Category: USA Politics

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – Communist and socialist activists are increasingly joining broader liberal protest movements, where they are promoting a 20-hour workweek, rent caps, seizure of private property and confiscating wealth from billionaires.

The proposals, outlined in interviews with Fox News Digital at a recent Minneapolis demonstration, would mark a dramatic shift away from private ownership and free-market principles toward a worker-controlled model if they were ever to come to fruition and would fundamentally change the United States as we know it.

The exchanges reflect a broader pattern identified in Fox News Digital reporting, where far-left ideas once considered fringe are increasingly appearing alongside more mainstream protest movements, often within demonstrations billed as broadly focused on workers’ or immigrant rights as well as “No Kings” protests.

“We are building a party of professional class fighters, people who are seriously looking at the system of capitalism and coming to the conclusion that we need a revolution… on a socialist basis,” said Owen Phernetton, a member of the Revolutionary Communists of America. He was holding a copy of the group’s newspaper, The Communist, and was wearing a sweater that read “Communism Will Win.”

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“This means handing political and economic power to the working class.”

A May Day demonstration also highlighted how these different left-wing groups operated within the broader event, with some marching behind immigrant rights organizers while others worked the edges of the rally, distributing literature and engaging directly with bystanders.

Phernetton said their vision includes placing factories, mines and businesses under collective control, limiting rent to a fraction of workers’ income and using confiscated wealth to fund government-backed healthcare, education and housing.

Phernetton, who was walking along the edge of the main rally with fellow members who were distributing newspapers, said the changes would require a fundamental restructuring of the economy and called for taking wealth from the richest Americans.

“Their wealth should be expropriated and put to use for the working class,” he said, while arguing for decreasing the workday to only 20 hours a week without any loss in pay.

“I’d actually say that the productivity will increase if the economy operates on a planned basis,” he said when pressed about a potential productivity dip on reduced hours, adding that the working class would control all productivity.

Andy Koch, a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), also argued that wealth and power should be shifted away from the ultra-wealthy.

“The country is run by billionaires, for billionaires,” he said.

But when asked about reports that some protest groups have received support from wealthy donors, Koch said he would welcome such funding.

“If one billionaire wants to donate to progressive pro-worker causes, that’s great,” he said.

CCP-CONNECTED MILLIONAIRE ALLEGEDLY BANKROLLS MINNEAPOLIS AGITATOR GROUPS THROUGH DARK MONEY NETWORK

At another section of the march, a protester wearing a mask stood on the sidewalk with a small group holding copies of The Communist newspaper with the headline “Down with Trump’s War!” while openly engaging with bystanders as the demonstration passed.

“I’m a communist because the workers create all the value in society and we get to own none of it under capitalism,” she said. She argued that rent should be capped at 10% of income and dismissed the struggles of similar policies in cities like New York and California.

“The reason why rent control hasn’t worked is because it hasn’t been under workers’ control… under capitalism, it won’t work,” she said.

Cass Batica, another activist affiliated with the Revolutionary Communists of America, was standing among demonstrators carrying Soviet-style flags and believes capitalism should be replaced entirely.

“I came to the conclusion that capitalism is not the way to go. We need socialism, we need communism for the workers of the world,” Cass Batica said, pointing to the Soviet Union as an example.

The march that Batica and other far-left protesters attended was led by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), which gathered speakers in a public green space ahead of the march and displayed a large banner reading “Legalization for All, Sanctuary State Now.”

As speakers addressed the crowd, members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization remained toward the rear and did not take part in the main program, offering insight into their strategy within the demonstration. When the march began, they fell in line behind the immigrant rights groups and moved with the broader crowd. None of them spoke at the podium.

Other activists operated more independently, positioning themselves along sidewalks rather than within the main body of the march.

FOX NEWS POLL: SOCIALISM GAINING GROUND AMONG VOTERS

Not every far-left supporter was part of an organization, including Caleb Batts, 24, who was draped in a hybrid LGBTQ pride and Soviet-style flag and described himself as a Marxist-Leninist.

“I like the way [Lenin] structured the economy and I believe the growth they saw under it was amazing. I believe China has seen some of the same growth,” Batts, who said he is a business major, said.

“The capitalist revolution in the 18th century was good, it freed millions of people from slavery under feudalism, and I believe after about 250 years capitalism has run its course and it’s just not productive anymore. I believe we should evolve as a society into socialism because we can afford to.”

Batts also said he does not believe borders should exist, a similar sentiment shared by members of groups such as the FRSO, who marched with banners calling for “No Deportations” and “ICE Out of Minnesota.”

“I believe that the most productive human society would be one without borders at all,” he said.

