Southwest
Veteran and astronaut Mark Kelly went into politics after wife Gabby Giffords was shot
Astronaut, author and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., appeared to be a top contender as Vice President Kamala Harris’ Democratic running mate pick at least as of Monday morning — and if he were yet to be picked, could bring a dramatic life story to the ticket.
Harris is aiming to defeat Republican former President Donald Trump and his vice-presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, in the race to take the Oval Office.
Kelly enjoyed the triumph of rocketing into space four times as a NASA astronaut — and also suffered gut-wrenching tragedy when his wife, former Arizona U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, was shot in the head in a 2011 assassination attempt.
JD VANCE’S HOMETOWN OF MIDDLETOWN, OHIO WAS BUILT BY STEEL INDUSTRY: WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT IT
He shared details of his life as an author of two books written with Giffords (he’s also the author of four astronaut-themed children’s books).
“Whether it was from my time in the Navy and at NASA, serving in the United States Senate, or visiting our troops overseas: I’ve learned that when your country asks you to serve, you always answer the call,” Kelly posted to X on Sunday, leading many to think she could be adding him to the ticket.
Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to swear in Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., with his wife Gabrielle Giffords in the old Senate chamber for the Ceremonial Swearing on Jan. 3, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
The choice of picks appeared to be narrowing down quickly on Monday.
Kelly was born in New Jersey in 1964.
He flew 39 missions as a U.S. Navy aviator during the Gulf War, and served aboard four space shuttle missions, two as commander of the spacecraft.
KAMALA HARRIS IN HER OWN BOOK REVEALS 12 THINGS AMERICANS MUST KNOW ABOUT HER
He defeated Republican incumbent Martha McSally to win his Senate seat in 2020.
Kelly and Giffords married on Nov. 10, 2007. She was nearly murdered little more than three years later, on Jan. 6, 2011, while greeting constituents in Tucson, Arizona.
Commander Mark Kelly, right, is assisted by United Space Alliance suit technician Andre Denard prior to the April 2011 launch of space shuttle Endeavour. (NASA via Getty Images)
“Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope,” released at the end of 2011, chronicled their journey together before and then after the tragedy, which ended Giffords’ political career.
AMERICAN CULTURE QUIZ: HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW STATE LINES, FELINES AND AMAZING US GRAPEVINES
“Gabby always loved playing with my wedding ring,” Kelly writes. “At almost every meal, she’d slip the ring off my finger and move it from her thumb to her forefinger to her middle finger. It was her little ritual, her way of fidgeting.”
“Her eyes remained closed, tubes were everywhere …”
That ritual proved the first sign of hope as she lay unconscious five days after she was nearly killed.
“Suddenly, as she held my hand … she actually pulled the ring off and began to move it around in her fingers, just like always … Her eyes remained closed, tubes were everywhere, but she was somehow able to direct the fingers of her one good hand to rediscover her old pastime.”
He added, “I was more than surprised. I was overwhelmed.”
Gabby Giffords, former representative from Arizona, left, and Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, in Statuary Hall ahead of a State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, March 7, 2024. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Just four months after his wife was nearly murdered, Kelly was “awaiting the last launch of the space shuttle Endeavour.”
Kelly was the commander of the spacecraft, which proved to be the last mission into space for both the Endeavour and for Kelly.
For more Lifestyle articles, visit foxnews.com/lifestyle
Kelly and Giffords tackled the experience from a more politically entangled in “Enough: Our Fight to Keep America Safe from Gun Violence,” which they co-authored with Harry Jaffe in 2014.
Sen. Mark Kelly and Vice President Kamala Harris. Kelly was considered a finalist as a vice presidential pick for the 2024 Democratic ticket. (Getty Images)
The book is framed, of course, by the horrific shooting in Tucson, when a man unleashed a torrent of bullets from a handgun.
Giffords survived. But six people were killed and 15 others were wounded.
“Gabby and I fear the country has veered off course when it comes to one important issue: how we relate to guns,” the couple wrote in the book.
“A basic freedom that both Gabby and I wholeheartedly embrace, the right to bear arms, has become radicalized.”
