The hard work and vision of a top policy and advocacy group in the America First movement helped make the difference in the 2024 presidential election, as several of its chairmen prepare to join the new Trump administration, a top official said.
America First Works executive director Ashley Hayek told Fox News in a Monday interview that her group has succeeded in focusing on popular policies from the first Trump administration and bringing those to state governments.
As the 2024 race heated up, Hayek said, America First Works turned to voter turnout as its plan to continue the prevalence of the political movement’s message.
"How do we educate people on these policies even more and mobilize voters?" she recalled asking.
"So we did a major study and analysis of the over 3,100 counties across the country, and we identified 21 key counties that we knew would be really important to be successful. And keep in mind that these are states that some were blue, some were red, some were purple, but some of the states were called in favor of Joe Biden in 2020 by only a 10,000 vote advantage," she said.
The initiative, nicknamed "Project 19" after the original 19 counties it targeted, sought to bring out to the polls low- and no-propensity voters. The latter is largely unique in the campaigning realm: seeking out voters technically considered "active" on state rolls but who have not voted in the past four cycles.
It not only targeted counties in swing states or reliably conservative states, but also in blue states like New York and New Jersey. In the latter, Trump came within four points of flipping it red for the first time this century, while a majority of New York’s counties voted for the Republican but were outweighed by the five boroughs, Erie County (Buffalo) and a couple others.
"I think it's kind of no secret when you look at any of the major media markets and the counties that those touch – look at Phoenix – that's Maricopa County, Las Vegas, it's Clark County, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, these are major urban areas, but they all have collar counties as well that become battlegrounds for both parties."
"And when we were on the ground, we would see, from time to time, Kamala Harris door-knockers, not as often as we thought we would," Hayek said.
The group’s election integrity work led them to target voters in places like Bucks County, Pennsylvania – where the RNC had launched a lawsuit after early voters were turned away from the Doylestown elections office.
"We were able to message directly to voters saying, ‘Hey, stay in line, don't get out of line,'" she said.
"We would call ahead to find out how long the line was for some of our elderly folks who couldn't wait in line that long."
"Those are the types of tactics just making it more accessible to vote. That's what conservatives want to do. We want to make it easier to vote, harder to cheat. That's been our mantra the entire time."
Through its voter outreach operations, Hayek said her group’s canvassers noticed a shift in pro-Harris activity from the Sun Belt to the Rust Belt – noting the latter had been President Biden’s strategy.
Hayek suggested Harris shifted to shoring up areas that had been in Biden’s pocket because her lack of "strategic messaging" was not resonating in those places as his once did.
A California native, Hayek said her group is also very involved in the Golden State despite its blue bent.
"I do think you're seeing more of a cultural shift. I do think that we're going to have to do things at a more local level in the state of California, and we're going to have to start working together in a lot better ways," she said.
With crime and taxation continuing to plague the elector-rich state, Hayek said she hopes to see America First Works’ work there continue to make inroads, similar to how former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., got relatively close to unseating Gov. Kathy Hochul in New York by focusing on issues and eschewing hyper-partisanship.
America First Works’ partner group, America First Policy Institute, has since seen at least four of its leaders tapped for roles in the new administration, including Zeldin.
Co-founders Brooke Rollins and Linda McMahon are agriculture and education secretary-designates, respectively, while Zeldin and fellow co-chairman ex-Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., are also primed for White House roles in 2025.
"I think this is a really exciting time not just for America First Works, but for all Americans," Hayek said.
"And one of the things that was really important to us was having conversations with voters… so we made sure to collect information about what policies people cared about the most: is it the economy, is it the border, is it education? So to be able to continue those conversations throughout 2025, 2026 and beyond is going to be really important for this movement."
Fox News Digital's Emma Woodhead contributed to this report.
The 2024 election cycle was rife with repeated legal battles to protect the voting processes from left-wing attorneys leveraging the courts to strip election safeguards, the chief of an election integrity nonprofit who saw a string of legal wins told Fox News Digital.
