Contributing Writers

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz endorsed Donald Trump for president Tuesday night and called for the country to unify behind the Republican frontrunner. “I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for President of the United States,” Cruz said on “Hannity.” “I look forward to supporting him enthusiastically.” Cruz, who fiercely battled Trump in the 2016 election primaries, argued that the results of the Iowa caucuses showed there is only one viable Republican nominee.

Former President Trump is already teasing a potential role on his team for former GOP rival Vivek Ramaswamy at a New Hampshire rally on Tuesday following Monday’s Iowa caucuses. Just one day after suspending his own presidential campaign, Ramaswamy appeared alongside Trump in Atkinson and expressed his full support for the GOP frontrunner.

Top Republicans in the Georgia House want to boost funding for its prekindergarten program by more than $100 million, raising teacher salaries, providing money for building classrooms and spending more on operations. “We’ve got to continue to up our game,” House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, a Milton Republican who led a study of Georgia’s prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds.

Wisconsin’s powerful Republican Assembly leader said Tuesday that he hopes the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court adopts new constitutional legislative boundary maps, even as he slammed proposals from Democrats as “a political gerrymander” and threatened an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court tossed Republican-drawn maps, long considered among the country’s most favorable to the GOP, and ordered new maps that do not favor one party over another.

Republicans who control the Wisconsin state Senate voted Tuesday to fire a state utility regulator because he supports setting energy rates according to customers’ ability to pay and opening up the solar energy sector. The Senate voted 21-11 to reject Public Service Commissioner Tyler Huebner’s confirmation. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers appointed him to the commission in March 2020 and again in March 2021.

Former President Bill Clinton was spotted vacationing in Mexico last week with California Gov. Gavin Newsom amid the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related court documents that have thrust the former president back in the spotlight.  Clinton was seen with Newsom, a Democrat, at the Four Seasons Resort in Tamarindo, Mexico, on Friday, the New York Post reported. One image obtained by the newspaper shows the pair riding in a golf cart.

Former first lady Melania Trump announced the passing of her mother, Amalija Knavs, on Tuesday. “It is with deep sadness that I announce the passing of my beloved mother, Amalija,” the former first lady wrote in a X post. Trump called her mother “strong” and “entirely devoted” to her family. “Amalija Knavs was a strong woman who always carried herself with grace, warmth, and dignity,” Trump wrote.

With six days to go until Iowa’s caucuses kick off the Republican presidential nominating calendar, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis no longer predicts victory and instead vows that “we’re going to do well here.” DeSantis, at a Fox News town hall on Tuesday in Iowa’s capital and largest city, emphasized that the battle for the GOP nomination “is a long process” and pledged that he’s “in it for the long haul.

Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis’ rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination took aim at the populist presidential candidate after his Tuesday town hall event. DeSantis joined Fox News for a town hall event in the Hawkeye State ahead of the famous Iowa Caucus, where the governor spoke on inflation and government accountability and took questions from the audience.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul outlined her agenda for 2024 in a State of the State address on Tuesday, with the Democrat focusing on public safety and housing ahead of a pivotal election season in a state whose races could determine control of Congress. Among the proposals announced were policies aimed at curbing retail theft and improving mental health treatment, as well as funding and incentives to increase the housing supply.

The Democratic National Committee called the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s upcoming primary process “detrimental.” The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee co-chairs Minyon Moore and James Roosevelt Jr. wrote in a letter to the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s chair, Raymond Buckley, that “The event on January 23, 2024 cannot be used as the first determining stage of the state’s delegate selection process and is considered detrimental.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley raised a few eyebrows this weekend from conservatives, after the former South Carolina governor made a comment about changing “personalities” while discussing the upcoming Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.  “The structure of it is really amazing,” Haley told an interviewer on a local Iowa PBS station last week of the GOP primary process. “Iowa starts it. You change personalities, you go into New Hampshire.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy asserted that he and former President Donald Trump are the only two candidates with an American First agenda. At a town hall in Marengo, Iowa on Saturday, the 38-year-old entrepreneur said that he and Trump are the only two “America First” candidates on the Republican ballot. “I think there’s two America first candidates in this race,” Ramaswamy said. “That’s Donald Trump and me.

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin needs to explain why the White House and senior officials weren’t immediately notified that he’d been hospitalized earlier this week until days later, amid a complex time as the Biden administration deals with a slew of national security matters abroad.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is threatening to remove President Biden from the election ballot as other states make efforts to disqualify former President Trump from securing a second term over his actions during the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.  The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether Trump can appear on Republican primary ballots in Colorado after the state Supreme Court ruled he couldn’t, citing the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.