Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is shedding more light on his policy ideas as he makes campaign stops in Iowa.
On Wednesday, the White House hopeful announced his plans to address the country’s massive student debt- which currently stands at a whopping $1.6 trillion according to CNN and his plan to boost military morale.
While speaking in Salix, Iowa, DeSantis declared that universities should have to pick up the tab if a former student can’t pay back their loans.
“If somebody defaults, the university should pick it up,” he said. “If they were on the hook for it, they would make sure the curriculum was designed to produce people that can be very productive. You’d have a heck of a lot less gender studies going on.”
DeSantis added that “we do believe in universities, but they got to be done in a good way,” meaning “rooted in the traditional mission of the university classical education.”
During another stop in Council Bluffs, the Florida Governor said that if elected he would offer back pay to veterans who reenlist after leaving the military due to Covid-19 vaccine requirements.
Later in the day, while touting his time in the US Navy as a JAG officer, DeSantis argued the US military is “indulging woke ideology” that negatively impacts recruitment.
“They’ve driven off some of our greatest warriors not just through that culture, but also through dumb policies like forcing m-RNA Covid shots on our service members,” DeSantis said.
“Why would you want to drive them off by doing things like forcing them to take a shot that they don’t want and sure enough, many people left,” DeSantis said at the second of four stops across Iowa. “As president, we will restore everybody back who wants to come back and we will give them back pay as a result.”
In January, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin rescinded the military’s Covid-19 vaccination mandate for troops after the shot was made mandatory in 2021.
The political network founded by the Koch brothers is endorsing Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary race according to a Tuesday memo.
Americans for Prosperity Action’s endorsement bolsters Haley’s campaign as Republicans get closer to the Iowa Caucuses. Haley is largely seen as the candidate most likely to topple Ron DeSantis for the No. 2 position in the primary field. Trump has so far dominated the primary field despite refusing to participate in any debates.
“In sharp contrast to recent elections that were dominated by the negative baggage of Donald Trump and in which good candidates lost races that should have been won, Nikki Haley, at the top of the ticket, would boost candidates up and down the ballot,” reads the memo from Emily Seidel, a senior adviser to Americans for Prosperity Action, who adds that Ms. Haley would win “the key independent and moderate voters that Trump has no chance to win.”
The memo goes on to say that the country “is being ripped apart by extremes on both sides,” adding: “The moment we face requires a tested leader with the governing judgment and policy experience to pull our nation back from the brink. Nikki Haley is that leader.”
The group has been committed to opposing Mr. Trump’s return as leader of the Republican Party. In a memo in February, Ms. Seidel, who also serves as the president of Americans for Prosperity, the political network’s parent group, wrote: “We need to turn the page on the past. So the best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter.”
In recent months, Haley’s popularity has surged among Republicans and political pundits but the endorsement from the super PAC established by David and Charles Koch could prove Haley’s campaign the push it needs. It will give her access to a direct-mail operation, field workers to knock on doors and people making phone calls to prospective voters in Iowa and beyond. The group has money to spend on television advertisements, as well.
Americans for Prosperity Action has been among the country’s largest spenders on anti-Trump material this year, buying online ads and sending mailers to voters in several states, including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. All told, the group has spent more than $9 million in independent expenditures opposing Mr. Trump.
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America,
ANALYSIS – In his Twitter Spaces debut Tuesday night, called “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson immediately accused Ukraine of being responsible for the catastrophic attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam in Southern Ukraine.
And he may be right.
Ukraine and Russia have routinely accused each other of shelling the dam, the hydroelectric station and the nearby Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
Both sides have blamed the other for the attack, in what appears to be a war crime. Kyiv blamed Moscow for the “terrorist attack,” but the Kremlin claimed that Ukraine had struck the dam to impact Russian-controlled Crimea’s water supplies.
And, despite his spotty track record on speculation, in this case, he may be right. Or at least, the assumption that Russia is always the culprit is no longer valid.
Based on recent reporting, which I wrote about here, Ukraine may, in fact, have been responsible for the serious sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in September 2022, which was long blamed on Russia.
This makes the always-blame Russia crowd look less credible. But that doesn’t mean Tucker’s always-blame-everyone-except-Russia approach is any better.
While on Fox, Tucker repeatedly blamed the United States and Joe Biden for being behind the Nord Stream attack.
On Feb. 24 he said: “So the Biden administration committed the single largest most profound act of industrial terrorism of sabotaging history. They blew up the Nord Stream pipeline …”
Thus, as far as we can tell, Biden knew about it beforehand but was unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
Tucker’s claims aren’t helped when he spouts pro-Russian talking points in his video, such as:
The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian- controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea, which has been for the last 240 years home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Firstly, the ‘Soviets’ built the dam during the USSR, not the ‘Russians,’ and the USSR no longer exists. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how long Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was based in Crimea; it belongs to Ukraine because that’s what happened when the USSR dissolved in 1991 and Ukraine became independent.