"They've been selling American people a lie," Restoring Integrity & Trust in Elections (RITE) President Derek Lyons told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview, referring to left-wing efforts to undermine election laws. "And I think that these past two election cycles, where people have said ‘No, voting is very easy and millions, hundreds of millions of people have been doing it,’ have shown that what they're doing is misleading, at the very least."
RITE is a non-profit organization founded in 2022 following voters’ concern over the security of the 2020 election during the COVID-19 pandemic. The group was co-founded by Fox News contributor Karl Rove and includes board members such as former Attorney General Bill Barr and Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy. The organization hit the ground running in 2022 to ensure its "mission of protecting the rule of law in the qualifications for, administration of, and tabulation of voting in the United States," according to the group’s website.
Lyons spoke to Fox News Digital just less than a month after Election Day, when he took a victory lap for his team’s battles against efforts to reportedly undermine election integrity, detailing the top legal tactics left-wing activists took during the election season.
Lyons, an attorney and former White House staff secretary and counselor to the president under President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, explained that Democrat activists were hyper-focused throughout the election on decrying efforts put forth by state legislatures to ensure safe elections, such as voter ID laws, frequently claiming such a policy would disenfranchise voters.
"The main thing they do is anytime anybody puts up any sort of election integrity measure, whether that's voter I.D., voter photo I.D., whether that's rationalization of cure periods – the ability of people to fix errors in their ballots sort of after the election – ballot receipt deadlines, so that we can know the result of the election quickly … they attack it and say, this is disenfranchising," he said.
"'This makes voting harder … this takes away people's right to vote.' …. They invoke federal voting rights laws that were meant to prevent the worst abuses of Jim Crow. They're sort of shameless about it. They'll throw any, any tactic at it," he explained of Democratic efforts to change voting laws.
When groups such as RITE step in to challenge claims that such voting laws are legal and protect elections from illegal activity, Lyons said left-wing activists slam them in court as holding no standing.
"They try to kick us out on procedural grounds because, ultimately, a lot of times they don't want to defend the merits of what election administrators are trying to do."
Lyons pointed to a successful case in Wisconsin back in 2022 when RITE challenged state officials from enabling what he called "re-voting" procedures, which entailed absentee voters who already submitted their ballots changing their votes mid-election. RITE challenged the practice and won to ensure that once a ballot is mailed, it cannot be changed.
"We were able to win that case on the grounds that once a ballot is put into the mail, received by the election officials, that's the end of that person's vote. There's no fishing ballots back out and putting them back in, etc. Which obviously creates a risk of errors and double voting and all sorts of other problems. And so they tried to kick us out on standing. We were able to defeat that and secure that victory in Wisconsin," he said.
Pennsylvania was again the premier battleground state this year, with both Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris and a bevy of their respective surrogates criss-crossing the state to rally support ahead of Election Day. For RITE, the group has filed and taken part in 10 different election cases since 2022, including a case revolving around potential double votes.
"In Philadelphia, we just got them to admit that they had planned to eliminate a crucial check against double voting to make sure that people weren't both voting in the mail and in person. So we had that in place for both elections [the 2022 midterms and 2024 election] to prevent that type of double voting, which does happen in Allegheny County," he said of the double vote case.
Lyons also celebrated a win in a case he described as the "crown jewel" of Pennsylvania: ensuring undated and incorrectly dated mail-in ballots were not counted in the official tally.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in September that mail-in ballots without the correct dates on ballot envelopes cannot be counted in elections.
The ruling gained widespread attention following Nov. 5, when Democratic-led election boards bucked the state high court's ruling and voted to include such ballots in a recount concerning longtime Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s race against Sen.-elect Dave McCormick. Democrats in the state openly defied the ruling before the state Supreme Court ordered counties to not include undated ballots, and Democrats walked back their decision.
"We took it to state court and got a declaration that this had to be done under state law," Lyons said of RITE’s battle against Democratic activists over undated ballot envelopes. "They ran to federal court and said federal law prevents this. We won that case. They took it to the Court of Appeals. Democrat judges disagreed with them and said the date requirement does not violate federal law. They went back to state court and said, ‘well, this violates the state constitution.’ That case was procedurally improper. That case was thrown out. And then they tried to bring some other little case that nobody was paying attention to and use that case to revolutionize the way election administration was done in Pennsylvania. And finally, the state Supreme Court, to its great credit, said enough."
