Former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ political nonprofit is fundraising off the aftermath of the deadly tornadoes that ripped through Alabama and Georgia, Fox News Digital has learned.

January saw several people die in tornadoes that tore into Alabama and Georgia, with damages from the storms also reported in Mississippi and Kentucky.

Months after the tornadoes, Fair Fight Action, Abrams’ political nonprofit, released a fundraising email on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, citing the day’s history and soliciting donations for the Selma Area Food Bank — and themselves.

Abrams’ nonprofit asked recipients to make a split donation between Fair Fight Action and the Selma Area Food Bank on the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, March 7.

‘Every year, to commemorate the anniversary of the attack, a large group of civil rights and voting rights leaders from around the country gather in Selma to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge — that same path that activists walked not long ago,’ the email said. ‘Like every year, the march took place this week, but under slightly different circumstances.’

‘The people of Selma are facing the devastating aftermath of a tornado that ripped through the city on January 12, 2023 — destroying homes, businesses, and infrastructure,’ the email continued. ‘Still, local organizers were dedicated to ensuring that the march went on.’

‘That’s why we’re asking you to make a split donation to Fair Fight Action and the Selma Area Food Bank, an on-the-ground organization delivering critical aid to the people of Selma. Will you make a donation today?’ Fair Fight Action asked recipients.

It is unclear from the email how the donation is split between the Selma Area Food Bank and Fair Fight Action.

‘Every dollar raised will support the ongoing Selma tornado recovery and further our mission of protecting the freedom to vote — carrying on the movement that the Bloody Sunday activists bravely fought for,’ the email said.

Fair Fight Action did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

In January, at least 35 possible tornado touchdowns were reported across several states, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The National Weather Service said suspected tornado damage was reported in at least 14 counties in Alabama and five in Georgia.

In Georgia, a 5-year-old child riding in a vehicle was killed by a falling tree in Butts County, said Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Director James Stallings. He said a parent who was driving suffered critical injuries.

Fox News Digital’s Sarah Rumpf contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE: The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is warning that the tax hikes in President Biden’s proposed budget would have a ‘devastating’ effect on Americans across the country.

‘It means a working-class (American) is going to have to pay more to put food on the table, clothes on their backs and gasoline in their cars, because this incredible spending will only fuel inflation. These Biden taxes will only reduce the take home pay for all Americans,’ Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital in an interview Friday.

‘Whether you make less than $400,000 a year or whether you make more than $400,000 a year, the policies within this proposal are going to be devastating.’

Smith was referring to one of the marquee points of Biden’s progressive fiscal 2024 agenda: an income tax hike from 37% to 39.6% on Americans whose earnings are in the top tax bracket. In total, the plan calls for more than $2 trillion in tax increases on the wealthy the White House claims will offset federal deficits by the same amount over 10 years.

Biden is also proposing to raise the corporate tax rate from 21%, where it was rolled back to during the Trump administration, to 28%.

Smith also pointed to the president’s proposal to roll back fossil fuel subsidies and other measures that House Republicans say would result in a $37 billion tax hike on the American energy industry. All told, these changes would trickle down to consumers, raising prices across the board.

‘That will affect every American,’ the chairman said, adding that Biden’s call to increase IRS funding by 15% after $80 billion was already granted by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act last year would also make economic conditions tougher for Americans.

‘And what is that going for? Enforcement. Just for the sake of monitoring working-class Americans’ bank accounts,’ Smith said.

He argued that ‘everything in this budget harms middle-class Americans,’ citing calculations that project $4.7 billion in tax increases if Biden’s plan were to pass.

Smith also cited House GOP calculations that show Main Street businesses would pay $1.8 trillion more under Biden’s plan through an expansion of the small business surtax and other means.

‘The last thing this economy needs right now for working-class families is more spending and more increases in taxes. Right now, they lost … months of their salaries over the last two years just because of the cost of inflation. … That happened because of reckless government spending,’ Smith said.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was on Capitol Hill earlier Friday for a hearing to defend Biden’s budget before Smith’s Ways and Means Committee.

