Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump in 2021, announced that he will not seek re-election in 2026.
“This decision comes with no reservations or remorse, only gratitude for the tremendous opportunity to have represented my home state in Congress,” Newhouse wrote in a statement.
Today I am announcing I will not seek reelection in 2026. See my statement below: pic.twitter.com/374ez1r0Lc
Former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who faces more than seven years behind bars after pleading guilty to wire fraud and identity theft, is seeking clemency from President Trump.
“I’ll take a commutation, clemency, whatever the president is willing to give me,” Santos told British media personality Piers Morgan in an episode of Morgan’s YouTube show “Uncensored” on Thursday.
“Seven years and three months in prison for a first-time offender over campaign matters just screams ‘over the top,’ and I would appreciate if the president would consider,” he added.
The disgraced former lawmaker also noted he is filling out paperwork to formally seek intervention from the White House before he reports to prison in July.
By U.S. House Office of Photography – https://santos.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/santos.house.gov/files/evo-media-image/rep_santos_george_official.jpg, Public Domain,
In his interview with Morgan, Santos blasted former Biden administration Attorney General Merrick Garland, whom Trump and other conservative allies have criticized and accused of weaponizing the Department of Justice against the president and his allies.
“I do believe this is an unfair judgment handed down to me,” he said Thursday. “I think there was a lot of politicization over the process.”
“Merrick Garland was by far the most disgraceful and disgraced political [attorney general] to ever serve in that capacity of the United States,” Santos said.
Santos was elected to represent New York’s affluent Long Island-centered 3rd District in 2022, becoming the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a nonincumbent before his fall from grace. The House expelled Santos from the chamber in a 311–114 vote in 2023, as ethics charges mounted against him.
Oscar-winning actor George Clooney is weighing in on who he believes should take the reins of the Democrat Party next after helping push out Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 election.
In a candid interview with CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Wednesday, Clooney offered an unexpected endorsement for one Democrat he said was “levitating above” the rest: Maryland Governor Wes Moore.
He began: “I really … there’s one person in particular I think is spectacular. There are a few: I like [Kentucky Governor] Andy Beshear.”
“I’m a Kentucky guy, I like him, he’s a good guy. And they’re smart. And he’s won in a red state. He’s a Democrat. I like [Michigan Governor] Gretchen [Whitmer], I think is very good.”
He continued: “But who I think is who I think is levitating above that is Wes Moore. I think he is the guy that has handled this tragedy in Baltimore beautifully. He has two tours of duty in Afghanistan, active duty. He speaks sort of beautifully. He’s smart. He ran a hedge fund. He ran the Robin Hood Foundation. He’s a proper leader.”
Watch:
“He’s a proper leader.” George Clooney reveals his choice for the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee: Maryland Governor Wes Moore. pic.twitter.com/j8yiNw0b3V
Circling back to Moore, Clooney added, “I like him a lot. I think he could be someone we could all join in behind. We have to find somebody rather soon, you know, because we need to redo… Look, the other side, the side that I don’t support, they are, you know, running through government and doing their thing. So it’s our job now to put together a proper team to stand up because we’re right now polling very poorly.”
Statistician and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver is predicting that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) would become the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party in 2028.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @ Women’s March NYC, 2019 [Photo Credit: Dimitri Rodriguez, CC BY 2.0, AOC]
In a video published to his Silver Bulletin newsletter on Wednesday, Silver and former FiveThirtyEight podcast host Galen Druke both chose Ocasio-Cortez as their No. 1 pick for likely 2028 Democratic presidential nominee.
“I think there’s a lot of points in her favor at this very moment,” said Druke. “In a Yale poll just out this week, AOC has the highest net favorability rating of any of the Democrats that they asked about.”
He argued:
So that means that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has broad appeal across the Democratic Party and there’s a lot of people who could potentially get on board with her. But I think equally important is the fact that she has very fervent support. I think a lot of people are gonna run in 2028 and it’s going to be a contest for attention and getting those sort of people who might be in your boat to turn out and stay with you through thick and thin, and I think that’s Ocasio-Cortez. Like, the media is kind of obsessed with her, and they’re going to follow her every move, which means she will be able to keep the attention on her throughout the primary process.