In Arizona, RITE had another win when it led a coalition of groups against a ballot initiative all the way through the Arizona Supreme Court that Lyons said would have expanded ballot harvesting.
"One of our first engagements that we're very proud of was, we quickly led a coalition of like-minded groups to litigate against a ballot initiative that was pending … in Arizona that would have eliminated things like precinct voting, would have expanded opportunities for ballot harvesting. It would have prevented efforts to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls and a host of other, I think, really bad rules for elections," he said.
"We were able to invalidate hundreds of thousands of signatures that the left, the liberal organizations that were pursuing this initiative had, quote unquote, gathered. We invalidated them. We litigated the case up to the Arizona Supreme Court. It actually went back a couple of times. And in the end, that ballot initiative was not approved. And so that meant that the 2022 election, but I think more importantly the 2024 election in Arizona, was not infected by ballot harvesting."
When asked if Democrat activists essentially cried uncle amid the avalanche of election lawsuits, Lyons pointed to Democratic Party elections attorney Marc Elias and a case originating out of Ohio as his "favorite" example of defeat over liberal attorneys.
"Marc Elias went to Ohio. Ohio passed a very sensible voter photo ID law. He started out the year in 2024 boasting and proclaiming to all who would listen on Twitter and in the media, that if Ohio passed this law, it will be sued and the law will be struck down. So he went to Ohio, and he did file that lawsuit. He followed through on his threat."
"We showed up, and we defended that lawsuit. We defended against that lawsuit alongside the state. And the victory was complete and total. A Democrat judge appointed by President Clinton, I believe, threw out his entire case, said 'you have not proven at all that there's even a remote chance that any voters are disenfranchised or burdened by this law. Case dismissed. Final judgment.' [Elias] didn't even appeal that case. Didn't even bother to try to take it up to the courts of appeals," he recounted.
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed the voter ID bill into law in January 2023, which mandated voters provide a driver’s license, state ID, passport or military ID when casting a ballot, instead of previous forms of identification such as a bank statement.
Democrats and some residents in the state dubbed it one of the most restrictive ID policies in the nation and the "worst anti-voter" bill, arguing it would disenfranchise lower-income voters who have suspended licenses or lacked the required documentation. The Ohio Secretary of State office found over the summer that more than 8,000 voters who tried to cast ballots since the law's passage were not included in final vote tallies as they lacked the proper identification, USA Today previously reported.
Republicans have defended the law as "an elementary precaution to protect the voting process," citing that Americans cannot board a plane or buy alcohol without the same requirement.
Concerns over election integrity have been brewing for years and were underscored during the 2020 election as voters hunkered down amid stay-at-home orders, and mail-in and absentee ballot voting grew. Heading into the 2024 election, a poll from January found 46% of registered Republicans said they had no confidence ballots would be accurately counted and reported, Fox Digital previously reported. On the other hand, 81% of registered Democrats reported in the poll they are "very" confident the 2024 elections would be "fair."
Polls focused on specific measures touted by Republicans and conservatives to ensure safe elections have received widespread support across the board. A Gallup Poll released days ahead of Election Day found that 84% of respondents favored requiring voters to provide a photo ID, while 83% said they support providing proof of citizenship when registering to vote for the first time. The poll noted that voter attitudes toward these issues were similar to those seen in its July 2022 poll.
"Voter photo ID is supported by something like 80% of the country. The notion that this is somehow unconstitutional has been rejected time and time and time again," Lyons said.
Looking toward future elections, Lyons said RITE will focus on election laws surrounding left-wing efforts to "normalize" noncitizen votes in blue states before such efforts seep into red states, as well as continuing their efforts on voter ID laws, enhancing the integrity of signature matching requirements, and unraveling what Lyons said was left-wing "lies" surrounding claims of disenfranchised voters over practices such as voter ID laws.