Republicans have been calling on Biden to release his budget proposal since he missed the formal deadline to do so last month, urging him to consider spending cuts before they’ll agree to raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling.

But the GOP has ruled out supporting tax hikes as a way to help lower the deficit. And Smith said Friday that Yellen’s testimony and Biden’s plan show the administration is ‘clearly not’ not serious about getting government waste under control.

‘This is the largest tax increase that Biden has ever presented, and it is the largest spending he’s ever considered. So, if he’s really wanting to cut spending and control the fiscal crisis that we’re in, he would have presented a budget that would balance at some point. This budget will never balance,’ Smith said.

The congressman deferred to leaders of the House Budget Committee when asked about whether Republicans’ own fiscal blueprint was in the works but said that talks on how to proceed with the debt limit were ongoing.

‘There’s a lot of conversations going on right now among Ways and Means Committee members, among all members in Congress, also with senators. And there are multiple avenues of what’s necessary to raise the debt limit,’ Smith said.

He declined to go into specifics, explaining that Republicans ‘are not boxing themselves in.’

‘They just know that we have a tough task before us, and that is we need to address the fiscal insanity that’s happening,’ Smith said.

A judge has rejected a request from Google to transfer a federal antitrust lawsuit against it from Virginia to New York.

The ruling Friday from U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is a victory for the Justice Department and several states, including Virginia, that sued Google earlier this year and wanted to keep the case in the commonwealth.

The lawsuit alleges that Google holds a virtual monopoly in online advertising that works to the detriment of consumers. The complaint alleged that Google ‘corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising.’

Google said that similar lawsuits, including one filed by the Texas attorney general, have been consolidated into a single case that’s being now being heard in New York. Google’s lawyers said consolidating the Virginia case as well would improve judicial efficiency and reduce the risk that courts would produce conflicting rulings.

Justice Department lawyers, though, argued that the case should remain in Virginia. They said that federal antitrust cases are exempt from the law that encourages consolidation of similar lawsuits filed in multiple jurisdictions. They also argued that their lawsuit would be bogged down if it were bunched in with all the consolidated cases.

The suit seeks to force Google to divest itself of the businesses of controlling the technical tools that manage the buying, selling and auctioning of digital display advertising, remaining with search — its core business — and other products and services including YouTube, Gmail and cloud services.

Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, said previously that the suit ‘doubles down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow.’

Digital ads currently account for about 80% of Google’s revenue, and by and large support its other, less lucrative endeavors.

Besides Virginia, California, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee have all joined the Justice Department as plaintiffs in the case.

A Virginia judge determined that frozen human embryos are legally considered property, using a 19th century law regarding the treatment of slaves as the legal reasoning for his decision.

A preliminary opinion issued last month by Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Richard Gardiner is under scrutiny from lawyers who believe the judge wrongfully justified his decision based on measures from Virginia’s history when it was legally permissible to own human beings.

The ruling from Gardiner, a district court judge for the 19th Judicial District of Virginia, came amid a dispute between a divorced man and woman in which the ex-wife wants to use two frozen embryos the couple created when they were married to conceive another child.

‘It’s repulsive and it’s morally repugnant,’ Susan Crockin, a lawyer and scholar at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics and an expert in reproductive technology law, told The Associated Press of the ruling.

Gardiner’s decision is not final as he has not yet ruled on other arguments in the case involving Honeyhline and Jason Heidemann, a divorced couple fighting over two frozen embryos that remain in storage.

Honeyhline, 45, wants to use the embryos, but her ex-husband Jason objects.

Initially, Gardiner sided with Jason. The law at the heart of the case governs how to divide ‘goods and chattels.’ The judge ruled that because embryos could not be bought or sold, they couldn’t be considered as such and therefore Honeyhline had no recourse under that law to claim custody of them.

But after the ex-wife’s lawyer, Adam Kronfeld, asked the judge to reconsider, Gardiner conducted a deep dive into the history of the law. He found that before the Civil War, it also applied to slaves. The judge then researched old rulings that governed custody disputes involving slaves, and said he found parallels that forced him to reconsider whether the law should apply to embryos.

