Politics
Opinion: I nominate Hunter Biden for most perfect troll of the year
Gotta hand it to Hunter Biden. He has been beating the MAGA congressional Republicans at their own game.
The GOP is desperate to find some kind of evidence that President Biden wrongfully profited from his son’s foreign dealings. So far, the quest, and their impeachment investigation, has yielded nothing. But House Republicans will not give up. In fact, their behavior reminds me of the old joke about the room filled with horse manure: They just know there’s a pony in there somewhere.
Opinion Columnist
Robin Abcarian
Hunter Biden has said, repeatedly, that he would testify in their disingenuous investigation. But he wanted to do so in public, not behind closed doors. Not good enough, said the Trump toadies, who want to grill him in secret. Why would testimony behind closed doors benefit Republicans?
“Lemme tell y’all why no one wants to talk to you behind closed doors,” explained Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett to her Republican colleagues on the House Oversight Committee before they voted on Wednesday to recommend that the full House find Biden in contempt. “Cause y’all lie.” (Partisans, she meant, would selectively leak secret testimony damaging to the Bidens. Republicans have said, and not without merit, that an open hearing would devolve into partisan bickering and posturing.)
To the committee’s surprise, Biden had shown up for the Wednesday hearing, sitting in the front row. But not for long.
To his credit, when it was MAGA Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s turn to speak, Biden did the most contemptuous thing possible: He abruptly stood and strode out of the room.
“Wow, that’s too bad,” said a disappointed Greene. “I think it’s clear that Hunter Biden is terrified of strong conservative women. What a coward.”
Aaron Rupar, the Washington journalist who covered the hearing on X, posted a screenshot of Fox News’ disingenuous chyron: “Hunter flees hearing room in face of GOP questions.”
Leaving was hardly the act of a coward, noted Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California. After all, he said, Greene “is the one who showed nude photos of Hunter Biden. Showing dick pics in this committee room!” (At a hearing last summer, Greene displayed photos of Biden that had been purloined from his notorious laptop.) Undaunted, Greene did it again on Wednesday, exploiting Biden when he was in the grip of addiction and despair over the death of his brother, Beau. Why should Hunter Biden sit still for Greene’s transparent attempt to humiliate him?
“You’ve got members of this committee who have engaged in revenge porn,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. MAGA Republican Rep. Nancy Mace had already set a bizarre and prurient tone, telling Biden, “You are the epitome of white privilege… . What are you afraid of? You have no balls.”
Between Greene’s fatuous display, Mace’s critique and — sorry, but I have to mention this — Colorado MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert’s unseemly boyfriend groping at a Denver theater in September, one really has to wonder about the obsession MAGA Republican women have with male anatomy.
For the MAGA Republicans trying to unseat his father, Hunter Biden is so much more than a troubled son who has taken advantage of the family name. He is their chance to keep a Biden non-scandal in the news. If they can generate negative-sounding headlines about Hunter, maybe some of the stink will rub off on his dad.
“I think what they are doing to Hunter is cruel,” Jill Biden told MSNBC host Mika Brzezinksi on Thursday.
It is, but to his credit, Hunter Biden is refusing to let them do it without a fight. He has a deep-pocketed and loyal friend in Hollywood entertainment attorney Kevin Morris, who has been at his side since 2019 and lent him money to pay his back taxes, and a savvy and aggressive new defense attorney in Washington fixture Abbe Lowell.
On Friday, in a surprise move, Lowell told the chairmen of the two House committees seeking Biden’s testimony that his client would appear behind closed doors if they issued new subpoenas. I assume Biden folded rather than risk a House vote to refer contempt charges to the Justice Department, which might further exacerbate his legal woes. In any case, he had already made his point. Republicans, for their part, said they’d pursue contempt charges anyway.
Nonetheless, with the help of his father’s Democratic allies in Congress, Hunter Biden has been successfully rubbing MAGA Republicans’ faces in their own hypocrisy.
Congressional Trumpists have refused to hold their own colleagues who have spurned lawful subpoenas in contempt. The double standard is as predictable as it is shoddy.
Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz rattled off a whole list of them on Wednesday: GOP Reps. Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs and former Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy, all of whom spurned subpoenas to testify in Congress’ investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Show the American people that we apply the law equally,” said Moskowitz. “If you hold them in contempt, I’ll vote for the Hunter Biden contempt.” (At the end, no Democrats voted to forward the contempt resolution to the full House.)
Thursday, Hunter Biden was in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles, pleading not guilty to tax charges. The case against him, which came after a plea deal fell apart, is serious, but he’s already made the government whole, repaying the taxes he owed, plus penalties and interest.
As for the MAGA-led committees hoping to use the son to impugn the father? They can sift through as much Biden, uh, dirt as they want, but they are never going to find a pony in there.