"I think our organization was able to do and to plug into a much broader coalition of of groups ,who really care about what I call the crown jewel of the United States of America, which is our elections. That's the key. It's the foundation of our self-government. And I think today we can believe, and we can have confidence, and we can be proud of the fact that they're a little more secure today than they were two years ago and four years ago," he said.
Republican lawmakers in Arizona are calling for Pima County recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly to be investigated for her handling of the 2024 General Election, accusing her of closing an early ballot request portal before the legal deadline for early ballot requests, among two other claims of potential misconduct.
Arizona State Representatives Teresa Martinez and Rachel Jones penned a letter to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes last week requesting a probe following reports of "significant and highly concerning issues" involving Cazares-Kelly’s actions leading up to and during the election, the lawmakers said in a joint statement Monday. Cazares-Kelly, a progressive Democrat, has been in office since 2021.
Martinez and Jones claim the Pima County Recorder’s Office disabled its online ballot request system six days before the legal deadline, impacting nearly 4,000 voters. They say the decision has raised concerns about compliance with Arizona election laws and potential voter disenfranchisement in the county, located in southern Arizona. The county has a population of just over 1 million people, per the 2020 census, making it Arizona's second-most populous county, behind Maricopa County.
The pair have also raised concerns that inadequate safeguards in the recorder’s voter registration program for prison inmates may have allowed ineligible individuals to vote. They say previous inquiries into this matter, including a letter sent by Jones and State Representative Cory McGarr on June 5, went unanswered.
Thirdly, Martinez and Rachel Jones say that the method of how undeliverable ballots were processed, stored and tracked under Cazares-Kelly's leadership, has also been raised.
A follow-up letter sent by Jones and McGarr on Oct. 24 to clarify compliance with Arizona law likewise received no response, according to the letter.
"Election integrity is the foundation of our democracy, and voters deserve to know their elections are being administered fairly, lawfully, and transparently," Martinez said in a statement. "The numerous irregularities and lack of accountability from the Pima County Recorder’s Office demand a full investigation."
ARIZONA ALLEGED ‘FAKE ELECTORS’ WHO BACKED TRUMP IN 2020 INDICTED BY GRAND JURY
Jones added that: "When nearly 4,000 voters face barriers to requesting a ballot, and when questions about unlawful voting and ballot processing are met with silence, it’s clear that immediate action is needed to restore public trust."
Cazares-Kelly’s office provided Fox News Digital with a Nov. 19 press release which she addressed concerns regarding the early ballot request portal.
It reads that Pima County discovered a district boundary error weeks before election which led to an "unavoidable delay" in the vendor’s printing and assembly of ballots resulting in many voters flood the online form to request ballots. Some voters did so despite already being on the Active Early Voting List (AEVL), which duplicated their ballot requests.
"The processing of online ballot requests is still a very manual process in our office, requiring us to look up each voter record and review many pieces of information," Cazares-Kelly said, per the release.
"Follow-up communication is often necessary. After monitoring the progress of the ballot requests during the week leading up to the October 25 deadline, it became clear that our office could not manually process all the online requests in a timely manner. Only 39% of the more than 20,000 ballot requests manually processed before October 19 were valid."
She said that her data team filtered out about 4,000 duplicate requests and emailed the remaining 3,900 voters with unique online early ballot requests, urging them to call the office so it could process the requests more quickly with one phone call versus back-and-forth correspondence.
"I am confident that most of the voters who requested a ballot using our online form either received their already queued ballots, voted early in person, updated their addresses online or successfully requested a mail ballot," Cazares-Kelly said.
A spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes' office says it has received the letter but is declining to comment further, telling Fox News Digital that the attorney general’s office does not comment on potential investigations.
Cazares-Kelly is the first Native American woman elected to a seat in Pima County, according to her campaign website. She is the President of the Progressive Democrats of Southern Arizona and Vice President of the Arizona Democratic Party's Native American Caucus.
In Martinez’s and Jones’ letter, the pair made reference to Mayes’ comments last month that her office was investigating whether President-elect Trump’s remarks about former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s law.
