Trump is wrong — about fraud and about the Great Replacement Theory — can he really be trusted to represent the values of the Golden State?
new video loaded: Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
transcript
transcript
Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
Elias Irizarry, who pleaded guilty to climbing through a broken window at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, now works for an office responsible for uncovering and defending against terrorism plots at the Pentagon.
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“Full pardon or commutation?” “Full pardon.”
By Alisa Shodiyev Kaff
June 4, 2026
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