Politics
Christie ramps up attacks on Haley as she closes gap with Trump in New Hampshire polls
HOLLIS, N.H. – With less than three weeks to go until New Hampshire holds the first primary in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is turning up the volume on his verbal attacks on rival former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
The former New Jersey governor is accusing Haley of acting “immature” in response to her viral comment that New Hampshire voters “correct” the Iowa caucus results. He argues that if former President Trump, the GOP nomination front-runner, asked Haley to be his running mate, “she would take it in five seconds.”
Haley, the former South Carolina governor who later served as United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration, has enjoyed plenty of momentum in recent months and has soared in the latest polls in New Hampshire, which suggest she has significantly closed the gap with Trump.
However, this week, two new comments by Haley were instantly used as ammunition by Christie, who is once again staking his presidential campaign on a strong finish in New Hampshire as he runs a second time for the White House. Christie stands in third place in most Granite State surveys, far behind Trump and Haley but ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and multimillionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
FIRST ON FOX: INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE GROUP LAUNCHES MASSIVE AD BLITZ ON BEHALF OF HALEY
Campaigning in Milford, New Hampshire, on Wednesday, Haley told the large crowd that “we have an opportunity to get this right. And I know we’ll get it right, and I trust you. I trust every single one of you. You know how to do this. You know Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it.”
Pointing to her home state, which on Feb. 24 will hold the first southern contest in the Republican presidential primary schedule, Haley added “and then my sweet state of South Carolina brings it home.”
The comment appeared to be tailored to Granite Staters, and the crowd cheered Haley’s remarks.
WAR OF WORDS BETWEEN HALEY AND DESANTIS REACHES FEVER PITCH
On Thursday night, Christie took aim.
“You don’t have to correct anything that Iowa does or doesn’t do. That’s not New Hampshire’s responsibility. Your responsibility is to do what you think is right. You don’t have to worry about what Iowa does,” he told the crowd at a town hall in this New Hampshire town along the state’s southern border with Massachusetts.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, speaks with voters at a town hall in Hollis, New Hampshire, on Jan. 4, 2024. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Minutes later, he told reporters, “I think people in Iowa saw here yesterday that she’s willing to say anything to an audience to try to curry their favor.”
“She mocks Iowa voters just to try to get a laugh out of New Hampshire voters,” he argued. “I mean that’s like just immature. Grow up.”
Christie was not the only rival to blast Haley.
DeSantis, who is staking much of his campaign on a strong Iowa finish, charged Thursday in a local radio interview in the Hawkeye State that Haley was “incredibly disrespectful to Iowans to say somehow their votes need to be corrected.”
Haley, during a CNN town hall Thursday in Iowa, said her comment was intended as a joke, noting “we’ve done 150 plus town halls. You got to have some fun, too.”
FIRST ON FOX: HALEY FUNDRAISING SOARS THE PAST THREE MONTHS
In recent weeks, DeSantis and Christie have taken aim at Haley for not being vocal enough in her criticism of Trump. Both candidates have argued Haley has an ulterior motive.
“She will not answer directly, and she owes you an answer to this: Will she accept a vice presidential nomination from Donald Trump? Yes or no?” DeSantis said at a town hall in New Hampshire last month.
Additionally, Christie, on multiple occasions over the past month, has emphasized that, “Ron DeSantis and I have both ruled out accepting the vice presidency from Donald Trump. Nikki Haley has not… That’s why she’s not saying strong things against Donald Trump.”
Haley has frequently repeated that she is not running for second place in the GOP 2024 presidential primary.
Given the opportunity in a Fox News Digital interview Tuesday ahead of a town hall in New Hampshire to categorically rule out serving as Trump’s running mate if asked, Haley reiterated she is running to win.
“I have said from the very beginning I don’t play for second. It’s offensive for anybody to think that I would do all of this to play for second. And so I have said that. I will continue to say that. If people aren’t satisfied with that, I don’t know what else to say,” Haley said.
