2026-04-05 02:06:26
The US Department of Health and Human Services gave at least $34 million directly to 16 crisis pregnancy centers between 2018 and 2024, according to a US Government Accountability Office report publicly released on Wednesday.
Crisis pregnancy centers, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, are “facilities that represent themselves as legitimate reproductive health care clinics providing care for pregnant people” but work to dissuade them from seeing abortions, even during life-threatening situations such as ectopic pregnancies. There are between 2,400 and 2,800 crisis pregnancy centers in the United States.
This report comes as the Trump administration doubles down on its “pro-life and pro-family agenda,” according to White House spokesperson Kush Desai. On Friday, the Trump administration, in its budget proposal, announced plans to overhaul its Title X family planning program, moving away from contraception and instead focusing on “optimal health (defined as physical, mental, and social wellbeing), not just medical intervention.” This also seems to dismiss that some people need medical interventions, like IVF, in order to have children.
The researchers at GAO noted that it was difficult to identify how much money was given to crisis pregnancy centers over the six-year period, which does not include Trump’s second term, as they “are not easy to identify in government spending data.” They were able to identify 16 crisis pregnancy centers that received federal funds from HHS because they received a large amount of funding through two HHS Sexual Risk Avoidance Education grants.
“HHS’s oversight of federal funding obligated to CPCs is specific to the
requirements of the grant awarded and varies depending on whether the CPC is
the direct or pass-through recipient of the grant, according to HHS officials,” the researchers wrote. “HHS neither targets nor excludes CPCs from any federal grant opportunities, according to agency officials.”
The amount of grant funding that GAO located given to crisis pregnancy centers was not exclusive to the years during the first Trump administration. 2021 to 2024, HHS gave an average of just under $4.8 million per year over a four-year period during the Biden administration, just under the average of $5 million per year under the first Trump administration.
The GAO report lines up with a 2024 Health Management Associates report, which found that 650 crisis pregnancy centers received close to $400 million from federal funding streams between 2017 and 2023.
2026-04-05 01:04:25
On Friday, President Donald Trump released his budget proposal for the fiscal year 2027. Surprisingly, given the cuts that would be necessary to fund the $1.5 trillion the Trump administration is asking for military spending, the budget also included over $500 million more funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, for a total of over $16 billion. But disability experts are wary of other aspects of what the Office of Management and Budget head Russell Vought, Project 2025’s architect, put forward. Vought wrote in the proposal that the budget “continues the Department of Education’s path to elimination, returning control of education back to America’s families.”
Under the IDEA, qualifying students with disabilities are able to receive modifications to their education, making sure that they have equitable access to learning opportunities in the least restrictive environment for them. The administration’s proposal includes nearly $700 million that would go directly to states.
“We do need to provide more money to states to provide direct services for kids with disabilities,” said Rob Trombley, who was an account lead for the Department of Education’s IDEA team during the Obama administration.
“IDEA really is a comprehensive program, and all of the parts of it kind of work in tandem and together to support the implementation.”
The budget recommends removing funding specifically designated for parent information centers, which help equip parents with information and resources they need to advocate for their kids with disabilities, as well as technical assistance for schools. This funding would instead come out of each state’s IDEA budget. Multiple experts I spoke with expressed concerns that this will lead to these parent programs not getting the funding they need.
“These are programs that are really critical for ensuring the implementation of IDEA,” National Center for Learning Disabilities‘ associate director of policy and advocacy Nicole Fuller said. “IDEA really is a comprehensive program, and all of the parts of it kind of work in tandem and together to support the implementation.”
The Trump administration tried the same move last year, but Congress, in a bipartisan fashion, rejected this change to the budget for parent information centers. “Advocates for students and families will call on Congress to do so again,” said Stephanie Smith Lee, former director of the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs during the George W. Bush administration.
Last year, there was also an attempt to put funding for preschool for kids with disabilities in the states through consolidated grants. Though that was similarly rejected, it is again in the budget bill for fiscal year 2027.
Early intervention during preschool years can help kids learn the skills that they need to thrive. “The sooner we can provide services for those who have developmental delays, the less likelihood that they may have a more severe disability,” Trombley told me.