Tucker’s Trumpian personal insults, like describing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “sweaty and rat-like comedian-turned-oligarch,” probably don’t help his credibility much either.
Tucker is on firmer ground when he argues that: “Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more, and for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it.”
Especially when he cites a December report from The Washington Post in which a Ukrainian general spoke of using U.S.-made HIMARS launchers to “test strike” on the Kakhovka dam.
So, what are the facts?
The dam spanning the Dnipro River was breached on Tuesday, flooding swaths of territory and threatening crucial water supplies to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
At least 42,000 people and 1,500 square miles of land are at risk from the flooding caused by the destruction of the dam, likely slowing any potential Ukrainian military advance in the Dnipro River delta.
Much of the Dnipro River delta will become inaccessible for land operations, raising suspicions that Russia deliberately sabotaged the dam to prevent an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.
However, the flooding has disproportionately affected the Russian-occupied side of the river.
The Kakhovka reservoir does supply Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and the Crimea peninsula with fresh water.
Zelensky has said that the only way to destroy the dam is through mining and explosives and emphasized that Russian forces have now occupied the dam for over a year.
In a statement, Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command said, “Russian occupation troops blew up the dam” at Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.
Blaming “Russian terrorists” for the attack, Zelensky said on Twitter that “the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land.”
In the end, Tucker may be right. Ukraine could have been behind the attack.
But he is far more credible when he is less bombastic and emphatic with his theories. Such as when he states:
So really, once the facts start coming in, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam, and a fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline last fall.
Tucker ended his new Twitter show by promising to be back with “much more, very soon.” I’m looking forward to it.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
It’s no secret that comedian Bill Maher has a sour view of former President Trump, the two have engaged in back-and-forth spats online for years often with no kind word between them.
However, the liberal comedian recently admitted to CNN’s Jake Tapper that he is scared of Trump “on a very personal level,” especially what the first president might do to him if he’s re-elected.
“I am afraid of Trump on a very personal level because I don’t think he likes me. I understand why,” the HBO “Real Time” host told Tapper on Tuesday as part of a CNN primetime special. “And I don’t know what he would do in a second term.”
Maher, 67, told Tapper that after Trump won the 2016 presidential election, “I was afraid for my own wellbeing. I thought I could wind up in Guantanamo Bay. I think I still could.”
“He’s obsessed sometimes. I don’t know. He went on a tear for about eight months when he was president every time, he’d have a rally. I have a list three pages long of the things he’s called me,” he said of the 45th president.
“I mean, he is obviously someone who does not know any boundaries, and, you know, you have to worry when you see what other authoritarian rulers do in other countries to people,” Maher told Tapper of Trump.
“I’m not thinking he’s going to become [Russian President Vladimir Putin] and start pushing people out windows,” Maher said, “but I’m not going to live on the 30th floor anywhere either.”
Trump has slammed Maher as a “radical left maniac.”
Earlier this month, Trump attacked CNN for adding Maher’s “Overtime” post-show segment to its Friday night programming. The cable network, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, “wants to give wacky liddle’ Bill Maher a shot at bringing them back to just normal ‘bad’ when Bill Maher suffers from the same affliction as CNN — BAD RATINGS!”
In a strikingly bizarre footnote to the tragic assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a Utah man who falsely claimed responsibility for the fatal shooting has now been sentenced and faces up to 15 years in prison.
Seventy-one-year-old George Hodgson Zinn — who dramatically approached law enforcement at Utah Valley University, yelling “I shot him — now shoot me” moments after Kirk was gunned down — has now pleaded no contest to obstruction of justice and guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, according to court records.
While Zinn’s initial false confession drew headlines and confusion during the chaotic aftermath of the shooting — leading some to believe he was the shooter — investigators quickly ruled him out as a suspect in Kirk’s assassination.
During questioning at a hospital after the incident, Zinn shocked authorities by admitting he had child sexual abuse material on his phone. A warrant later uncovered more than 20 images depicting abused minors, and prosecutors charged him accordingly.
In Salt Lake County district court, Zinn was sentenced to zero to five years for obstruction and one to 15 years for each exploitation count, with the judge ordering the terms to run concurrently. The exact amount of time he will serve will be decided by the Utah parole board.
Remembering Charlie Kirk: A Conservative Voice Silenced
The backdrop to this strange prosecution is one of the most shocking episodes of political violence in recent U.S. history. On Sept. 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk — founder and executive director of the conservative youth advocacy group Turning Point USA and a leading voice in the MAGA movement — was assassinated by a sniper while speaking at an outdoor event on the Utah Valley University campus.