“My belief is that we need to develop into socialism with the workers owning the means of production, into communism with the government owning the means of production and then into anarchism, where we have a stateless, classless, moneyless society and work as neighborhoods.”

WATCH: Communist Party presence noted at Minneapolis May Day demonstration

The Department of Justice has ramped up its use of a rarely deployed legal tool to strip citizenship, targeting 12 naturalized Americans accused of hiding ties to terrorism, violent crimes and other offenses, and signaling more cases will follow.

The action on Friday against 12 immigrants included bringing civil complaints or charges against those from Iraq, Somalia, China and India. It comes as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche touts expanding the typically difficult effort to denaturalize people and also follows the DOJ Civil Division ordering more denaturalizations in a memo last summer about the Trump administration’s priorities, which include cracking down on illegal immigration and fraud.

Blanche said in a statement to Fox News Digital of Friday’s sweeping enforcement action that anyone “who intentionally concealed their criminal histories or misrepresented themselves during the naturalization process will face the fullest extent of the law.”

FEDS LAUNCH OPERATION TARGETING MINNESOTA REFUGEES FOR POTENTIAL DEPORTATION AMID FRAUD INVESTIGATION

One of the dozen, Ali Yousif Ahmed, gained citizenship after saying he fled Iraq in 2009 because al-Qaeda terrorists attacked his family, authorities said. But, authorities said, Iraq sought Ahmed’s extradition in 2019 for allegedly murdering two Iraqi police officers while a leader in al-Qaeda, a detail he allegedly omitted from the U.S. government.

Another, Salah Osman Ahmed of Somalia, naturalized in 2007 and pleaded guilty in 2009 to providing material support for terrorists and belonged to the terrorist group al-Shabaab, Fox News Digital learned. The DOJ alleged that joining a terrorist group within five years of naturalization was grounds for revoking citizenship.

Others included Abduvosit Razikov of Uzbekistan, who allegedly entered into a sham marriage to gain citizenship, and Oscar Alberto Pelaez of Colombia, a priest who was convicted in the United States of 13 counts of sexual abuse of a minor, including sodomy, and allegedly lied about the crimes during the naturalization process, Fox News Digital learned.

Denaturalization has long been an infrequent tool for immigration enforcement. In the span of about 30 years, the DOJ filed about 305 denaturalization cases. Then, when Trump first took office in 2017, the government brought 168 cases. The figure drastically reduced under President Joe Biden, and now with Trump back in office, the effort has returned to the fore.

SENATE REPUBLICANS PUSH TO DEPORT, DENATURALIZE FRAUDSTERS AMID MINNESOTA SCANDAL

Prosecutors must meet a high bar to denaturalize immigrants by proving with “clear and convincing” evidence that “material fraud” occurred during the naturalization process, Neama Rahmani, a California-based former federal prosecutor, told Fox News Digital, saying it was not an easy process.

Blanche warned during a recent CBS News interview that people “should be worried” if they obtained citizenship through fraud.

“Who are targets are? We are not limiting ourselves to anyone in particular except to say that unfortunately, and I think you’re going to hear more about this in the coming days and weeks, there are a lot of U.S. citizens who shouldn’t be,” Blanche said.

TRUMP IS TARGETING NONVIOLENT AND LEGAL IMMIGRANTS. AMERICANS ARE STARTING TO NOTICE

Pressed on denaturalization being a “very drastic penalty,” Blanche shot back, “It’s a very drastic reward being naturalized, committing fraud.”

Immigrants rights groups have raised worries that the some 24 million naturalized citizens in the United States have been left unsettled by the Trump administration’s broadened pursuit of revoking citizenship.

“There are concerns that the federal government’s denaturalization efforts could lead to the revocation of U.S. citizenship of many individuals who made minor or unintentional mistakes or omissions in their naturalization application,” Forum policy expert Christian Penichet-Paul wrote last summer.

Rahmani noted that the alleged fraud cannot be trivial or negligent, but instead must be significant and intentional.

“It has to be something material, and material means that the citizenship would not have been granted had DHS known,” Rahmani said. “That’s really the standard.”

Declassified transcripts from two Apollo missions show astronauts repeatedly describing unexplained lights and objects while orbiting and walking on the moon.

The Pentagon on Friday released transcripts and photos from two NASA Apollo missions as part of a broader disclosure of dozens of photos and documents detailing UFO sightings it has documented since the 1950s.

The trove of documents reporting UFO and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) sightings comes in compliance with a directive from President Donald Trump aimed at increasing government transparency around reported UFO sightings, all of which remain unsolved. Tens of millions of documents are being combed through and will be released on a rolling basis.

