A federal grand jury in Miami indicted four people, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, for allegedly stealing millions in federal emergency funds.

Federal prosecutors said in a press release Wednesday that Cherfilus-McCormick used some of the stolen funds to support her 2021 campaign to win election.

‘No one is above the law, least of all powerful people who rob taxpayers for personal gain. We will follow the facts in this case and deliver justice.’

The 46-year-old congresswoman was indicted, along with her 51-year-old brother Edwin Cherfilus, for the scheme that involved overpayment to her family health care company.

She is also accused of participating in a straw donor scheme with the funds through the help of 46-year-old Nadege Leblanc, and filing a false federal tax return in 2021 with the aid of her 41-year old tax preparer, David K. Spencer.

If found guilty, Cherfilus-McCormick faces 53 years in prison. Her brother faces up to 35 years, Leblanc faces up to 10 years, and Spencer faces up to 33 years.

“Using disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime,” read a statement from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. “No one is above the law, least of all powerful people who rob taxpayers for personal gain. We will follow the facts in this case and deliver justice.”

The congresswoman’s allegedly shady campaign practices were first reported by Inside Elections in 2022. The report noted that she had squeaked out a win in the heavily contested election through the use of expensive ads.

RELATED: Newsom’s former chief of staff arrested on corruption charges — the governor blames Trump

Cherfilus-McCormick was the subject of an ethics investigation by the House Ethics Committee in January 2024, and that probe was reauthorized in July.

The congresswoman denied any wrongdoing at the time.

“The Committee on Ethics has not yet concluded its review of the allegations, and no decision has been made at this time. As outlined in the Committee’s public statement, the referral for further review does not imply that any violation has occurred,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in a statement to Florida Politics. “I fully respect the process and remain committed to cooperating with the Committee as it works to bring this inquiry to a close.”

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The owner of a Latino-themed ice cream shop in Charlotte says his workers are too scared to drive to the shop over the threat of being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Javier Morales is the co-owner of Legends Ice Cream & Snacks, but his is not the only business shuttering over the threat from ICE operations in North Carolina.

‘We have shut down. We are an ice cream shop that 80%-90% of our customers are Latino, because we sell Latino ice cream flavors. We have mangonadas, we have Mexican street corn.’

“Right now, I cannot take the risk to bring my employees to be profiled because a lot of them speak Spanish. They look like me. I look like the profile that they’re looking for. So it is a risk that I am not willing to take. My customers — the same thing,” Morales said.

The Trump administration ordered a surge in federal immigration sweeps in Charlotte named Operation Charlotte’s Web. The operation has led to a large drop in school attendance, which many say proves the immense size of the illegal immigration crisis.

“So right now there’s a lot of uncertainty — we have shut down,” Morales continued. “We are an ice cream shop that 80%-90% of our customers are Latino, because we sell Latino ice cream flavors. We have mangonadas, we have Mexican street corn, we have our Legends products, which are our big sellers that are just full of Latino flavor, and it’s what we try to do.”

He said that on Sunday, he only had one customer during a two-hour period.

“Even in their face, you could tell that they were scared,” he added. “They came in, got their things, and left right out. The weather in Charlotte was beautiful this weekend, and as an ice cream shop, we should have been packed. We should have been busy, and now we’re dealing with our shutdown.”

RELATED: VIDEO: Leotarded liberals protest ICE facility with ’80s-themed aerobics class

Morales suggested that ICE was profiling people based on their ethnicity.

“It’s just really unfortunate that by the look of your skin, you’re being profiled and you’re being stopped — you’re being questioned,” he added.

WJZY-TV reported that a U.S. citizen claimed to have been stopped by ICE twice within 10 minutes on South Boulevard, and he was dragged out of his vehicle after his car window was busted out.

One report from the operation indicated that 1 out of every 6 residents in Charlotte are foreign-born.

“We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed,” read a statement from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “There have been too many victims of criminal illegal aliens. President Trump and Secretary Noem will step up to protect Americans when sanctuary politicians won’t.”

A closed sign on the business blamed “icy conditions” for the interruption in service.

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Left-wing firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) tried to smear Republicans with a bizarre attack about supposed campaign donations from deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein but got humiliated instead.

Crockett tried to insinuate that the disgraced financier had donated to the campaign of former Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York along with other Republican politicians.