In a separate part of his opinion, Gardiner also said he erred when he initially concluded that human embryos cannot be sold.

‘As there is no prohibition on the sale of human embryos, they may be valued and sold, and thus may be considered ‘goods or chattels,” he wrote.

Crockin said she’s not aware of any other judge in the U.S. who has concluded that human embryos can be bought and sold. She said the trend, if anything, has been to recognize that embryos have to be treated in a more nuanced way than as mere property.

Neither of the Heidemanns’ lawyers ever raised the slavery issue. They did raise other arguments in support of their cases, however.

Jason’s lawyers said allowing his ex-wife to implant the embryos they created when they were married ‘would force Mr. Heidemann to procreate against his wishes and therefore violate his constitutional right to procreational autonomy.’

Honeyhline’s lawyer argued that her right to the embryos outweighs her ex-husband’s objections, partly because he would have no legal obligations to be their parent and partly because she has no other options to conceive biological children after undergoing cancer treatments that made her infertile.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

There oughta be a law….

That’s what millions of Americans may proclaim when they wake up Sunday morning, cursing the fact that Daylight Saving Time embezzled an hour of sleep.

Turns out, in fact there is law.

Several in fact, mandating when Daylight Saving Time begins. When Standard Time begins.

The most prominent law was passage by Congress of the Uniform Time Act in 1966. There was adoption of a massive energy bill in 2004 which shrunk Standard Time to just four months.

And there have only been 112 successful veto overrides by Congress in the history of the U.S. One was on a piece of time legislation after World War I.

People may lament that Congress doesn’t get much done. But it’s an indisputable point that Congress has spent a lot of time legislating about time.

A bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans hopes to do that again soon – permanently parking the U.S. on Daylight Saving Time and never reverting to Standard Time. That would eliminate the biannual ‘changing of the clocks’ ritual and probably make people feel better that they’re not losing an hour of sleep each March.

‘I would love to see Republicans be the party that stop the stupid clock change every year, twice year,’ groused Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.

‘I think people are tired of switching clocks,’ said Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla. ‘It throws people off.’

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is the chief advocate of legislation to eliminate the time change. Rubio and his bipartisan allies stunned the Senate in late March last year when they muscled through a bill to kill the time change.

‘Yes!!!’ said Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., in a stage whisper as she presided from the dais over the Senate when it adopted Rubio’s bill and no one objected.

Yet the plan never came up in the House.

The 117th Congress expired in early January without any more action on Rubio’s bill. But just the fact that Rubio’s plan advanced through the Senate indicates that the time change issue is ripening. It may not yet be an idea whose time has come. But there is more energy behind ditching the time change now than there has been in years.

Congress is in charge of time. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants the House and Senate the power to ‘fix weights and measures.’ That’s why Congress has legislated time zones and Daylight Saving Time in the past.

‘States used to be all over the map prior to the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966,’ said Steve Calandrillo, a professor at the University of Washington who has studied time policy. ‘We had bunches of states and cities, some on Daylight Saving Time.

Some on Standard Time. Minneapolis was on one clock system while St. Paul was on the other.’

To some lawmakers, the time switch concept reflects legislation gone awry.

‘It’s something probably that people are overthinking,’ said Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.V. ‘It’s a perfect example of how democracy is not working. Not reflecting the majority opinion on this issue.’

Congress may have the ability to legislate what time it is. But Einstein determined that time is relative – regardless of what the clock on the wall says

.I was referred a couple of years ago to Demetrios Matsakis. He’s a retried physicist who worked for decades at the Naval Observatory Master Clock in Washington, DC. 

My friend, who suggested I phone Matsakis, called him ‘Dr. Time,’ – which sounds like a super villain straight out of Marvel Comics. Matsakis served as the chief timekeeper of the U.S. for many years. 

The Master Clock at the observatory is the official clock for the U.S., the American military and much of the rest of the world.

‘The development of clocks has paralleled the development of civilization,’ said Matsakis – who incidentally doesn’t wear a watch.

In essence, time is a tool, created by humans to help manage life. It tells us when to get up. It tells us when to go to school. It tells us when to harvest the crops.