Read the full article from Here
Southwest
MIKE DAVIS: Driving a stake through 2020 election lawfare
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
The 2020 election ended six years ago. Yet, two power-hungry Democrat attorneys general up for re-election next year, Kris Mayes of Arizona and Josh Kaul of Wisconsin, persist in their lawfare against Trump supporters who lawfully challenged the election. These disgraceful cases must end immediately.
President Trump and many supporters found numerous discrepancies with the 2020 election. They challenged the results in several closely-contested states. The First Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 permitted such challenges — just like Democrats challenged Republican presidential wins in 1968, 2000, 2004 and 2016. Leftists maliciously alleged that the challengers submitted “fake electors” as part of the effort to overturn certified results in these states.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul weigh next steps in their 2020 fake elector prosecutions. (Mario Tama/Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Democratic Party of Wisconsin)
This is utter nonsense. No one was duped by the intent of these alternate electors. Rudy Giuliani didn’t have the “real” electors tied up in his trunk while sending in the “fake” electors.
The slates of electors submitted were alternate electors in the event that, on Jan. 6, 2021, Congress sustained objections to the certification of electors in the contested states.
SOCIAL MEDIA ERUPTS AS RESURFACED AG JAMES POSTS COME BACK TO HAUNT HER: ‘NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW’
In 2022, Democrat Mayes defeated Republican Abraham Hamadeh by less than 300 votes to become attorney general of Arizona. She immediately started pursuing illegal lawfare against Trump supporters. Mark Brnovich, the previous attorney general, took no action against those who had disputed the 2020 election, because he recognized that they had committed no crimes. Mayes didn’t care and sought indictments against the eleven Arizona alternate electors and seven other defendants, including Mike Roman, President Trump’s campaign head of operations on election day.
Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani speaks during a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Washington, Dec. 15, 2023. (Jose Luis Magana, File/The Associated Press)
A Maricopa County trial court correctly threw out the indictment and ordered Mayes to seek a new one. Mayes had not provided the grand jury with the full text of the Electoral Count Act, a complicated and arcane statute that has direct bearing on the case. If the statute permitted the defendants’ actions, the state cannot sustain its case. Federal election law preempts state law with respect to federal elections. The statute was so complex that Congress amended it a few years ago through the Electoral Count Reform Act.
Mayes scurried to the Arizona Court of Appeals. That court wisely declined to hear her appeal. Now, she has petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court for review. The justices should follow the sage lead of the appellate court and decline to hear Mayes’ appeal.
JONATHAN TURLEY: FANI WILLIS’ CASE AGAINST TRUMP COLLAPSES UNDER ITS OWN INSANITY
Mayes is the same prosecutor who threatened to investigate President Trump for a supposed death threat against former Rep. Liz Cheney — a Trump-deranged RINO — during a campaign rally in Phoenix. Trump, of course, made no such threat, and Mayes abandoned her stunt shortly after the president’s resounding victory last November.
Wisconsin also suffers from a partisan Democrat attorney general seeking re-election. In 2024, nearly four years after the conclusion of the 2020 election, Kaul, a radical leftist like Mayes, obtained indictments against three defendants, including Roman and two of Trump’s attorneys.
The facts were the same as in Arizona, except that Kaul did not charge the 10 Wisconsin alternate electors. The defendants are now facing a preliminary hearing in Dane County, a leftist bastion home to the state capital and the ultra-liberal University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they are hard-pressed to find a fair and impartial jury.
MIKE DAVIS: AFTER TRUMP CASE COLLAPSES, TIME FOR FANI WILLIS TO LAWYER UP
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Dec. 15. One defendant has sought to disqualify Judge John Hyland, alleging that a retired judge named Frank Remington wrote the opinion denying a defense motion to dismiss. The recusal motion included support from a Georgetown expert who concluded that, based on writing styles, Remington had written the opinion. Hyland denied the motion to recuse and asserted that he had written the opinion.
President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Washington, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, and War Secretary Pete Hegseth. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)
Regardless of how the preliminary hearing goes, the case should end. Kaul brought the charges, after the facts were known for four years, in the middle of the 2024 election, in which Wisconsin was a pivotal swing state. We cannot criminalize politics.
