Republican incumbent says Dem opponent dragging heels with recount

An incumbent Iowa Republican seeking re-election to the House has accused her Democratic opponent of “wasting taxpayer money” by pursuing a recount of their close contest.

The Associated Press has not yet called the race in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, where Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, leads Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan by just 801 votes. Bohannan requested a recount last week.

“Four counties in IA-01 have completed their recounts and I’ve gained 2 votes. Once again Christina Bohannan and the Dems are wasting taxpayer money,” Miller-Meeks posted on X Thursday. She has previously declared victory and her campaign is confident in her lead. 

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Congressional election observers from the House Committee on Administration were deployed to Iowa to monitor the uncalled race this week.

Bohannan’s campaign said in a statement last week that they want to ensure “every voter is heard” and pledged to “accept the results regardless of outcome.” 

Republicans have already clinched a razor-thin House majority, but a GOP victory in Iowa would allow the factious conference some room for dissent without log jamming President-elect Trump’s agenda in the next Congress.

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Republican incumbents held onto Iowa’s three other congressional seats, including the competitive 3rd District where Zach Nunn fended off a challenge from Democrat Lanon Baccam.

Republican incumbents Ashley Hinson in the 2nd District and Randy Feenstra in the 4th District won decisively. Hinson defeated Democrat Sarah Corkery. Feenstra defeated Democrat Ryan Melton.

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So far, Republicans have claimed 219 seats in the House of Representatives while Democrats have held on to 213. 

There are still two uncalled races in California’s 13th and 45th Congressional Districts, where Republican incumbents are defending their seats by extremely close margins. 

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The race in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District is a rematch. Miller-Meeks previously defeated Bohannan by a much larger margin of 7 percentage points in 2022. 

Miller-Meeks earned a first term in Congress representing Iowa’s 2nd District when she defeated Democrat Rita Hart by just six votes in 2020.

UFC president Dana White’s political pledge after Trump’s historic victory

UFC President Dana White is among President-elect Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters and was undoubtedly an instrumental part in his bid to win a second presidency, but Trump’s longtime friend is done with politics after this last election cycle. 

In an interview with the New Yorker following UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden last weekend, White told the magazine that he has likely endorsed his last politician. 

“I’m never f—ing doing this again,” he said. 

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“I want nothing to do with this s—. It’s gross. It’s disgusting. I want nothing to do with politics.” 

According to the report, White and Trump’s relationship dates back to the early days of UFC, when Trump allowed the sport, which at the time had a bad reputation for simply being violent, to hold events at his casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. 

Since then, the sport has spiked in popularity, and Trump has become a fan favorite. 

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“Every time, when he was getting hammered at his worst, we’d walk into that arena and the place erupts and goes crazy,” White told the magazine. “It shows other people, Oh, wait. Everybody doesn’t hate Donald Trump like the media is telling us.”

Trump received a thunderous applause as he made his way toward the Octagon on Saturday flanked by many of his Cabinet nominees, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard.

White said before the fight that Trump and UFC fighter Conor McGregor receive the biggest applause he has ever seen when they show up at a fight. 

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Trump’s campaign saw him appear on several popular podcasts including “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which has been viewed a staggering 47 million times on YouTube alone, “This Past Weekend with Theo Von,” Andrew Schulz’s “Flagrant,” Barstool Sports’ podcast “Bussin with the Boys,” “Nelk Boys” and “Impaulsive” with Logan Paul. 

White told the magazine that he believed these appearances worked in Trump’s favor, especially with the young male demographic. 

“You’re getting conversations in these podcasts, and you yourself, as a young kid, get to really see who Donald Trump is,” he said. “Not the bulls— you hear from the far-left media.”

Liberal network contributor warns ‘we should fear’ Trump’s choice for AG: ‘She’s competent’

College professor and MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson warned that President-Elect Donald Trump’s new pick to lead the Justice Department should spark “fear” among the left because she could actually execute his agenda.