It is also perhaps unsurprising that the budget refers to unborn disabled children, as anti-abortion activists tend to do, claiming that IDEA serves “eight million children with disabilities, including those unborn.” But there’s no tracking of the federal government by the Department of Education of fetuses with disabilities—that eight million number just refers to students with Individualized Education Plans, commonly known as IEPs.
There are also attacks on other aspects of education that will undoubtedly impact disabled students of color if the budget is approved by Congress, including an attempt to eliminate the English language acquisition program entirely and funding for minority-serving institutions programs. The 93-page Special Education appropriations report for the budget proposal also only mentions the term “race” once, acknowledging that schools can be held to account for disproportionately penalizing disabled students of one race over another.
Disability education is, of course, far from perfect. The federal government has already not followed through on a commitment to fund 40 percent of the cost of IEPs. The new budget proposal says that it will reduce “paperwork burdens on special educators so they can focus their time on serving students.” But, reducing paperwork for IEPs may not end up helping disabled students. Trombley told me that he does think a pilot program for finding ways to streamline IEPs could be useful if it is effective, but he does not have faith in the current administration to accomplish this. “We still need to make sure that kids are protected,” he added.
“For families, [an] IEP being comprehensive is really important, not only for their child’s services and supports,” Fuller noted, “but also should they need to use their due process rights.”
There very much remains a concern among disability education advocates that the Trump administration will soon try to move the disability education programs from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, where Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has suggested that autistic people have no value, would have a more profound influence on disability education policy.
“It is time to focus on how to improve educational opportunities for all students, including students with disabilities,” Smith Lee, now the co-director of policy and advocacy at the National Down Syndrome Congress, said, “and stop focusing on eliminating important programs, dismantling the US Department of Education, and cutting department staff.”
2026-04-04 19:30:00
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News in partnership with Puente News Collaborative and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
On a Saturday morning in March, high school students, mountain bikers and soldiers from a nearby Army base climbed the winding path up Mount Cristo Rey. From the summit, they could see most of El Paso, the sprawling city that dominates a stretch of desert where New Mexico, Texas and the Mexican state of Chihuahua meet.
They paused to trace the line of the Rio Grande, where it divides Mexico and the United States, and then touched the smooth tiles lining the base of the Christ the King statue, a cherished monument that gives the mountain its name.
Two days later, on a Monday morning, explosions rattled the same site. Contractors were blasting the south side of Mount Cristo Rey to prepare the terrain for construction of the border wall President Donald Trump has long promised would run from San Diego in California to Brownsville in Texas.
After the explosions, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uploaded a video of the blasts to social media. One earlier post boasted the mountain was getting a “face lift” to “secure a historically challenging terrain.”
The sarcasm didn’t sit well with thousands of residents from both sides of the border, who looked forward to the annual Good Friday pilgrimage to the mountain summit. This year, they would be walking above an active construction zone.
Walls have long separated El Paso and Sunland Park, New Mexico, from the Mexican metropolis of Ciudad Juárez. But building a wall on the rugged slopes of Mount Cristo Rey was long considered impractical. Eventually, the mountain’s slopes became the only significant gap without an imposing border fence in the binational metro area of more than 2.5 million people.
In recent years, Sunland Park and the area around Mount Cristo Rey saw high numbers of unauthorized crossings. Migrant deaths in the nearby desert soared. In lieu of a wall, Border Patrol agents blanketed the mountain and stationed themselves, along with surveillance equipment, on nearby roads.
Border crossings in the El Paso sector slowed during the final year of the Biden administration and have plummeted since Trump returned to office. The second Trump administration is intent on sealing every border gap.
SLSCO, a Texas company based in Galveston, has a $95 million contract to build a 1.3-mile wall on Mount Cristo Rey and two other barriers near El Paso. CBP waived environmental and historical preservation laws in June 2025, clearing the way for a border wall on the mountain. Over the objections of the local Catholic diocese, which owns most of the mountain, work began at the site in January.
Robert Ardovino, a business owner in Sunland Park, is no stranger to the traffic of Border Patrol vehicles and undocumented migrants crossing into New Mexico. But he was appalled to see the side of the mountain being shaved off. “Electronics would have made more sense than destroying a whole mountain,” Ardovino said on a recent afternoon. “But they’re doing what they’re doing.”