UFO EXPERT SAYS TRUMP’S DECLASSIFICATION COULD EXPOSE POSSIBLE ‘COVER-UP’ SPANNING DECADES

The documents include technical transcripts and photos from Apollo 12 in 1969 and Apollo 17 in 1972, capturing moments in which crews discussed strange flashes, moving lights and unidentified phenomena against the stark lunar horizon.

The release includes six photos taken by Apollo 12 mission astronauts on the moon’s surface, revealing unidentified and oddly shaped lights appearing in the sky. In one of the photos, there are a total of five UFOs identified.

A four-page transcript from the mission unveils one of the astronauts’ accounts of what he was witnessing, telling command about the lights he saw in the dark sky.

He described that the lights were “sailing off into space.”

EXPLOSIVE NEW DOCUMENTARY PROBES ’80-YEAR GLOBAL COVERUP’ OF UFO SECRETS

“I was thinking they’re dropping off from my water boiler, but it looks like some of those things are escaping the moon. They really haul out of here and just press off at the stars.”

The astronaut described that the lights were “pulsing every second.” Command suggested that the phenomenon was likely electromagnetic interference, which can occur by both man-made and natural sources.

A 16-page transcript from the Apollo 17 mission detailed how the astronauts saw lights from their window which resembled “Fourth of July.”

“They’re very jagged, angular fragments that are tumbling,” one of the astronauts described.

Another astronaut recounted how when he was trying to sleep he saw bright “peripheral horizon-type things” which made it difficult to sleep.

“The last one I remember before falling asleep — was the fact that there was a very bright spot that flashed right between my eyes like a very bright headlight — like a train coming at you, only with a flash,” the astronaut said.

More UAP files were made available at WAR.GOV/UFO.

Fox News’ Peter Doocy and Fox News Digital’s Robert McGreevy contributed to this report.

Republicans erupted in euphoria and mockery after the Virginia Supreme Court issued an earth-shattering rebuke of Democrats’ hasty efforts to draw out all but one Republican from the Old Dominion’s congressional delegation — with the case’s lead plaintiff telling Fox News Digital the decision vindicated critics of the plan.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to invalidate Democrats’ major redistricting effort, as Justice D. Arthur Kelsey specifically called out Attorney General Jay Jones and said the Democratic-led legislature’s failure to properly follow state law in its timeline for the redistricting amendment — including an “intervening election” clause — was the reason, not politics or which side won April’s popular vote.

Celebration erupted almost immediately as Republicans and “Vote NO” proponents mocked the alleged “gerrymander’s” proverbial architect, Senate President Pro Tem Lillie Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, whose office and cannabis dispensary were raided by the FBI earlier this week.

Former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican who, along with former AG Jason Miyares, led the charge against the redistricting, celebrated in a tweet storm of analysis within moments of the decision.

VIRGINIA COURT DECLARES STATE’S REDISTRICTING VOTE WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL IN LEGAL WIN FOR REPUBLICANS

Cuccinelli mocked Lucas, who often launched profane attacks on redistricting critics like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and depicted Virginia’s GOP delegation as future McDonald’s workers or people being pulled away from potential chairmanships.

“BTW [by the way] the vote was 4-3 — maybe Senator Lucas will sell ‘4 f’in 3’ t-shirts or maybe 6-f’in-5 t-shirts.”

“The court explains its decision not to intervene prior to the referendum, and quotes the exchange with Justice Russell at the beginning of oral argument about the outcome (i.e., “yes” winning by 3 pts) in which [Jones’] lawyer conceded the outcome doesn’t matter,” Cuccinelli added in one of several tweets.

Virginia Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, the main plaintiff in the case, told Fox News Digital that the entire state should be applauding the court.

“The Supreme Court ruling today affirms what we all know: you cannot violate the Constitution to change the Constitution,” McDougle told Fox News Digital.

“The Justices of the Supreme Court of Virginia after careful and thorough review of this matter affirmed that even the General Assembly must follow the law. This ruling is not a partisan one — it is a constitutional one. The rule of law is the foundation of our Commonwealth, and today it has been upheld.”

5 VIRGINIA CONGRESSMEN: DEMOCRATS ARE REJECTING VOTERS TO GERRYMANDER OUR STATE

“Every Virginian wins,” he said.

McDougle’s lower-chamber counterpart — House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore of Gate City — added that “you cannot violate the [state] Constitution to amend the Constitution.”

“Today’s ruling establishes once again that the Constitution of Virginia means what it says. The rule of law requires that Virginians have an opportunity to review a constitutional amendment before they vote for the House of Delegates in a meaningful way,” Kilgore told Fox News Digital.