‘There is a satirical poem by a Roman playwright about 200 BCE, where he complains about the fact that they’ve installed sundials. And now it used to be a stomach told him when to eat. But now he has to look at the sun,’ said Matsakis.

Time is a measurement documenting cycles of the Earth and the rest of the Solar System. Humans just use time to split life into segments.

‘When I was working at the Naval Observatory, some people had a very almost religious attitude about time. And others were more lackadaisical,’ said Matsakis. ‘I read once that Napoleon once wanted to have a party and he planned the whole thing meticulously with military precision, and nobody had any fun.’

By the same token, Matsakis says that he sometimes tries to estimate how much time has passed in a given setting.

‘Once I did an experiment and I discovered that drinking one whiskey sour slowed my perception of time down by 10 percent,’ said Matsakis.

Again, time is relative. But yet time marches relentlessly forward.

Which brings us back to Capitol Hill and the debate over actually legislating what time it is.

The U.S. first went to Daylight Saving Time to conserve energy. There has always been an argument that the shift saves energy. But not everyone is convinced.

‘It was thought that Daylight Savings Time and shifting back and forth, though a hassle obviously will reduce total electric usage. And I haven’t seen any more recent study and obviously with all electric cars that electric usage today is different than it was a hundred years ago,’ said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif.

And while eliminating the time may get rid of the nuisance of switching the clocks twice a year – it’s always going to be too light early in the morning part of the year somewhere and too dark in the evening someplace too.

The amount of sunlight and darkness is finite. It’s just the hands on the clocks which change.

So should the U.S. be all on Daylight Saving Time or Standard Time, year round?

‘There is no perfect solution,’ said Matsakis. ‘It’s all a compromise. The compromise can depend on where you live. If you live up north, that’s one thing. If you live down in Florida, that’s another.’

Hence, the reason the U.S. switches the clocks twice a year. It’s a legislative compromise. And that’s all legislation is anyway: compromise.

Matsakis isn’t so sure it’s a great idea to shift the U.S. permanently to Daylight Saving Time.

‘We tried going to permanent Daylight time in (the 1970s) and it was very unpopular. So we stopped doing it,’ said Matsakis.

President Richard Nixon shifted the clocks ahead an hour for two years via executive order to combat the OPEC oil embargo. But then the nation resumed the usual time change rituals.

So for now, there is a law about Daylight Saving Time. And it kicks in early Sunday morning.

And if some lawmakers have their way, there oughta be another law.

But laws are a little like time: both are constructs of humankind.

The only constants are the sunlight and the darkness and what we make of it. And that’s something which can’t be legislated from Capitol Hill.

Things quickly went south during a speech by federal Judge Kyle Duncan to law students at Stanford University this week when the associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) slammed him to his face after hecklers interrupted his presentation.

Duncan, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, started getting heckled by student protestors who made it impossible for him to continue his speech. 

According to video footage from the Thursday event, Dean Tirien Steinbach did nothing to stop the heckling and instead launched a minutes-long emotional speech during his presentation accusing him of causing ‘harm’ through his work on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and suggesting the school needed to reconsider its policies on free speech.

‘I had to write something down because I am so uncomfortable up here. And I don’t say that for sympathy, I just say that I am deeply, deeply uncomfortable,’ Steinbach said, standing just feet from Duncan in the lecture hall. ‘I’m uncomfortable because this event is tearing at the fabric of this community that I care about, and I’m here to support.’

‘I have to ask myself … is the juice worth the squeeze? Is this worth it?’ she said at the event hosted by the Stanford Federalist Society.

Duncan, appearing frustrated, suggested the event was a ‘setup’ before Steinbach interrupted him and continued. 

‘It isn’t a setup. For many people in this law school who work here, who study here and live here, your advocacy, your opinions from the bench, land as absolute disenfranchisement of their rights,’ Steinbach said. 

Duncan attempted to speak again, but the room erupted with jeers and Steinbach stopped him, saying, ‘Please let me finish.’