He predicted that when the Good Friday pilgrims ascended the mountain, many would be shaking their heads at the destruction. “There is no accountability,” he said. “And the damage will be irreparable.”
“CBP has environmental monitors present during these activities to ensure construction best management practices are being followed and implemented by the construction contractor,” an agency spokesperson said.
An environmental summary report, completed in lieu of an environmental impact assessment, is not available to the public, the spokesperson said.
Mount Cristo Rey is where the land border between the US and Mexico ends and the Rio Grande becomes the dividing line. This point, for centuries called Paso del Norte—the northern pass—has been a crossroads for Indigenous peoples, Spanish colonizers and later settlers traveling west on the early transcontinental railroads.
Once the railroad reached El Paso in 1881, the city grew quickly. A brick company opened on the flanks of Mount Cristo Rey, and a quarry was carved into the mountainside. Later, a copper smelter rose in its shadow. Mexican American workers lived nearby in a company town called Smeltertown.
A priest at Smeltertown’s Catholic church first proposed building a statue on the mountaintop. The 29-foot limestone statue of Christ was dedicated in 1939. The mountain, previously known as Cerro de los Muleros, or Mule Driver’s Mountain, was renamed Mount Cristo Rey.
Smeltertown was demolished in the 1970s. But descendants of several families who lived there still volunteer with the Mount Cristo Rey Restoration Committee, which maintains the trail and monument. They keep a watchful eye on the thousands of people, the religious and the secular, who join the Good Friday walk.
During the first Trump administration, in 2019, a group called We Build the Wall, that included Steve Bannon, tapped private donations to build a half-mile wall on the eastern side of Mount Cristo Rey. Fisher Sand and Gravel, which has received billions of dollars in border wall construction contracts under the Trump administration, built this section of wall on private property. CBP cut a dirt road across the south side of the mountain.
Bannon later pleaded guilty to defrauding donors. Lights illuminating the wall, which separates Mexico from the United States and El Paso from New Mexico, were turned off when the builders’ bank accounts were frozen.
Border wall construction largely stopped during the Biden administration. But once Trump returned to office, Mount Cristo Rey became a priority. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem waived more than two dozen laws on June 3 to expedite construction of the wall across the mountain. The REAL ID Act of 2005 granted DHS the authority to “waive all legal requirements” necessary to expedite construction of border barriers. Among the laws waived were the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.
Geologist Eric Kappus considers Mount Cristo Rey one of the premier sites anywhere for geology education.
CBP announced plans for a 30-foot-high barrier that would run along the south side of the mountain and loom over the Anapra neighborhood in Ciudad Juárez. Agency plans state the wall will consist of steel bollards spaced four inches apart. It will require drainage gates and access roads.
Funding for CBP’s El Paso Anapra 16-4 Wall Project, which includes Mount Cristo Rey, dates back to DHS 2020 border wall appropriations. Since then, the agency has received 224 written statements about the proposal. According to the summary, 211 comments opposed the wall.
Notably, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces urged the agency to exclude Mount Cristo Rey from its barrier plans. In its comments, the diocese referred to the mountain as a place “where faith transcends borders.”
“A grant of entry onto land [the diocese] owns for CBP purposes, whether temporary or permanent, would deter those pilgrims and migrants from exercising their religion as they have done for almost one hundred years,” wrote the Diocese’s general counsel, Kathryn Brack Morrow. “A place of hope, faith, and communion would become a place of fear, exclusion and division.”
Morrow wrote that the Diocese had received multiple requests for access to its property from the Department of Justice, which were denied.
The trail to the summit has not been disturbed by construction. But last year, the area along the border in Sunland Park and at Mount Cristo Rey was designated a National Defense Area, part of the US Army’s Fort Huachuca. People who enter a National Defense Area can be charged with trespassing.
Contractors are blasting the mountain along a 60-mile strip of federal property known as the Roosevelt Reservation. The City of Sunland Park also owns property on the mountain. A city spokesperson said Sunland Park has no jurisdiction over the area where construction is occurring.
The construction company JOBE also owns property on the mountain and declined to comment.