On the campaign trail, Trump called Cheney a war hawk and postulated how she might feel standing in a war zone with "nine barrels shooting at her."
"Arizonans deserve free, fair, and transparent elections," the letter reads. "In light of your recent decision to immediately investigate President-elect Donald Trump over his speech (although you later determined his remarks were protected by the First Amendment), we hope you will agree that Recorder Cazares-Kelly's alarming conduct administering the 2024 General Election warrants a thorough investigation."
Iowa is suing the Biden administration over its alleged refusal to provide access to the citizenship status information of more than 2,000 registered voters whose status was questioned ahead of the 2024 election.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Secretary of State Paul Pate filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, which claims U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) "would not hand over" its "list of noncitizens illegally registered to vote in Iowa."
Federal authorities' "failure meant that the State had to rely on the best — imperfect — data it had available to ensure that no Iowan’s vote was canceled by an illegal, noncitizen vote," Pate and Bird said in a joint statement.
DHS told Fox News Digital in a statement that the department does not comment on pending litigation, though "USCIS has engaged with Iowa and will continue to correspond with them directly through official channels."
The complaint details how state election officials checked voter rolls against a list of people who identified themselves as noncitizens with the state's Department of Transportation. The vast majority of the 2,176 names had subsequently registered to vote or voted, meaning that some of those people could have become naturalized citizens in the lapsed time.
Pate told county elections officials during the state’s early voting to challenge the ballots cast by any of the individuals named on the list and have them cast a provisional ballot instead.
Pro-voting groups sued Pate over the move, though days later a judge ruled against them and allowed those named on Pate’s list to cast provisional ballots.
At least 500 of the identified individuals proved their citizenship status and had their votes counted, the Des Moines Register reported, citing preliminary information collected from 97 of the state's 99 counties.
Another 74 ballots were rejected, according to the Register, mostly because those people did not return to prove their citizenship status.
Most of the people on Pate's list did not vote in the 2024 election, according to the Register's data from county auditors.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – President-elect Trump turned to podcasts during the 2024 election cycle, rallying support particularly among young men who have trended to the right in recent years and helped deliver Trump’s massive victory.
"I want to thank some people real quick," UFC CEO Dana White declared from the election night podium following Trump’s win, thanking a list of podcasters who spoke with Trump on the campaign trail. "I want to thank the Nelk Boys, Aidan Ross, Theo Von, Boston, Bussin with the Boys, and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan."
Ahead of President Biden dropping out of the race, and before facing two assassination attempts and pouring hours of work into seven key battleground states and beyond, Trump joined the popular podcast "Full Send," also known as the "Nelk Boys," for an interview in March 2022. This interview marked his entrance into the podcast world while appealing to a voting bloc of young men. Trump discussed not only his policies and vision for the U.S., but his family and sports, and he allowed voters to take a peek into his life beyond politics.
The Nelk Boys interview touched on Trump’s golf game, his favorite songs, such as "YMCA" and "Hold on I’m Coming," to play on the campaign trail, as well as his thoughts on the Biden administration’s handling of COVID and Russia.
"If you put up this whole interview, let’s see what happens when Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and all of them take it down," Trump quipped during the podcast, only for the interview to later be pulled from YouTube, setting off a firestorm of condemnation from Trump.
"Whatever happened to free speech in our Country? Incredibly, but not surprisingly, the Big Tech lunatics have taken down my interview with the very popular NELK Boys so that nobody can watch it or in any way listen to it," the 45th president said in a statement released by his Save America PAC at the time.
"In the 24 hours that it was up it set every record for them, by many times," he continued. "Interestingly, on the show I told them this would happen because Big Tech and the Fake News Media fear the truth, they fear criticism about Biden, and above all, they don’t want to talk about the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election, all topics discussed."
Fast-forward to 2024, Trump again joined the Nelk Boys, and a bevy of other podcasts as he worked to rally support among young men, including joining Joe Rogan, who hosts the most popular podcast in the U.S. with 14.5 million followers on Spotify alone and endorsed Trump just a day ahead of the election.