‘It’s uncomfortable to say this to you as a person. It’s uncomfortable to say that for many people here, your work has caused harm … and I know that must be uncomfortable to hear. It must be,’ she said. ‘I’m also uncomfortable because many of the people in the room here I have come to care for.’

Steinbach, who previously served as the chief program officer at the ACLU of Northern California, went on to describe how her job as associate DEI dean was to create ‘a space of belonging for all people in this institution,’ despite not stopping some of the students’ continued aggression towards Duncan.

She told Duncan that she ‘wholeheartedly’ welcomed him because she believed in the necessity of free speech, but also went on to suggest his speech was ‘abhorrent,’ ‘harmful,’ and ‘literally denies the humanity of people.’

She added that she didn’t want to censor Duncan and that she found the university’s policy of free speech ‘worthy of defending even at this time.’ She then, however, asked again if Duncan’s speech was worth it.

‘And, again, I ask is the juice worth the squeeze? Is this worth the pain that this causes and the division that this causes?’ she asked. ‘You have something so incredibly important to say about Twitter and guns and COVID, then that is worth this impact and the division … When I say is the juice worth the squeeze, that’s what I’m asking. Is this worth it?’

Steinbach went on to say she would stay for Duncan’s presentation, and to hear his perspective, but that she understood that students who felt the harm by his views was ‘so great’ that the university ‘might need to reconsider’ its free speech policy.

‘Luckily they’re in a school where they can learn the advocacy skills to advocate for those changes,’ she said.

She then thanked the protestors for ‘protecting the free speech that we value here.’ Before giving those who chose not to stay to listen to Duncan an opportunity to leave. 

‘I look out, and I don’t ask what is going on here. I look out, and I say I’m glad this is going on here,’ she added before turning the event back over to Duncan as a throng of students walked out of the room.

Fox News Digital reached out to Stanford University for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

A former Indiana congressman and Persian Gulf War veteran was convicted Friday of insider trading charges after a two-week jury trial.

The verdict against Steve Buyer, a Republican lawyer who served in Congress from 1993 to 2011, was returned after a jury heard evidence about stock purchases he made after he became a consultant and lobbyist.

Buyer once chaired the House Veterans’ Affairs committee and served for a time as a House prosecutor during former President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial.

The jury returned guilty verdicts on four securities fraud charges. Judge Richard M. Berman set sentencing for July 11.

Prosecutors said at trial that Buyer took information from clients and used it to make illegal stock trades.

His lawyers, though, argued that he was a stock market buff who did research that led to legal profitable trades. They said it was a coincidence that his clients purchased two companies that he had invested in.

Authorities said Buyer made over $320,000 illegally for himself, relatives and a woman with whom he’d had an affair.

Buyer, 64, was an Army reservist with a solo law practice in Monticello, Indiana, when he was called for active duty during the 1990-91 Gulf War. He served as a legal adviser in a prisoner of war camp.

On returning home, he ran for Congress and unseated three-term Democrat Jim Jontz in 1992.

While in Washington, Buyer helped draw attention to Gulf War-related illnesses, and he worked on other issues relating to the military, veterans, prescription drugs and tobacco.

A Democratic state lawmaker said Thursday he is running for Pennsylvania auditor general in next year’s election, getting an early start on the campaign to lead the state’s fiscal watchdog agency.

Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia, in announcing his candidacy, promised to overhaul how the agency tracks state and local government spending.

‘I think that it is time that we have an underdog to be the watchdog for working Pennsylvanians,’ Kenyatta told reporters at a news conference outside the state Capitol.

The post is currently held by incumbent Republican Tim DeFoor, who has not publicly announced whether he will seek reelection to another four-year term.

The auditor general generally serves as the state’s fiscal watchdog, auditing how money is spent and getting a say in approving general obligation bond issues and tax-anticipation notes.

However, people serving in the office have been able to use it to advance public policy goals, and it often serves as a springboard to other offices.

On Wednesday, Kenyatta said he would reestablish school audits that DeFoor had discontinued and focus on issues related to working people, such as wage theft and union rights.

Kenyatta is the first to announce his candidacy for the office in 2024 and is already familiar to many Democrats.