‘Crockett should get censured for this and staff should be fired. What a shocking embarrassment.’

“Folks who also took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein, as I had my team dig in very quickly: Mitt Romney, the NRCC, Lee Zeldin, [former President] George Bush … McCain-Palin,” she said in a video that was circulated on social media.

“I just wanna be clear. If this is the standard that we’re gonna make, just know we gonna expose it all!” she added. “Just know that the FEC filings? They are available for everybody to review!”

Zeldin mocked her in a post on his social media account.

“Yes Crockett, a physician named Dr. Jeffrey Epstein (who is a totally different person than the other Jeffrey Epstein) donated to a prior campaign of mine,” he wrote.

“NO FREAKIN RELATION YOU GENIUS!” he added with interspersed clapping emojis.

Others hopped in to make fun of Crockett’s suggestion.

“My team dug into Representative Crocket. Did you know she died at the ALAMO?! Stop the presses,” joked one account.

“Please order immediate testing of the drinking water across her congressional district — something is seriously wrong with it,” added another.

A Blaze News request for comment to Crockett’s office was not immediately answered.

RELATED: Jasmine Crockett calls Trump a ‘piece of s**t’ during rant at left-wing rally

“Crockett should get censured for this and staff should be fired. What a shocking embarrassment to go to the floor with this kind of insane accusation, and have the WRONG JEFFREY EPSTEIN,” replied GOP communications expert Matt Whitlock.

Crockett has recently suggested that she may launch a campaign for the U.S. Senate as retribution against Texas Republicans who redistricted the congressional maps to help them in the midterm elections.

“If you want to take my seat of 766,000 away, I feel like there has to be some karma in that to where I take your seat that is for 30 million away,” she said in October. “So we are, you know, the primary is the primary. That’s cool, but you got to win the general. So we are doing some testing here shortly to see if I can expand the electorate.”

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As the Trump administration nears the end of year one, Chris Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman (Lomez), hosts of BlazeTV’s newest show “Rufo & Lomez,” are compelled to not only pause and reflect on 2025, but also to ask the hard questions no one else will — and demand the second-year playbook that actually delivers total victory.

“I think it started out with some very solid wins — kind of blitzkrieg-style action on many fronts — but has the Trump administration hit a stall? Are things going as well as they should be?” asks Rufo.

In this episode, the duo, celebrating the wins and acknowledging the losses, offer a “five-point agenda” aimed at ensuring more success is on the horizon.

1. Reimmigration warfare

Immigration was second only to the economy in issues that drew voters to Trump, who pledged “mass deportations” from the rally pulpit his entire campaign trail. While the administration came out of the gate with ferocious plans to flush illegal aliens out of the country, deportations need to speed up, Rufo argues.

“What we’ve seen is a lot of fireworks, especially when it comes to DHS and ICE activities, but the actual deportations are rather low,” Lomez notes.

But that makes sense. “You’re never going to have enough muscle, enough kind of logistical force to deport 15 million people in handcuffs,” says Rufo.

The answer to this problem, they argue, is remigration — the voluntary relocation back to one’s native country. If the Trump administration is serious about hitting high numbers of deportations, it must incentivize people to leave of their own accord.

“If you want to get 10 million plus people to voluntarily leave the United States, you have to make their current life virtually impossible,” says Rufo. “You have to freeze them out of the financial system. You have to have punitive taxation on remittances that makes that economic incentive disappear.”

It is also critical that we begin looking at immigration through the lens of what benefits the American people, he adds. “We have to be ruthlessly selective about which populations are most likely to assimilate, most likely to contribute, and least likely to be a kind of net negative on whatever dimension — economic, social, cultural, [and] political. … Nobody has a right to immigrate to the United States. That’s a decision left to us.”

2. Build a future young Americans can afford

The nation’s younger generations are financially crushed in ways they weren’t just 10 years ago. Home affordability especially is out of reach for the majority of people under 40.

Rufo emphasizes the need for the Trump administration to “make a concrete economic agenda that will improve the possibilities for young people that are entering the work world and becoming adults.”

For starters, says Lomez, “We need to get rid of the regulatory framework that benefits older people at the expense of the young” — things like senior property-tax caps, locked-in low interest rates that keep people from ever selling, and zoning laws and building restrictions that prevent affordable homes from being built.