In August of this year, the Nelk Boys debuted Send the Vote on their podcast, which was a massive nonpartisan voter initiative aimed at youth, especially young men.
"Making a post on Instagram or making a tweet, that’s cool," Kyle Forgeard, one of the Nelk Boys, said in a promo video back in August, the Wall Street Journal reported. "But every single one of you guys needs to register to vote, and you need to make your voice heard. Don’t be f---ing lazy, get your ballot in the mail, do whatever you got to do, plan around it."
Armed with about a $20 million budget, Send the Vote placed ad buys targeting 1.1 million inactive, registered male voters between the ages of 18-34 to vote. The ads reached more than 35 million people, Fox News Digital learned, while countless others also saw the ads via the Nelk Boys’ social media accounts.
SendTheVote.com saw more than 2 million visitors, while 210,000 first-time voters who saw the ads and subsequently voted, and 110,000 people who visited the site requested they be reminded to vote.
Send the Vote reached more than 140 million people through influencers, nearly 1 million on streamed content, and nearly 7 million people through podcasts specifically, Fox Digital learned. Send the Vote ads were featured on other wildly popular podcasts, including on comedic shows KillTony, Theo Von, Tim Dillon, as well as the sports-oriented podcast "BS with Jake Paul," as well as viral TikTok celebrity Hailey Welch’s "Talk Tuah" podcast.
Send the Vote launched tailgate events during the Penn State vs. Wisconsin game in October, which appealed to young voters in two top battleground states. Volunteers knocked on frat house doors and held a voter registration concert in Atlanta with pro-Trump rapper Waka Flocka Flame.
"Too many people in our country felt like their voice didn't matter and that the barriers to making real change are too big to overcome. The goal of Send the Vote was to tear down those barriers and remind our audience that posting on social media does not count as a vote and they need to physically show up to vote. Sick of how much things cost? Go vote. Tired of unnecessary wars? Go vote - it’s not as difficult as they make it out to be." - John Shahidi, co-founder of "Full Send" told Fox News Digital.
Trump leaning into podcasts this election cycle, as opposed to traditional media interviews, paid off among Gen Z men and millennials. The Fox News Voter Survey published earlier this month found that men aged 18-44 supported Trump at 53% compared to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 45%.
In addition to the Nelk Boys, and other podcasters who highlighted Trump, Rogan’s endorsement of the 45th president was viewed as a massive success. The former and upcoming president had joined Rogan on his podcast for a three-hour interview ahead of the election. Harris was offered the same interview, but Rogan rejected her campaign's requests to shorten the interview and move it out of the studio, he previously said.
Trump attended a UFC fight in New York City following the election, and was seen embracing Rogan in a viral video.
On election night when Trump was projected the winner, the UFC’s Dana White celebrated the podcasters who spotlighted Trump to their audiences, adding that "karma" caught up with Democrats.
"Nobody deserves this more than him, and nobody deserves this more than his family does," White said on election night. "This is what happens when the machine comes after you. What you've seen over the last several years, this is what it looks like. Couldn't stop him, he keeps going forward, he doesn't quit, he's the most resilient, hard-working man I've ever met in my life, his family are incredible people.
"This is karma, ladies and gentlemen. He deserves this. They deserve it as a family."
A runoff election for the state Supreme Court in Mississippi is too close to call between state Sen. Jenifer Branning and incumbent Justice Jim Kitchens as of Wednesday morning.
Although Mississippi judicial candidates run without party labels, Branning had the endorsement of the Republican Party, while Kitchens had several Democratic Party donors but did not receive an endorsement from the party.
Branning, who has been a state senator since 2016, led Kitchens by 2,678 votes out of 120,610 votes counted as of Wednesday morning. Kitchens is seeking a third term and is the more senior of the court’s two presiding justices, putting him next in line to serve as chief justice. Her lead had been 518 just after midnight Wednesday.
Around midnight Wednesday, The Associated Press estimated there were more than 11,000 votes still to be counted. In the Nov. 5 election, 7% of votes were counted after election night.