Rep. Ben Cline of Botetourt, one of the Republican congressmen poised to be drawn out of his seat by the new map, called the court’s ruling “the correct decision.”

“It was always going to end up this way,” Cline said.

“Democrats broke laws that they helped write in the first place, blew through deadlines, wrote a biased and misleading ballot question, and lied to the voters in all of their advertising to support the referendum,” Cline said.

The lawmaker said voters previously banned “gerrymandering” in their decision in 2020 to create an independent commission to draw maps decennially.

“This is a great day for fair elections and the rule of law, and it’s a great day for the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Other observers noted Kelsey is an appointee of Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, a former governor who backed the redistricting.

GLENN YOUNGKIN ACCUSES GOV SPANBERGER OF ‘ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL’ GERRYMANDERING IN VIRGINIA MAP FIGHT

Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin added that “justice has been served” and that Gov. Abigail Spanberger, Lucas and others “knowingly violated our constitution to disenfranchise millions of Virginians.”

“The Constitution prevailed, and Virginians will never forget this unlawful attempt to rob them of their voice in Congress.”

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts called the ruling a major victory for the rule of law and characterized the failed gerrymander attempt as “Governor Spanberger’s blatant power grab to silence the voices of half of Virginians in Congress.”

Sen. Timothy Kaine, D-Va., however, was not celebratory.

The onetime governor blasted the court, saying that unlike Republican-led states using “backroom deals” to redraw maps, Richmond took its plan directly to voters.

“[T]he Virginia Supreme Court has blocked the people’s choice. So we have to campaign and win on their maps. We can do it,” he said.

Fox News Digital reached out to Spanberger for comment.

It remains to be seen whether or what avenues exist for Democrats to seek relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. and partners completed the removal of all remaining enriched uranium from a legacy research reactor in Venezuela, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced on Friday.

“For decades, the RV-1 reactor supported physics and nuclear research. Once that work finished in 1991, its uranium, enriched above the crucial 20 percent threshold, became surplus material,” the NNSA said.

The NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (DNN) team and technical experts from the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research “safely removed 13.5 kilograms (about 30 pounds) of uranium from the RV-1 reactor,” the administration said. “Working in close cooperation with the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] throughout, the team securely packaged the uranium into a spent fuel cask.”

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The material was then transported to the U.S., where it will be processed and reused, the NNSA noted.

“The group then escorted the material 100 miles overland to a Venezuelan port. There, they transferred the cargo to a specialized carrier supplied by the U.K.’s Nuclear Transport Solutions,” the announcement said. “The vessel carried the material to the United States arriving on U.S. shores in early May. Upon arrival, U.S. teams unloaded the casks and transported them to the Savannah River Site (SRS) for processing and reuse.”

The SRS is located in the state of South Carolina, near Augusta, Georgia.

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“The DOE Office of Environmental Management took custody of the material at SRS. There, technicians will process the material at the H-Canyon chemical separations facility to obtain high-assay low-enriched uranium for America’s nuclear renaissance,” the NNSA said.

The move comes months after President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military operation capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in early January.

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“The safe removal of all enriched uranium from Venezuela sends another signal to the world of a restored and renewed Venezuela,” NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams said in a statement. “Thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership, the dedicated teams on the ground completed in months what would have normally taken years.”

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said differences among his colleagues on the high court are often less about politics than they are about diverging approaches to constitutional interpretation — a dynamic, he said, that influences both the court’s rulings and its internal relations.

“That has nothing to do with politics,” Gorsuch told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. “That has to do [with] how you read law. Interpretive methodologies.”

Gorsuch, who was nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017, has described himself as a “textualist,” noting his approach focuses on interpreting legal texts based on the ordinary meaning of the words as written. The philosophy is linked to originalism — or the view that the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original public meaning when it was adopted. 

Other justices have different interpretations, including ones that allow for evolving interpretations over time. Gorsuch stressed that differences, while significant, are not inherently personal.

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“At the end of the day, you’re trying to get to the right answer under the law,” he said, adding that disagreement is an expected, and healthy, part of the process.

His remarks come as the federal judiciary and members of the Supreme Court have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, including by Trump and his allies, who have criticized the courts for impinging on what they see as the duties of the executive branch. 

Trump took to Truth Social last month to criticize the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for showing him “very little loyalty” in blocking his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs in February.

He also suggested they might block his executive order seeking to end so-called “birthright citizenship” in the U.S.

“Certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad, completely violating what they ‘supposedly’ stood for,” Trump said. 

