Karrin Taylor Robson, a Republican running for Arizona governor, has suspended her campaign. “This decision was not an easy one. I love Arizona deeply. It is the greatest state in our country, and I would do anything to protect it from the growing radicalism of the left,” Robson said. “But we cannot afford a divisive Republican primary that drains resources and turns into months of intraparty attacks. It only weakens our conservative cause and gives the left exactly what they want: a fractured Republican Party heading into November. With so much on the line in 2026, I am not willing to contribute to that outcome,” she continued. “While I am stepping back from this race, I am not stepping back from the fight for Arizona’s future,” Robson added. Thank you, Arizona pic.twitter.com/htJcrtMsSX — Karrin Taylor Robson for AZ Gov (@KTaylorRobson) February 12, 2026 More from The New York Times: Ms. Taylor Robson, a wealthy developer and lawyer who had gained a reputation as a moderate Republican even as she worked to appeal to the party’s pro-Trump wing, had trailed Representative Andy Biggs in most primary polls. Though she earned Mr. Trump’s early endorsement, he later also bestowed his support to Mr. Biggs, who is far more aligned with the MAGA base that has determined recent Republican primary elections in Arizona. Her decision to suspend her flagging campaign was a second humbling repudiation by the party’s base, four years after it picked Kari Lake, a pro-Trump firebrand and former news anchor, over Ms. Taylor Robson in a bitter primary fight. And it is a sign that the moderate brand of Republican politics long embodied by Senator John McCain of Arizona, who died in 2018, is no longer palatable to the state’s primary voters. “I want to thank Karrin Taylor Robson for a well-run campaign and for her many contributions to keeping our state red. Her experience as a businesswoman brought a valuable perspective to the race and her deep love for Arizona and its future has always been evident. Cindy and I send our best wishes to Karrin and her family in their next chapter,” Biggs said. “This is a critical time for our party to unite and avoid a costly, divisive primary as the weak and ineffective Katie Hobbs continues to hurt Arizonans. Our campaign is now the only campaign endorsed by President Trump and Charlie Kirk, as well as dozens of state legislators and leaders across Arizona. We intend to win and defeat Katie Hobbs in November, but the time for Republicans to unite behind our campaign is now,” he continued. I want to thank Karrin Taylor Robson for a well-run campaign and for her many contributions to keeping our state red. Her experience as a businesswoman brought a valuable perspective to the race and her deep love for Arizona and its future has always been evident. Cindy and I… https://t.co/sLhNFG8Azn — Andy Biggs (@andybiggs4az) February 12, 2026 Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) is another candidate in the Republican primary, trailing behind Biggs in the polls. Axios shared further: Schweikert called her a “good conservative” who “played an important role in so many Republican victories through the years,” in a statement provided to Axios. Hobbs’ campaign manager Nicole DeMont said in a press statement that Robson “saw the writing on the wall and knows that Gov. Katie Hobbs is going to win re-election.” It’s unclear whether Robson will endorse another candidate in the race.

BYU wide receiver Parker Kingston has been charged with first-degree felony rape in Utah. “This charge follows an investigation that began in February 2025 after the alleged victim, a female then 20-years-old, reported a sexual assault to officers at St. George Regional Hospital,” the Washington County Attorney’s Office said in a statement. “The alleged victim reported that Kingston sexually assaulted her on February 23, 2025, in St. George. Detectives with the St. George Police Department then gathered digital and forensic evidence. They also conducted interviews with the parties involved and other witnesses. The information was then turned over to the Washington County Attorney’s Office for review,” the statement continued. “Kingston has been taken into custody and is currently being held in Washington County without bail,” it added. He has an initial appearance in court scheduled for Friday. BYU wide receiver Parker Kingston has been charged with felony rape in Washington County. https://t.co/CRpycMh6Zf pic.twitter.com/ceTF44qYS7 — Dana Greene (@dana_greene) February 12, 2026 ESPN shared further: Kingston was BYU’s leading receiver in 2025, catching 66 passes for 924 yards and five touchdowns. This is the second high-profile allegation of rape against a BYU football player in the past year. In May, former quarterback Jake Retzlaff was accused of rape in a civil lawsuit before the parties jointly agreed in June to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning it could not be refiled. No criminal charges were filed against Retzlaff. However, he would have faced a lengthy suspension for violating BYU’s honor code, which prohibits premarital sex, and transferred to Tulane. “BYU became aware today of the arrest of Parker Kingston,” the university’s athletic department stated, according to ESPN. “The university takes any allegation very seriously, and will cooperate with law enforcement. Due to federal and university privacy laws and practices for students, the university will not be able to provide additional comment,” it added. Kingston’s arrest follows the announcement of his engagement at a basketball game last week. Parker Kingston revealing he’s engaged at the BYU Basketball game. pic.twitter.com/QDzu6FwYX7 — Ben Criddle (@CriddleBenjamin) February 8, 2026 Fox News noted: Kingston, 21, is being held without bail in St. George, a city near the Arizona border, Washington County prosecutors said. His initial appearance in court is scheduled for Friday, and punishment ranges from five years to life in prison. The wide receiver appeared to make his engagement public during BYU’s recent men’s basketball game against Houston on Saturday. Kingston and his new fiancée were shown on the jumbotron, where she flashed her new engagement ring.