Haley also told Fox News that Christie and DeSantis have “criticized me for everything. Let’s be clear. That’s what happens when you’re losing.”
ONLY ON FOX: HALEY PUSHES BACK BUT DOESN’T CATEGORICALLY RULE OUT BEING TRUMP’S RUNNING MATE
Pointing to the Fox News Digital interview, Christie told reporters on Thursday night “she won’t answer. She gives this bull answer ‘I never play for second.’ Like, what’s that mean? It’s simply yes or no. Would you accept vice president from Trump or wouldn’t you.”
“She won’t answer. And you know what that means in politics when you don’t answer a question. That means it’s because you know the answer and you don’t want to say it out loud,” Christie claimed. “I will tell you right now, if Donald Trump offered her vice president, she would take it in five seconds. Five seconds. And that’s why she’s not answering the question.”
Pointing to South Carolina’s Feb. 24 Republican presidential primary, Christie argued that Haley “wants the wiggle room to be able to do that later on when she doesn’t do as well as everyone thinks she’ll do here and when she loses her own home state, which she’s going to do.”
In an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader, Haley claimed that ruling out serving as running mate would make “the news for days” and stifle her momentum.
Christie, a longtime vocal GOP critic of Trump, has faced plenty of pressure in recent weeks to drop out of the race and back Haley to prevent any fracturing of the anti-Trump vote.
Referencing the crowd of close to 300 people who showed up at his town hall, Christie said “you saw all these people tonight who don’t want me out of this race. They want to vote for me. And I suspect a lot of these people here, if I dropped out, wouldn’t vote at all, because she’s unwilling to take Trump on.”
When asked by Fox News where he needs to finish in New Hampshire to continue on, Christie said “I have to come in second or like a very, very close third. I don’t think there’s any mystery to that. That’s what I have to do.”
Trump holds an extremely formidable double-digit advantage over DeSantis and Haley in Iowa – whose Jan. 15 caucuses kick off the GOP nominating calendar – and enjoys an even more massive lead in national polling in the Republican race.
However, with the latest polls indicating Haley narrowing the gap in New Hampshire, where independent voters have long played an influential role in the state’s storied primary, Trump’s campaign this week launched an attack ad on Haley in the Granite State.
Former President Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023, in Durham, New Hampshire. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)
Neil Levesque, the executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, told Fox News that “Haley has what every candidate wishes they had – which is momentum. And she’s closing the gap with Trump.”
Haley landed a big boost last month with the endorsement of popular Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who has joined Haley on the campaign trail at her town halls since backing her.
She is also supported by Americans for Prosperity (AFP) Action, the political arm of an influential and deep-pocketed conservative public advocacy group with strong grassroots outreach.
Greg Moore, a longtime New Hampshire-based conservative activist and an AFP Action senior advisor, emphasized that “one thing we know about the New Hampshire primary is that they are often decided by momentum. We’ve seen that – for example – with John McCain twice, where he was a candidate with momentum in both 2000 and 2008. That’s where you want to be. Frankly, I think I’d rather be where Nikki Haley is right now than where Donald Trump is.”
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
Politics
Dem fundraising giant in the hot seat as GOP lawmakers demand answers over dodged subpoena
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House Republicans are demanding ActBlue, a top Democratic campaign fundraising apparatus, turn over international communications, probing whether the organization knowingly misled lawmakers and dodged subpoenas to hide weaknesses in its screening process to weed out illegal, overseas donations.
House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., collectively laid out their demands in a letter published on Tuesday.
“For more than a year, the Committees have conducted oversight regarding ActBlue’s ‘fundamentally unserious approach to fraud prevention,’” the letter reads.
“Recent reporting … strongly suggests that ActBlue deliberately obstructed the Committees’ investigation, including through misleading statements and noncompliance with our subpoenas.”
BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL: LEFT-WING GROUPS DEFIANT AS GOP SHEDS LIGHT ON GROUPS TIED TO CHINA
Rep. Jim Jordan leaves a House Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 10, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
The letter is addressed to Regina Wallace-Jones, the CEO and president of ActBlue, and is the most recent entry in investigations that began in 2023 when Republicans originally raised concerns about foreign donations possibly influencing American elections.
It also follows New York Times reporting on a memo from Covington & Burling, a law firm, warning that gaps in its screening armor could present “a substantial risk for ActBlue.”
The memo, on its own, does not implicate wrongdoing or indicate that ActBlue accepted international donations. Even so, the reporting caught the eye of Republicans in Congress.
Steil, Jordan and Comer are collectively asking ActBlue to produce two internal documents to examine the internal understanding ActBlue may have had about its own weaknesses.
The first is a resignation letter from General Counsel Aaron Ting — a document Republicans contend centers on liabilities created by ActBlue’s donation security.
Republicans believe the second, a message from ActBlue’s former legal counsel Zain Ahmad, relates to an ignored whistleblower complaint about those practices.
HOUSE HEARING RAISES RED FLAGS OVER FORMER TECH MOGUL’S ‘CCP NETWORK’ ALLEGEDLY FUNDING OF FAR-LEFT GROUPS
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) speaks to the media on his Committee’s investigation into former President Joe Biden’s cognitive state, in the Rayburn House Office Building on July 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Republicans have already requested those documents before, but haven’t received them.
“There is considerable reason to believe that ActBlue may have deliberately withheld this responsive material to impede our investigation,” the letter states.
For its own part, ActBlue has claimed it makes every effort to ensure its fundraising complies with legal requirements.
In ActBlue’s own letter published in Nov. 2023, Wallace-Jones, the CEO, affirmed that the organization maintained the highest standards for scrutiny of its fundraising.
“Our approach is multilayered, with checks and confirmations occurring throughout the donation process to verify donors and donor information,” Wallace-Jones wrote.
“These measures, which include compliance measures, technological tools, and manual reviews, help to ensure the identity of donors, root out potential foreign contributions, and protect donors from financial fraud.”
OVERSIGHT DEMANDS DOJ ANSWERS ON FOREIGN FUNDING OF AGITATOR GROUPS AS IRAN, ANTI-ICE PROTESTS CONTINUE
Regina Wallace-Jones of Palo Alto soaks up the first evening of the DNC Convention at the United Center in Chicago, IL on Monday, August 19, 2024. (Photo by Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
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Republican lawmakers have given ActBlue two weeks to produce the requested documentation, setting a deadline for April 28, 2026.
“Absent these steps, the Committees are prepared to use available mechanisms to enforce our subpoenas,” the letter reads.
Politics
Swalwell scandal sparks fears of deeper rot on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON — Eric Swalwell’s downfall has raised the possibility of a broader reckoning on Capitol Hill as congressional staffers, reporters and opposition researchers race to verify long-standing rumors of a sordid underground culture among the city’s most powerful.
Former lawmakers across the political spectrum have warned for years of a hushed congressional bacchanal marked by inappropriate revelry and sexual misconduct. But a sense of growing momentum gripped Congress on Tuesday, as Democrats grappled with Swalwell’s resignation and Republicans called for other lawmakers to face scrutiny.
The 72-hour collapse of Swalwell’s political career has shifted attention not only to his closest associates in Congress, but also to a larger set of sitting lawmakers from both parties suspected of lurid sexual activity. Several members have claimed that Swalwell’s alleged behavior was an open secret amid a cacophony of rumors on social media of other potential offenders.
“I think that many people knew about this for a while,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, said in an interview with The Times.
Luna, who planned to lead the charge to expel Swalwell before he resigned, alleged that young staffers would talk among one another about Swalwell’s conduct. Lawmakers should have done more to approach him about the rumors, she said.
Multiple current and former female staffers who spoke with The Times described a broader culture of warning one another about lawmakers with reputations for inappropriate conduct.