Branning had a substantial lead in the first round of voting with 42% compared to Kitchens' 36%. Three other candidates split the rest.
The victor will likely be decided by absentee ballots that are allowed to be counted for five days following an election in Mississippi, as well as the affidavit ballots, according to the Clarion Ledger.
Voter turnout typically decreases between general elections and runoffs, and campaigns said turnout was especially challenging two days before Thanksgiving. The Magnolia State voted emphatically for President-elect Donald Trump, who garnered 61.6% of the vote compared to Vice President Harris’ 37.3%.
Branning and Kitchens faced off in District 1, also known as the Central District, which stretches from the Delta region through the Jackson metro area and over to the Alabama border.
Branning calls herself a "constitutional conservative" and says she opposes "liberal, activists judges" and "the radical left." The Mississippi GOP said she was the "proven conservative," and that was why they endorsed her.
She has not previously held a judicial office but served as a special prosecutor in Neshoba County and as a staff attorney in the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Division of Business Services and Regulations, per the Clarion Ledger.
Branning voted against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem and supported mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crime, according to Mississippi Today.
Kitchens has been practicing law for 41 years and has been on the Mississippi Supreme Court since 2008, and prior to that, he also served as a district attorney, according to the outlet.
He is endorsed by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Action Fund, which calls itself "a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond." Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., also backed Kitchens.
In September, Kitchens sided with a man on death row for a murder conviction in which a key witness recanted her testimony. In 2018, Kitchens dissented in a pair of death row cases dealing with the use of the drug midazolam in state executions.
Elsewhere, in the state’s other runoff election, Amy St. Pe' won an open seat on the Mississippi Court of Appeals. She will succeed Judge Joel Smith, who did not seek re-election to the 10-member Court of Appeals. The district is in the southeastern corner of the state, including the Gulf Coast.
"Missouri proved today how to handle radical activists that come into a state with secure elections and try to undermine them through the legal process," Bailey said in an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital.
Bailey added that this was a huge victory for the Show Me State.
"We went to court, we put on the evidence, and radical activists working to undermine our elections FAILED. This is a HUGE win for election security," Bailey said in a post on X.
Elon Musk also shared his approval and praise for Missouri's court ruling.
"Congratulations AG Bailey! Now we need this nationwide," Musk wrote in a post on X.
The Missouri court’s decision to uphold the voter ID law came after heavy criticism from groups arguing that such requirements could disenfranchise voters.
However, Bailey’s office successfully presented evidence supporting the law’s necessity and effectiveness in maintaining the integrity of the voting process. The court’s ruling confirmed that the voter ID law does not impose a burden on voters.
Missouri also provides free non-driver's licenses for voting for those who do not already have a driver's license or have a current license. The health department's Bureau of Vital Records provides free birth certificates to those seeking their first non-driver's license in order to vote if the applicant does not have a current driver's license.
"There is not a severe burden on the right to vote as the State has gone to great lengths to help voters obtain IDs," Bailey wrote in a previous court brief.
In October 2022, Cole County Presiding Judge Jon Beetem had already rejected a lawsuit brought by the Missouri League of Women Voters, NAACP and two voters challenging a law passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature making it mandatory that voters show photo identification to cast a regular ballot. Under the 2022 law, people with a valid government-issued photo ID are still able to submit provisional ballots, which will be counted if they return later that day with a photo ID or if election officials verify their signatures.
Republicans said the goal of the 2022 law was to deter voter fraud, but the plaintiffs in the case argued the legislation placed unconstitutional hurdles on voting, suppressing turnout.
Before the 2022 midterm elections, it was acceptable for Missourians to present a voter registration card, a student identification card, a bank statement or utility bill or a valid driver's license to cast their ballots in the state.
The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 36 states request or require identification to vote, of which at least 20 ask for a photo ID.
Other Republican-led states are moving in the same direction as Missouri, which could serve as the blueprint for national policy.
"I'm proud that Missouri will continue to lead the nation in defense of election security," Bailey said.
Critics argue that such requirements are an overreaction that could disenfranchise eligible voters.