To the untrained eye, Mount Cristo Rey, like many Chihuahuan Desert locales, can appear desolate. A local CBP spokesperson compared it to a “moonscape” in a local news interview. “It’s just rock and sand.”
But for geologists like Eric Kappus, Mount Cristo Rey is a “treasure.”
Kappus discovered a series of dinosaur footprints at Mount Cristo Rey in 2002 while he was a graduate student at the University of Texas at El Paso. The prints were formed between 80 and 100 million years ago when Iguanodons and theropods plodded through mud on the edge of what was then a vast sea.
Kappus said he spent thousands of hours exploring Mount Cristo Rey, looking for fossils and prints. After working as an exploratory geologist and teaching across the country, he still considers it one of the premier sites anywhere for geology education.
“I could teach 75 to 80 percent of an introductory geology class in the field at Mount Cristo Rey,” he said. “It’s like a giant chalkboard.”
“The border wall is quite disrespectful to a lot of work that’s been undertaken by numerous government agencies.”
The prints, preserved in sandstone, were exposed during excavation for the brick yard. The site was later donated to the non-profit INSIGHTS El Paso Science Center. The dinosaur tracks site is not threatened by border wall construction.
William Lukefahr, an INSIGHTS tour guide, led a group down a rocky trail to the dinosaur tracks on a warm March morning. He slowed down to look for plants and animals. He pointed out a Black-spined prickly pear cactus and a Mormon Tea shrub. Then he spotted a spider web encasing a cocoon-like structure made of debris—the home of a desert shrub spider. “This mountain is very unique,” he said. “But there hasn’t been a lot of scientific research done here.”
Other creatures commonly seen on Mount Cristo Rey include coyotes, canyon wrens, and the greater earless lizard. Scruffy sotol and creosote shrubs dot the mountainside. Lukefahr explained that Mount Cristo Rey creates a corridor connecting the mountains in Juárez with those on the western and northern flanks of El Paso.
In their public comments to CBP, more than 80 people expressed concern for Mount Cristo Rey’s prized environment. The agency’s summary statement, in response, explained that a biological survey yielded no federally listed threatened or endangered species. The survey deemed that the habitat has a “low to moderate” suitability for wildlife.
“CBP has also determined there is minimal impact to vegetation and behavioral patterns of wildlife since the project area is flanked by existing barrier and an active patrol road,” the agency wrote.
Ardovino, the local business owner, said that wildlife activity in Sunland Park diminished after Border Patrol was “unleashed” to drive across the desert and carve new roads.
Years ago, he said, there were 18 pairs of burrowing owls, a diminutive variety, on his property. That was until Border Patrol vehicles repeatedly disrupted their habitat. “They’re gone now,” he said. “Concern for the environment is last on [the CBP] list.”
Myles Traphagen coordinates the borderlands project of the Wildlands Network, a nonprofit advocacy group. He said building the border wall will counteract federal efforts to foster endangered species, including the Mexican gray wolf.
US and Mexican government biologists collaborate on wolf reintroduction, with pups from New Mexico transported to Northern Mexico to grow the population and increase genetic diversity. “The border wall is quite disrespectful to a lot of work that’s been undertaken by numerous government agencies,” he said.
In 2017, Traphagen tracked the movements of a Mexican gray wolf outfitted with a GPS collar. The wolf traveled north from Chihuahua into New Mexico, then followed the Rio Grande to Mount Cristo Rey, where it crossed back into Mexico.
He said the border wall will close off this wildlife crossing point.
Ardovino owns property less than a half mile from the blast site. He said his interactions with local Border Patrol agents have always been respectful, although he was not notified before the blasting began. The boom of an unexpected explosion signaled that construction was underway.
The neighborhood of Anapra in Juárez is just feet away from the blast site. Warning signs were posted in the neighborhood in January.
Morrow, the attorney for the Diocese, said she has yet to receive notification from federal agencies of the blasting. Neither has Ruben Escandon Jr., spokesperson for the Mount Cristo Rey Restoration Committee. “Hopefully,” blasting would not occur during the Good Friday walk, he said.
The CBP spokesperson said landowners would be notified, but that there are no landowners in the blast zone.
