California Gov. Gavin Newsom survived the effort to recall him from office, according to projections by NBC News and CNN.
Newsom had been joined on the campaign trail by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, a longtime personal friend whom he served alongside in San Francisco.
Republicans had pinned their hopes on Larry Elder, who preemptively pushed conspiracy theories about election fraud and had been closely linked to Donald Trump.
The race was called less than one hour after the polls closed.
BREAKING: California Gov. Gavin Newsom staves off recall effort, will stay in office, NBC News projects.… https://t.co/hp5bojhcC0— NBC News (@NBC News) 1631677137.0
CNN PROJECTION: California Gov. Gavin Newsom survives Republican-backed recall effort and will remain in office… https://t.co/MwtpjqNo8V— CNN Politics (@CNN Politics) 1631677137.0
EDITOR'S NOTE: The author of this story worked on political campaigns for Newsom when he was a local supervisor in San Francisco.
A 17-year-old girl in Iowa has been arrested after she contacted a parody "Hit Man" website with an apparently sincere attempt to have a 7-year-old child assassinated.
Local news station KCCI reports that police in Storm Lake, Iowa were contacted late last week by the owner of the "Rent-a-Hitman" parody website after they received a request to take out a child that included detailed information on their address and appearance.
Police proceeded to call up the teen girl who made the request while posing as a prospective assassin, and police subsequently determined she was serious enough about having the 7-year-old killed to warrant taking her into custody.
CBS News reports that police subsequently searched the teen girl's phone and deemed her threat to have the child killed as credible.
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The teenager has since been slapped with a felony charge of solicitation to commit murder.
Neither the targeted child nor their family were harmed in any way by the teen's assassination plot, police said.
A car dashcam video caught a man hurling a rock through a car’s windscreen as it was driven at speed along a Seattle highway, according to a report.
The thrower stepped towards the vehicle as it was driven on Interstate 5 late Saturday, according to the news website King 5. The rock left shards of glass showering onto the driver.
"It is a very scary moment. It's very disturbing. It's mentally very disturbing – maybe I'm not surviving today,” the driver, who gave his name as Soni, told K5.
"It is going to kill someone. It's going to cause a chain reaction. My two kids depend on me. So, it's going to destroy three lives in just seconds.”
Police told K5 nobody had been arrested.
The Democratic co-chair of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus challenged House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to act on his words after the Republican leader conceded Monday that there is wasteful spending at the Pentagon, which has never passed an independent audit.
"We need to get the efficiencies in the Pentagon," McCarthy toldCNN, criticizing GOP senators for seeking out ways to expand the military budget beyond the level set in the newly passed debt ceiling agreement.
"Think about it, $886 billion. You don't think there's waste? They failed the last five audits," said McCarthy. "I consider myself a hawk, but I don't want to waste money. So I think we've got to find efficiencies."
The $886 billion figure McCarthy referenced is the military spending topline for fiscal year 2024 that House Republican leaders and the Biden administration agreed to as part of their deal to raise the debt limit.
That spending level, which still must be finalized in the appropriations process, is right in line with President Joe Biden's budget request, which calls for a $28 billion increase over the current military budget of $858 billion.
McCarthy voted for that budget late last year even as critics condemned it as outrageously wasteful.
In response to McCarthy's CNN interview, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.)—who has been demanding cuts to Pentagon spending for years—tweeted that the Republican leader should finally "put his money where his mouth is and bring our 'Audit the Pentagon' bill to the floor."
"There is plenty of waste and fraud at the Pentagon," wrote Pocan, who co-chairs the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus alongside Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).
The bipartisan Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023 would "administer a 0.5% cut to the budget of any office at the Pentagon that does not receive an audit for the first year of the bill's enactment," according to a summary of the legislation. That penalty would rise to 1% in subsequent years, exempting "funding for personnel, families, and military healthcare" from automatic cuts.
Of the bill's 19 co-sponsors, eight are Republicans—though McCarthy is not one of them.
The speaker's remarks Monday came as war hawks in the Senate Republican caucus continued to express dismay over the military spending level set in the debt limit deal, even though it would bring the Pentagon budget to a record high while cutting spending on education, housing programs, and other critical services.
Under the agreement, which drew applause from the CEO of one of the world's leading weapons manufacturers, military outlays would account for nearly 56% of total discretionary spending. But that's apparently not enough for Senate Republicans.
"We're playing a dangerous game with our national security," claimed Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). "The bill [McCarthy] produced is inadequate to the threats we face. If the Republican speaker takes the position that we're going to be tough on China... I don't see how we do that with a declining Navy."
Graham and other Republican senators—along with Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.)—are "looking for creative ways to increase the Pentagon budget" beyond the $886 billion topline, Politicoreported last week.
"The most likely vehicle is the next emergency supplemental for Ukraine, which they hope to cram with cash for other Pentagon priorities that normally wouldn't be in the measure," according to Politico. "But doing so could also mean a partisan clash if Democrats oppose reopening the deal through a supplemental without some relief for domestic spending priorities."
The looming fight over Pentagon spending comes months after the Congressional Budget Office issued a report concluding that "the Department of Defense can't accurately account for or report on its physical assets or spending." The department has previously worked to cover up evidence of its massive waste, which is often a boon to arms makers.
Last month, a former top contract negotiator at the Pentagon toldCBS News that "the gouging that takes place" at the Defense Department "is unconscionable," with private companies dramatically overcharging the government for military equipment and other items.
Those comments led a group of senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), to demand a Pentagon investigation into price gouging by top government contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
"The DOD can no longer expect Congress or the American taxpayer to underwrite record military spending while simultaneously failing to account for the hundreds of billions it hands out every year to spectacularly profitable private corporations," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the Pentagon chief.
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