Kenyatta, 32, came in third in the three-way Democratic primary for U.S. Senate last year, raising $2 million for the campaign before losing to then-Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

Kenyatta is serving his third term in the state House of Representatives and, in his relatively short time in office, has become one of the most visible speakers during House floor debates.

He is the grandson of the late civil rights activist Muhammad I. Kenyatta and became the first openly gay person of color to serve in the state House after he was first elected in 2018.

He campaigned across the country for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, before becoming one of 17 people to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.

After losing the U.S. Senate primary, he hit the campaign trail to help his fellow Democrats around Pennsylvania in last year’s election, including Fetterman.

DeFoor, 61, was relatively unknown in state politics before he ran for auditor general in 2020, beating Democrat Nina Ahmad for the open seat.

DeFoor was previously the elected controller in Dauphin County, which includes Harrisburg, and touted his three decades of experience conducting governmental audits and fraud investigations for the state inspector general, the state attorney general and a hospital system.

Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former state Republican Party Chair Matt Borges were convicted Thursday in a $60 million bribery scheme that federal prosecutors have called the largest corruption case in state history.

A jury in Cincinnati found the two guilty of conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise involving bribery and money laundering. Each faces up to 20 years in prison.

The government’s prosecution team was able to show that ‘Householder sold the Statehouse’ and betrayed the people he was elected to serve, and that Borges was ‘a willing co-conspirator,’ U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Kenneth Parker said in a statement.

‘Through its verdict today, the jury reaffirmed that the illegal acts committed by both men will not be tolerated and that they should be held accountable,’ Parker said.

The man who brought the case, Parker’s predecessor David DeVillers, tweeted: ‘The line between influence peddling and bribery will now be drawn by the rule of law and not by politicians, lobbyists and corporations.’

‘We are incredibly disappointed in the verdict,’ Householder’s attorney Steven Bradley said in an email. ‘We will take some time to evaluate all of our legal options and will most certainly pursue an appeal. Our client is looking forward to going home to be with his wife and family during this very difficult time.’

The attorney representing Borges, 50, did not immediately respond to messages left by The Associated Press on Thursday. The verdict comes two-and-a-half years after Borges, Householder and three others were arrested.

Prosecutors alleged that Householder, 63, orchestrated a scheme secretly funded by FirstEnergy Corp. to secure his power in the Legislature, elect his allies — and then to pass and defend legislation that delivered a $1 billion nuclear power plant bailout to the Akron-based electric utility. They alleged that Borges, then a lobbyist, sought to bribe Tyler Fehrman, an operative, for inside information on the referendum to overturn the bailout law.

‘Justice,’ Fehrman, tweeted after the verdicts came down.

In a phone interview, Fehrman said that the outcome proved the risk he took wearing a wire for the FBI as part of the government’s investigation was worth it.

‘For them to come back and find both of them guilty, and after not too long, is just such a relief,’ he said. ‘It is a good day for Ohioans. This stuff just can’t continue to happen.’

Householder had been one of Ohio’s most powerful politicians — an historically twice-elected speaker before his indictment. After his arrest, the Republican-controlled House ousted him from his leadership post, but he refused to resign for months on grounds he was innocent until proven guilty. In a bipartisan vote, representatives ultimately ousted him from the chamber, the first such expulsion in Ohio in 150 years.

In a move that may have been pivotal in the trial’s outcome, Householder took the stand in his own defense. Appearing confident and relaxed, he spent a day contradicting FBI testimony, defending his support for the bailout bill — known as House Bill 6 — and denying that he attended swanky Washington dinners where prosecutors alleged he and FirstEnergy executives hatched the scheme in 2017. But prosecutors eviscerated his claims on cross-examination the next day.

Rachael Belz, CEO of the government watchdog group Ohio Citizen Action, said she hopes that the trial and guilty verdicts turn the tide in Ohio politics.

‘We don’t believe that utilities funneling millions of dollars through shell corporations to drive state policy is how our state government should work, nor do Ohio voters,’ she said in a statement. Belz held the decision up as evidence that Ohioans expect and deserve better.