There was another prosecutorial embarrassment who brought charges against a slew of defendants over the 2020 election in Georgia: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Her case got derailed when it became public, thanks to Roman’s attorney Ashleigh Merchant, that Willis was having an affair with one of the special prosecutors she had hired, Nathan Wade, who received nearly $700,000 courtesy of the taxpayers of Fulton County. Wade spent much of it on Willis, treating her to lavish global trips. The lovers claimed Willis had reimbursed Wade, but there was no corroborating evidence. Georgia courts disqualified Willis, and a special prosecutor who replaced her dismissed the case earlier this month.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Lawfare Democrats failed to lock up, bankrupt, or defeat Trump electorally. They are trying to get one last pound of flesh from some of the president’s former aides and supporters. If Mayes and Kaul do not follow the Georgia special prosecutor’s stellar example and drop their sham cases, the courts in Arizona and Wisconsin should.
The Justice Department also should pursue charges against these affronts to the legal profession for conspiracy to violate the civil rights of these lawfare victims under 18 U.S.C. § 241. After all, as we heard so much during the lawfare campaign against President Trump, no one is above the law.
Read the full article from Here
Southwest
Oklahoma man accused of threatening federal agents online
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released an image Friday showing a suspect accused of threatening federal agents being taken into custody by an officer from Homeland Security Investigations.
The agency said, “Threatening to assault, murder or interfere with a federal agent is a FELONY.”
“Logan Murfin of Tulsa, OK, has been charged with ten counts after posting on social media that federal agents need to be gunned down, shot & executed,” ICE wrote on X.
“Welcome to the find out stage, Logan,” it added.
SANCTUARY POLITICIANS’ RHETORIC LED TO 1,150% SURGE IN VIOLENCE AGAINST ICE AGENTS: DHS
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shared an image Friday of suspect Logan Murfin being taken into custody, after he allegedly threatened federal agents on social media. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images; ICE)
The image shows Murfin being detained by a federal officer. In the background is a holiday decoration with the message “Season’s Greetings.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma said Thursday that Murfin is charged with five counts of threatening to assault and murder federal law enforcement officers with intent to impede, intimidate, interfere and retaliate and five counts of interstate communication with a threat to injure.
SENATOR WARNS OF ‘POWDER KEG’ AS PEOPLE CONDONE BEHAVIOR OF ANTI-ICE PROTESTERS
Federal agents search for undocumented immigrants on Nov. 17, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (Ryan Murphy/Getty Images)
“According to court documents, Murfin knowingly posted several threatening and intimidating statements on social media advocating for the assault and murder of federal agents,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Federal agents detain a person after attending a court hearing at immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York City on July 1, 2025. (Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
“He stated that federal agents need to be gunned down, shot, and executed. Further, Murfin encouraged people to stay armed and to kill agents when seen because the agents don’t deserve to live,” it added.
Read the full article from Here
Southwest
Republicans protest double standard after judges call Texas redistricting plan ‘racially gerrymandered’
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Republicans are accusing federal judges and Democrats of a double standard — arguing that they are branded racist for redrawing political maps while Democrats face no scrutiny for doing the same in blue states like California and Illinois.
“For years, Democrats have engaged in partisan redistricting intended to eliminate Republican representation. But when Republicans respond in kind, Democrats rely on false accusations of racism to secure a partisan advantage,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued on Tuesday.
Paxton made the comments after a trio of federal judges delivered a ruling that blocked Texas from using a new congressional map drawn by Republicans earlier this year which would have created up to five more right-leaning U.S. House districts. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map,” the judges said in the majority opinion. “But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”
Republicans found this reasoning as hypocritical.
“Both parties are redistricting to increase their political advantages, but only one party is being accused of doing it for nefarious reasons. It’s a double standard and I think most voters can see that,” veteran Republican strategist and communicator Ryan Williams told Fox News Digital. “The parties are simply trying to increase their representation in Congress.”
FEDERAL JUDGES BLOCK TEXAS FROM USING REDRAWN CONGRESSIONAL MAP
Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general, during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 16, 2024. (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
HOUSE DEM, 79, INDICATES HE MAY NOT RETIRE AFTER JUDGES STRIKE DOWN TEXAS CONGRESSIONAL MAP
The distinction between political and racial motivations for redistricting is crucially important. That’s because of a Supreme Court ruling that emphasizes states cannot allow race to be the main reason for redrawing district lines. But the ruling gives states a green light when it comes to political motivations.