3. Crush terror networks

“The administration has to dismantle the left-wing terror networks, whether it’s Antifa [or] other organized militant groups,” says Rufo. “They have to actually get mugshots, case numbers, inmate numbers — the tangible evidence.”

These terror networks “are essentially saying that ‘we can control the streets in places like Portland; we can veto peaceful conservative speech in places like Berkeley.’ We have to ensure that they can no longer do so and can no longer exert control through violence.”

Lomez says the Trump administration’s designation of Antifa as a terrorist network was “a huge step in the right direction,” but more action is needed. He acknowledges that some of what the administration is doing is probably “sensitive” and might take years to accomplish, but it needs to “explain to the American people what they are doing” and up the consequences for violent members of these groups.

“The other thing that we need to put pressure on,” he says, “ is these institutions that are harboring these people [in terror networks].”

“If you do a good job planting bombs at the Pentagon as the Weather Underground did, you get sinecures at major universities’ you get speaking gigs; you get massive publicity. You become a public intellectual for the left. There are ways of applying pressure to these institutions to prevent them from doing this.”

However, in order to see this through, the right people must be in power. Otherwise bureaucracy slows it down or makes it impossible. Right now there are “certain Cabinet officials [who] are doing an amazing job,” says Rufo. “They’re extremely aggressive, [but] others seem to be more in it for the prestige, more in it for the spotlight, more in it the perks of the office.”

“We have to get people that are willing to fight and willing to play hard, and it has to be backed up at the highest level of the government.”

4. Death to DEI

While the Trump administration excelled at ripping up the DEI apparatus in the federal government, the initiative lives on in other places.

“Corporations, universities, school districts have kept this DEI system, a system of anti-white discrimination in particular, as part of their operating procedure,” says Rufo.

The Trump administration must “use the power of the government to say, ‘This stops now. It’s a violation of the Civil Rights Act. You don’t qualify for federal grants and contracts. You have to stop it.”’

“We need to go back and we need to look at who was making decisions in accordance with this anti-white ideology, but that broadly is encompassed under this sort of woke banner, so this would include like the trans stuff … and we need to remove them completely,” adds Lomez. “We need to apply maximum coercive pressure on these institutions to get rid of these people. They cannot employ these people any longer.”

5. Bankrupt the universities

To fix broken, ideologically captured universities, we can’t just punish them with investigations or funding cuts, says Rufo. We have to make them financially liable for student loans. “You have to make the universities hold the bag so that when it blows up, they blow up with it.”

This will have multiple positive downstream effects: reduce administrative bloat; stop the admission of unqualified students; end the “everyone must go to college” scam; and shift lower quintiles to trades, apprenticeships, associates degrees, and on-the-job training.

“The Trump administration should figure out how to use this student debt problem and essentially offload it to the universities. Look, universities are not MAGA’s base. Punishing the universities is not going to punish MAGA voters — precisely the opposite,” says Rufo, “and so there’s got to be a little bit of political calculation that’s baked into this formula that yields the outcome that we want.”

To hear more of Rufo and Lomez’s five-point plan for the Trump administration to stack up Ws, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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The head of Google’s parent company says welcoming artificial intelligence into daily life is akin to buying a refrigerator.

Alphabet’s chief executive, Indian-born Sundar Pichai, gave a revealing interview to the BBC this week in which he asked the general population to get on board with automation through AI.

‘Our first refrigerator …. radically changed my mom’s life.’

The BBC’s Faisal Islam, whose parents are from India, asked the Indian-American executive if the purpose of his AI products were to automate human tasks and essentially replace jobs with programming.

Pichai claimed that AI should be welcomed because humans are “overloaded” and “juggling many things.”

He then compared using AI to welcoming the technology that a dishwasher or fridge once brought to the average home.

“I remember growing up, you know, when we got our first refrigerator in the home — how much it radically changed my mom’s life, right? And so you can view this as automating some, but you know, freed her up to do other things, right?”

Islam fired back, citing the common complaints heard from the middle class who are concerned with job loss in fields like creative design, accounting, and even “journalism too.”

“Do you know which jobs are going to be safer?” he posited to Pichai.

