Trump News Today: Trump Attacks Transgender Rights As Nikki Haley Takes Over Former President In 2024 Race

Nikki Haley prepares to announce her 2024 presidential run against the former president in the White House race.

The former South Carolina governor and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations will formally run for office on February 15 in Charleston.

This would make her the first Republican to publicly admit that she is challenging Donald Trump.

It would also make her the third Indian-American in U.S. history to hold a White House bid.

Trump claimed Wednesday afternoon on Truth Social that an “invasion” was taking place on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Our southern border is overwhelmed at or near numbers never seen before,” he wrote.

“December had 251,487 encounters, four times the record. Our country is poisoned!” he added.

Former President Donald Trump has vowed to pursue medical staff who provide care for transgender children if he is re-elected.

In a video released Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said:

“Ridiculous. The process of administering puberty blockers to children, mutating their appearance, and finally performing surgery on minor children. Can you believe this?”

By this time four years ago, at least a dozen Democratic presidential candidates eager to make a case against Donald Trump have either visited Iowa or are in the leadoff voting states ahead of the 2020 election. announced plans to visit

This year’s Iowa campaign looks markedly different, with Republican constituencies appearing frozen after Trump’s early announcement of his 2024 campaign. So far, only former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has visited this year, with South Carolina Senator Tim Scott planning a stopover in the coming weeks.

Even Trump, who is currently the only declared candidate in the 2024 election, is absent from Iowa and will instead start his campaign in two other early voting states, New Hampshire and South Carolina, this weekend. I chose to

With Iowa holding the nation’s first GOP caucuses just a year late, the field of White House candidates has been largely content to avoid chilling Iowa. Announced a bid for the former president.

Alan Ostergren, a Des Moines Republican attorney involved in Republican politics, said, “No one wants to stand on their own against Trump.” , no one wants to go first.”

The new Democratic head of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday asked for more information about classified records found in the personal possessions of Presidents Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Rep. Jim Hymes of Connecticut was named a key member of the committee on Wednesday by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. With the commission’s new Republican chairman, Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, Hymes is moving away from the traditionally silent oversight of the U.S. spy agency to create a panel divided by highly political battles. lead.

Turner and Senate Intelligence Committee leaders have been pressuring the White House in recent weeks to privately share more of the classified material discovered. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the review of the classified material, which is also the subject of multiple Justice Department investigations.

“There is a strong bipartisan concern that Congress has not been briefed on even the prior review of classified information that may have been released,” Hymes said in an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday. It’s wrong. It’s wrong as a law.”

The Intelligence Committee has this year witnessed everything from multiple discoveries of the supreme leader holding classified documents to a dispute over whether to renew foreign surveillance powers used by the FBI, the National Security Agency, and other spy agencies. , has already faced some major challenges.

House Republicans Wednesday focused on what Watchdog described as “signs of widespread fraud” in the federal coronavirus aid program launched under President Donald Trump, citing the Biden administration’s promised aggressiveness. started monitoring.

Republican lawmakers complained that little attention was paid to the issue when Democrats dominated Congress.

More than 1,000 people have pleaded guilty or have been convicted of defrauding the myriad COVID-19 relief programs that Congress established early in the pandemic. He also faces federal fraud charges against more than 600 individuals and entities.

But that’s just the beginning, according to investigators who testified when the House Oversight Responsibility Committee held its first hearing in the new Congress on fraud and waste in federal pandemic spending. Congress approved about $4.6 trillion in spending from six coronavirus relief bills starting March 2020 when Trump was in the White House, a $1.9 trillion package Democrats passed in the first months of Biden’s presidency. Including.

Committee Chairman Rep. James Cumer, R-Ky.

Former President Donald Trump’s political campaign began the year by spending about $25 million for the recently launched 2024 presidential election.

The reduction spread across the four election commissions is well below the $105 million Trump reported in early 2022. It becomes a dense field of Republican candidates vying for campaign funds from party donors.

Since opening the bidding on Nov. 15, Trump has raised $9.5 million across his political committee, including key campaign funds, according to his campaign. — way back when he was still president.