“Lorem Ipsum”: Stefanik Botches Campaign Launch for New York Governor

Representative Elise Stefanik announced her New York gubernatorial campaign early Friday, though she may not have let her team know.

The Trump loyalist’s website was still plastered in “lorem ipsum” placeholder text by the time she shared the link to her X account. But eagle-eyed critics noticed that wasn’t the only mistake on the half-baked project.

The website was also riddled with basic grammatical errors, espousing classic American values such as “family first trust,”  “will alternative,” and “legacy planningegal issues.”

In announcing her bid for the 2026 race, Stefanik slammed New York’s current leader, Kathy Hochul, as the “worst governor in America.”

“Under her failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery bills,” Stefanik alleged. 

“When New Yorkers were looking for leadership from our Governor, she bent the knee to the raging Defund the Police, Tax Hiking Communist causing catastrophe for New York families,” she continued, referring to New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who received more than 50 percent of the citywide vote Tuesday, despite the White House’s best efforts to derail his campaign.

Yet Stefanik’s apparent detestation of the democratic socialist didn’t stop her from taking a page out of Mamdani’s playbook. The top-ranking New York Republican very clearly peeled lessons from the 34-year-old’s wildly popular platform, fixating her messaging on affordability—one of Mamdani’s major policy points.

“I am running for Governor to make New York affordable and safe FOR ALL,” Stefanik wrote. “FIRE HOCHUL. SAVE NEW YORK.”

Hochul took the reins of New York in 2021 after ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo was forced out of Albany by two egregious scandals of his own making: allegations of sexual harassment from more than a dozen of his own staffers, and an enormous cover-up of Covid-19-related nursing home deaths.

A year later, New Yorkers seemed to warm up to their unanticipated leader. Hochul won the 2022 election by more than 370,000 votes, or 7 percent of the electorate, against Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, who now serves as Donald Trump’s administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.  

Hochul has not yet announced whether she plans to run for another term, but Stefanik would need an explosive campaign to win over Republican and Democratic voters to thwart the incumbent.

Stefanik has drawn national attention in recent years, expediently ascending the rungs of the Republican Party since she went all in on the MAGA movement. She wasn’t always in the president’s pocket, however. When Trump first ran for president, Stefanik expressed that she believed his language and behavior toward women was “offensive” and “just wrong.” 

Comedian Ziwe Fumudoh’s sit-down with disgraced New York City Mayor Eric Adams may have been the most ridiculous exit interview in modern history.

The 20-minute conversation felt like one strange, long joke that only Ziwe was in on. The mayor flirted with his interviewer (more than 30 years his junior) several times, talked about hooking up with the Statue of Liberty, claimed that he had proof Gracie Mansion is haunted, ranted about saggy pants, and skirted around addressing his various federal indictments and scandals—which he could have gone to prison for if Trump’s DOJ didn’t drop his cases.

Here are some of the other weirdest moments from the interview:

1. “Not the bulge that others would talk about”

“When you on the train with that beautiful outfit you have on, and all of a sudden you see someone hanging out there and they have a bulge on they side—and not the bulge that others would talk about—then you wanna make sure they stop and they frisk,” Adams said, shooting his shot at Ziwe while simultaneously plugging NYPD stop and frisk policies that have long been racist and unconstitutional.

“That felt like a threat,” Ziwe said, referring to the mayor’s innuendo.

“Well you may think he has a weapon,” Adams replied.

“What are you saying right now?”

“What are you feeling right now?”

2. “The firmness of my body.”

Ziwe asked Adams about his proclivity for night life, as he’s been known to frequent clubs, bars, and hookah and cigar lounges during his tenure.

“Why do people think [at] 65 you should not be out? You know, when I get out of the shower and take a look at myself and my six-pack, and the firmness of my body, I’m living the 65 life,” Adams said.

3. Nepotism for his “ex-shorty.”

The mayor was also questioned about his appointment of ex-girlfriend Jasmine Ray. Adams dated Ray from around 2014 until he broke up with her in 2021, as she details in her recent book. But in 2022, Adams created a position for her—a $161,000 gig to be the director of his “Office of Sports.”

“I must ask, did you appoint Jasmine Ray as the city’s first director of sports, wellness, and recreation because she was your ex-shorty?” Ziwe asked.

“Because she was good at her job, and she did it well,” Adams replied. “And so, if you met someone 10 years ago and you hung out with, and you decide 10 years later you wanted to bring them on because you know how good they are at their job? You should do so.… I’m pretty sure all of your boos you didn’t abandon them merely because you had a relationship with them once.”

Adams concluded his interview with a message to democratic socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

“This is New York. It’s not Cuba. It’s not China. It is the center of capitalism, not socialism. Can’t take it backwards. We made too much success. Gotta move forward.”