RELATED: Here’s how to get the most annoying new update off of your iPhone

The Alphabet chief was steadfast in his touting of AI’s “extraordinary benefits” that will “create new opportunities.”

At the same time, he said the general population will “have to work through societal disruptions” as certain jobs “evolve” and transition.

“People need to adapt,” he continued. “Then there would be areas where it will impact some jobs, so society — I mean, we need to be having those conversations. And part of it is, how do you develop this technology responsibly and give society time to adapt as we absorb these technologies?”

Despite branding Google Gemini as a force for good that should be embraced, Pichai strangely admitted at the same time that chatbots are not foolproof by any means.

RELATED: ‘You’re robbing me’: Morgan Freeman slams Tilly Norwood, AI voice clones

– YouTube

“This is why people also use Google search,” Pichai said in regard to AI’s proclivity to present inaccurate information. “We have other products that are more grounded in providing accurate information.”

The 53-year-old told the BBC that it was up to the user to learn how to use AI tools for “what they’re good at” and not “blindly trust everything they say.”

The answer seems at odds with the wonder of AI he championed throughout the interview, especially when considering his additional commentary about the technology being prone to mistakes.

“We take pride in the amount of work we put in to give us as accurate information as possible, but the current state-of-the-art AI technology is prone to some errors.”

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Joy Reid came out against transgender-identifying males in women’s locker rooms after previously calling critics of the transgender movement Nazis.

The former MSNBC host made the surprising comments while opining about an incident at a Los Angeles gym where a woman expressed her outrage at seeing male genitalia in the locker room.

‘I can see why she would have gone and reported to management. … Does she not have the right to be at least uncomfortable with the situation?’

“I would be disturbed. I would be alarmed. I’m alarmed enough when I see a woman with her dangling boobies,” said Reid on her podcast Sunday.

“If I saw a penis in the ladies’ locker room, I would freak out, too!” she added.

Singer Tish Hyman went viral over video showing her accusing Alexis Black of exposing himself in the women’s locker room at a business formerly run as a Gold’s Gym. Hyman, who is a lesbian woman, said that it was the fourth time she had been forced to deal with the issue and the staff had ignored her complaints.

Reid sided with Hyman but said the issue had nothing to do with anti-transgender bigotry.

“What it’s saying is if I turn around and I see a pee-pee, a penis in front of me inside of the room, I would probably go to management and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why is there somebody — a naked man — in this room?’” Reid asked.

“Because just the world we live in, just from a safety standpoint and just from a privacy standpoint … I can see why she would have gone and reported to management,” she added. “Because if she’s uncomfortable, does she not have the right to be at least uncomfortable with the situation?”

Reid had previously compared critics of the transgender cause to those who supported Nazi Germany.

“Targeting trans people isn’t new. It is an age-old tradition which Nazi Germany did with brutally violent ends in the 1930s. While the Supreme Court refuses to do anything about weapons of war in schools, today they seemed inclined to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors,” she said nearly a year ago in comments documented by Sky News.

RELATED: Joy Reid says no one used the word inflation until Republicans taught them what it means to damage Dems

“I was in shock. I was scared, and I told him to leave. He would not leave and had no regard for my naked body,” said Hyman of the incident.

Hyman says her gym membership was revoked because of the incident.

“Trans people have a right to exist,” she said. “They need their own locker rooms and their own spaces. It doesn’t make sense to put them in the same room with women.”

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The Trump administration is advancing its plan to dismantle the Department of Education, seeking to return more power to the states.

The department announced on Tuesday that it had entered into six new interagency agreements with four government agencies to “break up the federal education bureaucracy” and “ensure efficient delivery of funded programs.”

‘What we want to do is to show Congress that this implementation works.’

These new agreements involved partnerships with the Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State.

“Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said. “As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms. Together, we will refocus education on students, families, and schools — ensuring federal taxpayer spending is supporting a world-class education system.”

The Education Department and the DOL will establish the Elementary and Secondary Education Partnership, which aims to “empower parents and states” to promote improvements in the education system that will better serve students.

“DOL will take on a greater role in administering federal K-12 programs, ensuring these programs are better aligned with workforce and college programs to set students up for success at every part of their education journey,” a press release from the Education Department read.

A separate partnership with the DOL aims to improve postsecondary education and workforce development programs. The Labor Department will administer grant programs to “help students from all walks of life obtain the credentials and career training they need to prosper and contribute to the American economy.”

