Joe Biden

The mother of a 10-year-old Ohio girl was crossed state lines to obtain an abortion is now defending her daughter's alleged 27-year-old rapist, the New York Post reports.

The mother spoke to Telemundo behind the slightly opened door of her apartment, where the alleged rapist Gerson Fuentes also lives. He is an immigrant from Guatemala who is living in the country illegally.

On Friday, The Arizona Republic released a list of Republican candidates in the state of Arizona, up and down the ballot, known to deny or question the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"The results have been examined and re-examined, challenged in court and in a monthslong ballot review. No evidence has been found of widespread fraud or error in the results," said the report. "Yet candidates deny the outcome. Others don't quite go as far. But they raise questions about potential irregularities they say could have influenced the vote and should be examined. The Arizona Republic is listing candidates by category by the race that they are entered in. This list is not complete and will be updated throughout the 2022 election season."

The House select committee hearings have renewed questions about the security response to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The hearings have shown that multiple agencies received specific warnings about the potential for violence that day, but the response by federal agencies and law enforcement remained puzzlingly inadequate, and the revelation that the U.S. Secret Service deleted thousands of electronic communications from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, raises new questions.

Appearing on CNN's "New Day" on Friday morning, former House impeachment lead counsel Daniel Goldman cast a jaundiced eye at Secret Service claims that the only texts missing among agents occurred around Jan. 6, saying there is more to the story than government officials are letting on.

Joseph Cuffari, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress in the letter dated Wednesday that his office has had difficulties obtaining records from the Secret Service from January 5 and 6, 2021.

Joe Biden heads to Saudi Arabia for a two-day visit on Friday, as the war in Ukraine and the Middle East’s vexed geopolitics have prompted the US president to reverse course after having vowed to make the Wahhabist monarchy a “pariah” because of the 2018 killing of exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The US president illustrated the old foreign policy dilemma of realpolitik versus promoting human rights by writing an opinion piece for The Washington Post ahead of his trip: Saudi Arabia's "energy resources are vital for mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine. And a region that’s coming together through diplomacy and cooperation – rather than coming apart through conflict – is less likely to give rise to violent extremism,” Biden wrote.

On Friday, writing for The Bulwark, former Republican National Committee official and Jeb Bush strategist Tim Miller demolished the idea in some quarters of the Republican Party that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) would be a more norm-abiding alternative to former President Donald Trump.

"As for me, gun to my head, I’d side with the people saying DeSantis would be less of an existential threat," wrote Miller. "To be clear — saying someone is less of an existential threat to democracy than Donald Trump might be the faintest praise ever uttered in American politics. It doesn’t carry with it any rejection of the many legitimate concerns that we small-'l' liberals have about a potential DeSantis administration. It merely acknowledges that Trump’s psychopathy is so extreme as to put him in a category all of his own. And as such, anything that keeps him from darkening the halls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue again is almost certainly an improvement."

US Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller signaled Thursday he may support a full percentage point interest rate hike this month -- the biggest increase in more than 30 years and a further indication of the central bank's determination to crush sky-high inflation.

And although rising borrowing costs and blistering price surges have raised fears of recession, Waller said he believes the economy can avoid a downturn thanks to the strong US job market.

A who’s who of political conservatives – former federal judges, U.S. senators and GOP election lawyers – have issued a report that is the most extensive rebuttal yet of Donald Trump’s stolen election claims in six of 2020’s battleground states.

The report, “Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election,” refutes the 187 claims made in Trump’s 64 post-election lawsuits, as well as erroneous conclusions in several post-election reviews that pro-Trump state legislators outsourced to pro-Trump contractors. (Trump lost every lawsuit except one that involved a non-election issue.)

Leaked audio of Steve Bannon published earlier this week by Mother Jones confirms that days before the 2020 presidential election, Republican incumbent Donald Trump planned to prematurely declare victory on the night of November 3 regardless of whether it was true.

"What Trump's gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He's gonna declare victory. But that doesn't mean he's a winner," a chuckling Bannon told a group of associates on October 31, 2020. "He's just gonna say he's a winner."

Republican hopes of winning control of the U.S. Senate in the 2022 midterms may be dashed by the nominations of extremist candidates in GOP primaries.

"Top Republicans, once confident about winning control of the Senate in the midterms, fear they'll blow it after nominating several deeply flawed candidates in winnable states, according to conversations with GOP strategists, pollsters and other officials," Axios reported Thursday. "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been sounding this alarm for months: electing fringe candidates with checkered pasts could squander a golden chance to reclaim power."