Watch the entire interview here.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is hoping to lure New York City police officers to join its ranks by suggesting their current employer doesn’t really respect them.

An advertisement ICE posted to social media Thursday attempted to lure law enforcement officers away from the city they’ve supposedly sworn to protect.

“NYPD OFFICERS: Join an agency that respects you, your family, and your commitment to serving in law enforcement,” the post read. It included a link to a recruitment page, claiming that the country had been “invaded by criminals and predators.”

The Trump administration’s effort to poach from the NYPD’s head count comes as the law enforcement agency has only recently stopped struggling with hiring and retention, after significantly reducing education and age requirements.

Meanwhile, ICE has struggled with its own recruitment “shit show,” as the agency flounders to achieve White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s quest to hire 10,000 so-called “Homeland Defenders” by January. Increased recruitment efforts have reportedly placed an immense strain on ICE officials, who have had to turn away more than 200 new recruits who were improperly vetted.

This latest ad comes in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in New York City’s mayoral election, meaning that the democratic socialist is set to inherit the NYPD’s multibillion-dollar surveillance state apparatus. Mamdani has presented a new vision for public safety by planning to establish the Department of Community Safety, which will handle nonemergency 911 calls in the place of armed police officers, putting mental health, homelessness, and prevention outreach in the hands of an entirely separate agency.

In the wake of Mamdani’s victory, Donald Trump seems adamant that New York City should fall to ruin, and on Thursday he threatened to gut the city’s federal funded infrastructure projects, including “bridges, and tunnels, and all of the things that were being planned for New York.”

But ICE operations would still continue there, he said. “They have killers in New York, we want to get them out,” Trump said. But his administration’s latest efforts to strip the ranks of the NYPD reveals the government is far more interested in deporting immigrants than addressing crime.

South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace’s explicit rant about the abuses of her ex-fiancé have come back to bite her.

Patrick Bryant filed a defamation suit against the Lowcountry lawmaker Friday, noting in a social media statement that he would no longer “stay quiet” regarding Mace’s “completely false accusations.”

Mace, however, did not take the news well.

“What kind of guy sues his own rape victim and sues women he filmed without their knowledge, permission or consent for YEARS? Who does that?” Mace posted Friday morning. “Can’t wait for a court hearing on this!!! Put me in coach—I’m ready to testify, under oath—this guy should be rotting in a jail cell—not suing his victims!!!

“HOLD THE LINE,” she added.

Mace put Bryant on full blast during a House Oversight Committee hearing in May, when she alleged that he was a “predator” who had taken videos of her during the course of their relationship without her consent. (In a shocking turn of events, Mace showcased what she described as her “naked silhouette” during the hearing.)

The South Carolinian also mentioned that in 2023, she discovered a trove of hidden camera nude images of women that she argued were taken by Bryant, similarly without those women’s consent. She then posted images of the other women during the hearing, though she said she had gotten permission to do so.

It was all in an effort to advance two pieces of legislation that she had introduced months prior, centered on further prohibiting “video voyeurism” and expanding a “civil right of action for victims.”

But people close to Mace weren’t so sure that her vulnerability was completely altruistic. In an April deposition tied to a Charleston County civil case, Mace’s former political adviser Wesley Donehue claimed that the salacious, dredged-up material was all part of a bogus extortion attempt by Mace to “gain 100 percent ownership” of homes the former couple had in Washington and South Carolina’s Isle of Palms.

President Trump seems to love corrupt politicians.

On Thursday evening, the president pardoned Glen Casada, the former Tennessee state House speaker, as well as one of his aides, of corruption charges, claiming that the Biden administration “over-prosecuted” the two of them.

Casada and his former chief of staff Cade Cothren were sentenced in September for running a scheme to get lawmakers to use their taxpayer-funded mail business. Prosecutors said that Cothren launched Phoenix Solutions with the support of his boss and another Tennessee state representative, Robin Smith, to set up a mailer program for legislators.

The company had a fictional “Matthew Phoenix” listed as its head, and Casada and Smith received $52,000 in taxpayer money from the company’s activities. The company wasn’t Casada’s only misdeed, either: He resigned in 2019 due to many scandals, including sending sexually explicit text messages about women to Cothren, sending racist text messages, and using cocaine inside a legislative office building.

It’s yet another controversial presidential pardon on Trump’s already long list. In this case, it’s a fellow Republican. Since being sworn in, Trump has pardoned the January 6 rioters who sought to overturn the 2020 election on his behalf, a crypto billionaire who cut a deal with the Trumps, a corrupt electric car magnate, and numerous others.

Trump even commuted the sentence given to notorious liar and former Representative George Santos, convicted on multiple counts of fraud and corruption. It seems that to the president, crimes don’t matter if you’re an ally or are useful to him. It’s not surprising, considering Trump’s own numerous corrupt activities.