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He contrasted this with liberal justices on the court, whom Trump said “stick together like glue, totally loyal to the people and ideology that got them there.”

Gorsuch, for his part, stressed that the justices often share plenty of common ground, even if their interpretation of the Constitution prompts them to reach different conclusions.

That approach, he suggested, carries over into how the justices work together behind closed doors — where collaboration and debate are central to the high court to perform its constitutional duties.

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“The framers understood that people would come to the table with different views,” Gorsuch told Fox News Digital. “The goal is to reason together.”

While ideological divides can be sharp, Gorsuch emphasized that culture at the high court is built on mutual respect.

“If you sit and listen to someone long enough, you’re going to find something you can agree on,” he added. “Maybe you start there.”

The Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling striking down Democrats’ costly redistricting push sparked an uproar on social media over the massive sum the party spent to pass the now-defunct congressional map. 

Virginians for Fair Elections, the main pro-redistricting group, raised north of $64 million in support of the Democratic-friendly gerrymander that could have netted the party four GOP-held seats in November’s midterm elections. Nearly $40 million of that came from an outside spending group aligned with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who was heavily involved in the effort to redraw the state’s congressional map.

The pro-redistricting campaign outspent the opposition 10 to 1 on television ads, according to analysis from The Washington Post. But the legal challenge that Republicans helped bankroll to get the map thrown out proved more decisive.

“The funniest part about the court’s ruling that Virginia’s map is unconstitutional garbage is that the Democrats burned $64M just to get it thrown out,” conservative columnist Dustin Grage wrote on social media.

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“Democrats incinerated nearly $70 million on an unconstitutional gerrymandering scheme in Virginia,” conservative commentator Steve Guest said following the court’s ruling.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday that Virginia Democrats violated the state constitution by fast-tracking the gerrymander referendum before voters, who narrowly approved the measure earlier this year.

The court’s decision is a major setback for Democrats’ efforts to flip control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections. Though the party made gains in California with a Democratic-friendly gerrymander, Republicans have carved out a significant lead in the country’s redistricting race.

The GOP has redrawn maps in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Florida and Tennessee that could carve out roughly 10 additional seats for the party in 2026.

Republicans are also eyeing new maps in Louisiana and South Carolina among other southern states, following the Supreme Court’s decision to significantly curb the use of race in drawing electoral districts. 

Jeffries ripped the court’s ruling as an “undemocratic action” designed to disenfranchise voters.

“We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision,” he said. “No matter what it takes, House Democrats will win in November so we can help rescue this nation from the extremism being unleashed by Donald Trump and Republicans.”

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Other observers mocked Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, who championed the gerrymander under the slogan “Ten F—ing One,” referring to the new congressional map that would let Democrats hold 10 out of the state’s 11 congressional seats.

“You all started it and we f—ing finished it,” Lucas wrote on social media after Gov. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., signed the since-defeated map into law in February.

“So did Louise Lucas still ‘F—ING FINISH IT?’” journalist Charles Cooke wrote on social media Friday.

“Tough luck, @SenLouiseLucas – merch just got Supreme Court’d straight to the clearance rack,” GOP strategist Christian Martinez wrote on social media in response to a post from Lucas promoting “Ten F—ing One” shirts.

“Maybe try ‘Zero F—ing Wins’ next time,” Martinez added.

“I guess it’s fitting that her initials are LLL,” journalist Chuck Ross wrote, referring to Lucas.

The FBI raided Lucas’ office on Wednesday in Portsmouth, Va., as part of an ongoing investigation. The probe is examining possible corruption related to a marijuana dispensary business she owns, sources familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital.

A spokesperson for Lucas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Michigan’s attorney general, a Democrat, announced 16 felony charges against major Democratic donor Fay Beydoun on Wednesday, alleging that she used a $20 million state grant to enrich herself.

State records cited by investigators said Beydoun’s company received an initial $10 million deposit on April 1, 2023, from a $20 million state grant intended to attract more business activity to Michigan. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel alleges Beydoun instead used grant funds for personal enrichment, including maintaining a $550,000 annual salary.

“Today, we allege Fay Beydoun sought and received a $20 million ‘Michigan enhancement grant’ from the state Legislature, operated a criminal enterprise to use those funds for personal expenses and her own enrichment, and lied repeatedly when reporting how she used those funds,” Nessel said of the charges. 

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“The process by which this ‘grant’ was proposed, developed, awarded, and administered bears practically zero semblance to the traditional grant process, and was only made possible through a system that pairs political cronyism with minimal oversight,” Nessel continued. 

