Erika Kirk endorses JD Vance for president in 2028
Erika Kirk, widow of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, and U.S. Vice President JD Vance embrace on stage during a Turning Point USA event at the Pavilion at Ole Miss at the University of Mississippi, on October 29, 2025 in Oxford, Mississippi. Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images
(PHOENIX) — Erika Kirk endorsed Vice President JD Vance for president during a Turning Point USA conference in Arizona, vowing to throw one of the most influential conservative organizations in the country behind Vance in 2028.
“We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible,” she said during her speech on Thursday night at AmericaFest, the first major Turning Point event since her husband’s assassination.
While the endorsement is not a major surprise given Vance’s close relationship with Charlie Kirk, Erika Kirk and Turning Point, it is significant given the group’s prominence on the right.
Turning Point, founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012, played a key role in helping elect President Donald Trump and shaping the modern conservative movement, particularly among younger voters.
Vance has not yet officially said whether he will run in 2028. In an interview last month with Fox News, Vance said he was focused on the vice presidency and the 2026 midterms but would have a conversation with President Trump after next year’s elections about 2028 .
“We’re going to win the midterms, we’re going to do everything that we can to win the midterms, and then after that, I’m going to sit down with the president of the United States and talk to him about it,” Vance said. “But let’s focus on the now.”
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, Vance credited the Turning Point founder for his own political rise and for building out President Trump’s second administration.
“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene. He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government,” Vance said in the days after Kirk was fatally shot on Sept. 10 during a campus event at Utah Valley University.
Erika Kirk’s endorsement follows Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying in an interview with Vanity Fair published this week that if the vice president were to run for president in 2028, he would support him.
“If JD Vance runs for president, he’s going to be our nominee, and I’ll be one of the first people to support him,” Rubio told Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple.
Trump himself has said Vance and Rubio would be “great” options for presidential candidates.
“I’m not sure if anybody would run against those two,” Trump said in late October. “I think if they ever formed a group, it would be unstoppable.”
Ghislaine Maxwell October 18, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, invoked the Fifth Amendment during the closed-door virtual deposition before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, according to Chairman James Comer.
It was expected that Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison in Texas, would refuse to answer questions from lawmakers and committee staffers as part of the panel’s investigation into the late financier and his ties to some of the world’s most powerful figures in politics, business and entertainment. Epstein, a convicted sex offender, died by suicide in 2019 while at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
Maxwell has a petition pending in federal court in New York which seeks to overturn her conviction or reduce her sentence.
Some committee lawmakers were expected to attend the closed deposition.
The deposition was more than six months in the making, and was first requested last July, when Comer formally issued a subpoena for a deposition with Maxwell to occur at Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee on Aug. 11.
Comer agreed to delay the deposition as Maxwell awaited a Supreme Court ruling on her appeal, which she ultimately lost.
During that interview, Maxwell told Blanche that she never witnessed nor heard of any criminal or inappropriate activity by President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, nor any of the well-known men who associated with Epstein, according to the sources.
The closed deposition with Maxwell comes on the same day that members of Congress can go to the Department of Justice to view unredacted versions of the Epstein files that the department has withheld from public disclosure.
Lindsey Halligan, attorney for US President Donald Trump, holds ceremonial proclamations to be signed by US President Donald Trump, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, March 6, 2025. Trump exempted Canadian goods covered by the North American trade agreement known as USMCA from his 25% tariffs, offering major reprieves to the US’s two largest trading partners. (Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance announced Tuesday that the couple is expecting their fourth child.
“We’re very happy to share some exciting news. Our family is growing!” Usha Vance wrote in the post on social media.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi delivers remarks on an arrest connected to the 2012 U.S. Embassy attack in Benghazi, at the Department of Justice on February 6, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers grilled a combative Attorney General Pam Bondi as she testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday amid multiple controversies, including her handling of the files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the Justice Department’s targeting of President Donald Trump’s political foes.
In a fiery exchange at the beginning of the hearing, Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal pushed Bondi to turn around and apologize to a group of Epstein survivors who attended the hearing.
Bondi, who didn’t turn around, told Jayapal she wouldn’t “get in the gutter for her theatrics.”
In her opening statement, Bondi expressed support for the victims.
“I have spent my entire career fighting for victims, and I will continue to do so. I am deeply sorry for what any victim — any victim — has been through, especially as a result of that monster,” Bondi said to the Epstein survivors.
Bondi said several Democrats were engaging in “theatrics” throughout the hearing, and when Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee, pushed her to answer questions instead of engaging in heated interactions, Bondi called Raskin a “washed up loser lawyer.”
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been sharply critical of the Justice Department’s incomplete release of the Epstein files and extensive DOJ redactions after some viewed unredacted files at the agency beginning Monday.
Raskin, said he was outraged by Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files.
“You redacted the names of abusers, enablers, accomplices and co-conspirators, apparently to spare them embarrassment and disgrace, which is the exact opposite of what the law ordered you to do. Even worse, you shockingly failed to redact many of the victims’ names, which is what you were ordered to do by Congress,” he said.
“Some of the victims had come forward publicly, but many had not. Many had kept their torment private, even from family and friends. But you published their names, their identity, their images on thousands of pages for the world to see. So you ignored the law,” he added.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department — in response to concerns raised by victims’ and their lawyers — removed from its website “several thousand” documents and media that may have “inadvertently included victim-identifying information.”
Tensions were high as a group of Epstein survivors were seated behind Bondi. The group spoke out about the federal investigation into the convicted sex offender earlier Wednesday and have been critical of the federal government for not doing enough to prosecute Epstein over the years or look into the people who allegedly enabled him.
Several victims and their families said they feel the federal government has not done enough outreach to them.
“Pam, I have a clear and simple message for you. The way this administration and you specifically have handled survivors has been nothing short of a failure,” Sky Roberts, the brother of Virginia Giuffre, Epstein’s most high-profile accuser said prior to the hearing.
Sky Roberts’ wife, Amanda Roberts, said Bondi’s treatment of the Epstein survivors has been disappointing.
“To Ms. Bondi, we are deeply disappointed by the way you and your leadership in this department have treated survivors. And today, while you’re being questioned, we ask you to look in the eyes of every single one of us and remember Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who paid the ultimate sacrifice for the trauma that she had endured,“ Amanda Roberts said.
Raskin also blasted Bondi in his opening statement, calling her handling of investigations a “vendetta factory.”
“You’ve turned the people’s Department of Justice into Trump’s instrument of revenge,” Raskin said. “Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time.”
In her opening statement, Bondi highlighted the cooperation between Democratic mayors to drive down crime in Memphis and Washington, D.C.
In the same opening statement, Bondi said that the clashes between federal agents have been avoidable and were so due to the “reckless rhetoric” by certain politicians.
Bondi also went after judges who rule against the administration, and called it “judicial activism.”
“We fought through a nonstop flood of bad faith, temporary restraining orders from liberal activist judges across this country. America has never seen this level of coordinated judicial opposition towards a presidential administration. It is not only an unlawful attack on the executive branches authority, but a serious attack on the democratic process,” she said.
She will likely be grilled about her efforts to revive cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York’s Democratic Attorney General Letitia James after indictments against them were tossed.
Bondi is also expected to be questioned about the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — something administration officials have said was a law enforcement operation.
Given that, questions have been raised about why the attorney general was not present to discuss the matter at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago news conference announcing the raid.
The attorney general has testified on Capitol Hill only a handful of times.
In her most recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she appeared to use prepared lines of attack against Democratic lawmakers who demanded she answer their tough questions.
