Politics
Influencer files complaint against Steyer campaign, alleging violations
WASHINGTON — A political influencer has filed a complaint against Tom Steyer’s campaign for governor, saying the committee failed to notify her of disclosure requirements, as required by law, when she was paid to meet with Steyer in March and later produced social media content from the meeting.
What’s more, she said the Steyer campaign falsely accused her of posting paid content in support of Steyer’s chief Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra, and failing to disclose it in a complaint filed by the billionaire’s campaign this week.
Maggie Reed, who regularly posts satirical takes on politics to roughly half a million followers on Instagram and TiKTok under the username mermaidmamamaggie, said she was actually paid by Steyer’s campaign and signed an agreement that barred her from disclosing the payment.
She posted, and later deleted, a video from her meeting with Steyer in March.
“In plain terms: the Committee paid for political content, structured it to look like an ordinary creator’s organic opinion, and used a non-disclosure agreement to keep the public from learning the truth,” says the complaint, filed Thursday with California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.
Steyer’s campaign disclosed in a campaign filing that it had paid the agency that represents Reed $5,000 for digital advertising, but didn’t indicate that the payment was connected to Reed’s meeting with Steyer or her production of content.
The Steyer campaign said that while it did pay to meet with Reed, it left the decision of whether to create content entirely up to her.
Since then, Reed has produced several videos expressing support for Becerra, the former California congressman and U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, but she said that she was not paid to produce those videos and that they reflected her genuine support for Becerra’s campaign.
Becerra has been the top Democrat in recent polling in the race, maintaining a narrow edge over Steyer and a firm grip on one of the top two spots in the June 2 primary that would send him to the general election in November.
Reed’s complaint is the latest volley in a back and forth involving the use of paid influencers in the gubernatorial race.
Two influencers who support Becerra — but were not paid by his campaign — filed a complaint last week saying that a number of influencers had created paid content in support of Steyer but failed to disclose so in their posts.
Steyer’s campaign then filed a complaint earlier this week in which it leveled accusations against Reed and another influencer named Jay Gonzalez, who is now a paid staffer on the Becerra campaign. The complaint alleges that Gonzalez made several pro-Becerra posts after joining the campaign and belatedly amended them to include disclosure that they were sponsored.
The Becerra campaign has maintained that it does not otherwise pay influencers to produce content on its behalf.
Steyer’s complaint included screenshots of an email sent to Reed’s talent agency by a gubernatorial campaign gauging her interest in producing paid content.
While the screenshots produced in Steyer’s complaint did not disclose who had sent the inquiry, Reed said in her complaint that the request had come from a staffer for the gubernatorial campaign of former Los Angeles Mayor and California State Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa.
Disclosure of paid political content by social media creators is required in California thanks to a law passed in 2023.
Influencers themselves are required to disclose that a post they created was sponsored, but campaigns are required to notify them of the requirement.
Violation of the law doesn’t trigger civil, criminal or administrative penalties, but the Fair Political Practices Commission has the right to take violators to court and request that a judge force compliance with the law.
The agreement Reed signed with Steyer’s campaign, which was attached to her complaint, indicated that she needed to follow all applicable state, federal and local laws, but made no specific mention of her requirement to disclose that content she produced was sponsored.
The agreement did specify that Steyer’s campaign might need to disclose the payment.
Politics
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. says he expects to return to Congress ‘in the next couple of weeks’ after missing 100 votes
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Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., said Thursday that he expects to return to Congress “in the next couple of weeks” after missing 100 consecutive House votes during an extended absence tied to what his office has described only as a “personal health matter.”
“My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery,” Kean, 57, told the New Jersey Globe in his first public comments since stepping away from Capitol Hill in March.
“I understand the need for public transparency, and I appreciate the support of my constituents,” he added. “I anticipate that in the next couple of weeks, I’ll return to voting and to the campaign trail.”
Kean last voted on March 5 and has missed every House roll call vote since then, according to GovTrack. His absence has drawn heightened attention because Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and because Kean represents one of the country’s most competitive congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
TOM KEAN JR’S PROLONGED ABSENCE PUTS PRESSURE ON HOUSE REPUBLICANS’ RAZOR-THIN MAJORITY
Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., is running for a third House term in 2026 after fending off Democratic challengers in prior election cycles. (Getty Images)
His office has repeatedly declined to disclose details about the illness, saying only that the congressman is focused on recovery and expected to return “soon.” Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Kean for additional comment.
Last week, Kean’s father, former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean Sr., told NJ.com that his son was recovering from a “serious illness.”
“You can’t say definitely, but their best guess is now he’ll be out in two or three weeks,” Kean Sr. said, referring to doctors treating his son. “Any time you’ve been through a serious illness, you can’t be 100% the day you get back. You’re gonna be able to do things, but gradually ramping up.”