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The charges have also created political fallout in Michigan because Beydoun was a donor to Democratic candidates and committees after her company received the grant. The criminal complaint does not allege that any candidate or committee knew of the alleged misuse of grant funds.

Federal records show that Beydoun donated well over $50,000 to various Democratic campaign committees following the grant in April 2023. Notable Democrats to receive donations from Beydoun include Michigan Senate frontrunner Rep. Haley Stevens and Sen. Elissa Slotkin, as well as Reps. Hillary Scholten and Kristen McDonald Rivet, both of whom are defending toss-up House seats.

“Congresswoman Scholten’s campaign received $1,000 from Fay Beydoun in 2023, a previous campaign cycle,” a spokesman for the congresswoman told Fox News Digital. “In light of Beydoun’s criminal charges this week, Congresswoman Scholten has donated the funds to a local charity.”

Stevens, the DCCC, Rivet and Slotkin did not respond to requests for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Thursday.

“The Democrat Party in Michigan has a massive corruption problem, and many of these top Democrat politicians happily took money from Beydoun,” Michigan GOP Chairman Jim Runestad told Fox News Digital. “The Michigan Republican Party is calling on Haley Stevens, Hillary Scholten, Kristen McDonald Rivet and anyone else who took money from this alleged criminal to return it to the taxpayers. If they don’t immediately return this money, it only raises additional questions about who knew what and when.”

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Nessel has accused Beydoun of forging a legal invoice to use grant funding for personal legal fees, using grant funds to purchase expensive handmade Tunisian rugs and a $4,000 coffee maker, misrepresenting expense reports to cater personal dinners and submitting false reports to keep the grant money flowing.

Of the $1.35 million of Beydoun’s spending analyzed by the Michigan attorney general, less than $20,000 was found to have been used for business development purposes.

Beydoun faces one count of conducting a criminal enterprise, seven counts of uttering and publishing, one count of forgery, and seven counts of larceny by conversion.

Beydoun would face over 100 years behind bars if convicted on all charges and sentenced to the maximum penalties.

“While it’s clear to us that Fay Beydoun used her political connections to get this grant, we don’t have evidence that people knew that she planned to misappropriate the money or to spend the money illegally,” Nessel said of the case. “We don’t have evidence of that.”

Beydoun did not respond to a request for comment after being reached by Fox News Digital on Wednesday.

The United Kingdom’s ruling Labour Party is on track to suffer a major defeat in Thursday’s local elections as Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK surges in support, prompting calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign.

British local elections are widely viewed as a functional referendum on the popularity of the ruling party and its head. With Labour having already suffered a net loss of nearly 500 local council seats with just over half of the councils called, multiple Labour MPs are saying that Starmer must agree to a timeline for his exit from office. 

“Many, many Labour voters that I represent, I guess, in the north of England and elsewhere that the direction the government [has] taken has not delivered the change that they thought they voted for,” Labour MP Jon Trickett said of the results. “They’re angry, they’re upset, they feel let down, they’ve sent us a clear message: The party, the leadership, must change with immediate effect if we want to recover.”

Starmer, for his part, has accepted responsibility for the losses but resisted calls to immediately resign in the wake of the local election results, stating that he was “not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos.” He has not, however, explicitly ruled out a managed exit.

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Farage, an ally and friend of President Trump, told supporters: “Personally, I’ll be very sad to see the Prime Minister go. I will be very, very sad indeed. He’s the greatest asset we’ve got.”

Alan Mendoza, executive director of the London-based Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital, “The era of two-party politics is definitively over with Reform UK’s stunning national success and the Green Party’s more localized wins. The two traditional parties of government, Labour and the Conservatives, have been routed nationally and in some cases have ceased to exist as a meaningful force in whole swathes of the country. By backing Reform across much of the political landscape and the Greens in pockets, British people are indicating they’ve had enough of the politics of the past and are ready to embrace different ideas.”

The era of two party politics is definitively over with Reform UK’s stunning national success and the Green Party’s more localised wins. The two traditional parties of government, Labour and the Conservatives, have been routed nationally and in some cases have ceased to exist as a meaningful force in whole swathes of the country. By backing Reform across much of the political landscape and the Greens in pockets, British people are indicating they’ve had enough of the politics of the past and are ready to embrace different ideas.

English local elections span over 5,000 seats across 163 local councils and six mayorships. The semi-autonomous parliaments in Scotland and Wales also held elections on Thursday.

Labour’s losses were driven by defections both to the right and the left.

Reform UK, which has seen a net increase of about 650 seats as of writing, picked up considerable ground in post-industrial parts of northern and central England. Many of those seats are described as part of the country’s “Red Wall,” a mass of constituencies that have historically supported the Labour Party.

