National Politics

Republican Rep. George Santos of New York told GOP colleagues in a closed-door meeting Tuesday that he is temporarily stepping down from his two congressional committees.

The presidential campaign landscape in Iowa is markedly different this year compared with four years ago. In 2019, at least a dozen Democratic hopefuls eager to make their case against the Republican incumbent, Donald Trump, had either visited Iowa or had announced plans to visit soon. This year, Republicans considering a challenge to Democrat Joe Biden seem frozen by Trump’s early announcement of a 2024 campaign. With Iowa’s first-in-the-nation GOP caucuses just a year off, the field of would-be White House candidates has largely been content to steer clear of the state. Even Trump has been absent from Iowa, choosing instead to kickstart his campaign last weekend in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has won her bid to lead the GOP for two more years. McDaniel prevailed Friday over Donald Trump attorney Harmeet Dhillon in a high-profile election that highlighted fierce internal divisions that threaten to plague the party into the next presidential season. While Donald Trump privately backed McDaniel, powerful forces from within his “Make America Great Again” movement lined up behind Dhillon. The victory makes McDaniel the longest-serving RNC chair since the Civil War, yet friends and foes alike agree that she will not be leading the RNC from a position of strength.

They are now among the most powerful women in Congress. But when they were first elected in the 1990s, they were often overlooked, or even talked down to.

For the second time this month, House Republicans have advanced a measure to restrict presidential use of the nation’s emergency oil stockpile — a proposal that has already drawn a White House veto threat. A GOP bill approved Friday would require the government to offset any non-emergency withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with new drilling on public lands and oceans. Republicans accuse President Joe Biden of abusing the reserve for political reasons to keep gas prices low, while Biden says tapping the reserve was needed last year in response to a ban on Russian oil imports following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The bill was approved on a near party-line vote. It now heads to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it is expected to languish.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is reiterating that he will block Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California from serving on the House committee that oversees national intelligence. He says the decision is not based on political payback but because “integrity matters, and they have failed in that place.” In the previous Congress, Democrats booted Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona from their committee assignments for incendiary commentary that lawmakers said incited potential violence against colleagues. McCarthy insists he is putting national security over partisan politics. But the Democratic lawmakers targeted say he has “capitulated to the right wing of his caucus."

The verdict comes weeks after a different jury convicted two leaders of the extremist group in the mob’s attack that halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

A political newcomer who lost his bid for the New Mexico Statehouse and is accused of orchestrating a series of drive-by shootings at the homes of Democratic officials will remain behind bars pending trial.