RELATED: America’s largest teachers’ union declares war on the Trump administration, will use kids as foot soldiers

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The Department of the Interior will work with the Education Department to establish the Indian Education Partnership to improve Native American education.

“Through a vital partnership with the Department of Education, the Department of the Interior will assume administration for enhancing Indian education programs, streamlining operations, and refocusing efforts to better serve Native youth and adults across the nation,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum stated.

The HHS will establish the Foreign Medical Accreditation Partnership to assess whether the standards of foreign medical schools are comparable to U.S. standards.

“Medical education must incorporate timely, rigorous science on nutrition, metabolism, and all medical subjects. [HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] is leading the charge with American medical schools and HHS will encourage foreign medical schools through this partnership,” Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill stated.

HHS will also create the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Partnership to improve on-campus child care programs for parents attending college.

Lastly, the State Department will set up the International Education and Foreign Language Studies Partnership “to streamline international education program funding and data collection measures, consolidate program management, and advance national security interests.”

RELATED: Trump admin battles teachers’ unions in latest Education Department legal challenges

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

McMahon told CNN on Wednesday that these partnerships are not yet ready to implement but are in the “beginning stages” of establishing interagency agreements.

She acknowledged that the Trump administration would need congressional approval to make these moves permanent, adding that the current goal is to demonstrate that the changes will be effective.

“What we want to do is to show Congress that this implementation works,” McMahon told CNN.

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, has previously pledged to take legal action against the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Education Department.

Freedom Foundation CEO and Teacher Freedom Alliance President Aaron Withe responded to the Education Department’s latest “bold action” and the union’s roadblocks, in a statement emailed to Blaze News.

“President Trump is delivering on his promise to dismantle the federal education bureaucracy, and who is leading the opposition? Randi Weingarten and the teachers’ unions,” Withe stated. “The teachers’ unions have enjoyed unprecedented power over this department since Jimmy Carter created it as a political favor to the [National Education Association]. They’ve had decades to deliver results. Instead, American students keep falling further behind while spending keeps going up.”

“The unions oppose these reforms because they threaten the special access they’ve enjoyed for too long,” Withe continued. “Well, that era is over. Parents, students, and local communities deserve better than a system designed to serve union bosses. The Freedom Foundation applauds President Trump and Secretary McMahon for taking bold action to break up this failed bureaucracy and return control of education where it belongs.”

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A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper was relieved of his game-day duties after having a run-in with South Carolina player Nyck Harbor during Saturday’s game against Texas A&M.

“This kid scores a touchdown, maybe pulls his hamstring, keeps jogging up into the tunnel. And when he and a teammate are returning, this Texas state trooper, who’s there for security purposes, I’m sure, who I’m sure is a huge Texas A&M fan, and Texas A&M’s getting the doors blown off of them,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock explains.

“They’re down 27 to 3 at this point, late in the second quarter, and he walks through in between these two players and … gets into some elbow-to-elbow contact or whatever and points at them, and the kids, they’re excited. They turn their head briefly and then keep it moving,” he continues.

“It’s a horrible look for the state trooper. I think they had every right to pull him from the game and say, ‘Hey, man, what are you doing? Go home,’” he adds.

However, that is not what happened.

Rather, the state trooper is now being used as an example of police brutality.

“What happened at the Texas A&M South Carolina football game is unacceptable. For an officer who was there to protect everyone in the stadium to walk toward those young players with that level of aggression, that level of intention, that level of purpose,” ESPN analyst Ryan Clark said on “The Pivot Podcast.”

“And now, if you are these young men’s parents, this is worst-case scenario for you. This is something you’ve coached your kids through. You’ve told them how to behave. You told them what to say. You’ve told them how to look. And you’ve told them all these things just to stay alive,” he continued.

BlazeTV contributor T.J. Moe isn’t having it.

“This is what you do when there is a shortage of racism. You create your own. Obviously, when there’s a shortage of police brutality, you have to extrapolate out a police officer on national television brushing up against some players and say, ‘Just imagine what he does when he’s not on camera,’” Moe says.

“At any point in time, Ryan gets a chance to cry about a white man looking negatively towards a black man, it helps him in a lot of ways,” he adds.

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