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Farage’s party sought to appeal to voters by promising to take a hard-line stance on immigration policy, cut taxes and repeal environmental policies they believed were hampering economic growth.

Labour also saw losses in urban cores and areas near universities to the far-left-wing Green Party and candidates running independent of established parties, many of whom were Muslim. 

Green Party leaders made the center-left Labour government’s approach to the war in Gaza, which they view as too closely aligned with Israel, a focal point in their campaign for local control.

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Zach Polanski, the head of the party, declared on election day that “Palestine is one of the elements on the ballot.”

A poll conducted ahead of Thursday’s elections found that roughly 60% of Muslim voters would consider backing a pro-Palestinian independent candidate to prevent Labour from winning locally. About half said they would consider voting for the Green Party to do so. The same poll found that Muslim voters saw support for Palestinians as more important than the economy when determining who they would vote for.

Independent and Green Party candidates have so far won a net increase of approximately 90 seats.

The Conservatives, Labour’s historic rival, are also on track to see considerable losses as a result of Thursday’s elections. As of writing, the party has so far suffered a net loss of roughly 300 local seats.

Farage called the results, which academic observers say could mark a shift away from the United Kingdom’s functionally two-party system, a “historic change in British politics.”

FIRST ON FOX: Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has not publicly or privately responded to a top investigative committee in Minnesota’s request for information on her possible ties to the massive fraud scandal, but a recent email from one of her former top staffers to the committee sheds light on how her camp may view the situation and who they blame.

“As the District Director for Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from 2019-2022, I read with interest your comments in Session Daily regarding H.R.6187 – MEALS Act,” former Omar District Director Kendal Killian wrote in an email, obtained by Fox News Digital, Wednesday afternoon to the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee Chair Kristin Robbins. The email was also sent to Rep. Dave Pinto, the lead Democrat on the committee.

Killian wrote, “If the quote is accurate, you said, ‘She passed the MEALS Act in March 2020.’ Given that you were elected in 2018, I find it surprising that I need to explain to you how a bill becomes law, but one person cannot unilaterally pass legislation.”

Republicans have long argued that the pandemic-era school meal waivers tied to the MEALS Act, sponsored by Omar, helped create the conditions that enabled the massive Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, which federal prosecutors say totaled roughly $250 million. 

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Killian went on to explain to Robbins, who has previously served as a legislative director in Congress, that because Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House when the larger bill was passed, that they have “responsibility for implementation” of the legislation.

“So your characterization that Rep. Ilhan Omar passed this legislation unilaterally (and oversaw its execution) is off base,” Killian said. Killian went further in his effort to distance Omar from the legislation, claiming that the bill critics have been citing “never even passed.”

“Again, it is bizarre to have to explain this to a State Representative, but maybe you need some help,” Killian’s email says. He claimed that Robbins is suffering from “confusion,” because “similar legislative language to that in the MEALS Act was included in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.”

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“While the original Meals Act (which never passed) was more similar to universal school meals legislation Omar championed and Representative Sydney Jordan in Minnesota later shepherded, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (supported by McConnell and signed by Trump) added waiver authority that facilitated much of the Feeding Our Future fraud,” Killian wrote. “The fraud was not committed under any bill authored by Omar, but rather under broader COVID-19 legislation and by taking advantage of USDA emergency waivers granted by the Trump administration. Those flexibilities, combined with weak oversight and rapid funding expansion, created conditions that were later exploited in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.”

In bold, Killian wrote that the Families First Coronavirus Response Act was not “chiefly sponsored” by Omar and “thus is grossly inaccurate to claim so” and ended the email saying that “perhaps” the committee should subpoena President Trump rather than Omar.

While the MEALS Act itself did not pass as a standalone bill, it is listed on Congress.gov as related legislation to the broader Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which became law in 2020 and included similar school meal waiver provisions. Robbins told Fox News Digital the former Omar staffer is “lying” about the impact Omar had, arguing the core purpose of the MEALS Act, expanding USDA waiver authority, was part of the broader legislation.

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 “I’m talking about the MEALS Act that got incorporated in the larger coronavirus package,” Robbins explained. “In the related bills section it links to the Ilhan bill and lists it as one of the bills included in the Act, the language is identical.”

Congress.gov, the official legislative database run by the Library of Congress, lists Omar’s MEALS Act (H.R. 6187) as “related legislation” to the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (H.R. 6201).

Robbins pointed to numerous examples of Omar taking credit in messages to her constituents back in Minneapolis for the legislation that did ultimately pass and citing her MEALS Act.