The Justice Department on Thursday accused the Biden administration of pushing policies that were unfair to Christians, releasing a report that amounted to the latest rhetorical broadside by the Trump administration over what it calls the “weaponization” of government.
The 197-page document, released by a task force led by the department, sought to portray what President Trump’s advisers contend was anti-Christian bias among those who worked for President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is Roman Catholic. The report, which refers to decision-making at more than a dozen agencies, comes weeks after Mr. Trump publicly attacked the pope.
“The Biden administration’s policies regularly clashed with a Christian worldview and burdened traditional religious practices,” the report said. “These conflicts frequently arose over abortion, gender ideology, and sexual orientation.”
The document is the Justice Department’s latest effort to argue that it is removing purported political bias from the work of prosecutors. But critics say that the department under Mr. Trump has abandoned its tradition of operating independently from the White House, including by pursuing the president’s rivals, like James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, who was indicted this week for posting a photograph last year of seashells on a beach arranged to say “86 47.” The administration argues that the image was a coded threat to kill the president.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department issued a report accusing Biden-era prosecutors of unfairly pursuing anti-abortion activists through the use of a law that makes it a crime to obstruct or intimidate a person seeking abortion services or participating in a religious service at a house of worship. The Trump administration, in turn, has charged dozens of protesters, as well as the former CNN anchor Don Lemon, with violating the same law during a demonstration inside a church in St. Paul, Minn.
In a statement accompanying the release of Thursday’s report, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, vowed that the department would “continue to expose bad actors who targeted Christians, and work tirelessly to restore religious liberty for all Americans of faith.”
The report sharply criticized a leaked internal memo from 2023 by the F.B.I.’s field office in Richmond, Va., that said far-right extremists could be attracted to Catholic churches or groups.
For decades, the F.B.I. has worked to develop sources at churches, universities and mosques, but the Richmond memo quickly became a talking point on the right. Republicans argued that it showed the bureau was targeting Catholics.
F.B.I. officials quickly withdrew the memo after it was leaked, and an internal investigation found no evidence of “malicious intent.” But the new report argues otherwise. The memo, the report asserts, stemmed from a “misplaced reliance on baseless allegations from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the religious affiliation of a single law enforcement target who happened to identify himself as a ‘radical traditional Catholic.’”
Earlier this month, the Justice Department charged the S.P.L.C. with fraud, accusing the group of paying informants inside hate groups not to fight racism and extremism, but to promote them. The group has denied the charges and called it a politically motivated prosecution.
The new report also criticized a memo issued in 2021 by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in response to concerns raised by the National School Boards Association about purported threats to local education officials, as parents and teachers grappled with restrictions enacted during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Garland’s memo ordered the creation of a task force of Justice Department prosecutors and F.B.I. investigators to use their “authority and resources to discourage these threats.”
That directive, however, raised significant internal concerns at the F.B.I. and Justice Department. One senior prosecutor warned that “the vast, vast majority of the behavior cited” by the National School Boards Association did not violate federal law.
“Almost all of the language being used is protected by the First Amendment,” the Justice Department lawyer warned shortly before the Garland memo was issued.
While the Trump administration report cites the Garland memo as an example of anti-Christian bias, the document leaves unclear how school board fights over masks, remote learning and safety in public schools constitute a religious issue.
Politics
House Republicans splinter over pesticide provision in farm bill as MAHA movement flexes its muscle
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers moved Thursday to strip out a controversial pesticide provision from legislation setting U.S. farm and nutrition policy after Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., threatened to “slaughter” the legislation if her measure did not receive a floor vote.
Lawmakers voted 280 to 142 to approve Luna’s amendment, which removed language from the farm bill shielding pesticide manufacturers from legal liability.
The successful vote could be a sign of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement’s growing influence over congressional Republicans, who splintered over the issue. Leading MAHA advocates applied public pressure on Republicans to back the amendment, arguing that failing to do so would be a betrayal of the MAHA movement.
Seventy-three Republicans backed Luna’s measure, while 142 GOP lawmakers rejected it.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, speaks to members of the media outside a House Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 3, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg)
HOUSE CONSERVATIVES THREATEN EXTENDED SHUTDOWN OVER ELECTION INTEGRITY MEASURE
The provision that lawmakers struck would block lawsuits against pesticide companies for failing to disclose potential health risks as long as they are in compliance with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on labeling. States and localities would be barred from issuing pesticide labeling guidance that diverges from the EPA.
“I have a little boy, and the amount of articles I have seen on pesticides and herbicides popping up in children’s products (to include organic) is very bad,” Luna, a MAHA-aligned Republican, wrote on social media earlier this week. “On behalf of all the moms and dads that aren’t in office, I am not going to be bullied into supporting a bill that is providing protections and immunity to corporations that are responsible for giving children and adults cancer.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, policy chair of the House Freedom Caucus, also endorsed Luna’s amendment, arguing it would “protect Americans from dangerous pesticides.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, speaks to reporters after a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 20, 2025, during a government shutdown. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
‘LONG OVERDUE’: SENATE REPUBLICANS RAM THROUGH TRUMP’S CLAWBACK PACKAGE WITH CUTS TO FOREIGN AID, NPR
Republican critics, however, contended that Luna’s amendment would raise costs for consumers if the pesticide provision was stripped from the farm bill.
