National News

Joe Kasper, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's controversial chief of staff, is expected to leave the Pentagon after coming under fire in recent days.

Initial reports said Kasper would step into another role at the Pentagon. But Politico confirmed on Thursday that he would leave the Department of Defense entirely and return to "government relations and consulting." As a special government employee, he will be limited to advising the Pentagon 130 days per year.

Kasper was reportedly behind the firings of three senior officials — Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll — who had enjoyed regular access to Hegseth.

"Kasper did not like that those guys had the secretary's ear," one person told Politico. "He did not like that they had walk-in and hanging-out privileges in the office. He wanted them out. It was a knife fight."

Hegseth's chief of staff was also recently criticized for what The New York Times described as "pointlessly bawdy" digressions in meetings.

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"One meeting Mr. Kasper led this month, with a group that works with veterans that was offering its services to the Pentagon, devolved into a recounting of an evening Mr. Kasper and a representative of the group spent at a Washington strip club, said a person who took part in the session," the report said.

Hegseth, however, has defended Kasper, calling him a "great American."

"He has done a fantastic job for us at the Defense Department…You make changes over time, and we're grateful for everything Joe's done," the secretary told Fox News.

=Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) will run for governor of Alabama rather than seek a second term in the Senate, reported Yellowhammer News on Thursday.

"Back in state while Congress is in recess, Tuberville told a group of donors at a private event on Wednesday night that his mind is officially made up," reported Grayson Everett. "Rather than seeking re-election to the U.S. Senate, he is ready to run his next race in Alabama, and serve the people of the state in Montgomery instead of Washington."

A former football coach, Tuberville initially wanted to run for governor in 2018, "but decided against it when Kay Ivey chose to run for the office she constitutionally stepped into following Robert Bentley’s resignation in 2017" — which had been triggered by an explosive scandal involving Bentley using government resources to further an extramarital affair.

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In 2020, Tuberville ousted Trump's former attorney general Jeff Sessions, who held the Senate seat until 2017, in a primary where Sessions was seeking his old office back, and then defeated Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, who had been elected in a massive upset when Roy Moore, the Republican former state chief justice running in the special election to replace Sessions, was accused of inappropriate behavior with children. Moore went on to sue one of his accusers for defamation, but lost that case in 2022.

Since being elected, Tuberville — a steadfast supporter of President Donald Trump — has been at the center of numerous controversies.

He has questioned whether white nationalism is an inherently racist ideology, said that slavery reparations are an attempt to hand out money to "the people that do the crime," and spent months under the Biden administration blocking vital military appointments to try to force the Pentagon to stop giving female servicemembers medical leave for abortions.

Florida Senate Minority Leader Jason Pizzo sent shockwaves through the state capitol Thursday when he announced from the senate floor that not only was he stepping down from his leadership position, but also leaving the Florida Democratic Party -- and he delivered a scathing review of the party on his way out.

A longtime Republican pollster said Thursday that people who voted for Donald Trump last year are already beginning to waver in their support.

Sarah Longwell has been doing focus groups of 2024 voters of Trump, tracking how attitudes are changing and why. The one thing she said is finally starting to "set in" for those voters is "maybe Donald Trump doesn't know exactly what he's doing."

She explained that the caveat is always the "hardcore MAGA people," who will never leave Trump. But another "major slice" of the coalition of people who helped elect Trump were "people who just wanted things to cost less."

Those voters, she said, were "upset about inflation" and "the cost of housing." So, they heard Donald Trump "promise to lower the price of groceries, and that he was going to lower the cost of everything. It was going to be so easy and so fast. And when you listen to voters in focus groups, they say not only are things not getting better, but it feels like they're getting worse."

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She added they feel uncertain about the economy.

"You get other people, especially people who are cost-constrained, who are at the lower end of the income spectrum, and those people notice every dollar and the way any price that goes up," said Longwell. "And, so, from those voters who heard the promise that Trump was going to lower costs, who thought he was a businessman, who knew what he was doing, and is now watching this chaos and not seeing their prices go down. They are starting to lose faith that he's going to be able to keep the promises that he made to them."

See her comments below or at the link here.

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is reportedly considering a run for the US Senate in Georgia next fall as long as she does not have to face Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, according to a Thursday report published by The Daily Caller. Citing two unnamed sources familiar with her thinking, the right-wing outlet reported that […]