House Dem Who Repeatedly Tried to Impeach Trump Loses Primary Race
Texas redistricting toppled a longstanding Democratic incumbent Tuesday when Rep. Christian Menefee upset Rep. Al Green in a Houston-area runoff that pitted two sitting House Democrats against each other.
Rep. Al Green, one of Congress’s most vociferous Trump foes, lost his Democratic runoff to fellow Texas Rep. Christian Menefee after redistricting disrupted congressional lines in the Houston area.
The battle for Texas’s heavily Democratic 18th Congressional District was an intra-party contest, with Green and Menefee both fighting to keep their House seats after redistricting reconfigured the congressional districts around Houston.
Under Texas law, if no candidate has received a majority of the votes in a primary, the race will go to a runoff election.
Menefee earned 46 percent of the votes and Green 44.2 percent after the early-March primary.
Green has been one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal critics in Congress, filing various impeachment proceedings against him during both of Trump’s tenures.
Green has also been thrown out of Trump’s State of the Union presentations several times for getting up and protesting during the speech.
After the March primary, Green spoke with Fox News Digital on Capitol Hill, and he identified $1.5 million in spending against his campaign from the crypto industry as a major force behind the tightness of his election.
That was also a shot at Menefee for his claimed lack of expertise and for not showing up for votes early in his congressional career after his time as an attorney.
Menefee will take on Republican Ronald Whitfield in the November general election, though Menefee is strongly favored in the heavily Democratic Houston-area district.
The high-stakes election in the Texas Republican primary between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton has been called.
President Donald Trump endorsed Paxton, the outspoken Texas attorney general who has become one of Trump’s closest allies in the state.
Paxton won the election in a landslide.
Now, Republicans will face off against left-wing Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in November.
This will likely become one of the most important Senate races in the country as Republicans fight to preserve their narrow 53-47 majority.
Talarico emerged as the Democratic nominee after defeating another left-wing member of Congress, Rep. Jasmine Crockett — one of Trump’s loudest critics in Congress — during the March primary.
Talarico’s left-wing language on social media, which endeared him to Lone Star state progressives, is proving to be a liability as he tries to woo Texans in the general election.
Republicans have been pulling up footage and X postings from Talarico from within the last few years.
Talarico’s been saying things like “poverty is violence,” the Bible supports abortion, there are six biological sexes, and other radical stuff.
Talarico declared in another prior speech that “people don’t belong in cages” and even seemingly likened prisons to “domestic abuse.”
Groups like the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) have seized on statements like that, optimistic that they won’t play well in historically red Texas.
The NRSC launched a deepfake attack ad against Talarico to show him as reading his prior “extreme statements praising transgenderism, twisting Christian beliefs, and advocating for open borders.”
One theme the GOP has especially grabbed onto is Talarico’s use of religion to promote his liberal agenda.
“In my faith, God is non-binary,” Talarico said in a 2021 speech in which he railed against a GOP bill requiring K-12 athletes to play sports that align with their biological sex.
Earlier that year, Talarico suggested that there are more than two biological sexes.
Trump Admin Says It Uncovered $10 Billion Obamacare Fraud Scheme
The Trump administration says it has uncovered what it describes as a massive fraud scheme within the Affordable Care Act.
Members of Trump’s administration allege that roughly $10 billion in taxpayer money was improperly paid out between 2021 and 2024 because of weakened enrollment safeguards under former President Joe Biden.
According to a Department of Health and Human Services report, officials have already removed nearly three million fraudulent or improper Obamacare enrollments and estimate another 2.6 million questionable enrollments remain.
Administration officials say the findings are part of a broader government-wide effort to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse across federal programs.
The report traces the alleged problems to changes made during the Biden administration that expanded enrollment opportunities while relaxing income verification and eligibility checks.
At the start of Biden’s presidency, approximately 10 million people were enrolled through the Affordable Care Act exchanges. By 2024, enrollment had surged to roughly 22 million.
Federal investigators now believe millions of those enrollments were improper, fraudulent, or created without the knowledge of the individuals involved.
“By our estimate, improper, phantom, and fraudulent enrollment peaked at 5.6 million people in 2025,” the report states.
“We estimate 2.6 million improper and phantom enrollments remain, including over 1 million enrollments without a Social Security number.”
According to the report, several different forms of abuse contributed to the alleged fraud.
Officials say some applicants intentionally understated their income to qualify for larger taxpayer-funded subsidies.
Others allegedly received premium assistance despite failing to meet eligibility requirements.
Investigators also identified what they describe as “phantom enrollments,” in which insurance brokers allegedly enrolled people in Obamacare plans without their knowledge to collect federal commissions.
The report argues that reduced verification requirements made those practices significantly easier to carry out.
Since taking office, the Trump administration says it has restored stricter income verification requirements, ended several special enrollment periods, increased screening for duplicate Medicaid enrollment, and launched investigations into brokers suspected of creating phantom policies.
Officials also say they have strengthened oversight of agents participating in the federal marketplace.
As a result of those efforts, nearly three million enrollments have already been removed from the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
Even after those removals, approximately 19.2 million people remain enrolled.
The administration says its goal is not to reduce legitimate coverage but to ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent only on individuals who actually qualify.
“Preserving the fiscal and programmatic integrity of the ACA Exchanges is key to safeguarding taxpayer-funded resources for those that truly need them,” the report states.
“The federal government paying brokers to enroll individuals without their knowledge is not.”
The report also says the administration will continue pursuing additional enforcement actions against brokers and others accused of exploiting the program.
“The Trump Administration continues to aggressively root out fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption by promulgating new regulations to improve program integrity, investigating suspected improper or fraudulent enrollment, and taking action against agents and brokers committing fraud.”
The findings are likely to reignite debate over the Affordable Care Act and how aggressively eligibility rules should be enforced.
Supporters of the administration argue the report demonstrates that stricter oversight is necessary to protect taxpayers and preserve benefits for those legally entitled to receive them.
Critics of previous verification rollbacks have long warned that loosening enrollment safeguards could increase improper payments and fraud, while supporters of the Biden-era policies argued the changes made healthcare more accessible to eligible Americans, Fox News reported exclusively.
The administration says its investigations remain ongoing, with an estimated 2.6 million additional enrollments still under review as officials continue auditing the federal health insurance exchanges.
Trump has been pushing to replace Obamacare for over a decade, and this may give Republicans enough motivation to actually do something.