Nate Silver reveals his top picks for the most likely 2028 Democratic presidential nominee:
Silver replied, “I agree with everything. She was going to be my first pick, and I can’t conceal that now, right? Because of some of the polling; because she has this kind of progressive lane, probably not to herself; because she is younger and media savvy. I mean, look, in polls, if she were to try to primary Chuck Schumer, she is now ahead in those polls and New York Democrats are actually a pretty moderate bloc.”
After Silver added, however, that he was not yet sure whether Ocasio-Cortez would even run, Druke said, “I think she’s gonna run. If you’ve been following her moves in terms of her ‘Fight Oligarchy’ tour, in terms of the kind of content she’s putting out on social media.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly planning to fight a subpoena for testimony as part of a Justice Department special counsel’s investigation into former President Donald Trump.
Multiple sources close to Pence informed Politico that the former VP, who is rumored to be planning to announce a 2024 White House run, will likely address his plans to resist the subpoena during a visit to Iowa on Wednesday.
The aides told Politico that Pence’s decision to challenge Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request has little to do with executive privilege, instead, he plans to argue that his former role as president of the Senate — therefore a member of the legislative branch — shields him from certain Justice Department demands.
Pence allies say he is covered by the constitutional provision that protects congressional officials from legal proceedings related to their work — language known as the “speech or debate” clause. The clause, Pence allies say, legally binds federal prosecutors from compelling Pence to testify about the central components of Smith’s investigation. If Pence testifies, they say, it could jeopardize the separation of powers that the Constitution seeks to safeguard.
“He thinks that the ‘speech or debate’ clause is a core protection for Article I, for the legislature,” said one of the two people familiar with Pence’s thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss his legal strategy. “He feels it really goes to the heart of some separation of powers issues. He feels duty-bound to maintain that protection, even if it means litigating it.”
That’s because the legal question of whether the vice president draws the same “speech-or-debate” protections as members of Congress remains largely unsettled, and constitutional scholars say Pence raising the issue will almost certainly force a court to weigh in. That could take months.
“It is admittedly a constitutionally murky area with no clear outcome,” said Mark Rozell, a George Mason University political scientist who specializes in executive privilege. “Since there is a legislative function involved in the vice president presiding over the Senate, a court very well could decide that it must address the scope of the speech or debate privilege and whether it would apply in this case.”
Last week, Smith’s office moved to subpoena Pence in one of its most aggressive moves to date as its inquiries into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election accelerate. (RELATED:Special Counsel Overseeing Trump Criminal Probe Subpoenas Mike Pence)
Notably, the Justice Department has previously argued in civil litigation that the “speech or debate” clause protects the vice president when working on Senate business. The department explicitly asserted in 2021 that Pence was shielded by the “speech or debate” clause in a civil lawsuit related to his role presiding over Congress’ Jan. 6 session.
On Monday, the House Select Committee investigating the events surrounding the January 6th, 2021 Capitol riot voted to recommend the Department of Justice criminally prosecute former President Donald Trump.
The committee voted 9-0.
According to Fox News, the first referral recommended by the committee is for Trump’s obstruction an official proceeding of Congress. The committee will also refer Trump to DOJ for conspiracy to defraud the federal government, making a false statement and inciting, assisting, or aiding and comforting an insurrection.
In what is expected to be its final meeting on Monday, the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6 said it will formally ask the DOJ to pursue charges after a nearly 18-month probe into the former president’s involvement in the activities that lead to the Capitol breach on January 6, 2021.
The committee’s unprecedented criminal referral holds no official legal weight, and a final determination in whether to pursue the charges will be up to Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department.
At Monday’s meeting, the committee’s members, seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans, each presented a portion of their findings against Trump before taking the vote to issue criminal referrals.
The committee will also refer four Republican members of Congress to the House Committee on Ethics for defying the committee’s subpoenas. One of the Republicans who defied their subpoena was then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, (R-Calif.)
The committee also subpoenaed:
Jim Jordan, R-Ohio
Mo Brooks, R-Ala.
Scott Perry, R-Pa.
Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.
This Hollywood-backed committee continues to waste resources and taxpayer money to produce the most biased congressional "investigation" in this nation's history.
According to The Hill, It’s unclear if the Ethics panel will launch an investigation based on the select committee’s new recommendations. Unlike most other standing committees, membership on the Ethics panel is evenly divided between the parties. And the committee strives — at least rhetorically — to avoid the divisive partisan politicking that practically defines some of the other panels.
