Politics
Your guide to the California Congressional District 27 race: Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley
- Jason Gibbs: Republican, Santa Clarita City Council member, mechanical engineer
Gibbs has been a member of the Santa Clarita City Council since 2020 and was chosen by his peers to serve as the city’s mayor in 2023. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering at Cal Poly and went on to work in the aerospace industry, according to his campaign website. He has lived in Santa Clarita for nearly a decade while raising two young children, his bio says, and has served on the local boards of the Boys and Girls Club, the Valley Industry Assn. and the Salvation Army.
- George Whitesides: Democrat, incumbent
Whitesides defeated Republican incumbent Mike Garcia to represent the 27th Congressional District in 2024. Whitesides worked on President Obama’s transition team in 2008 and served as NASA chief of staff during the Obama administration, according to his campaign bio. He was the first chief executive of Virgin Galactic, co-founded Megafire Action, a nonprofit that advocates for legislation to address the growing problem of massive wildfires, and was a board member for the Antelope Valley Economic Development and Growth Enterprise, his bio says.
Others:
- Roberto Ramos: Democrat, Marine veteran, UCLA master’s student
- Caleb Norwood: Democrat, college student
A representative for David Neidhart, a Republican candidate, said he has withdrawn from the race. His name still will appear on the ballot.
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President Donald Trump appeared to joke during remarks at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches in Florida Friday that the U.S. would be “taking over” Cuba “almost immediately,” while recognizing attendees including former Rep. Dan Mica.
“And he comes from, originally, a place called Cuba, which we will be taking over almost immediately,” Trump said.
“Cuba’s got problems. We’ll finish one first. I like to finish a job.”
TRUMP AIMS TO RESET WAR POWERS CLOCK WITH CONTROVERSIAL BID TO BYPASS CONGRESS
President Donald Trump speaks during an event at The Villages Charter School in Sumterville, Fla., on Friday. (Thomas Simonetti/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump then riffed on a hypothetical show of American force.
“On the way back from Iran, we’ll have one of our big — maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier — the biggest in the world,” he said.
“We’ll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore, and they’ll say, ‘Thank you very much, we give up.’”
The president did not elaborate further.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for clarification if the remarks were hypothetical or outlining policy plans.
The F.B.I. and prosecutors shared on Thursday new footage of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Trump during the White House correspondents’ dinner at the Washington Hilton last weekend, leading up to when shots were fired.
The video contains more than five minutes of edited and annotated surveillance footage that is sped up and slowed down in parts. It was shared on social media by the F.B.I. and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
In her post on Thursday, Ms. Pirro asserted that the video resolved uncertainty about whose gunfire had struck a Secret Service officer, who was protected by his bulletproof vest. The video, she wrote, showed that the man charged in the case, Cole Tomas Allen, had shot the Secret Service officer, and that there was “no evidence the shooting was the result of friendly fire.”
President Trump shared similar footage on Saturday, showing the assailant running through a magnetometer before law enforcement officers drew their guns. He was brought down and disarmed at the top of a staircase leading down to the floor where the dinner was being held, and officials said they recovered a shotgun, a handgun and knives from him.
Law enforcement and administration officials had previously stopped short of definitively saying whose gunfire had struck the officer’s vest, and the charges lodged against Mr. Allen on Monday, including attempted assassination, did not include shooting a federal officer, only with firing a weapon. In a court filing on Wednesday, prosecutors said they believed that the Mr. Allen fired his shotgun down the staircase.
Most of the newly released video is focused on other elements of Mr. Allen’s actions. It opens with footage the authorities have time-stamped as occurring on April 24, the day before the episode, and shows him walking through the hotel corridor and entering the gym.
In the segment showing Mr. Allen running through the magnetometer, officers appear to be breaking down the security station. He raises the shotgun as he races past them and aims it at security officers. The video has no sound, and it is unclear whether he discharges a shot.
