AOC Is Gunning for a Powerful Committee Spot

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is on the rise.

The progressive breakout began notifying her colleagues Thursday that she intends to run for ranking member on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, the key investigative arm of the legislature and one of the most influential positions in the House.

At least three lawmakers who had discussions with Ocasio-Cortez confirmed the bid, reported NBC News. The 35-year-old currently serves as the vice ranking member on the committee.

Her race, which pits her against a senior member of the committee—Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly—will serve as a measure of Democratic priorities in the wake of a brutal November election, as the caucus weighs whether to continue to reward and back its longtime leaders or lean into its up-and-coming changemakers.

Fellow progressives are already endorsing her for the job. In an interview with NBC News, Representative Ro Khanna described Ocasio-Cortez as “very collaborative” and someone who “helps lift up all members.”

“She has been so passionate about the work of this committee for two years as vice chair, and we need progressives moving into leadership in our Congress and country to enact a working-class agenda,” Khanna told the network. “I’m all in for her.”

The top spot became an open race after Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin challenged New York Representative Jerry Nadler to become the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. In a letter to his colleagues announcing his candidacy, Raskin warned that the next four years under Donald Trump would be “the fight of our lives,” pointing to the incoming Republican trifecta as well as a “complicit Supreme Court waiting in the wings” and a “dominant media propaganda system parroting all the lies.

“This is where we will wage our front-line defense of the freedoms and rights of the people, the integrity of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and the security of our most precious birthright possessions: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and democracy itself,” Raskin wrote, referring to the House Judiciary Committee.

On Wednesday, Nadler bowed out of the race, caving to internal party pressures that demanded a younger face for the coveted position. His exit came with a full endorsement of Raskin, 61, who will effectively waltz into the position in a race with no other challengers.

Pete Hegseth’s lawyer is resorting to threats to help his client’s nomination to secretary of defense.

Tim Parlatore told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Thursday night that the sexual misconduct allegations against the former Fox & Friends Weekend host were “extortion,” in his opinion.

“Quite frankly, with the violation of the [confidential settlement] agreement, if he is not confirmed as the secretary of defense, we may still bring a civil extortion claim against her,” Parlatore said.

Parlatore said that the agreement between Hegseth and his accuser was not a nondisclosure agreement but a confidential settlement between the two parties, and claimed that the accuser and one of her friends had violated it. The lawyer added that Hegseth’s accuser was free to speak publicly but faced the risk of a defamation lawsuit.

This flies in the face of what Republican senators have been saying in recent days to defend Hegseth. Senators Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott each attacked the credibility of Hegseth’s accuser for remaining anonymous and not coming forward. Now it appears that she will be hit with a defamation lawsuit and branded as an extortionist if she starts speaking publicly.

Kevin Roberts, president of the powerful Heritage Foundation and architect of the Project 2025 manifesto, is throwing his organization’s heft (and cash) behind Donald Trump’s nominee. However, the president-elect is reportedly souring on Hegseth, and last month, his team began compiling a list of alternative candidates for secretary of defense. With Hegseth’s nomination reportedly hanging on by a thread, Trump might have to deal with the same embarrassment he faced with Matt Gaetz.

The crypto industry is about to have another friend inside the White House.

In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump announced the appointment of Paypal COO David Sacks to a new position with an influential-sounding title: “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.”

“In this important role, David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness,” Trump wrote late Thursday. “David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas. He will safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship. He will work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S. David will also lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.”

Trump continued to pile on the praise for his prominent Silicon Valley backer in a follow-up post, promising that the tech executive has the “knowledge, business experience, intelligence, and pragmatism to MAKE AMERICA GREAT in these two critical technologies.”

The new role—and his appointment of a longtime tech billionaire to initiate it—underscores Trump’s growing intent to leverage D.C. to the better benefit of Silicon Valley. A member of the “Paypal Mafia,” Sacks will be the latest associate of Peter Thiel to enter the echelons of the executive branch, following fellow Paypal co-founder Elon Musk and Vice President–elect JD Vance, who has had a long work history with the anti-tax billionaire. Trump has also tapped Thiel’s colleagues to run critical agencies: Jared Isaacman, who financed Musk’s SpaceX initiative, was nominated to run NASA earlier this week.

