GOP leaders who defy Trump feel the heat from his base
CNN
Months after voters ousted Donald Trump from the White House, the fractures within the GOP are in sharp relief as the party wrestles with its post-Trump identity and prominent Republicans who stood up to him after the January 6 insurrection are feeling heat from his base with primaries brewing ahead of next year's midterms.
Looking to cement his grip on the GOP despite the party's losses in 2020, the former President is talking up the possibility that he might run for the White House again in 2024, forcing other potential hopefuls like former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to tiptoe around the huge shadow he casts within the party. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, who voted to impeach Trump, is once again a target of Trump and his congressional allies after she said that Republicans who objected to the certification of Electoral College results on January 6 should be disqualified from leading the party.
The Senate on Wednesday voted down an effort led by Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to block a series of planned US weapons sales to Israel.
Republicans on the House Ethics Committee fell in line behind GOP leaders and voted not to release the results of their investigation into Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, despite growing calls from the Senate GOP to make the findings public ahead of his confirmation hearing.
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.
On one side of the Capitol, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace vowed to “stand in the way” of Democratic Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first out transgender woman elected to Congress, using women’s bathrooms in the US Capitol.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general during Trump’s first term, as his pick to be US ambassador to NATO.
Police in Peru have arrested a man caught trying to leave the country with 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants strapped to his body.
Ensuring the US doesn’t default on its obligations. Extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts before they expire. Quarterbacking President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the economy.