COMPLEX PARTIAL SEIZURE RULED AS CAUSE OF PAUSING EPISODE DURING HOUSE FLOOR SPEECH, DEM CONGRESSMAN SAYS
Tom Kean Jr., GOP candidate for New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, speaks at his election night party in Basking Ridge, N.J., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Stefan Jeremiah/AP)
Kean Sr. also said doctors expect his son to make a full recovery but declined to discuss the diagnosis.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters this week that he had spoken with Kean recently but was unaware of details surrounding the congressman’s condition.
“We’re expecting him back here soon. He’s had a medical issue,” Johnson said Wednesday. “I don’t even know the details.”
JOHNSON WARNS HOUSE REPUBLICANS TO ‘STAY HEALTHY’ AS GOP MAJORITY SHRINKS TO THE EDGE
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill while House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., listens. (Mariam Zuhaib/AP)
The absence has become a growing political issue in New Jersey as Democrats target Kean’s swing district. Kean is running unopposed in the Republican primary on June 2, while several Democrats are competing for their party’s nomination.
Earlier this month, a top Kean aide told The New York Times, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”
Kean consultant Harrison Neely said this week the congressman remains committed to seeking reelection.
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“What I can tell you is that the congressman is dealing with a personal health matter. He is focused on his recovery,” Neely told the New York Post.
Fox News Digital’s Adam Pack contributed to this report.
A splintered Supreme Court on Thursday declined to rule in a case dealing with how states should assess the intellectual disabilities of capital defendants to determine if they should be spared the death penalty.
Two decades ago, the court barred the execution of people with mental disabilities as a violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
That ruling, in Atkins v. Virginia, gave states leeway to determine their own processes for deciding who was intellectually disabled. It led to follow-up cases from Florida and Texas in which the court further limited capital punishment.
Twenty-seven states permit the death penalty, but they differ in how they determine intellectual disability.
On Thursday, a majority of justices took a pass on deciding how states and lower courts should resolve cases in which defendants had taken I.Q. tests multiple times and received varying results, as well as the extent to which states must consider a broader evaluation of evidence beyond I.Q. test scores in deciding if a person is disabled.
The case involved Joseph Clifton Smith, an Alabama man, who was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering a man he planned to rob in 1997. In the years before and after the murder, Mr. Smith took five I.Q. tests with scores ranging from 72 to 78.
The state sought to execute Mr. Smith, noting that the key part of Alabama’s law on mental disability turned on whether defendants had scored 70 or lower on the test. But a lower court found Mr. Smith was intellectually disabled, in part because the tests had a margin of error. Alabama asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.
The court’s brief unsigned order dismissed the case as “improvidently granted,” meaning the justices punted, and sent the matter back to the lower courts.
As a result, Mr. Smith will be spared the death penalty and resentenced, his lawyer said on Thursday.
“The District Court listened carefully to experts on all sides and concluded that Mr. Smith is intellectually disabled. The Supreme Court declined to disturb that finding,” his attorney Kacey L. Keeton, of the Federal Defender office for the Middle District of Alabama, said in a statement. “For Mr. Smith and his family, today brings profound relief.”
The Alabama attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Although the Supreme Court did not resolve the key question in Mr. Smith’s case, it prompted several separate opinions.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the record in Mr. Smith’s case was incomplete and the court could not use it to “provide any meaningful guidance” on how lower courts should assess multiple I.Q. scores.
“Proceeding without a more developed record or lower court opinions is especially perilous. That is because the differences between methods used to assess multiple I.Q. scores raise complicated questions on which even experts may disagree,” she wrote, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Four justices dissented, saying the court had failed to address a recurring question that has “led to confusion and unsound analysis in lower courts.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the majority “shies away from its obligation to provide workable rules for capital cases,” doing a disservice to state criminal justice systems and “victims of horrific murders.”
Without clear rules, court hearings over multiple I.Q. scores will be “little more than battles of experts” and “whether a defendant lives or dies will hinge on which expert a judge finds more credible,” he wrote, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.
Writing only for himself, Justice Thomas said the court should go even further and overturn its decision in the landmark Atkins case — a move that would significantly scale back protections against executing the mentally disabled.
Nothing in the nation’s history, he wrote, “suggests that there is anything unlawful about executing murderers now protected by Atkins — let alone one such as Smith who reads at an 11th-grade level and has never scored below 71 on a single I.Q. test.”
Medical and disability groups have warned that a narrow, test-focused approach conflicts with previous Supreme Court rulings and could increase the risk that people with intellectual disabilities are executed.
The Trump administration, which lifted a moratorium on the federal death penalty last January, supported the state’s position in part. D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, said states had discretion to determine whether a defendant was intellectually disabled and urged the court to defer to Alabama’s assessment.
