Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Republicans considering a 2024 run for the White House will assemble in Las Vegas this weekend, with anxious donors and activists openly considering whether or not to support Donald Trump for a third straight time.
The former U.S. president will be among the only major Republican prospects not in attendance for the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual leadership meeting, which organizers suggest marks the unofficial beginning of the 2024 presidential primary campaign season.
Trump will speak, but just by video conference, while leading rivals including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence will deliver keynote addresses in person.
The gathering comes just days after Trump became the first candidate to formally launch a 2024 campaign. His allies initially hoped his early announcement might ward off serious primary challenges, but that's not likely after his loyalists lost midterm contests last week in battleground states from Arizona to Pennsylvania. His political standing within the GOP, already weakening, plummeted further.
Mocking one of Trump's slogans, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted before his appearance Friday: "We were told we'd get tired of winning. But I'm tired of losing."
There is still plenty of praise for the former president.
"There's no question that what President Trump accomplished over his four years in terms of strengthening the the U.S.-Israel relationship was unparalleled. He was the most pro-Israel president ever," said Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition's executive director.
However, that may not be enough to win over the coalition's leading donors this time, Brooks continued.
"For a lot of people who are attending this conference, this is about the future," Brooks said. "And for some of them, President Trump may be their answer. For others, they're interested in what others have to say."
With a sprawling fundraising operation featuring small-dollar contributions, Trump does not need major donors to reach for the GOP nomination a third time. But unwillingness by big-money Republicans to commit to him -- at least, for now -- could signal a much broader shift in a party that has been defined almost wholly by its allegiance to Trump for the past six years.
The Republican Jewish Coalition's two-day speaking program, beginning Friday, features DeSantis, a leading Trump rival, and Pence, whom Trump blames for not overturning the 2020 election. Other speakers include Pompeo, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Florida Sen. Rick Scott.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who could become the House speaker when Republicans take over in January, is also scheduled.
The annual event is playing out at the Las Vegas Strip's Venetian Hotel in a nod to the Republican Jewish Coalition's longtime benefactor, Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate who died last year. His wife Miriam Adelson remains a fundraising force within the GOP, though her level of giving in the recent midterm election, which exceeded $20 million, was somewhat scaled back.
The 76-year-old Israeli-born Miriam Adelson "is staying neutral" in the GOP's 2024 presidential primary, according to the family's longtime political gatekeeper Andy Abboud.
But that hasn't stopped ambitious Republicans from courting her.
The Adelsons donated $172.7 million during the 2020 presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which set a new record for donations in a single election and was more than three times the next biggest donor in either party. Over the past decade, they have donated nearly a half billion dollars to Republican candidates and causes.
And while the Adelsons were prominent Trump supporters in the past, Miriam Adelson is unwilling to commit to him as the next presidential primary season gets underway.
She is not alone among major donors and party leaders.
Longtime Trump backer Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group investment firm, told Axios this week that he would back someone from a "new generation" of Republicans. Kenneth C. Griffin, the hedge-fund billionaire, is already openly backing DeSantis.
In an interview this week, Pence slapped at Trump and his loyalists by noting that midterm Republican candidates who "were focused on the past, particularly those that were trying to relitigate the last election, did not do as well."
More than any other position or policy, Trump has been consumed by perpetuating lies about his 2020 loss since leaving office. He endorsed dozens of candidates in 2022 based largely on whether they embraced his baseless claims. Many of them lost last week.
"I think we will have better choices in 2024," Pence told The Associated Press. "And I'm very confident that Republican primary voters will choose wisely."
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
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A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.