SmartNews

A Texas congressman dodged questions about Ken Paxton's scandals on Wednesday, pivoting to culture war attacks on the Democrat who will face the newly minted GOP Senate nominee in November.

The confrontation came on the Charlie Kirk Show, where host Andrew Kolvet pressed Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) to respond to critics — including New York Times conservative columnist David French — who argued that Republican primary voters actively embrace corruption rather than merely tolerate it.

Republicans have indicated they intend to portray Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico as a "freak," but he pushed back strongly against his GOP rival in Texas, Ken Paxton.

The Donald Trump-endorsed Texas attorney general Paxton slurred the state legislator as "Tala-freako" in his victory speech after beating Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in a closely watched GOP runoff election.Talarico leveled an attack of his own after Paxton and other Republicans smeared him in thinly veiled homophobic language.

As Israel launched a new bombardment of Lebanon on Tuesday, its far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, suggested that it was trying to derail ongoing peace negotiations between US President Donald Trump and Iran.

During a press briefing on Tuesday, the influential politician railed against the possibility of a deal to end the war as it neared the three-month mark and said the whole Israeli Cabinet was in agreement.

President Donald Trump celebrated the victory of his hand-picked Senate candidate on Wednesday – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton – who he endorsed over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), but in doing so he's grown an army of GOP “apostates” in Congress perfectly poised to undercut his agenda.

The dynamic was highlighted Wednesday in an analysis published in The Washington Post, where chief political correspondent Karen Tumulty noted that Trump has increasingly engaged in what she characterized as a risky strategy.

Approximately 15 minutes into Donald Trump's rambling televised Cabinet meeting, MS NOW host Chris Jansing and her producers pulled the plug and called out the president for his boasts and lies about his direct-to-consumer drug program.

As the president jumped from topic to topic, the he eventually boasted, “You remember, some of you were at the news conference I had my first term where I got the prices down one eighth of a percent, one quarter, one eighth of a percent, my first term and I'm so proud of it because prices, drug prices hadn't come down in 28 years. And I was the first one to do it.”

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis presented himself as a martyr to free speech after the state Democratic Party censured him for springing an election denier from jail before her sentence ended.

The Democratic governor granted clemency to former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted in 2024 for allowing unauthorized individuals to access her office's election system looking for fraud in the 2020 presidential contest, and a Colorado Sun political reporter flagged his appearance Wednesday in a party call.

President Donald Trump spent roughly 10 minutes of a high-stakes cabinet meeting on Wednesday — convened amid delicate negotiations to end the U.S. war with Iran — ranting about his efforts to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, falsely claiming predecessors wasted "hundreds of millions" on the landmark and repeatedly comparing it to a swimming pool.

"From 1922 on, it really never worked," Trump told cabinet members, calling the pool — which he repeatedly referred to as a "reflecting lake" — an embarrassment. "It was filthy dirty. It was Biden."

A controversial agreement granting Donald Trump immunity from IRS audits may ultimately prove worthless, according to University of Baltimore School of Law Professor Kim Wehle, who argues in a new column that it may not stand up to legal scrutiny under what are called "creative crimes."

As part of a settlement with Trump over a leaked tax return lawsuit, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on an addendum granting the president sweeping tax protections. The IRS agreed to drop all pending audits of Trump — potentially saving him an estimated $100 million in liability — and the one-page document declared the U.S. government is "forever barred and precluded" from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization's tax filings.

President Donald Trump had his third hospital visit in 13 months on Tuesday – purportedly for a medical and dental checkup – but despite declaring himself to be in "perfect" health after the exam, prominent physician Vin Gupta flagged a telling omission in the president's lab results on Wednesday that raised questions about his condition.

“What we see with our own eyes is difficult to ignore: his day-to-day performance as president, and often he’s falling asleep at these major Oval Office events,” Gupta, who frequently appears on MS NOW as a medical analyst, said in a video published Wednesday by Zeteo. “He seems like he has a lot of daytime somnolence.”