Trump announced Thursday evening that he’s nominating former attorney general of Florida Pam Bondi as the next attorney general of the United States. The latest cabinet pick replaces former Florida representative Matt Gaetz, who withdrew as nominee for attorney general on Thursday after the “distraction” his nomination had caused due to a swirl of allegations about paying underage women for sex.

Johnson told MSNBC host Ari Melber that this is bad news for those concerned about Trump.

“Occasionally, attorneys general try to behave like they are not the personal lawyer of the President of the United States. That is completely out the window. Pam Bondi is exactly what I was saying in the last segment that we should all fear, because she’s competent,” he said.

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“We may not agree with her ideologically, but she actually knows how to do this job,” Johnson told Melber, adding, “So if anyone on the Democratic side or anyone who cared about liberty or justice was thinking ‘Well maybe Matt Gaetz will screw this up and that will give us time,’ no. Pam Bondi knows what she is doing.”

He went on to tell the news host that her association with Florida’s government indicates she knows how to use state power to accomplish conservative agendas.

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“She knows what she’s doing about immigration. Remember, Florida is one of those states that has been very aggressive about migrants and deportation and moving people to different states and everything else like that. Florida has enacted all sorts of rules and laws to curtail students and what they can do on campuses and finding legal justifications for manipulating education money,” Johnson said. 

He continued, “She is a dangerous and effective pick, and that’s frankly worse than what we would have got with Matt Gaetz, even with the deplorable moral background that he has.”

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As Johnson mentioned, he had warned about the concept of a more experienced pick in a previous segment, arguing it would be a far more frightening choice for those wary of Trump’s agenda.

“It is, but I guess I’m from the perspective of, I never necessarily thought that Matt Gaetz was a sincere pick. Trump can call all he wants, but I suspect there were many, many people lined up to come after him who won’t be as offensive, who might actually be more effective,” he said. 

“So while it might be a loss in the battle, I don’t necessarily think it’s a victory in the war against what may be an AG that ushers in an authoritarian type of presidency that affects the fundamental rights of American citizens,” Johnson added.

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Major automaker praised online for ad celebrating family amid Jaguar’s ‘woke’ rebrand

Auto brand Volvo is being celebrated for its recent “pro-life” ad after fellow luxury car brand Jaguar caused a social media firestorm this week with its rebrand that critics dubbed “woke.”

The nearly four-minute long ad for Volvo’s new fully electric SUV, the EX90, depicts a man learning he is going to be a father and imagining his family’s future. The ad then powerfully shows off the car’s safety features that protected his family.

“Designed to be the safest Volvo car ever made,” the ad says. “For life.”

The ad was released in September, but resurfaced on social media this week. Several commentators praised the ad and contrasted it to the messaging in Jaguar’s new “Copy Nothing” ad.

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“While Jaguar is going woke, Volvo is celebrating life. I’d much rather own a Volvo than a Jaguar,” one conservative account posted.

“Volvo responds to Jaguar’s insane ad by creating the most beautiful ad I’ve ever seen. Enjoy,” CatholicVote’s The Loopcast podcast host Tom Pogasic posted.

“You are going to notice that even smart advertisers will start reading the room on the cultural shift. Jaguar communicated a more libertine deconstruction of the past & missed. Volvo hit a home run through wholesomeness & affirming sacred duties,” Christian author Paul Anleitner wrote.

“Jaguar is focusing on DEI, gender-bending, and telling their consumers they’re ‘deleting ordinary’. Volvo leans into the ordinary. The ordinary is beautiful and authentic. It’s unique, yet universal. Woke ideas and made up identities are not. I hate ads, but there’s something here,” conservative commentator Amala Ekpunobi wrote.

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Guillaume Huin, senior marketing director for McDonald’s, also hailed the ad’s cinematography and impact.

“Volvo posted a 3 min and 46 second ad on Instagram, shot by Hoyte Van Hoytema, the cinematographer of Interstellar and Oppenheimer. It goes against every single rule you can think about as a social lead. Length. Format. Over-produced. Every comment under the ad said it immediately put Volvo in their consideration set. It’s f—ing fantastic,” he wrote on X.