The video then replays the footage at a slower speed, pausing and placing a circle around Mr. Allen as he runs through the magnetometer, then pausing and placing circles around officers’ guns as they appear to fire them.
A frame-by-frame analysis suggests Mr. Allen may have fired his 12-gauge shotgun during that confrontation. The clue is in the dust in the ceiling lights unsettled by the gunfire. In the frame after Mr. Allen aims at the security officers, the video shows that dust resting in two ceiling lights has been disturbed and is drifting downward. It is possible that this was caused by a muzzle blast from Mr. Allen’s shotgun. It is not until the next frame in the video — after the dust has been unsettled — that a Secret Service agent returns fire.
Public defenders for Mr. Allen argued in a court filing that there had been contradictions in the description of the shots fired, and that the video evidence did not show a muzzle flash from his shotgun.
Prosecutors have countered that the evidence showed Mr. Allen fired the shotgun at least once as he ran past the magnetometers and that one spent shell was found in the recovered weapon.
Politics
MN governor race to replace Walz sees major shakeup as GOP contender ends campaign: ‘Don’t see a path’
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FIRST ON FOX: Minnesota Republican lawmaker Kristin Robbins, chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, announced on Friday she is ending her gubernatorial campaign to replace embattled Gov. Tim Walz.
“It was not a tough decision to get into the race 10 months ago,” Robbins exclusively told Fox News Digital. “We could not allow Tim Walz to have a third term in Minnesota. He’s destroyed our state, and we had to stop him, and so, I think I made a great case for that, and because of all my work on the fraud committee he got out nine months ahead of schedule, which is great.”
Robbins continued, “Once Senator Klobuchar became sort of the anointed candidate to replace him, I just think the establishment kind of circled the wagons and, you know, it became a challenging endeavor, and I’m a realist, and I am a numbers person, and when I look at the math, I don’t see a path for me to win.”
Weeks after Walz dropped his re-election bid in January amid a massive fraud scandal that unfolded during his watch, Sen. Amy Klobuchar jumped into the race, bringing her deep political backing and name recognition with her as the presumptive nominee for the Democrats.
MINNESOTA LAWMAKERS UNLOAD ON WALZ’S ‘LEGACY’ AFTER HE TOUTS FRAUD RECORD IN FINAL ADDRESS: ‘RIDICULOUS’
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks to reporters after announcing he will not seek re-election at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on Jan. 5, 2026. (Reuters/Tim Evans)
Robbins told Fox News Digital she determined it was better to “bow out” and find a “new way to contribute” due to love of her state and the realization that there are “many ways to serve.”
In terms of what’s next, Robbins says she hasn’t had the time to give that much thought but said she is focused on closing out the current legislative session and said “there’s a lot of big things going on in the front committee.”
“I know where the bodies are buried,” Robbins said about the fraud situation, pointing out that there is much more work to be done to get answers on how the billions of dollars in fraud was allowed to go unchecked for so long.
MN LAWMAKER TAKES ACTION TO GET ANSWERS ON OMAR’S ALLEGED FRAUD TIES AFTER SHE SKIPS KEY HEARING: ‘GHOSTED US’
With Robbins exiting the race, the Republicans vying to win the gubernatorial primary include Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, healthcare executive Kendall Qualls, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and several other lesser known candidates.
Robbins told Fox News Digital she will “not be endorsing anyone.”
“That will be up to the voters to decide, and I wish all the other candidates well,” Robbins said.
Ultimately, Robbins says her “overwhelming thought” is “gratitude” when she looks back on her campaign.
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Minnesota State Rep. Kristin Robbins testifies before Congress during a hearing. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“I am so grateful for the last ten months of going all over the state meeting Minnesotans from every walk of life and to have had the privilege to run for governor and meet all these amazing people and hear their stories, be inspired by what they want for Minnesota,” Robbins said. “I am just so grateful and so privileged.”
Robbins says that going forward, the “answers” are not going to come from the capitol in St. Paul, but rather “from the communities and from the people” and she “looks forward to plugging into that.”
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