Month: January 2024

Former President Donald Trump defeating his sole rival, Nikki Haley, in the New Hampshire Republican primary on Tuesday, making Trump the clear front-runner to become the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee.

Speaking after Trump’s victory, Haley said she would remain in the race, telling supporters that “this race is far from over … I have news for all of you — New Hampshire is first in the nation, it is not the last in the nation.”  Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and governor of South Carolina, is facing pressure from Trump supporters to drop out of the race and unite the party.

Trump has now easily won the first two contests of the 2024 election cycle with victories in both New Hampshire and Iowa. The winners of the primary in New Hampshire in the last four election cycles have gone on to secure the party’s presidential nomination, including Trump in 2016. No Republican in the modern primary era has lost the nomination after winning both Iowa and New Hampshire.

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CBS News journalist Charles Osgood, the host of “CBS Sunday Morning” for more than two decades, died Tuesday at 91 years old. According to CBS News, Osgood was living with dementia for a period of time before his death.

Osgood spent 45 years at CBS News before retiring in 2016. During his tenure at “Sunday Morning”, the show reached some of its highest ratings levels in three decades, and earned the Daytime Emmy as Outstanding Morning Program on three different occasions. His tenure on “Sunday Morning” was in fact longer than the show’s original host, Charles Kuralt. Jane Pauley, who took over hosting duties of “Sunday Morning” after Osgood retired, shared: “Watching him at work was a masterclass in communicating. I’ll still think to myself, ‘How would Charlie say it?’, trying to capture the elusive warmth and intelligence of his voice and delivery. I expect I’ll go on trying.”

Rand Morrison, longtime executive producer of “Sunday Morning”, shared via CBS News: “To say there’s no one like Charles Osgood is an understatement. He embodied the heart and soul of ‘Sunday Morning.’ His signature bow tie, his poetry … just his presence was special for the audience, and for those of us who worked with him.”

Osgood became an anchor-reporter for WCBS NewsRadio 88 in New York in 1967, where he anchored the first morning drive shift when the station became an all-news outlet. He would eventually make his way to CBS News, where he launched the radio-news segment “The Osgood File”, which ran between 1971 and 2017. The audio vignettes were heard four times each weekday morning on various stations across the U.S. He would often bid listeners farewell by telling them: “I’ll see you on the radio.” Osgood was also known for saying: “Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. There’s nothing that can’t be improved by making it shorter and better.”

Osgood is survived by his wife of 50 years, the former Jean Crafton; five children (Kathleen Wood Griffis, Kenneth Winston Wood, Anne-E Wood, Emily J. Wood and Jamie Wood); a sister, Mary Ann; and a brother, Ken. His first marriage to Theresa Audette ended in divorce after 16 years.

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 38,000 for the first time ever on Monday, setting a record high. The S&P 500 also reached a record high, closing at about 4,850, while the Nasdaq hit 15,360 by the end of trading on Monday.

The recent surge is driven in large part by optimism about the prospects for a “soft landing,” in which inflation comes down to normal levels while the economy avoids a recession, with investor enthusiasm about AI also helping to drive returns. The recent market rally is also said to be in part the result of expectations among some investors of interest rate cuts at the Federal Reserve, anticipated as soon as March. Interest rate cuts would lower borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, potentially triggering a burst of economic activity through greater household spending and company investment. The Fed, however, risks a rebound of inflation if it cuts interest rates too quickly, since stronger consumer demand could lead to an acceleration of price increases.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said early last week the central bank expects to cut rates this year, but that it won’t be “rushed” to make the decision soon.

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On Monday, the Supreme Court voted to allow Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire Texas installed on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of an effort by the state to prevent illegal border crossings. The narrowly-divided High Court voted 5-4 to grant an emergency request filed by the Biden administration, which had argued that Texas was preventing agents from carrying out their duties. The Biden administration said the wire prevented agents from reaching migrants who have already crossed over the border into the U.S. The Court’s order noted that four conservative members of the nine-justice court would have rejected the government’s request – Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott installed the razor wire near the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass as part of an operation to address illegal immigration. Texas later sued after Border Patrol agents cut through some of the razor wire, claiming the agents had trespassed and damaged state property. Abbott’s immigration enforcement plan, dubbed Operation Lone Star, included busing thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities and arresting migrants on trespassing charges. The state previously placed buoys in the Rio Grande to prevent crossings, and in response the Biden administration sued. A federal judge ruled for the Biden administration, but the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month reversed that decision, saying agents could not cut or move the wire unless there was a medical emergency. The barrier currently remains in place while litigation continues.

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Federal prosecutors said that a Texas man has pleaded guilty to kidnapping a 13-year-old girl at gunpoint from a San Antonio stree, who was later rescued in Southern California when a passerby saw her hold up a “Help Me!” sign in a parked car. The girl was rescued July 9 in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, after a passerby called 911 to report seeing her hold up the piece of paper with the handwritten plea for help.

An FBI agent wrote in an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint that the girl was walking down a street in San Antonio on July 6 when the suspect, Steven Robert Sablan, 62, drove up with a black handgun and told her, “If you don’t get in the car with me, I am going to hurt you.” Sablan had no legal custody or familial relationship to the teenage girl, authorities said. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California said Sablan, of Cleburne, Texas, admitted in a plea agreement that he sexually assaulted the victim multiple times while driving her 1,300-miles from Texas to California.

On July 9, Sablan parked at a laundromat in Long Beach to wash clothes. The girl was left in the car and scribbled the note with the words “Help me!” flashing the sign in the window. Prosecutors said a “good Samaritan” dialed 911, alerting Long Beach police to the location.

Sablan, who has been in federal custody since July 2023, pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping, prosecutors said. Upon Sablan’s arrest in California, police said they recovered a plastic BB handgun, handcuffs and a knife. In July, Sablan was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of kidnapping and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. Authorities determined Sablan had an outstanding warrant for his arrest related to a burglary charge in Fort Worth, and he had twice been convicted of robbery with a deadly weapon and possession of a controlled substance.

Sablan is being held in a federal detention center in Los Angeles; he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and up to life in prison. A sentencing hearing is set for Oct. 25.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended his presidential campaign on Sunday, just two days before the New Hampshire primary, and endorsed former president Donald Trump.

DeSantis made the announcement in a video on X, which he captioned: ““Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill”

In the video, DeSantis said: “Now, following our second-place finish in Iowa, we’ve prayed and deliberated on the way forward. If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome, more campaign stops, more interviews, I would do it. But I can’t ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources. We don’t have a clear path to victory. Accordingly, I am today suspending my campaign. It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance. He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, or repackage formed of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.”

DeSantis originally positioned himself as an alternative to Trump, however, was unable to capture support from Rebpulicans. DeSantis entered the Republican presidential race after achieving a blowout 2022 re-election win in Florida, but was only able to take a distant second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. DeSantis has two years remaining in his second and final term as the governor of Florida.

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