The Wildlands Network’s Traphagen said that contractors at Mount Cristo Rey are defying common blasting protocols. Blast impact goes well beyond the thin strip of land where construction is underway, he said, and nearby residents and landowners should be notified for safety.
Construction activities are so far limited to the government’s Roosevelt Reservation. But it is unlikely the wall can be built without access to the diocese’s property on the mountain. The Diocese’s attorney was adamant the church will not sell.
The CBP spokesperson said that if the agency is unable to purchase property for border wall construction through voluntary sales, the Department of Justice can use eminent domain.
In public comments, the diocese attorney said attempts to seize the land would violate religious freedom and the right to worship, protected by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
For now, the diocese is holding on to its sacred space. On Good Friday, thousands of people would climb Mount Cristo Rey, as they have every year going back almost a century.
But blast by blast, border wall construction is coming for Mount Cristo Rey.
2026-04-04 15:01:00
Here at the Center for Investigative Reporting, we excel at finding things: government documents, paper trails, the misdeeds people have tried to hide. It’s serious work. But that gave us an idea: What would happen if we used these skills for things that are less about accountability and more about joy? If we turned our energy toward personally meaningful questions?
That was the spark for our first-ever Inconsequential Investigations hour. We turned our journalistic strategies on our own biggest questions to see where the trail led.
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.This week on Reveal, we take up Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes’ quest to find the first short film he ever made, even though it was lost to the early 2000s internet. Yowei Shaw of the podcast Proxy brings us along as she meets her doppelganger and discovers the truth behind how people see her. And Reveal reporter and producer Ashley Cleek untangles her own unsolved mystery: Did reclusive rock star Jeff Mangum really call into her college radio show, asking her for a favor?
We plan to do more Inconsequential Investigations like this. If you have a personal mystery that needs looking into, please email [email protected].
This is an update of an episode that first aired in October 2025.
2026-04-04 11:05:17
NASA just released the first photos taken by astronauts aboard Artemis II– the first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years. The images show Earth from space, in one photo swathed in clouds and in another almost obscured in darkness.
The four-person crew includes pilot Victor Glover, the first Black astronaut to travel to deep space, and mission specialist Christina Koch, the first woman on a lunar mission. On Day 6 of their 10-day journey, they’ll loop around the far side of the moon without landing and continue home.
“You look amazing. You look beautiful,” said Glover looking back at Earth in an interview with CBS News. “From up here you also look like one thing… No matter where you’re from or what you look, like we’re all one people.”
Back on Earth, NASA’s future is less certain. The White House has proposed cutting the agency’s science budget by 47%, and for the first time in 40 years, NASA has not committed to starting any new science missions.
2026-04-04 02:04:40
If you have the good fortune of not spending time on Elon Musk’s X, it is hard to grasp just how blatant the anti-Muslim hate coming from GOP lawmakers—and tolerated by their leaders—has become. Take Rep. Andy Ogles, the Tennessee Republican who declared last month that “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” Since that post, Ogles has shared anti-Muslim content on X more than 100 times.
Ogles is not alone, either. Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) wrote on X in February that, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” He added this month: “We need more Islamophobia, not less.” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), meanwhile, recently shared photos of the 9/11 terror attacks alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani with the caption, “The enemy is inside the gates.”
In response, Republicans leaders have done little. House Speaker Mike Johnson said last month that he talked to his members about “our tone and our message,” while noting that he would use different language. At the same time, he’s tried to explain away the anti-Muslim rhetoric by saying that there is a “lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem.” Johnson took a stronger line later in March when he said in relation to Fine that “we should never disclaim whole groups of people.” He added, “Obviously, we love Muslim people.” But he has imposed no real consequences thus far. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said that he does not like claims that Muslims do not belong in the United States or that they are the “enemy.” Despite that, he has not criticized Tuberville directly.
On its own, it is not surprising to see right-wing members of Congress targeting Muslims. Donald Trump built his political career on it. During his first presidential campaign, a Muslim ban was one of his signature campaign proposals. When an attendee at one of his rallies claimed President Obama was a Muslim born outside the United States in 2015, Trump—an early proponent of the birther conspiracy theory—did nothing to correct him. What stands out now is how aggressive and common the bigotry has become.
