Author: Press Room
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — A former Republican candidate for Congress in Florida has been charged with threatening to send a hit squad to kill an opponent in the race, federal authorities said Friday. William Braddock claimed in a recorded call with a local activist that he would send a Russian and Ukrainian hit squad to kill Anna Paulina Luna during the 2022 primary for a seat in the Clearwater area, the Department of Justice said. Luna went on to win the seat in the general election. Braddock, 41, was extradited from the Philippines, where he moved after the primary, on a…
NEW YORK — Scandal-fatigued voters will give former Gov. Andrew Cuomo a frosty reception if he runs for mayor to replace the indicted Eric Adams, a strategist for one of his potential Democratic rivals wrote Tuesday in a memorandum. The memo from Alyssa Cass, an adviser to ex-New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, details vulnerabilities that could hinder a Cuomo comeback — a bid-rigging scandal that roiled the Cuomo administration a decade ago, and his management of nursing home residents during Covid, for instance. “Before Cuomo even dips his toe into the race, the electoral water is ice cold,” Cass…
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) defended GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump saying the Russia-Ukraine war must end through negotiation in an interview Sunday rather than counting on a Ukrainian victory. “I’m not on Russia’s side — but unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement,” Rubio said in an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I want, and we want, and, I believe Donald Trump wants, for Ukraine to have more leverage in that negotiation.” Rubio, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee,…
It was a viral moment for a campaign that needed one: A chorus of boos greeting JD Vance as he spoke to a roomful of union firefighters in Boston, the same group that had warmly greeted Tim Walz a day earlier. But it was a fleeting moment for Walz and Kamala Harris. Despite the reception at the August convention, the International Association of Fire Fighters last week declined to endorse either candidate in the presidential race — a snub of the Walz-Harris campaign that underscores a much larger problem for the ticket. The move completely blindsided the vice president’s team.…
As many across the southeast struggle to dig out from Hurricane Helene and with Florida now bracing for Hurricane Milton, Donald Trump is making the storms a flashpoint in the presidential race. The former president has seized on the devastation left by Helene to launch a barrage of misinformation — including promoting false claims that FEMA spent disaster relief money on migrants that add to his already inflammatory rhetoric about immigration. Across visits to storm-torn states and through social media, he has cast Kamala Harris and the Biden administration as absent and incompetent in delivering aid even as members of…
New Quinnipiac University polls show Donald Trump gaining in the Rust Belt states central to Kamala Harris’ campaign, including taking a slight lead in Michigan. The polls, conducted Oct. 3-7 and released on Wednesday, found that in a hypothetical two-way match-up, Harris leads Trump by 3 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 49 percent support to 46 percent. Trump, meanwhile, leads by 3 percentage points in Michigan, 50 percent to 47 percent. The race is even closer in Wisconsin, with the candidates neck and neck: Trump at 48 percent and Harris at 46 percent. All three results are within the margins of…
Speaker Mike Johnson is blasting Democrats for being “hypocritical” when it comes to standing with Israel after Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Tuesday. The GOP leader kicked off a planned Tuesday speech before the New York Stock Exchange by calling on the Biden administration to send a clear message to Iran that their attacks against Israel won’t be tolerated. He urged the Biden administration “to fully enforce the Iran sanctions on the books and reimpose the U.N. sanctions lest they expire.” There are widespread concerns that the escalating battle between Israel and Iran could turn into an even broader international…
The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the government of Mexico can sue the leading gun manufacturers in the U.S. for allegedly fueling drug cartel violence south of the border. The justices announced Friday that they will hear the gunmakers’ challenge to an appeals court ruling that would allow the unusual, $10 billion lawsuit to proceed in federal court in Boston. A district court judge threw the case out two years ago, citing a 2005 law Congress passed to block an increasing number of suits seeking to hold gun manufacturers liable for violence and deaths involving firearms. However, the…
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson refused Sunday to condemn comments from former President Donald Trump and his family that suggest Democrats were behind assassination attempts on Trump. “I don’t think they’re saying that the Democratic Party tried an assassination attempt. I think what they’re alluding to is what they’ve all been saying. They have got to turn the rhetoric down,” Johnson said in an interview with host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” “For years now, the leading Democrats in this country, the highest elected officials and the current nominee for president have gone out and said that Donald…
Senate Republican spending is heavily concentrated in just a handful of races — a distribution that doesn’t match the reality of the battleground map. That dynamic is the result of poor fundraising from some key candidates and the party’s reliance on fickle big donors to close the gap. The playing field is ripe with inviting targets, but the advertising from the GOP and its allies is heavily lopsided instead of spread across them. And some of the places where they’re more involved are not the most obvious pickup opportunities. Instead, a combination of individual candidate strengths and weaknesses, donors’ preferences,…