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In Omar’s own September 2020 press release, she explicitly says she “passed into law this spring” the MEALS Act provisions and describes them as legislation that “directly authorized these school meal waivers.” 

“Ilhan’s MEALS Act, a bill aimed at protecting students’ access to school meal benefits during school closures, was passed into law as part of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act,” Omar’s campaign website reads.

Additionally, Omar publicly pushed back after the Trump administration signaled in the summer and fall of 2020, after the legislation passed, that it would begin scaling back or letting some of the waivers expire and return programs closer to their pre-pandemic rules.

In August, she again linked the legislation she sponsored in the House to the overall situation, saying in a letter to the Trump administration, “In March, Congress authorized the use of waivers in the MEALS Act and the COVID-19 Child Nutrition Response Act in order to continue to provide school meals for children during the pandemic.”

“Absolutely not, it did help feed kids,” Omar said in December when asked if she regreted her support for the MEALS Act.

Killian’s email also directly contradicts his own words in a LinkedIn post from a year ago, reviewed by Fox News Digital, in which he characterized the significance of the legislation differently.

“When I worked in Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s office during the pandemic, she wrote and passed the MEALS Act, a vital bill funding schools and feeding all kids,” Killian wrote.

In the same post, Killian described the bill as laying “the groundwork” for broader school meals policy, a contrast to his email to lawmakers in which he argued the legislation “never even passed” and sought to distance it from the framework later used during the pandemic. 

Killian’s email to Robbins also included a P.S. with a link to the well-known Schoolhouse Rock “I’m Just a Bill” cartoon that explains to children how bills become law.

“It’s shameful,” Robbins told Fox News Digital about the tone of the email and referred to the situation as Omar’s “henchmen” coming after her. 

“We have had no official response from the congresswoman, but they have a former district director, which is the most senior position, and he sent it to me and the Democrat lead on the committee,” Robbins said. “So he’s clearly wanting to have Democrats push back on me and say, ‘Robbins doesn’t know what she’s talking about, this wasn’t really Ilhan’s bill, it never passed,’ which is just BS.”

Notably, Killian’s letter does not address the specific questions the committee asked Omar in a recent letter, which the congresswoman has not responded to, related to the several connections between Omar and individuals in the Somali community charged or implicated in the case.

The committee asked Omar to turn over communications showing how she promoted expanded access to federal child nutrition programs, including emails, texts and meeting records with the Minnesota Department of Education and constituents. 

The request also zeroed in on Omar’s public promotion of a Minneapolis restaurant that later became linked to the fraud scandal. Robbins cited a Somali-language TV appearance in which Omar highlighted Safari Restaurant as a meal distribution site and asked for all communications related to the video and the restaurant’s participation.

“She fought to keep the waivers in place during the time that Safari and the other fraudsters were making their money,” Robbins told Fox News Digital.

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The committee is also seeking records of any contact between Omar and a long list of individuals charged or implicated in the Feeding Our Future case, including nonprofit founder Aimee Bock and dozens of alleged co-conspirators as well as information about political donations Omar received from individuals later charged in the case, requesting “any and all” communications with those donors.

In a response to Fox News Digital, Killian did not directly say whether his original email was coordinated with Rep. Omar or her office, instead describing it as his personal “perspective.” He acknowledged that “very similar language” from the MEALS Act was included in the broader coronavirus relief package that became law.

Killian also argued that responsibility for the fraud lies with those who implemented the program, placing blame on both federal and state officials, particularly Gov. Tim Walz.

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“It was then overseen by the Trump USDA. And then governors like Walz. Frankly, Governor Walz…deserves the same level of scrutiny as this Fox inquiry,” Killian wrote. “At the end of the day, it was Governor Walz who [expletive] this up.”

Killian further sought to distance the legislation from the fraud itself, arguing that “no fraud took place at actual public schools” and that “the nonprofits did,” adding that “Ilhan’s bill was focused on the former.” 

But the same waiver authority allowed meals to be distributed far beyond school cafeterias, including at non-school sites such as restaurants and community locations later tied to the fraud scheme, raising questions about how separate the two systems were in practice.

Killian also dismissed inconsistencies over whether the MEALS Act “passed” as a matter of “casual” or imprecise language, without directly reconciling his emailed statement that the bill “never even passed” with his prior description of Omar as having “wrote and passed” it.

Omar’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Omar was given a deadline of May 5 to respond to the committee, which she did not meet, and has yet to give any public response.

After Omar missed the deadline, the committee attempted to subpoena her for the, information but was blocked by Democrats on the committee in a party-line vote. 

“It’s the same story every time,” Robbins posted on X after the vote. “Fraud is committed, information is suppressed, and the dysfunction continues.”