GOP: The Party of Treason and Hate

A bill that would have prohibited minors from getting married in West Virginia was defeated Wednesday night in a legislative committee.

The Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill on a 9-8 vote, a week after it passed the House of Delegates.

The vote came shortly after the bill’s main sponsor, Democratic Del. Kayla Young of Kanawha County, testified briefly before the committee. She said that since 2000 there have been more than 3,600 marriages in the state involving one or more children.

Currently, children can marry as young as 16 in West Virginia with parental consent. Anyone younger than that also must get a judge’s waiver.

The U.S. Secret Service has received and is reviewing a sworn declaration from a Brazilian man who claims Rep. George Santos was "in charge of" a fraud scheme that led to the man's arrest in 2017 for installing skimmers at a Seattle bank ATM, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News.

Santos was interviewed in 2017 by Secret Service investigators, and the probe remains open, according to two sources.

The declaration is a "significant" development, A.T. Smith, a former deputy director of the Secret Service said.

Joe Harding, the now-former Florida Republican lawmaker who authored the extremist "Don't Say Gay" bill could face up to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday afternoon to federal felony fraud charges in a scheme to obtain $150,000 in COVID-19 relief funds, according to Florida Politics‘ publisher Peter Scorsch.

Harding, 35, was a construction project manager who started his own lawn care company. He quickly became a right-wing darling after his anti-LGBTQ legislation, officially the Parental Rights in Education Act, was embraced by Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis, who signed it into law.