But the warnings, passed privately among junior aides, have focused on “sleazy” activity and boundary-crossing behavior, said one former legislative aide, who asked to remain anonymous. Whispers about sleazy behavior generally do not meet the coverage threshold for traditional newsrooms, which are bound by strict ethical standards.
Another former aide said that quiet guidance shared among female staffers focused on behavior that is legal, but nevertheless viewed as unprofessional and unbecoming of members of Congress — a line that has prevented many from speaking out publicly.
Now, a race is on for leverage between two political parties facing comparable strategic risks — each with members facing growing questions over their alleged conduct — and for scoops among news outlets, seeking to break the story first.
The Monday resignations of Swalwell and Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales, who faced his own sex scandal, was also forcing lawmakers to address the issue publicly. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) — one of Swalwell’s closest friends in Congress — answered questions from reporters at length Tuesday, telling them he should have confronted Swalwell when he heard rumors about his behavior.
“You let your guard down. I let him into my circle. … I deeply regret it,” Gallego said.
He denied knowing about Swalwell’s alleged misconduct when asked about the behavior.
“Look, we socialized. We went out. But I never saw him engage in any of the predatory behavior, harassment, sexual assault,” Gallego said.
Notably quiet was President Trump, who has faced sexual assault accusations of his own and frequently parried with Swalwell throughout his presidency. Although Trump posted an article reporting Swalwell’s resignation on social media, he has not commented on the matter in his own words.
The unraveling scandal comes at a time when lawmakers have come together across party lines to push for transparency in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender and alleged sex trafficker whose network of powerful associates included Democrats and Republicans alike.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, details of the Swalwell scandal continued to unfold Tuesday, as a Beverly Hills woman accused him of drugging and raping her in 2018. The Times could not immediately reach his attorney; he previously denied allegations of rape and sexual misconduct made by multiple women in published accounts last week.
Sex scandals are not a new phenomenon on Capitol Hill, which has seen over a dozen members embroiled in controversy over the last decade, including Katie Hill of California, Cory Mills and Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Blake Farenthold of Texas, among others.
But several prominent former members — including former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — have warned of a more widespread cultural problem.
“Every member in Congress knows not to let any young staffer get around Swalwell or Matt Gaetz. It’s not a secret there,” McCarthy said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Luna had pressed lawmakers to address alleged sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill. In February, she called on the “predatory freaks” in Congress to leave office as she complained about the process to get ethical complaints handled.
“It pisses me off because while some of us are actually working and busting our asses, these clowns are sexually harassing their own staff, doing illegal crap, insider trading etc,” Luna wrote at the time.
Luna said Monday that she was encouraged to see bipartisan support for expelling Swalwell and Gonzales.
A longtime staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity said Tuesday that allegations against Swalwell have sparked conversations about how to do more to help staffers report sexual misconduct, such as reforming procedural rules that would allow staffers to report any of their concerns directly to ethics panels, and about the need for ethics investigations to move more quickly.
“Congress has a short-term memory, that is the difficulty here,” the staffer said. “After these guys leave their seats, there needs to be a concerted and consistent effort for reforms to be established and be made permanent.”
Politics
Video: Vance Says Pope Should Stay Out of U.S. Affairs
new video loaded: Vance Says Pope Should Stay Out of U.S. Affairs
transcript
transcript
Vance Says Pope Should Stay Out of U.S. Affairs
Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the tension between President Trump and Pope Leo XIV as Catholics expressed dismay about Mr. Trump’s attacks.
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“I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.” “I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing. And I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace.” “Pope Leo said things that are wrong. There’s nothing to apologize for. He’s wrong.” “I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person. I don’t think he’s doing a very good job.” “I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor, and it had to do with the Red Cross. There’s a Red Cross worker there, which we support.” “It’s terrible. It’s gross. It’s blasphemous.” “I stand with the pope. I mean, the pope speaks the Gospel. He speaks for peace.”
By Shawn Paik
April 14, 2026
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