Paxton is appealing the ruling, which will head to the Supreme Court.
And Republican Gov. Greg Abbott also sharply criticized the ruling, saying in a statement that Texas legislators “redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences — and for no other reason.”
“Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during 10 days of hearings,” Abbott argued.
TRUMP TARGETS RED STATE REPUBLICANS IN PUSH TO REDRAW CONGRESSIONAL MAPS
But the ruling suggested that in calling on Texas state lawmakers to draw new maps, the governor pointed to a Justice Department letter that alleged the state’s existing 2021 congressional map was unconstitutional because of the racial makeup of certain districts.
The judges’ opinion argued that by pointing to that letter, Abbott had “explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race.”
Gov. Greg Abbott on Nov. 14, 2025, in Midlothian, Texas. (Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
Democrats praised the ruling as a victory for the party — and for the Democratic state lawmakers who broke quorum for two weeks this summer and fled Texas in a bid to delay the passage of the redistricting bill in the Republican-dominated state legislature.
“Texas Democrats and the DNC fought valiantly for fair representation, and now, with this decision, the court has ruled that Texas Republicans cannot implement this blatant gerrymander in the next election,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement.
And John Bisognano, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee president, argued in a statement to Fox News that “Texas Republicans drew a mid-decade gerrymander that was not only immoral, but also clearly illegal, as a Trump-appointed judge pointed out in his opinion blocking the map. The national gerrymandering crisis Republicans started this year in Texas threatens to draw voters out of a meaningful role in the electoral process – that’s why the American people’s rejection of this scheme has been so forceful.”
While Texas was the first red state to redraw its map this year at Trump’s urging, others have followed, including Missouri and North Carolina. And Ohio Republicans, thanks to a state requirement to redraw their maps, did just that, improving the GOP’s chances in two more congressional districts. A push is also underway in Indiana, with Florida and Kansas also mulling redrawing their maps.
Democrats are fighting back, led by California.
ABBOTT SIGNS TEXAS REDISTRICTING MAP INTO LAW, SECURING MAJOR GOP VICTORY AHEAD OF 2026 MIDTERMS
California voters two weeks ago overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative which will temporarily sidetrack the left-leaning state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated legislature.
That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which aimed to counter the move by Texas to redraw their maps.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who masterminded the redistricting push in the Golden State, wrote on social media following the Texas ruling.
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during an election night press conference at a California Democratic Party office on Nov. 4, 2025, in Sacramento. (Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo)
Illinois and Maryland, two blue states, and Virginia, where Democrats control the legislature, are also taking steps or seriously considering redistricting.
And in a blow to Republicans, a Utah district judge last week rejected a congressional district map drawn up by the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of next year’s elections.
And while Trump, to date, hasn’t weighed in on the ruling, Attorney General Pam Bondi predicted an eventual victory for Republicans.
“Texas’s map was drawn the right way for the right reasons,” she said on X. “We look forward to Texas’s victory at the Supreme Court.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
The Texas ruling comes as the Supreme Court is actively weighing states’ use of race in the drawing of congressional maps. Justices heard a second round of oral arguments last month in Louisiana v. Callais, a case centered on that very issue.
A majority of the court seemed poised to significantly weaken a key Voting Rights Act provision that prohibits states from diluting the power of minority voters, though the court has not yet issued a final ruling.
Read the full article from Here
-
Alaska1 week agoHowling Mat-Su winds leave thousands without power
-
Texas1 week agoTexas Tech football vs BYU live updates, start time, TV channel for Big 12 title
-
Ohio1 week ago
Who do the Ohio State Buckeyes hire as the next offensive coordinator?
-
Washington5 days agoLIVE UPDATES: Mudslide, road closures across Western Washington
-
Iowa7 days agoMatt Campbell reportedly bringing longtime Iowa State staffer to Penn State as 1st hire
-
Miami, FL1 week agoUrban Meyer, Brady Quinn get in heated exchange during Alabama, Notre Dame, Miami CFP discussion
-
Cleveland, OH7 days agoMan shot, killed at downtown Cleveland nightclub: EMS
-
World6 days ago
Chiefs’ offensive line woes deepen as Wanya Morris exits with knee injury against Texans