“Jaguar brand designers punching the air rn [right now],” designer and software engineer Mike Rundle quipped.

Jaguar came under fire after it released a new promotional video debuting its reimagined logo on its X account under the slogan “Copy Nothing.”

The ad featured androgynous models in brightly colored, over-the-top outfits, including one man wearing a dress, along with other slogans such as “create exuberant,” “live vivid,” “delete ordinary” and “break moulds.”

The ad did not feature a car throughout its entire 30-second run.

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Jaguar defended the company’s recent rebrand amid the backlash.

“Our brand relaunch for Jaguar is a bold and imaginative reinvention and as expected it has attracted attention and debate,” Jaguar said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“As proud custodians at such a remarkable point in Jaguar’s history we have preserved iconic symbols while taking a dramatic leap forward. The brand reveal is only the first step in this exciting new era and we look forward to sharing more on Jaguar’s transformation in the coming days and weeks.”

Far-left outlet’s take on Laken Riley’s killer causes firestorm on social media

Daniel Penny trial witness who challenged claim about subway chokehold has more to say

NEW YORK – Dr. Satish Chundru, a Texas forensic pathologist working for Daniel Penny’s defense as he fights charges for the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely, returned to the witness stand Friday for a second day of grilling.

Penny, a 26-year-old Marine veteran and architecture student, grabbed the 30-year-old Neely in the middle of a schizophrenic, drug-fueled outburst on a subway car that witnesses said included death threats and had them fearing for their lives. Although Neely still had a pulse when Penny let go, he later died.

Contrary to the official autopsy report conducted by Dr. Cynthia Harris of the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, Chundru testified that he does not believe a chokehold caused Neely’s death.

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Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner and leading forensic pathologist, disagreed with Chundru’s testimony.

“Dr. Chundru’s testimony may have been very interesting, but it was wrong,” he told Fox News Digital. “He described what can happen in sickle cell disease, not what happens in sickle cell trait, which Neely had. Eight percent of Black people in this country have sickle trait, which is a benign medical condition that rarely causes any symptoms, let alone death.”

At the autopsy, Harris found significant “sickling” on Neely’s organs, she testified, and lawyers on both sides asked for an explanation. She said the condition did not contribute to Neely’s death, and she blamed it solely on asphyxiation from the chokehold. 

“Sickle trait red blood cells do sickle after death, when the body’s oxygen supply disappears and can be seen at autopsy – as with Neely or with anyone with sickle trait dying from any condition,” Baden said. “It’s a post-mortem artifact like rigor mortis. Further, death from sickle disease takes days of sickling to occur; it can’t occur in seconds as happened to Neely.”

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However, he said, even if the chokehold caused Neely’s death, it is not up to the medical examiner to decide whether that was criminal.

“The individual circumstances are important as to whether the death could [or] should have been avoided, and whether the death should be prosecuted, which is entirely up to the prosecutor,” he said.

Chundru, a former Miami-area medical examiner who now runs a private practice in Texas conducting autopsies in a half-dozen counties, said that he did not believe an air choke caused Neely’s unconsciousness and, therefore, did not cause his death.

Rather, he blamed it on “the combined effects of sickle cell crisis, the schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint, and the synthetic marijuana.”

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Penny faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on the top charge of manslaughter. He also faces a charge of criminally negligent homicide.

It was not immediately clear whether he would take the stand in his own defense, although some experts have suggested it is likely that he will because it is a self-defense case.

Woman’s dream house turned into a living nightmare by neighbors

KITTREDGE, Colo.– The house next to Bear Creek looked like something out of a fairy tale, growing right out of the earth alongside towering pine trees. Snow covered the ground, pristine except for a few animal tracks. The stream, nearly frozen over, meandered through the piles of white.

“It was pure bliss,” Taralyn Romero recalled. A playground even sat on the other side of the creek that she pictured her partner’s daughter enjoying.

But as the weather started to warm, pure bliss turned into a nightmare. And Romero, pitted against her neighbors and the local government, would soon become the wicked witch of her fairy tale.