Secretary Zeldin said, in March, that he will drive “a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.” He signaled then that the EPA would consider revising its endangerment finding, a 2009 legal decision that finds greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are warming the Earth and that this warming poses a threat to […] The post Sec. Zeldin “Struck a Dagger Through the Heart” of the Green New Scam appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

If two more senators agree, the GOP can hold a standing filibuster to force a vote on the SAVE Act. The majority can force a standing filibuster, or “talking filibuster,” as Republicans are calling it, which would require Democrats to hold the floor for speeches, marking a bigger hurdle to delaying the bill. This approach […] The post 48 Senators Have Agreed to a Standing Filibuster, 2 More Needed appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from The Michael Knowles Show. * * * Zohran Mamdani is very, very upset because the federal government has reportedly removed the rainbow gay pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument. Here’s what Mamdani had to say: I am outraged by the removal of the Rainbow Pride Flag from Stonewall National Monument. New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history. Our city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to… — Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) February 10, 2026 Credit: NYCMayor/X.com First of all, this is a bit of vindication for me because when everyone was saying that Mamdani was going to establish Sharia law in New York — saying he’s some kind of Islamist terrorist — I said, you know, would that it were so simple. In some ways it would be preferable if he were a serious Muslim; you can kind of talk to a Muslim. I think it’s worse. I think he’s not just a far-leftist but a millennial leftist who plays up the Muslim thing because of identity politics. He knows it will help win over some immigrants. There’s also a radical Left and Muslim alliance because they have a common enemy, which is America and the Church and the white man or whatever — you know, the usual enemies of the Left. And so, I said that’s true. But if push comes to shove, he’s going to side with leftism over Islam. Just like when push comes to shove, Joe Biden says he’s Catholic and he’s liberal. But when there’s a conflict between the two, he always picks liberalism. He never picks Catholicism. So his real faith is liberalism. And that was my argument with Mamdani. And I think I’m totally vindicated in that.  Now, Mamdani is very upset because Trump took the pride flags away from Stonewall. What is Stonewall? The Stonewall Inn was a filthy, truly degenerate, disease-ridden, Mafia-run bar. It was a hive of crime, decadence, and debauchery in New York City. And then, when the cops raided the filthy, illegal Mafia-run bar — not illegal because it was hosting gay people  — when that happened, a bunch of sexual deviants, including famously a trans-identifying guy, started chucking bricks at the cops. As a result, we now side with the gay Mafia bar attacking cops. That is the thing that we’ve exalted as a national monument. But because it’s a national monument, the federal government has a say over it. And Trump has come out and said, look, you can fly the US flag at federal properties, you can fly certain military flags like missing-in-action, prisoner-of-war flags, but that’s basically it. You know, the flag of the Army or the Navy or something where that’s appropriate, but that’s it. We’re not doing the BLM flag. We’re not doing the gay flag. We’re not doing the trans flag. We’re not doing the terrorist trans flag — I call that the terrorist gay flag. So the federal government said we’re not doing that. But it begs the question: why do we have a national monument to Stonewall in the first place? What do we have a national monument to weird sex stuff? And why is a liberal New York politician, the most prominent left-wing New York politician, why is he all of a sudden so concerned about tearing down monuments?  The left has spent ten years tearing down monuments to all of the men who built this country. Monuments to Christopher Columbus — there was a big push for that in New York — constantly defacing the Columbus monument in Columbus Circle. There were also attacks on even Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, Thomas Jefferson, and certainly on Robert E. Lee. WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show on DailyWire+. So all these guys — we’ve got to tear down all these monuments — and the only monument we have to keep up, the only monument we can’t tear down, is the weird sex flag on the weird sex place, which was actually a bar run by the Mafia.   Now, before Republicans get too high on our horse, I just want to point out what the libs are doing is destroying history and tearing down the traditions and fabric of our country, in some cases tangibly, which is bad. But we want to tear some things down too — maybe not in as blunt a way as the libs do, maybe not in as blunt a way as the Taliban does. We’re not blowing up the Buddha statues, okay? But we do want to tear things down in the way that you prune a garden, not the way you blow up a Buddha in Afghanistan, but the way you prune a garden. I do want to get rid of the Stonewall National Memorial. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous that we have a monument to a Mafia-run gay bar best known for assaulting police officers and for spreading diseases. We should not have a monument to that. That’s degrading to our country. You can be nice to people who have some weird sexual behaviors. You can be nice to them. You can be somewhat tolerant of that without putting up a freaking monument to the Mafia gay bar. That’s insane. Not only should we be taking the pride flag away from that, we should be removing that as a national monument.  I don’t want monuments up to people like Malcolm X or Angela Davis. Even if they’re figures from American history, they represent bad stuff.  I don’t want monuments up to the Rosenbergs who were communist spies.  I don’t want a monument to someone like Alger Hiss. I don’t want them. I don’t want monuments to people who are bad for this country. Once again, I made this point in my book Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds about speech. The false dichotomy when we’re talking about free speech is between free speech and censorship, when really the real battle is between competing sets of standards, because all societies have standards. The same thing is true here. The real debate is not: Do we tear down the statues or do we leave them standing? The real question is: Who is worthy of a statue? Who’s worthy of a monument? Who’s worthy of veneration as a political matter?