Yet with just weeks left in the 117th Congress, there’s a small and closing window for the committee to launch any new probes while Democrats are still in the House majority. And it’s unlikely that a GOP-led Ethics Committee would take the remarkable step of investigating the role of sitting Republicans in an event as polarizing as the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Former President Trump’s debate prep is going “great,” former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard informed Fox News.
“He knows the issues. He is very honed in on her [Kamala Harris’] record in reminding voters… ‘what have you done for the last three and a half years?’ You can paint this rosy picture about what you’re going to do, but we’re paying attention to what you’ve already done and how her policies have destroyed our economy, made us less safe, both here at home and abroad,” she told “FOX & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade.
The former president recruited Gabbard to help sharpen his skills ahead of the highly-anticipated Sept. 10 debate, where he is slated to face off against Vice President Kamala Harris at the National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia.
Gabbard infamously tore into Harris during a 2019 Democratic primary debate for jailing hundreds of Californians for marijuana violations despite smoking the drug herself.
“She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” she said during the viral exchange.
So anyways, last time Tulsi Gabbard tried to go against VP Harris…here’s how it went: pic.twitter.com/YH3IST8tEb
Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer attend medal ceremony via Wikimedia Commons
A new biography on Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) exposes new details surrounding his tense relationship with former President Donald Trump.
Michael Tackett, deputy Washington bureau chief at the Associated Press, drew from nearly three decades of McConnell’s political career using sources including recorded diaries by the elder statesmen and past interviews. In the finished book, The Price of Power, which hits shelves on October 29, Tackett uncovered several shockingly negative assessments of the ex-president by McConnell, who has publicly expressed his support and endorsed him in the 2024 election.
After Trump lost the election in 2020, McConnell congratulated his former Senate colleague President Joe Biden and warned his fellow Republicans not to challenge the election results. But behind the scenes — and as Trump tried and failed to overturn the election results — he apparently couldn’t wait to see the last of Trump:
Privately, he said in his oral history that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office, and that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”
“And for a narcissist like him,” McConnell continued, “that’s been really hard to take, and so his behavior since the election has been even worse, by far, than it was before, because he has no filter now at all.”
Before those Georgia runoffs, McConnell said Trump is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie.”
An account of the aftermath of January 6, which had McConnell in a secure location while his aides “barricaded” in the office, revealed an emotional moment between the former Senate Majority Leader and his staff:
McConnell then went to his office to address his staff, some of whom had barricaded themselves in the office as rioters banged on their doors. He started to sob softly as he thanked them, Tackett writes.
“You are my family, and I hate the fact that you had to go through this,” he told them.
Ex-Congressman George Santos (R-Ny.) is reportedly planning a political comeback.
Less than a year after being expelled from Congress, Santos says he plans to mount a primary challenge against Nick LaLota (R).
During his visit to the Capitol for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Santos announced on Twitter, that he would challenge LaLota of New York’s 1st Congressional District, on Long Island.
“Tonight, I want to announce that I will be returning to the arena of politics and challenging Nick [LaLota] for the battle over #NY1,” Santos wrote on Twitter during Biden’s address. “I look forward to debating him on the issues and on his weak record as a Republican. The fight for our majority is imperative for the survival of the country.”
Tonight, I came to the SOTU with an open mind and heart because I believe in the great idea that is the United States of America.
I just witnessed a weak, frail president deliver spin and lies to the American people from inside the chambers. I have made several personal…
“New York hasn’t had a real conservative represent them since I left office arbitrarily, thanks to RINO, empty suits like @nicklalota. He is willing to risk the future of our majority and the future of this country for his own political gain,” Santos wrote.
“God bless you all, and we are off to the races!” Santos concluded.
“To raise the standard in Congress, and to hold a pathological liar who stole an election accountable, I led the charge to expel George Santos. If finishing the job requires beating him in a primary, count me in,” LaLota told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives on Dec. 1 after being indicted on multiple felony counts related to alleged campaign finance crimes, following which the House Select Committee on Ethics produced a report corroborating the indictment’s allegations.
As buzz continues to build around Trump’s looming 2024 announcement some Republicans are already trying to burst his bubble.
Despite the obvious excitement surrounding Trump’s long-awaited presidential campaign announcement the Republican is already facing hurdles on the path to 2024.
Trump, who is already facing various legal challenges, will be effectively cut off from the Republican National Committee if he declares his candidacy committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told The Hill.