Under Alabama law, to avoid execution, defendants like Mr. Smith are required to show “significant subaverage intellectual functioning at the time the crime was committed, to show significant deficits in adaptive behavior at the time the crime was committed, and to show that these problems manifested themselves before the defendant reached the age of 18.”
After lengthy litigation in state and federal court, a district court judge found in 2021 that Mr. Smith should have the opportunity to show he was intellectually disabled. When a score is close to but higher than 70, the judge said he “must be allowed to present additional evidence of intellectual disability.”
The judge noted that even one score of 72 could mean Mr. Smith’s I.Q. was actually as low as 69 because of the standard error of measurement. The district court judge also found Mr. Smith deficient in social and interpersonal skills, self-direction, independent living and academics.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed the ruling, citing two Supreme Court decisions that said that when a test score, adjusted for the margin of error, is 70 or less, the defendant must be able to provide additional evidence of intellectual disability.
In response to an earlier request from the Supreme Court in the matter, the 11th Circuit said its finding was based on a “holistic approach” and review of evidence, not just a single low score.
Politics
Senate GOP erupts over Trump DOJ ‘anti-weaponization’ fund, punts ICE, Border Patrol funding
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Senate Republicans are pressing pause on their push to fund immigration enforcement after a tense, closed-door meeting.
But it’s not over internal divisions. This time, the fury is directed toward the Trump administration and the surprise “anti-weaponization” fund created by the Department of Justice (DOJ). It comes as Republicans were near the finish line for their $72 billion package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.
For now, Republicans are calling it a day and leaving Washington, D.C.
“We will pick up where we left off,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said.
REPUBLICANS RECOIL AS TRUMP’S BILLION-DOLLAR DOJ ‘SLUSH FUND’ FOR ALLIES THREATENS ICE, BORDER PATROL PLAN
Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate GOP leaders are pushing forward with budget reconciliation to fund the final piece of government that had been shut down by Senate Democrats’ opposition to President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu)
That makes President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline effectively impossible to meet, but Republicans contend that it’s the administration’s actions that have further complicated an already rocky process.
“The message to the administration is this: we were on a glide path to passing this bill until these announcements,” a top Republican aide told Fox News Digital.
The timing of the settlement between Trump and his family and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the subsequent creation of the fund derailed Republicans’ sprint to the finish line.
“We don’t know where the votes are on reconciliation right now,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said.
SENATE REPUBLICAN THREATENS TO DERAIL ICE, BORDER PATROL PACKAGE OVER TRUMP’S BILLION-DOLLAR REQUEST
The White House referred Fox News Digital to Trump’s comments Thursday when asked if he would be amenable to no ballroom security funding and restrictions on the DOJ’s nearly $1.8 billion fund, or veto the package outright.
“I don’t need money from the ballroom,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, and touted that the actual construction was being done through private funding.
“But this is being made as a gift from me and other people that are great patriots that spent a lot of money,” he continued. “We’re building what will be the finest ballroom anywhere in the world. If they want to spend money on securing the White House, I think it would be very — very much a good expenditure. But the ballroom is being built.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was dispatched to the Hill Thursday morning to tamp down lawmakers’ concerns over the “anti-weaponization” fund, which several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have dubbed a “slush fund.” But instead, he was berated behind closed doors.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department told Fox News Digital that Blanche had a “healthy discussion on the settlement.”
“He made clear that the Anti-Weaponization Fund announced Monday has nothing to do with reconciliation. Indeed, not a single dime from the money the president is seeking in reconciliation would go toward anything having to do with the fund,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to work with the Senate to get critical reconciliation funds approved.”
TRUMP DEMANDS SENATE PARLIAMENTARIAN’S OUSTER FOR AXING BALLROOM SECURITY FUNDING
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was dispatched to the Hill Thursday morning to tamp down lawmakers’ concerns over the “anti-weaponization” fund. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Sources told Fox News Digital that over two dozen Republicans demanded answers from Blanche on what kind of guardrails could be put into the fund, and specifically if those convicted for assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, riots could be excluded.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., erupted at Blanche, and Thune was uncharacteristically frustrated by the situation.
Several Republicans leaving the meeting had little to say about what happened inside, while others reiterated that they were focused on funding ICE and Border Patrol and nothing else.
Those concerns were validated with several people who were pardoned by Trump earlier this year, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who declared that he would make a claim this week.
There have been discussions of including those guardrails into the reconciliation package, given that the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the DOJ, is a major part of the process.
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“I did raise that issue, and that seemed to be what [Blanche] was saying, but you know, we haven’t seen language,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said.
Further complicating matters are plans Senate Democrats had for the package with their flurry of amendment votes.
Sources told Fox News Digital that one of the first amendments in the pipeline would have prevented any of the DOJ’s funds from going to convicted rapists and forced the package to be sent back to committee, sending the GOP back to square one on a politically perilous vote.
“This was all 100% avoidable,” a senior Republican aide told Fox News Digital.
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