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Romero is a native Coloradan and had been living in Denver when COVID hit. Like so many city dwellers at that time, she decided she wanted more space and rented a house in the mountains. When the lease was up, she wanted to stay rural.

Enter the house in Kittredge, an unincorporated community about 30 minutes outside of Denver with a population just over 1,300 people as of the 2020 Census.

She fell in love with the home on a small slice of property along Bear Creek and moved in along with her partner and his daughter in March 2021. At first, the only trespassers on her land were elk and other animals.

As the snow melted away, fishermen started wading into the portion of Bear Creek that looped through the edge of her property.

Then summer hit. A couple fishermen turned into dozens of people gathering in Kittredge Park as school let out. Families brought their coolers and floaties and spent the day playing in her creek.

They left behind solitary socks and dirty kids’ clothing strewn over logs and tree stumps, empty baby wipes containers, children’s water bottles and a red Hydro Flask adorned with a sticker of a turtle and the words “F— plastic.”

At first, Romero was perplexed. There was no fence or other boundary between the park and her property. Maybe people just didn’t know they were on private land.

So that first summer, Romero says she asked visitors what they were doing there. Some knew the creek — and land next to it — were private, but told her the previous owners had long granted public access to both. Others were driving more than an hour from surrounding areas to get to a park that had a creek next to it, she said, unaware that the water was on private property.

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Romero’s immediate concern was potential liability, she said.

“Having a playground where kids are running back and forth and the parents are sometimes distracted on their phones, made me incredibly concerned that I was going to be dealing with a drowning at worst, or someone getting hurt and slipping on the rocks at best,” she told Fox News Digital.

And while most visitors were respectful, she was upset at the mess left behind each day when the crowds finally went home.

Kids and pets dug holes in the creek bank. People broke trees and left trash. Diapers, cigarettes and cans littered the ground. 

Romero said she didn’t know what to do. She put up a “no digging” sign, and she set out a table and chairs with a placard reading, “Private Property: Residents and Invited Guests Only.” They went ignored.

Her family was new to a small town and didn’t want to make waves, she said.

“We wanted to make friends. We wanted to fit in,” she said. But even gentle reminders to people that they were on private property and requests to respect the land were met with aggression and “vitriol,” she said.

Uncertainty over property lines

The summer after Romero purchased the home, county officials told community members that they were researching where the property lines stood. The county believed the creek had likely moved since the plat map for Kittredge was created in 1920.

“We don’t know if the creek has meandered onto their property,” Matt Robbins, spokesman for Jeffco Open Space, told local media at the time.

At a September meeting with the Kittredge Civic Association board, Romero and her partner Michael Eymer clarified that the “Residents and Invited Guests Only” sign meant Kittredge residents. An attorney from a nearby community whose children played in Bear Creek said she was considering seeking a temporary restraining order so families could continue using the park until the county determined who the real owners were.

Meanwhile, hostilities continued to grow.

“I got maps thrown in my face. I got cussed out. I got screamed at,” Romero said. “I got threatened, and I got told that it wasn’t my land and that I had stolen it.”

Romero said “bad actors” and “bullies” quickly outnumbered the rest, coming into her backyard specifically to antagonize the family.

“They were not there to play with the kids. They were there solely to scream at us, to cuss at us and to harass us,” she said.

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‘People lost their damn minds’

After what Romero described as a “trial period” in which she tried to share the land with the community like the former homeowners had done, she was done playing nice.

She strung a rope across her property and put up no trespassing signs.

“When that rope went up, people lost their damn minds,” she said. “It catapulted this situation into a whole other stratosphere.”

She said people started conspiring online and collectively agreed to ignore the rope and “openly trespass.”

Romero felt like she was portrayed “as a villain… someone who didn’t want to watch children have fun.” 

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“Once it got on to Facebook, it really took off,” she said, escalating from a couple of hundred people to a “full on frenzy” of mob mentality. People from around the country now hated her.

“It really changed the course of my journey… and threw me into an enormous battle, not only with my community, but eventually with my government as well,” she added.