Last year, the RNC admitted it was paying for legal fees “that relate to politically motivated legal proceedings waged against President Trump” and in recent months the committee has funded Trump’s defense against probes launched by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. (D) and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).
“We cannot pay legal bills for any candidate that’s announced. So these are bills that came from the Letitia James lawsuit that started while he was president,” McDaniel said. “It was voted on by our executive committee for our former president, that this was a politically motivated investigation and that’s what it’s been.”
“But we cannot do in kind contributions to any candidate right now. He’s the former president being attacked from every which way with lawsuits, and he’s certainly raised more under the RNC than we’ve spent on these bills,” she added.
Advisers in Trump’s inner circle have indicated the announcement could come as soon as November 14th but some conservatives say it shouldn’t come as any shock.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on Sunday that Trump’s upcoming announcement doesn’t surprise him, according to The Hill.
“Like, why should anybody be surprised,” Christie said, adding, “When something happens that you anticipated happening, it doesn’t make any difference.”
“He’s going to run. Everyone always knew he was going to run. He can’t miss the attention any more than he does, and he’s going to run,” the former governor added. “Now we’ll see what happens.”
However, reports began to swirl on Monday that Trump couls make his annoucenment during tonight’s rally in Ohio. Axios reporter Jonathan Swan was the first to report that Trump could move up the announcement date.
“Based calls/texts all morning, Trump/Vance rally in Ohio will be v closely watched by Rs. Speculation has reached a point of absurdity at this point but many Rs of varying degrees of closeness to Trump are anticipating accelerated announcement based on his recent private comments,” Swan tweeted.
Based calls/texts all morning, Trump/Vance rally in Ohio will be v closely watched by Rs. Speculation has reached a point of absurdity at this point but many Rs of varying degrees of closeness to Trump are anticipating accelerated announcement based on his recent private comments
A source close to the matter told The Washington Examiner that ultimately the decsion is up to Trump and nobody knows exactly when he will share the news.
“There’s a lot of back-and-forth right now, no one really knows if it’s going to happen tonight or if it’s going to happen in a week or so. Trump himself is the one who wants to do it ASAP. No one knows right now whether it’s happening tonight or not,” the source explained.
By David Shankbone - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3937757
Hollywood liberal Rosie O’Donnell is once again taking aim at President Donald Trump after he renewed his call to revoke her U.S. citizenship.
O’Donnell, who left the country in March to settle in Ireland, addressed Trump’s comments Thursday on her Substack. She insisted that the Constitution protects her from such action.
“He can’t do that because it’s against the Constitution, and even the Supreme Court has not given him the right to do that … he’s not allowed to do that, the only way you’re allowed to take away someone’s citizenship is if they renounce it themselves, and I will never renounce my American citizenship,” O’Donnell said. “I am a very proud citizen of the United States.”
The comedian added that she is working toward Irish citizenship and hopes to enjoy dual status.
“I am also getting my citizenship here so I can have dual citizenship in Ireland and the United States because I enjoy living here. It’s very peaceful. I love the politics of the country. I love the people and their generous hearts and spirit. And it’s been very good for my daughter. But I still want to maintain my citizenship in the United States. My children are there. I will be there visiting and go to see them. And I have the freedom to do that, as does every American citizen.”
President Trump had reignited the feud Wednesday, writing on Truth Social:
“As previously mentioned, we are giving serious thought to taking away Rosie O’Donnell’s Citizenship. She is not a Great American and is, in my opinion, incapable of being so!”
O’Donnell, for her part, accused Trump of using her as a distraction from unrelated scandals.
She also lashed out at Trump personally, continuing her years-long pattern of hostility:
“The president of the USA has always hated the fact that I see him for who he is — a criminal con man sexual abusing liar out to harm our nation to serve himself,” she wrote. “This is why I moved to Ireland — he is a dangerous old soulless man with dementia who lacks empathy compassion and basic humanity.”
This is not the first time the two have sparred. Their public back-and-forth dates back nearly two decades, with O’Donnell regularly launching harsh attacks at Trump and his supporters.
Back in March, when O’Donnell first announced her move abroad, Trump responded pointedly on Truth Social:
“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
A president is not allowed to strip the citizenship of someone born in the United States under the Constitution. O’Donnell, who was born in New York, has her citizenship protected by the 14th Amendment.
