Home

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Former Rep. Peter Meijer withdrew his name from the U.S. Senate race in Michigan on Friday, ending a longshot bid to become the Republican nominee and return to Congress after being ousted by voters for supporting an effort to impeach then-President Donald Trump. Meijer announced his candidacy in November and contended for the Republican nomination against former U.S. Reps. Mike Rogers and Justin Amash, in addition to wealthy businessman Sandy Pensler. Meijer met an April 23 deadline to turn in petition signatures to get his name on the ballot for the August primary but withdrew from the race on Friday, a Michigan Secretary of State spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press. Meijer’s name will not be on the ballot since he met a 4 p.m. deadline Friday to withdraw from the race. “The hard reality is the fundamentals of the race have changed significantly since we launched this campaign. After prayerful consideration, today I withdrew my name from the primary ballot,” Meijer said in a statement. Although many believed that Meijer had the potential to be competitive in a general election, his vote to impeach Trump undermined his bid to be competitive in a primary in a state that supported Trump in 2016. Trump has endorsed Rogers in the race. Meijer, who is from Grand Rapids, is an heir to a Midwestern grocery store empire and a former U.S. Army Reserve officer who served in Iraq. He was seen as part of the next generation of Republican leaders when he was elected to the U.S. House in 2020 at only 32 years old. Meijer was among 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 following the deadly mob siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He then would lose reelection to a Trump-backed primary opponent in 2022 despite having a significant fundraising advantage. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — a potential running mate for presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — is getting attention again. This time, it’s for a new book where she writes about killing an unruly dog, and a smelly goat, too. The Guardian obtained a copy of Noem’s soon-to-be released book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.” In it, she tells the story of the ill-fated Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she was training for pheasant hunting. She writes, according to the Guardian, that the tale was included to show her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it has to be done. But backlash was swift against the Republican governor, who just a month ago drew attention and criticism for posting an infomercial-like video about cosmetic dental surgery she received out-of-state. In her book, Noem writes that she took Cricket on a hunting trip with older dogs in hopes of calming down the wild puppy. Instead, Cricket chased the pheasants while “having the time of her life.” On the way home from the hunting trip, Noem writes that she stopped to talk to a family. Cricket got out of Noem’s truck and attacked and killed some of the family’s chickens, then bit the governor. Noem apologized profusely, wrote the distraught family a check for the deceased chickens, and helped them dispose of the carcasses, she writes. Cricket “was the picture of joy” as all that unfolded. “I hated that dog,” Noem writes, deeming her “untrainable.” “At that moment,” Noem writes, “I realized I had to put her down.” She led Cricket to a gravel pit and killed her. That wasn’t all. Noem writes that her family also owned a “nasty and mean” male goat that smelled bad and liked to chase her kids. She decided to go ahead and kill the goat, too. She writes that the goat survived the first shot, so she went back to the truck, got another shell, then shot him again, killing him. Soon thereafter, a school bus dropped off Noem’s children. Her daughter asked, “Hey, where’s Cricket?” Noem writes. The excerpts drew immediate criticism on social media platforms, where many posted photos of their own pets. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign surfaced the story on social media alongside a photo of Noem with Trump. The Lincoln Project, a conservative group that opposes Trump, posted a video that it called a “public service announcement,” showing badly behaved dogs and explaining that “shooting your dog in the face is not an option.” “You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit,” Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project wrote on X. “Unsporting and deliberately cruel … but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.” Noem took to social media to defend herself. “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she said on X. “Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.” She urged readers to preorder her book if they want “more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping.” Republican strategist Alice Stewart said that while some Republican voters might appreciate the story “as a testament to her grit,” it ultimately creates a distraction for Noem. “It’s never a good look when people think you’re mistreating animals,” Stewart said. “I have a dog I love like a child and I can’t imagine thinking about doing that, I can’t imagine doing that, and I can’t imagine writing about it in a book and telling all the world.” It’s not the first time Noem has grabbed national attention. In 2019, she stood behind the state’s anti-meth campaign even as it became the subject of some mockery for the tagline “Meth. We’re on it.” Noem said the campaign got people talking about the methamphetamine epidemic and helped lead some to treatment. Last month, Noem posted a nearly five-minute video on X lavishing praise on a team of cosmetic dentists in Texas for giving her a smile she said she can be proud of. “I love my new family at Smile Texas!” she wrote. South Dakota law bans gifts of over $100 from lobbyists to public officials and their immediate family. A violation is a misdemeanor punishable up to a year in jail and/or a $2,000 fine. The state attorney general’s office has declined to answer questions about whether the gift ban applies to people who are not registered lobbyists. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas will remain among the handful of states that haven’t legalized the medical use of marijuana or expanded their Medicaid programs for at least another year. Republican state senators on Friday blocked efforts to force debates on both issues before the GOP-controlled Legislature’s scheduled adjournment for the year Tuesday. Supporters of each measure fell short of the 24 of 40 votes required to pull a bill on each subject out of committee. Backers of both proposals argue that they have popular support yet have been thwarted going on a decade in each case. Kansas doesn’t allow voters to put proposed laws on the ballot statewide, a path that has led to approval for each measure in other states. All but 12 states have legalized medical marijuana, and all but 10 have expanded Medicaid in line with the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act and its promise to cover almost all of the cost. Besides Kansas, only Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming have done neither, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. “We’re behind the times,” state Sen. John Doll, a western Kansas Republican who voted for both measures, said after Friday’s votes. Republican leaders had expected both efforts to fail, given the GOP’s 29-11 Senate majority, and viewed them largely as political grandstanding. The medical marijuana vote was 12-25, with three senators absent. Law enforcement officials oppose the idea, seeing medical marijuana as likely to be close to legalizing recreational use. During committee testimony earlier this year, opponents also pointed to Oklahoma officials’ frustration with the legalization of medical marijuana by ballot initiative there in 2018. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, has said the explosive growth of the marijuana industry under a lax law has attracted an influx of criminals and foreign nationals for illegal black-market operations. “We had no idea we were going to have 10,000 growers, way more than they have in California and all these other states, and anybody with a hangnail could get a medical card,” Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said. But Oklahoma also received nearly $52 million in revenue from its excise tax on marijuana and an additional $67 million in state and local sales taxes in 2023. Cheryl Kumberg, a registered western Kansas nurse and president of the Kansas Cannabis Coalition, said Oklahoma’s problems stem from its lax law. She said Kansas residents who can get cannabis from other states are using it, risking legal issues to address their medical problems. “It’s ridiculous,” she said. “I can go 45 minutes one way, a couple hours in the other direction, and you can just you can just use it however you want.” Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly even linked medical marijuana to Medicaid expansion in 2021, unsuccessfully pitching marijuana taxes to cover the state’s relatively small share of the cost of expanding Medicaid health coverage to another 150,000 people. The Medicaid expansion vote Friday was 18-17 despite months of aggressive public campaigning by Kelly and other expansion advocates. In early January, she said she was taking a “more political approach” and suggested plans to hit anti-expansion Republicans hard during the fall campaign. She backed off that idea this month, telling reporters after one pro-expansion event, “Whether it’s an election year or not — that’s irrelevant.” But last year, Kelly formed the Middle of the Road political action committee, and it raised nearly $1 million by the end December for elections this year for all legislative seats. Also last year, two former Kelly campaign aides helped form a nonprofit advocacy group, the Kansas Coalition for Common Sense, to back the governor’s goals. That group put out a post-vote statement suggesting that a no vote was a vote against lowering health care costs and helping rural hospitals. But Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita-area Republican, said before the vote that he wasn’t expecting Medicaid expansion to become a major campaign issue. He dismissed surveys and polling that expansion supporters released showing its popularity as “just based on how the question is asked.” “If you ask them, ‘Do you want able-bodied people to get free health care?” people will vote no,” Masterson said, repeating a common GOP argument. ___ Murphy reported from Oklahoma City. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. investigators are looking into allegations against 14 of the 19 staffers from the U.N. relief agency for Palestinians who Israel claims were involved in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants that spurred the latest war in Gaza, a spokesman said Friday. The announcement by U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric provided the first information on the investigation ordered by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The U.N.’s internal watchdog — the Office of Internal Oversight Services — is carrying out the probe following Israel’s initial allegations in January. The watchdog, known as the OIOS, reported that of the 19 allegations against UNRWA agency staffers, one case was closed because Israel provided no evidence and four others were suspended for lack of sufficient evidence, Dujarric said. The United Nations was informed in January of Israeli allegations that 12 employees of the agency known as UNRWA had taken part in the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, when Hamas and other Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people and seized some 250 as hostages. The agency had at the time terminated the contracts of all those employees. Dujarric said the U.N. later received additional allegations from Israel about seven UNRWA staffers — five in March and two in April. A separate, independent review of UNRWA’s neutrality. led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna was released on Monday. It said Israel had never before expressed concerns about anyone on the staff lists that UNRWA had given Israel every year since 2011. UNRWA has 32,000 staff in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, including 13,000 in Gaza who provide education, health care, food and other services to several million Palestinians and their families. The agency’s head, Philippe Lazzarini, said Tuesday that nearly 180 UNRWA staffers have been killed during the Israeli offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them children and women, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel’s original allegations led to the suspension of contributions to UNRWA by the United States, its biggest donor, and more than a dozen other countries, causing a pause in funding worth about $450 million, according to Colonna’s report. A number of countries have since resumed contributions, but the U.S. Congress has suspended any money for the agency until March 2025. Dujarric on Friday reiterated Guterres’ appeal to donors to support UNRWA generously. Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner general, says UNRWA has enough money to operate only through June. Dujarric pointed out that UNRWA had released the original information about the Israeli allegations and called for the independent review of its neutrality. Colonna’s 48-page report said UNRWA has “robust” procedures to uphold the U.N. principle of neutrality but cited serious gaps in implementation. It made 50 recommendations to improve UNRWA’s neutrality, which Guterres and Lazzarini have pledged to implement. Dujarric said OIOS has not given any indication when its investigation of the 14 staffers would be completed, not did he elaborate on the allegations. He told reporters that OIOS investigators had met with Israeli authorities and would visit again in May. “These discussions are continuing and … have enabled progress on the investigations,” he said. Of the 12 initial cases, eight remain under investigation, he said. Three cases have been suspended and one staffer has been cleared. U.N. “is exploring corrective administration action,” Dujarric said. UNRWA’s Lazzarini said on Tuesday that anyone cleared by OIOS would be reinstated. Of the seven additional cases brought to the U.N.’s attention after January, Dujarric said six remain under investigation and one has been suspended pending additional information. ___ Find more of AP’s Israel-Hamas coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A tornado plowed through suburban Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday afternoon, destroying homes and other structures as the twister tore for miles along farmland and into subdivisions. Injuries were reported but it wasn’t yet clear if anyone was killed in the storm. Multiple tornadoes were reported in Nebraska but the most destructive storm moved from a largely rural area into suburbs northwest of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people. Photos on social media showed heavily damaged homes and shredded trees. Video showed homes with roofs stripped of shingles, in a rural area near Omaha. Law enforcement were blocking off roads in the area. KETV-TV video showed one woman being removed from a demolished home on a stretcher in Blair, a city just north of Omaha. Nebraska Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Katrina Sperl said damage is just now being reported. Taylor Wilson, a spokesperson for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said they hadn’t seen any injuries yet. Before the tornado hit the Omaha area, three workers in an industrial plant were injured Friday afternoon when a tornado struck an industrial plant in Lancaster County, sheriff’s officials said in an update on the damage. The building just northeast of the state capital of Lincoln had collapsed with about 70 employees inside and several people trapped, sheriff’s officials said. Everyone was evacuated, and three people had injuries that were considered not life-threatening, authorities said. Sheriff’s officials say they also had reports of a tipped-over train near Waverly, also in Lancaster County. The Omaha Public Power District reported that nearly 10,000 customers were without power in the Omaha area. The Weather Service also issued tornado watches across parts of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. And forecasters warned that large hail and damaging wind gusts were possible. ___ Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com