Fox News Digital's Danielle Wallace and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Opponents of a defeated California ballot measure to raise the state's minimum wage said voters made the right call in pushing back against a proposal that would otherwise have resulted in higher inflation.
Proposition 32, which would have raised California's minimum wage to $18 per hour, was narrowly beaten back as only 49.2% of voters supported the proposed hike. The current minimum wage in the state is $16 per hour.
Fast-food restaurants with 60 or more locations are already mandated to pay their employees at least $20 per hour.
"Basic economics shows that raising the minimum wage ultimately drives up inflation and unemployment, predictably hurting workers and families," Republican State Sen. Brian Jones, the upper chamber's minority leader, told Fox News Digital. "More inflation and higher costs are the last things we need right now. Californians made the right call to reject Prop 32 and protect financial stability."
Business groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce, California Restaurant Association and California Grocers Association opposed the measure, saying high labor costs would hurt small businesses.
Chamber of Commerce CEO Jennifer Barrera told The Associated Press that the economy and personal costs were top of mind in the election, a message that resonated with the voters.
John Kabateck, the California director for the National Federation of Independent Business, said minimum wage hikes amid a period of inflation would have added to the current economic woes many residents already face.
"At the end of the day, this really came down to affordability for Californians already struggling," Kabateck told Fox News Digital. "People realized a higher minimum wage was not going to make their bad situation that much better."
Prop 32 was authored by startup entrepreneur Joseph Sanberg, an anti-poverty advocate and major investor in Blue Apron, the ingredient-and-recipe meal kit company.
"The time is now, because the pandemic has heightened the people’s understanding of the realities so many Californians face," Sanberg said in his official ballot argument. "Cost of living is rising faster and faster... but wages haven’t increased commensurately."
Fox News Digital has reached out to Sanberg and various trade groups.
Sanberg was heavily involved in spearheading Prop 32.
Jones called the measure a failed "publicity stunt" hatched by Sanberg that was part of "his pattern of misleading Californians."
"Known for posing as an environmentalist while facing scrutiny for dubious claims, Sanberg shifted tactics by pushing a minimum wage hike and falsely branding himself as a champion of the working class," he said. "Californians saw through his deception and rightly rejected his Prop 32 that would have decimated our economy."
Kabateck said policymakers in Sacremento didn't seem to be in touch with small business owners and voters struggling to get by.
"At the end of the day, who doesn't want a few dollars in their pocket? But at what cost?" he said.
"I am running to serve as the Chair of the Democratic National Committee," Ken Martin, head of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, announced Tuesday in a social media post.
Martin becomes the second candidate to launch a bid to succeed current DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, who is not expected to seek a second four-year term early next year in the wake of this month's major election setbacks for the Democrats up and down the ballot.
Former two-term Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate who for the past year has served as Social Security administration commissioner in President Biden's administration, announced his candidacy on Monday.
Martin, who has led the Minnesota Democrats for a dozen years, serves as a DNC vice chair and is also the leader of the association of state Democratic Party chairs.
"When I took over @MinnesotaDFL, we were in debt and disarray. But we brought people together, built a winning coalition, and delivered results. I’m ready to get to work to rebuild our party," Martin said in his social media post.
In an accompanying video, Martin emphasized, "if you're looking for a creature of D.C., that's not me. But I do know how the DNC works and how it isn't working."
He stressed that Democrats "need to reconnect our ideas — which we know are popular in red, blue and purple states across this country — back to our party and to our candidates."
Martin said he started his bid for DNC chair with the backing of over 80 DNC members. The next DNC chair will be chosen by the roughly 450 voting members of the national party committee.
O'Malley, in launching his bid, highlighted that "we must connect our Party with the most important place in America — the kitchen table of every family’s home. Jobs, Opportunity, and Economic Security for all. Getting things done. Hope. A 50 state strategy. Now," O’Malley emphasized in a social media post.
While O'Malley and Martin are the first two candidates to launch bids, others are expected to follow, as the Democrats try to rebound after losing the White House and Senate in the 2024 elections and failing to recapture the House of Representatives.
Another potential contender is Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party.