‘After so many years of utility-controlled energy policy that favored fossil fuels, Ohio must now move toward equitable, forward-looking solutions that will protect our air and water, the health of Ohioans, and provide clean energy jobs to keep Ohio competitive in the 21st-century economy,’ Belz said.

Borges did not testify at trial but has insisted that he’s innocent. His attorneys argued that he was entirely uninvolved with the pay-to-play scheme, while Householder’s team portrayed his actions as nothing more than hardball politics.

‘The bottom line is that Larry Householder was engaged in political activity, not criminal activity,’ his attorney Steven Bradley told jurors during closing statements. He said the government’s investigation was flimsy and full of holes, calling it ‘a nothing burger.’

But over the previous six weeks, jurors had been presented with firsthand accounts of the alleged scheme, as well as reams of financial documents, emails, texts and wire-tap audio.

The prosecution called two of the people arrested — Juan Cespedes and Jeff Longstreth — to testify about political contributions that they said are not ordinary, but bribes intended to secure passage of the bailout legislation.

Householder’s attorneys pushed back on arguments about their recollections, as well as their motivations. Both have pleaded guilty and are cooperating in hopes of a deal with the government.

Jurors also heard taped phone calls in which Householder and another co-defendant, the late Statehouse superlobbyist Neil Clark, plotted a nasty attack ad — and, in expletive-laced fashion, contemplated revenge against lawmakers who had crossed Householder.

Clark, who died by suicide in March 2021, was also heard describing to undercover FBI agents posing as developers how he was directing cash through Generation Now, a dark money group that has also pleaded guilty, to keep it secret.

Householder testified that he never retaliated against those who voted counter to his wishes or who donated to his rivals. He told jurors that the set-up advanced his interests, which were the same as Ohio’s interests, because they involved good policy.

Under a deal to avoid prosecution, FirstEnergy admitted using a network of dark money groups to fund the bribery scheme and even bribing the state’s top utility regulator, Sam Randazzo.

Randazzo resigned as chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio after an FBI search of his home, but he has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. The government has asked the PUCO to delay its own internal investigation into FirstEnergy while their probe continues.

President Biden on Thursday blasted ‘MAGA Republicans,’ asserting that they want to defund the police and the FBI, flipping the GOP’s continual claims that the Democrats were the anti-police party.

‘MAGA Republicans are calling for defunding the police department and defunding the FBI now,’ Biden said during an event at the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia. ‘That’s a good one. I like that.’

Biden, who has previously said that he doesn’t want to strip police departments of funding, included in his budget proposal hiring 100,000 additional police on the streets, plus money for crime prevention strategies and community violence intervention.

‘My budget invests in public safety. It includes funding for more training, more support for law enforcement at a time they are expected to play many roles. We expect our cops to be social workers, psychologists, and mental health counselors.’ he shared. ‘You know, more cops are killed, responding to domestic violence calls, than anything else.’

During the summer of 2020, ‘defund the police’ became the battle cry among more progressive Democrats from coast to coast who demanded police reform following George Floyd’s death.

But in a twist, Democrats are attempting to turn the tables and accuse Republicans of being anti-police. 

Democrats’ accusations started after Republicans failed to back a Jan. 6 independent commission and opposed spending $1.9 billion to boost Capitol security and fund the police officers in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots.

Following the FBI’s unprecedented decision to execute a search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, some in the Republican Party called to defund and destroy the federal agency. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was one of the first to share her disapproval of the search, writing on Twitter: ‘Defund the FBI.’

‘The FBI raid on Trump’s home tells us one thing. Failure is not an option,’ Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., tweeted. ‘We must destroy the FBI. We must save America.’

The president laid out his budget proposal on Thursday, unveiling a slew of tax hikes on corporations and high-income individuals. The proposals are unlikely to garner support in a deeply divided Congress, and face almost certain rejection from Republicans, who won control of the House last year.

In total, Biden’s budget proposals calls for more than $4.5 trillion in tax increases, including higher tax rates on corporations and high-income individuals, expanded Medicare taxes on top earners and higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign income.

Fox Business’ Megan Henney contributed to this report.