At last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Bo French, a Republican running to be Texas Railroad Commissioner declared, “The problem is, we call it Sharia [law], but the problem is actually Islam.” In Congress, a recently launched “Sharia-Free America Caucus” now has 60 members, including Fine and Ogles. Another member, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), who is the son-in-law of right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza, has written that “Islam is incompatible with our culture and our governing system.” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) called last month for banning “Islamic immigration,” as well denaturalizing and deporting people who are already US citizens.
The legislators attacking Muslims in the most aggressive terms today have also been loyal supporters of Israel in a party that is increasingly divided over support for the nation, particularly since the start of the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran. Their Islamophobia directs animus at a more familiar Republican scapegoat at a time when people on the far-right are flirting with, or openly embracing, antisemitism. It also affords lawmakers like Ogles a chance to generate outrage without major risk to reelection. In the modern GOP, attacking Israel still carries serious political risk; going after Muslims does not.
When I profiled Ogles last year, he was not well known for his views on Muslims, thousands of whom are his own constituents. Instead, he was most notable for a George Santos-like proclivity for apparent fabrication, as well as a recent FBI investigation into what he later admitted was a non-existent personal loan he reported to his 2022 campaign. (Prosecutors looking into his campaign finance practices were withdrawn from the case soon after Ogles proposed amending the Constitution so that Trump could run for a third term.)
Ogles’ attacks on Muslims started attracting significant attention last June when he called for Mamdani, whom he dubbed “little muhammad,” to be stripped of US citizenship and deported. Perhaps inspired by the outrage that generated, Ogles has posted about Muslims, who make up only about 1 percent of American adults, more than any other topic in recent weeks. Last month, he shared the same grotesque anti-Muslim meme at least 10 times in a single day.
Despite frequently styling himself as a defender of Western civilization, Ogles and the people in charge of his social media appear to know remarkably little about basic American history. One video posted to Ogles’ X account in March shows him railing against Islam before lecturing about how “those in Jamestown were Puritans.” (As elementary school US history curricula make clear, Jamestown was not settled by Puritans.)
Ogles does not post much about Israel, despite a strong record in support of it. Fine, who lists his pronouns on X as “Hebrew/Hammer,” distinguishes himself by both attacking Muslims and defending Israeli aggression in disturbing terms. As Jewish Currents has noted, Fine was asked on social media in 2021 about how he slept at night in a post that included what appeared to be an image of a dead Palestinian child. “Quite well, actually!” he replied, “Thanks for the pic!” More recently, he wrote during the war in Gaza, “Tell your fellow Muslim terrorists to release the hostages and surrender. Until then, #StarveAway.”
Recent survey data shows that Republicans, unlike Democrats and independents, remain far more sympathetic to Israelis than Palestinians. They are also much more likely to have negative opinions of Muslims. But surveys also point to major generational gaps. A poll conducted in November by YouGov for the Institute for Middle East Understanding, an advocacy group supportive of Palestinians, found that Republican seniors sympathized more with Israelis than Palestinians by a 67-point margin. (Only 2 percent favored Palestinians.) Among Republicans under 30, the gap in favor of Israelis dropped to 19 points.
That was before the war in Iran, which has prompted unprecedented dissent from right-wing media figures with large audiences of young Republicans. Tucker Carlson has been one of the loudest voices in that camp. He has also made a point of pushing back against attacks on Muslims. (The former Fox News host has blamed Republicans’ concern with “radical Islam” on “the Israeli government and its many defenders and informal employees in the United States.”)
Carlson frequently rejects claims by Fine and others that he is an antisemite. But those further to the right like Nick Fuentes, who has a large following of up-and-coming Republicans, make no apologies for open antisemitism. Candace Owens, the right-wing conspiracy theorist who has baselessly suggested that Israel was involved in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, is now one of the most popular podcasters in the United States.
In response, the Republican Party leaders tolerating the rhetoric of Fine and Ogles are trying to keep antisemitism at bay while allowing hatred of Muslims to go unchecked. A new generation of Republicans shaped by Fuentes and his ilk may soon decide they don’t have to choose.
