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South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem was in political freefall Friday as embarrassing revelations continued to emerge from the scrutiny of advance copies of her memoir, which doesn’t officially publish until Tuesday.

Noem was already reeling from near-universal backlash against her disclosure in the book that she shot and killed a dog named Cricket and a billy goat years ago — the dog for its failures on a hunting excursion and its attacks on a neighbor’s chickens, and the goat for chasing after Noem’s children and smelling bad.

The Trump campaign and its Republican allies on Friday filed a lawsuit challenging Nevada’s ballot receipt deadline.

Nevada law allows for mail ballots postmarked on Election Day to be accepted and counted if they are received by county election officials within four days. This year, Election Day is Nov. 5, meaning ballots postmarked on or before that date must be accepted and counted if they are received by election offices by 5 p.m. on Nov. 9.

A new motion by Donald Trump's legal team to get the charges against their client in the stolen Mar-a-Lago documents case dismissed over accusations of selective prosecution is doomed based upon the unique circumstances of the case.

That is the opinion of University of Texas School of Law professor Steve Vladeck in an opinion piece for MSNBC where he suggested Judge Aileen Cannon will now be put on the spot to dismiss it or come up with a rationale to agree with Trump's lawyers.

Republican Georgia Congressman Mike Collins came under fire Friday over a social media post applauding video of white University of Mississippi students racially abusing a Black woman participating in a campus protest for Palestine.

Collins posted the video—in which numerous people can be heard grunting like apes and one young man is seen jumping up and down like a monkey in front of the Black woman—with the caption, "Ole Miss taking care of business."

Nearly two weeks after the British Conservative Party pushed through a proposal to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda in what one lawyer called "performative cruelty" in the name of winning the general election expected later this year, the local election results announced throughout the day Friday made increasingly clear the ploy hadn't worked.

Elections expert John Curtice projected the Tories could ultimately lose up to 500 local council seats as vote counting continues into the weekend, following elections in which voters cast ballots for 2,661 seats.

LIVINGSTON, Texas — Clinton Jones looked across the emergency shelter Friday. His children were going stir crazy. His wife, Samantha, and mother-in-law, Lee Farrell, were making the best of the cots and blankets they received from the Red Cross.

The 27-year-old’s family was one of thousands who fled their Southeast Texas homes as heavy rains saturated land in multiple counties and filled lakes and streams. An unknown total of homes, businesses and other property has been damaged this week by unrelenting storms stretching across Polk, Montgomery, Harris and other counties.

Thunderstorms will wrack the region throughout Saturday, and showers are likely on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. Conditions along the Trinity River, which runs through Polk County, have become too dangerous for first responders to access, according to Polk County Emergency Management. Flooding has begun to encroach on subdivisions surrounding the lake to the East and West, evacuation crews began making their final calls for people seeking assistance.

Jones’ family home sat to the south of Lake Livingston, in the river bottoms of Coldspring, the San Jacinto County seat. It was overtaken by water shortly after the family left and Jones found safe harbor for their animals, his neighbors told him.

Much of the county was still underwater Friday as crews pulled stranded residents from their homes and roadways.

His family sat among dozens of evacuees who rested on cots and sat around plastic folding tables in Dunbar Gym, a makeshift shelter in an old school building. Many were elderly or infirm, few spoke English or were comfortable telling their stories.

[How the flooding in Southeast Texas got so dire]

Lunch was late, but it would be coming soon. Jones' 3-year-old son, the youngest, finally fell asleep, exhausted after a night of missing his bed and crying for his toys. They don’t know what to tell him about their home.

“We lost everything,” Jones said. “We lost everything we owned: beds, dressers, clothes, the kid’s toys.”

Thunder echoed through the shelter and the sounds of rain were amplified. It scared Jones’ other children, who, at that point, had already fled the storms twice. Their first refuge was a vacant home their friend owned. But the water quickly reached the doors and windows.

Jones was trying to hold it together, but worry lined his face and tears were near at hand as he spoke about their escape to Livingston.

He saved most of their important documents and salvaged some clothes so their kids would have something clean to wear. Warm in the shelter, the children remained barefoot. Their shoes were all lost.

Jones sat next to his son on a folding chair, Samantha stepped forward to offer him what comfort she could. He pressed his face into her stomach as she stroked his hair. Eventually his arms rose to wrap around her waist and they held each other.

Outside, the day grew sunny and the heat set in. But the damage of the last few days lingered and the rain will return before long.

Jones doesn’t know where his family will go when Monday comes, hopefully bringing sunny skies and clear weather.

For most of East Texas, the rains began in early April and they just kept coming. Until Sunday, many locals felt confident they could brave the weather. This is just what East Texas does in the spring, it’s usually rainy and wet, the mosquitos and cicadas begin to emerge and soon the fireflies will too. It’s nearly boating season and time to complain about the heat.

But on Sunday, the fear began to set in for those living below Lake Livingston as the Trinity River Authority announced it would increase the amount of water released at the dam. Polk County leadership recommended residents evacuate, but the situation was not dire yet.