“If the EPA says the label is good, I don’t see why every state municipality should have to have another label that would simply raise the price for the American consumer,” Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., said in opposition to Luna’s measure.
“We’re not talking about the pesticide in the jug as has been misrepresented to the American citizens and especially the MAHA movement,” Scott continued. “We’re talking about just the label on the jug. There is no liability shield for the pesticide in the jug.
A farmworker wearing protective gear sprays pesticide in a field. (Andrew Holbrooke/Corbis via Getty Images)
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., also sharply criticized Luna’s measure.
“The arguments on the other side are pretty shallow, and they’re emotional,” Thompson said on the House floor. “They’re not science-based.”
Democrats also widely backed the effort to remove the pesticide provision from the bill.
“Put simply, this language puts chemical company profits over the health of Americans,” Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said during debate on the House floor.
A woman holds a bottle of the weedkiller Roundup containing glyphosate in her garden in a staged scene. (Wolf von Dewitz/Picture Alliance)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
The floor battle over the pesticide provision also comes as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week about whether pesticide manufacturers like Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, should be given legal preemption from failing to warn consumers that its weedkiller product Roundup could cause cancer.
The Trump administration sparked controversy among MAHA advocates earlier this year when it declared domestic production of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, a national security priority. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an influential MAHA voice, publicly defended the move despite railing against glyphosate for years.
Bayer has repeatedly maintained that its product is safe to use and has not been found to cause cancer.
Politics
Your guide to the L.A. Unified Board of Education District 6 race: Incumbent Kelly Gonez is unopposed
Three seats are on the June 2 primary ballot for the seven-member Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, but the District 6 race is essentially a foregone conclusion: The only name on the ballot is two-term incumbent Kelly Gonez.
The nation’s second-largest school system, with close to 400,000 students, faces evolving challenges and uncertainties that could alter the direction of the district for years.
In mid-April L.A. Unified officials barely averted a strike by agreeing to significant employee raises, rescinding about 200 layoffs and agreeing to hundreds of new hires of counselors, school psychologists and other student support staff. The contracts with three district unions, including teachers, will cost nearly $1.2 billion a year, and board members now must find a way to pay for them amid budget pressures.
Standardized test scores have trended upward since the nadir of the COVID-19 pandemic, recovering faster than the state average, but the pace remains too incremental for critics.
The future of L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho is uncertain. He’s on paid administrative leave following FBI raids of his San Pedro home and downtown office. At least part of the investigation centers on a failed chatbot project that was supposed to revolutionize and individualize education.
Carvalho said he’s done nothing wrong and would like to return to work. If he does not return — and cannot serve out his new four-year contract — board members would select a superintendent.
L.A. Unified also faces declining enrollment — which reduces state funding and increases pressure to save money by closing many campuses.
Heightened federal immigration enforcement also has affected enrollment and attendance while creating anxiety that spills over into the classroom. Officials responded by declaring L.A. Unified a sanctuary district — both for immigrants and for the LGBTQ+ community, which also has been a target of some conservative groups.
Carvalho’s central focus on improving test scores has led to increased tutoring, repeated diagnostic measures and phonics training. In addition, the district put a successful school bond on the ballot to continue renovations, worked to lower student absenteeism and emphasized greener campuses.
The board majority consists of candidates elected with the endorsement of the powerful teachers union — United Teachers Los Angeles. This election will not change that balance because five seats are held by union-friendly incumbents. But the outcome will determine whether UTLA can further strengthen its hand or whether other constituencies will gain a measure of power at that union’s expense.
The material below was assembled through reporting and a survey provided to Gonez. Some responses are paraphrased for clarity or condensed for brevity.
-
New York33 minutes agoComputer Outage Disrupts Student Exams in New York State
-
Detroit, MI1 hour ago‘He went on an adventure’: Detroit bus driver, police praised for reuniting missing 9-year-old with family
-
San Francisco, CA1 hour agoSan Francisco’s free, discounted childcare program adds over 700 new spots
-
Miami, FL1 hour agoThis Miami food truck was just named Florida’s top independent restaurant
-
Boston, MA2 hours agoPolice Blotter: Sticky fingers: Boston cops looking for South End candy store robber
-
Denver, CO2 hours agoEx-Broncos wide receiver lands in UFL; ex-Denver RB joins 49ers
-
Seattle, WA2 hours agoSeahawks receiver makes surprise switch to cornerback
-
San Diego, CA2 hours agoThe Saddest Restaurant Closures in San Diego, Spring 2026