Kirk, just 31 years old, had become one of the most recognizable young conservative figures in America. He built Turning Point USA from a student organization into a powerful grassroots force shaping Republican campaigns, energizing young voters, and challenging campus liberal orthodoxy across the country.
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
His death prompted an outpouring of grief and outrage from Republican leaders and conservative grassroots activists, who saw the attack as not just a crime but part of a broader pattern of hostility toward conservatives. Thousands attended memorial events, and his legacy has become a rallying point in debates over political violence and free speech on college campuses and beyond.
The suspect in the shooting — 22-year-old Tyler James Robinson — was later arrested and charged with aggravated murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, underscoring the gravity of the crime and the national attention still focused on the case.
What This Means Going Forward
Zinn’s sentencing closes one strange chapter in the unfolding story of the Kirk assassination, but it also highlights the turmoil that followed one of the most prominent conservative leaders of his generation. A man who tried — for reasons still unclear — to throw law enforcement off the trail of the real shooter now faces prison time for his own criminal behavior.
Former President Donald Trump is done playing nice…
In a series of harsh Truth Social posts the White House hopeful released a scathing rebuke of some of Rupert Murdoch’s top American media properties.
“In a phony and probably rigged Wall Street Journal poll, coming out of nowhere to softened the mental incompetence blow that is so obvious with Crooked Joe Biden, they ask about my age and mentality. Where did that come from?,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website. “Now that the Globalists at Fox & the WSJ have failed to push their 3rd tier candidate to success, they do this.”
The former president took a shot at Fox specifically, calling out the network over a multi-million dollar settlement it paid Dominion Voting Systems in April.
“The Wall Street Journal & Fox are damaged goods after their failed DeSanctimonious push & stupid $780,000,000 ‘settlement.’ MORONS!!!” Trump said.
In a final social media post late Sunday, Trump criticized Fox’s coverage of his popularity within the GOP and with American voters more generally.
“The Wall Street Journal and FoxNews keep pushing the narrative, through Trey Gowdy and others, that ‘BOTH’ Crooked Joe Biden and 45th President Donald J. Trump are unpopular within their own Party,” he said. “This happens to be true for Crooked Joe, where they won’t even let RFK Jr. have his votes fairly counted (more RIGGING, and STEALING Elections!), but VERY untrue for ‘TRUMP,’ where I have a 90% Approval Rating, and am crushing the ‘second tier’ candidates by 50, 60, and even 70 Points. THAT’S POPULAR!”
The current front-runner for the Republican nomination for president, skipped the first GOP debate last month, partly due to what he says is a “hostile” relationship with Fox and Murdoch.
Trump has said he does not plan to attend the Sept. 27 debate.
On Monday, California Congressman Darrell Issa (R) announced he’s nominating President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Today I will nominate @realDonaldTrump for the Nobel Peace Prize. No one deserves it more,” Issa declared in the tweet.
Fox News Digital reached out to Issa’s office on Tuesday to request a comment from the congressman regarding why he decided to nominate the president for the award.
“Not since Ronald Reagan has an American president better represented the national resolve of peace through strength or the fundamental case for a world without war,” Issa said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“Remarkably, it was the 2024 election of Donald Trump – more than 10 weeks before his swearing in – that tangibly kickstarted the cause of peace in numerous regions of the world, and we are already seeing the benefits. I hope the Committee takes note of these extraordinary times and recognizes that President Trump ideally represents what the Nobel Peace Prize should stand for,” the lawmaker added.
President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, less than a year into his first term in office.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
“Donald Trump was instrumental in facilitating the first new peace agreements in the Middle East in almost 30 years,” the congresswoman said, according to a January 2024 press release.
Far-right billionaire investor Peter Thiel was revealed as an FBI informant as recently as 2021, according to a new report from Insider.
Insider reports:
In order to be added to this database, multiple layers of approval are typically required, and only those able to provide “valuable information … on a recurring basis” are given CHS status. Once admitted to the CHS database, informants are then given a code name and a serial number to categorize reports.
The source added that Thiel’s status as an FBI informant is meant to be a way for the billionaire to distance himself from the MAGA movement, which has repeatedly assailed both the FBI and the US Department of Justice in response to investigations focused on former President Donald Trump. Johnson told Insider that he believes Thiel is primarily informing on foreign governments’ attempts to cement themselves within Silicon Valley. Johnson added that Thiel was explicitly told to not inform on former President Donald Trump or other US political figures.
Peter Thiel, who was the first outside investor in Facebook, became influential within the Republican Party in 2016, when he pledged $1.25 million to elect Trump and endorsed him at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Thiel then served on then-President-elect Trump’s transition team. And in the 2022 midterm elections, Thiel backed MAGA US Senate candidate and ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ author JD Vance with a $10 million super PAC donation. Vance went on to attack the FBI, falsely accusing agents of wiretapping his phone. Thiel also put $15 million toward a super PAC backing Arizona Republican US Senate candidate Blake Masters, who went on to lose the general election to incumbent Senator Mark Kelly (D-Arizona).