Sacks is a part of a contingent of tech bros, including Musk and Thiel, who have leveraged their immense wealth, power, and influence to unite conservatives and former leftists behind a cynical and conspiratorial reactionary vision against liberalism. As The New Republic’s Jacob Silverman noted in 2022, Sacks has spent years “quietly becoming the leading practitioner of a new right-wing sensibility that has emerged in the political realignments provoked by Trumpism and the pandemic.

“On foreign policy, it offers a blend of isolationism, Trumpist nationalism, suspicion of the deep state, and the anti-empire realism of John Mearsheimer,” Silverman wrote. “Domestically, the vision is more muddled, a series of angry poses, a politics of pique, much of it playing out on Twitter, Callin, YouTube, Rumble, Substack, and other online media, especially among people who may have once counted themselves on the left but now can’t countenance the sight of homeless encampments.”

But despite his political affinity for Trump’s politics, Sacks hasn’t always been on the president-elect’s side. In the immediate wake of January 6, the longtime Republican said on his podcast, All-In, that Trump was “clearly” responsible for the insurrection because “he is the one who put forth this theory that the election was stolen and was constantly repeating it for the last two months” and had “disqualified himself from being a candidate at a national level.”

“If you want to see this mob as a gun, I think he loaded the gun,” Sacks said at the time. “He pointed it in a certain direction, but did he tell them to storm the Capitol? No, not specifically. I think therefore it’d be a very hard case to prosecute, but I think, you know, prosecuting him in a court of law is sort of unnecessary and redundant. I mean, I think that in the eyes of the public, politically, he is—I think most see that he’s culpable.”

With Pete Hegseth’s nomination for secretary of defense is in trouble on Capitol Hill, he still has the support of a powerful conservative backer: Project 2025 architect and Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts.

Roberts said Thursday that his organization plans to spend $1 million to lobby senators unwilling to back the former Fox News personality accused of sexual assault.

“It’ll be messaging right now with their constituents about how out of step they are with the Trump agenda,” Roberts told the Associated Press in an interview, saying that “the establishment” was behind the opposition to Hegseth.

The conservative think tank also has a lot of supporters in the Republican Party, and Roberts’s move could sway Republican senators who are put off by Hegseth’s personal views and the allegations against him.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly denied that he had anything to do with the conservative Project 2025 manifesto, despite his running mate JD Vance and multiple campaign staffers having links to the project. Since he won the election, however, Trump has made staff picks with close ties to the policy plan, and his allies have spoken openly about adopting some of its policy proposals, such as eliminating the Department of Education.

If Roberts is openly supporting Hegseth and backing up lobbying efforts with cash, it could signal that Trump’s nominee is Project 2025–approved. It may also be an effort to curry favor with the president-elect in exchange for something else.

With Trump no longer in campaign mode, his administration’s true motives and affiliations no longer have to be hidden or explained away. Likewise, the unpopular people and organizations who support him don’t have to keep their distance. Project 2025 and its leaders are now operating openly to defend the president-elect in exchange for being able to implement their horrific agenda for America.

Tulsi Gabbard’s PAC spent thousands in political funds to help get her personal manifesto on The New York Times bestseller list, Forbes reported Thursday.

Gabbard founded the leadership PAC Defend Freedom, Inc., in March. Although it initially reported having no cash on hand, the PAC would go on to spend $33,000 of its donors’ funds on a bunch of copies of Gabbard’s book.

The book, For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind, debuted in fourth place on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list during the week of May 4, but it was flagged for bulk purchases, as large orders might have affected its ranking. The book stayed on the list for one more week.

At least some of those bulk purchases came from Gabbard’s PAC: On July 11, Defend Freedom made the first of four disbursements for “printing” to BulkBooks, a book wholesaler based in Franklin, Tennessee, that specializes in large orders. The disbursements totaled $33,000.

“For a limited time, Defend Freedom PAC supporters who gave $100 or more received Tulsi Gabbard’s NYT bestselling book For Love of Country,” Gabbard spokesperson Erika Tsuji confirmed.

Authors normally receive royalties for book copies purchased wholesale, which indicates that Gabbard profited personally from the bulk order (rather than if her PAC had requested copies from the publisher directly). Her spokesperson didn’t comment on this when asked over email.

While this is not illegal, it is shady. “She is not a federal candidate or an officeholder, so she is allowed to personally profit when her PAC buys her book with donors’ funds,” campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel explained to Forbes.

Gabbard has shifted hard from an edgy Democrat to an unflinching, QAnon-adjacent Donald Trump loyalist. This book, and the subsequent bestseller scam, is straight from her new alt-right grifter playbook.