On Monday the county declared a disaster. By that afternoon, orders came from local officials to evacuate. Few listened. And as the rains worsened Wednesday and Thursday, first responders were called in to pull people from the water.

Then, the city of Livingston, population 5,784, which sits east, not south, of the lake, flooded.

The small town is formed around a small valley, its slight bowl shape sent the water directly to the city’s center.

Trash, personal belongings, street signs and pieces of homes and businesses littered driveways and grassy lawns of the small town. Creek beds were washed out and businesses along Washington Avenue saw anywhere from six inches of water to three feet.

A small resale shop was destroyed, its windows busted out, shelves and display cases filled with mud or tossed into the parking lot out front. People with white trash bags picked through the rubbish and walked away with pairs of cowboy boots, jackets and other supplies.

Downtown Livingston traffic flowed Friday afternoon as small-business owners assessed the damage to their buildings and homeowners began to clean up their yards. Water slowly receded along U.S. Highway 59, but was closed in places between Livingston and Houston, about an hour and a half south.

Isis Martin, 56, was grateful her little sewing shop, I.M Sew Happy, was located a little ways up the hill, further from the city’s center. It still took on four to six inches of water in places but escaped the damage felt by her fellow business owners.

Martin’s home survived the storms as it sits on a hill. Water may run down the lawn, but it doesn’t stay there. She knew the biggest concern was her little sewing shop and spent hours on Thursday trying to get past police blockades to check on it. It took eight hours to do so.

“This is how I support my family,” Martin said. “I have an 18-year-old son at home who’s still in high school. I have a 10-year-old niece and a disabled brother, he’s a double amputee. We all rely on this business to run. So if it’s not running, we’re not surviving.”

Martin and her friend Keith Rippy, 67, spent Friday morning scraping mud from the floors, removing carpet and assessing damage. All of the outlets her sewing machines were plugged into had been submerged, and she was waiting to see what damage the machines took on.

Livingston is her home, and she wouldn’t give it up for the world. Even throughout all of this, her network of friends and other small business owners have stepped up for each other. She monitors their social media in case they need anything she can provide, and is confident they’re doing the same.

Martin prays she can reopen safely on Monday and resume work. She, and the town, are strong enough to withstand this storm.

Mysterious lights following a motorist on a dark country road, a saucer-shaped craft hovering over a suburban subdivision, and a flaming orb falling into the woods are among phenomena Pennsylvania residents have reported to authorities, state records show.

After the head of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) casually mentioned during a legislative hearing earlier this year that the agency tracks UFO sightings, the Capital-Star obtained records showing PEMA has investigated more than a dozen such events in the last decade.

In his bid for a third term, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is hoping to cross the finish line by making overtures to voters he hasn't previously engaged with: Democrats. His 2024 Democratic opponent isn't impressed by the gesture.

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cruz is hoping to attract more suburban-dwelling Democratic voters to win reelection. In more recent campaign appearances, Texas' junior U.S. senator has been actively rebranding himself as a bipartisan dealmaker not afraid to reach across the aisle to deliver for constituents on issues like immigration. One campaign ad Cruz is running this cycle features "Democrats for Cruz," featuring voices described as "local elected officials, law enforcement, business owners and industry advocates, who back Cruz in his reelection campaign."

Former White House adviser Hope Hick's testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial was a "devastating" blow to his defense on the 34 felony count trial that wrapped up its second week of testimony on Friday.

That is the opinion of Norm Eisen, who assisted the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of then-President Donald Trump.

Reacting to recent comments from Donald Trump that he may not accept the results of the 2024 presidential election if he loses to President Joe Biden, former RNC chair Michael Steele went on an extensive tirade on Saturday morning accusing the former president of weakness.

Steele, who now co-hosts MSNBC's "The Weekend," jumped on comments the former president made in an interview with Time, where he admitted when it comes to the election results, "... if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”

According to multiple legal observers, prosecutors overseeing the 34-felony count hush money trial of Donald Trump in a Manhattan courtroom are doing an excellent job of getting the jury's attention after two weeks of testimony.

With the testimony of former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and ex-White House aide Hope Hicks, members of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office have brought to the forefront the more lurid elements of the case that involves not only paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election, but also how the former president worked hand-in-hand with Pecker to smear his rivals.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon still hasn't set a trial date in former President Donald Trump's classified documents case in the Southern District of Florida. And a date could be even further off after new allegations leveled by a member of Trump's defense team.

The Daily Beast reported that Stanley Woodward — an attorney for Trump "body man" Walt Nauta — is alleging "vindictive prosecution" by Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith. This stems from an incident in which prosecutor Jay Bratt, who is working under Smith, reportedly implied that Woodward's representation of Nauta could complicate a possible judicial appointment in Washington, D.C. courts. Defense lawyers also say that Bratt engaged in a "campaign of intimidation and harassment" against Woodward to exert pressure.