President Donald Trump participates in a welcome ceremony with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud at the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
A new twist has emerged in the Fulton County election interference case against President Donald Trump. On Friday, a special prosecutor was appointed to replace embattled District Attorney Fani Willis (D), who was disqualified after a court found her romantic relationship with a top prosecutor created an appearance of impropriety.
Peter Skandalakis, executive director of Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council (PAC), announced that after failing to find another willing candidate, he would step in personally to oversee the case.
“Several prosecutors were contacted and, while all were respectful and professional, each declined the appointment,” Skandalakis said in a statement. “Out of respect for their privacy and professional discretion, I will not identify those prosecutors or disclose their reasons for declining.”
The move came just as a judge-imposed deadline loomed for PAC to name a new prosecutor—or risk seeing the entire case dismissed.
Skandalakis explained that while “it would have been simple” to let the deadline expire, he believed “that was not the right course of action,” citing the public’s interest in ensuring the matter is resolved properly.
The Georgia court’s decision to remove Willis cast major doubt on the future of the case, which accuses Trump and several allies of racketeering and other charges related to challenging the 2020 election results. Trump and most of his co-defendants have pleaded not guilty, maintaining that they did nothing wrong in questioning the outcome of the election. Four others accepted plea deals.
With Willis out, Skandalakis now has full discretion over whether to continue pursuing the case or to drop the charges entirely.
“My only objective is to ensure that this case is handled properly, fairly, and with full transparency—discharging my duties without fear, favor, or affection,” he said.
This isn’t the first time Skandalakis has been involved in a high-profile matter stemming from Willis’s conduct. After she was previously barred from investigating Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R) due to her involvement in a political fundraiser against him, Skandalakis also took over—and ultimately declined to bring charges.
Citing that past experience, he said his familiarity with similar issues makes him the best candidate to take over the Trump case.
The original indictment accused Trump and more than a dozen associates of an “unlawful conspiracy” to challenge President Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia. The case is one of several politically charged prosecutions targeting Trump during his campaign to return to the White House—the first criminal cases ever brought against a then-former U.S. president.
Trump was previously convicted in New York on business record charges tied to a 2016 hush money payment. Meanwhile, his two federal prosecutions—for alleged election interference and mishandling classified documents—were dismissed following his reelection to a second term.
PAC officials had confirmed as late as Thursday that no replacement had been found, suggesting the decision came together quickly.
On Monday, Skandalakis addressed Trump’s recent presidential pardons for several allies charged in the Georgia case, saying his office had “diligently” worked on the matter since Willis’s removal and would continue to do so “without being influenced by matters outside the scope of our assigned task.”
He also clarified that Trump’s pardons apply only to federal charges, not state cases.
“Therefore, the task before my office remains unchanged,” Skandalakis said.
Mike Lindell just scored a major legal win in his battle to expose election integrity concerns. On Wednesday, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Lindell’s favor, tossing out a $5 million arbitration ruling that sought to award a tech contestant prize money from his 2021 “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge.
In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel said the arbitration panel overstepped its authority by rewriting clear contract terms to reward software developer Robert Zeidman. “Fair or not, agreed-to contract terms may not be modified,” wrote Judge James Loken in the ruling, reinforcing that legal agreements must be honored—not manipulated for political convenience.
Lindell called the years-long legal fight a “setup” and declared the decision as “vindication.”
“This opens a door that no man can shut. I am so excited. I mean, this is an answer to prayer,” Lindell told The Hill.
The case stemmed from Lindell’s 2021 Cyber Symposium, where he challenged the public to prove that his data—allegedly showing Chinese interference in the 2020 election—wasn’t related to the actual vote. Zeidman submitted a rebuttal, but the internal judges ruled he hadn’t met the challenge’s high bar. When Zeidman took the issue to arbitration, the panel sided with him and awarded the $5 million. Now, that ruling has been reversed by the federal court.
The appeals court made clear: the arbitration panel violated Minnesota contract law by using outside evidence to redefine what kind of data Lindell had to provide.
“The panel effectively amended the unambiguous Challenge contract,” the court said.
The ruling orders a lower court to vacate the arbitration award and halts any effort to force Lindell to pay the $5 million—another setback for those trying to financially crush voices challenging the official 2020 narrative.
While Lindell continues to face ongoing lawsuits from companies like Dominion and Smartmatic, he remains defiant. Just last month, a Colorado jury hit him with a $2.3 million judgment for alleged defamation—but Lindell isn’t backing down.
“You’re going to see the big win will be as you watch me melting down these machines and turning them into prison bars,” he declared boldly.
