GOP Senator Still Unsure About Rep. Accused of Abusing His Daughter

Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno isn’t willing to take a stand on the political future of the guy who allegedly held a gun to his daughter’s head.NOTUS asked Moreno Friday whether Republicans should move to replace Representative Max Miller on Ohio’s ballot, after gruesome allegations surfaced that he had physically abused his ex-wife, Emily Moreno.“I don’t know,” the senator told NOTUS. It’s not clear what about this situation has Moreno so mystified. Moreno’s own daughter accused Miller of throwing hot water on her body, holding a gun to her head, and breaking their two-year-old daughter’s collarbone. Earlier this week, Emily Moreno filed for a new restraining order against Miller, alleging that he’d physically grabbed one of her attorneys and used a profane slur. If that doesn’t elicit the strongest condemnation, what does the Ohio senator care about? Moreno’s not alone in his total apathy. Other Republicans—including the entire Ohio Republican delegation—have remained disturbingly silent on the allegations. Reagan McCarthy, a spokesperson for Moreno, hit back at questions about Moreno’s continued support for his former son-in-law. “While we won’t dignify this baseless attacks by Democrats and their media allies, Senator Moreno will not speak on active litigation involving his family,” McCarthy told NOTUS in a statement.Read The TNR Blue Book, our new newsletter on the Democratic Party:Minnesota Governor Tim Walz says President Donald Trump is lying about who committed the cyberattack on his state—and purposefully hiding how many states were affected.Trump on Friday dismissed concerns that Iran was likely responsible for a cyberattack against Minnesota’s municipal water systems, instead blaming state officials. The president did not provide any evidence for his claim.Shortly after, Walz fired back.“Trump knows exactly who is responsible for this attack, and knows that other states were hit too,” Walz wrote in a post on X. “This is what modern warfare looks like, and it further illustrates there’s no plan to win a war with Iran.”In the last week, at least seven states have reported cyberattacks against their municipal water systems, according to the FBI. Though the attacks haven’t been definitively attributed, federal and state officials say they carried trademarks of Iranian hackers.Still, Trump ranted wildly during his Cabinet meeting at Camp David, asserting that Minnesota was to blame for the attack. “You know who’s behind it? Minnesota. Because they’re grossly incompetent. I think the governor’s behind it. I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack,” Trump said.The Trump administration has long targeted Minnesota and its large immigrant population, due to the president’s blatant Islamophobia. The president has continued to pursue fraud allegations against Minnesota officials in a transparent effort to punish Democrats and antagonize immigrants.Read The TNR Blue Book, our new newsletter on the Democratic Party:President Trump won’t let go of his corrupt IRS settlement.At a Cabinet meeting hosted Friday at Camp David in Maryland, Trump was asked by a reporter whether the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” created by his settlement with the IRS, which set aside $1.776 billion for anyone who felt politically prosecuted by the government, was actually dead and, if it was, why the Department of Justice wouldn’t put that in writing.“Well, it is dead, but you know, I wish it weren’t, to be honest with you. I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused,” Trump said. “I’d like to see them compensated for the pain. They lost their families. They committed suicide, many people committed suicide.”Trump on the weaponization fund: "It's dead, but I wish it weren't" pic.twitter.com/2S4pyKt5xm— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 31, 2026 So just to recap: Trump doesn’t want the slush fund dead, despite past claims from the Department of Justice that the fund isn’t moving forward.Trump was also asked about whether he was willing to waive the settlement’s provision that he, his family, and his businesses would be protected from all IRS audits in the future in order to have acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed. He dodged the question, only saying Blanche “should be confirmed forthwith.”All of this points to Trump trying to hold on to the IRS settlement even after federal judges have ruled against it. It raises the question of whether he’s still going to try and implement the fund secretly—and validates the Republican holdouts who are refusing to confirm Blanche until they get some answers.As an aside, Trump’s claim that the fund is necessary due to suicide among January 6 insurrectionists is rich. On Thursday, New Jersey Governor Mike Sherill proclaimed July 30 “Brian Sicknick Day,” in honor of the Capitol Police officer and Garden State native who died from his injuries one day after responding to the Capitol riots. Four other police officers who responded to the riots committed suicide within seven months. President Donald Trump baselessly claimed Friday that Minnesota had committed a cyberattack against itself.Speaking at a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, Trump dismissed officials’ concerns that a cyberattack on municipal water systems in Minnesota was the work of Iranian hackers. “I don’t think so. I think I blame it on Minnesota, because they’re grossly incompetent,” Trump said.“I would blame it on Minnesota and the governor, the corrupt governor of Minnesota,” Trump continued, referring to Governor Tim Walz. “They like to say, ‘Oh, it’s Iran!’ Iran should be so lucky. Iran’s got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota.”Trump: "We heard in Minnesota there was a cyberattack and they blame it on Iran. I don't think so. I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent. Iran's got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota." pic.twitter.com/y1Mr6jjgaY— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 31, 2026 But Trump offered no evidence to support his claim, apparently motivated not by facts, but by sheer pettiness. Federal and state officials said earlier this week that the cyberattack was probably the work of Iranian hackers, but they have not definitively determined who is responsible. They also cautioned that the hackers could simply be posing as Iranians in order to escalate the conflict between the two countries, though former intelligence officials said this was unlikely. If the hackers were hoping to ratchet up the tensions between the U.S. and Iran, they failed by picking a state that Trump has designated as an outlet for his blatant Islamophobia. As reporters moved to exit the Cabinet meeting, Trump resumed his ranting about Minnesota. “I think that Minnesota is behind it!” he declared.“You know who’s behind it? Minnesota. Because they’re grossly incompetent. I think the governor’s behind it. I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack,” Trump continued. “I think that Minnesota ought to get its act together. It’s one of the worst-run states.”The president teased that his administration was planning “massive future things having to do with corruption” in Minnesota. The Trump administration has continued to pursue fraud allegations against Minnesota officials in a transparent effort to punish Democrats and antagonize immigrants.The Trump administration is not making its case against Anthropic.A federal judge flamed the government during a hearing Thursday, noting that Justice Department attorneys had failed to provide evidence “justifying” the Defense Department’s decision to class the AI company as a national security risk, or Donald Trump’s subsequent order barring federal agencies from utilizing the company’s services.California-based U.S. District Judge Rita Lin literally spelled out the questions she would ask the government’s attorneys via a legal notice earlier this week, but the DOJ still failed to impress. Lin remarked at the outset of the hearing that, “if anything, it seems like the record in some ways has gotten worse for the government,” according to the Law & Crime network.In May, Lin blasted the government for the “Orwellian” way that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to sever ties with the AI contractor after Anthropic refused to grant the Pentagon unrestricted use of its AI bot, Claude, for military purposes.At the time, the president and Hegseth claimed that Anthropic had gone “WOKE” for arguing that Claude could not safely or reliably be used for “autonomous lethal warfare and mass surveillance of Americans.”“Having reviewed the record that the parties have submitted on the cross motions for summary judgment, it appears to me to be largely the same as the record that I assessed at the preliminary injunction stage,” Lin said Thursday. “I don’t see additional evidence from the government really justifying what it did.”She added that she found it “really troubling” that the Trump administration was taking a position that “seems at odds to me with the First Amendment,” in “threatening to take away contracts from anyone who might do business with them” by “labeling them as subversive.”Lin even posed a hypothetical question: whether it would be constitutional for the government to terminate “every defense contract with anyone who’s ever publicly criticized President Trump.”When DOJ lawyers hedged, Lin said, “I’m surprised that you can’t give a yes to what seems to be an easy question.”Read more about Anthropic: