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A bipartisan Senate report released Wednesday blasts the U.S. Secret Service for several significant failures that led to the near-fatal assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump in Butler County, Pennsylvania, over the summer.

The report indicates that security knew the shooter was on the roof minutes before Trump was shot.

Meanwhile, a bill that would increase the Secret Service protection for former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, now awaits President Joe Biden’s signature.

The new Senate report lays out a litany of failures from the Secret Service, including failure to delegate responsibilities to agents and officers, failure to keep the key buildings cleared, failure to work will with local law enforcement, who were helping with security, and more.

The report includes a list of failures, including that the Secret Service did not properly respond after the would-be assassin was identified as a suspicious person over an hour before Trump took the stage.

A stunning paragraph from the report lays out the gravity of some of the mistakes:

“Approximately two minutes before shots were fired, the USSS Security Room, located on the rally grounds, was told that there was an individual on the roof of the AGR building,” the report said. “Shortly before shots were fired, a USSS counter sniper observed local officers running towards the AGR building with guns drawn.”

Critics have blasted the agency from its poor planning of the event, its slow and clumsy response and its unwillingness to share details publicly after the incident. The former head of the Secret Service resigned after a disastrous Congressional hearing on the issue where lawmakers from both sides took her to task.

The report also said an inexperienced agent had trouble getting the drone working and spent hours calling a tech support hotline for help. The agents apparently also had problems with their radios, something that is common, according to the repot.

“From planning missteps, to the siloed and flawed communication to the lack of effective coordination between law enforcement, to the breakdowns in technology, the Secret Service’s failures that allowed an assassination attempt on former President Trump at his July 13 rally were shocking, unacceptable, and preventable – and they led to tragic consequences,” said Chairman Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.

Lawmakers called for accountability and ongoing oversight.

“Our initial findings clearly show a series of multiple failures of the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and an inexcusable dereliction of duty,” Ranking Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said in a statement. “Not only did USSS fail to ensure the AGR roof was adequately covered, they were also aware of a suspicious individual with a rangefinder for at least 27 minutes and did not delay proceedings or remove former President Trump from the stage, even after being informed that the suspicious individual was on the roof of the AGR building.”

Paul said that federal law enforcement agencies had “obstructed” the Congressional inquiry into this issue.

“What happened on July 13 was an accumulation of errors that produced a perfect storm of stunning failure,” added Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “It was a tragedy and completely preventable from the outset.”

The bill that would increase Trump’s protection comes after the former president survived his second assassination attempt this year and would give presidential-level Secret Service protection to all nominated presidential and vice presidential candidates. The U.S. Senate voted unanimously to pass the bill on Tuesday evening. It has already passed in the House.

As The Center Square previously reported, President Joe Biden recently told reporters that the Secret Service “needs more help."

(The Center Square) – At the Wisconsin Election Commission’s request, the state’s Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up the petition to rule on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawsuit seeking his removal from the ballot, bypassing the court of appeals.

The decision follows the Dane County Circuit Court’s ruling Monday to keep Kennedy on the ballot.

“Given the need for a prompt resolution of this appeal, the court does not contemplate holding oral argument in this matter,” the court announced. “The court will endeavor to issue a written decision as expeditiously as possible.”

The action breaks with typical court procedure to reject premature petitions, leading Justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler to issue a dissent.

“A majority of this court grants the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s (WEC) petition to bypass the court of appeals before the WEC has filed its response brief, despite the majority’s professed practice in prior cases of ‘generally den[ying] as premature petitions for bypass prior to the filing of briefs in the court of appeals,’ Bradley said Friday. “Such arbitrariness by courts is antithetical to the original understanding of the judicial role.”

Kennedy’s effort to remove himself from the state’s ballot has encountered setbacks for months. After withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing former President Donald Trump, Kennedy had sent a letter Aug. 23 to the WEC, requesting his name be removed from the ballot.

But in its certification of presidential candidates five days later, the WEC voted 5-1 to put Kennedy’s name on the ballot, saying he had missed the Aug. 6 deadline for third party candidates to withdraw from the General Election. Following the decision, county clerks were authorized to begin printing ballots and Kennedy filed his lawsuit, which the Dane County Circuit Court struck down.

Vice President Kamala Harris was once anti-fracking and opposed to former President Donald Trump’s tough immigration policies.

Now, it’s apparently a different story.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash this week, Harris was asked about the change in her stance on fracking. Fracking is a major industry and economic driver in the swing state of Pennsylvania, a state where Harris is up a slim 0.8%, according to Real Clear Politics’ polling average.

Harris said during a town hall in 2019 that there is “no question” she supports banning fracking. During the CNN interview, Harris said she does not want to ban fracking and that she “made that clear on the debate stage in 2020.”

“As vice president I did not ban fracking, and as president I will not ban fracking,” Harris said.

Harris has previously said she supports a ban on fracking, offshore drilling, and plastic straws. She also said she supports passing the Green New Deal, which includes a treasure trove of far-left energy policies.

Harris’ inconsistency on the fracking issue has drawn criticism.

”If Kamala Harris can so quickly reject her firm energy positions from the past, there is no telling how quickly she’ll renounce today’s positions in the future,” Daniel Turner, who leads the energy workers advocacy group, Power the Future, said in a statement. “Just like Vice President Harris abandoned her support for Joe Biden after telling the American people he was perfectly fine, she will abandon any position she pretends to have now. Harris is bankrolled by green billionaires who want to ensure the funding of their pet projects continue, so it’s beyond clear that she doesn’t care about the truth of her energy positions, she cares only about keeping the tax dollars flowing.”

During the same CNN interview, Harris said those who illegally cross the border should face “consequences.”

“We have laws that have to be followed and enforced that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally,” Harris said. “And there should be consequence. And let’s be clear, in this race, I’m the only person who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations who traffic in guns, drugs, and human beings. I’m the only person in this race who actually served a border state as attorney general to enforce our laws. And I would enforce our laws as president going forward. I recognize the problem.”

However, Harris posted on then-Twitter in 2017 that “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”

Harris had also mocked Trump’s border wall during the Trump administration as a “vanity project” but has now expressed her support for a Senate immigration bill that allocates $650 million for building the border wall.

“Funding Trump’s unrealistic border wall would be a gross misuse of taxpayer money,” Harris wrote on Twitter in April of 2018.

A year earlier, Harris called Trump’s wall a “ stupid use of money” and pledged to “block any funding for it.”

It is possible the border wall funding was a concession Harris was willing to make rather than a policy goal.

However, any policy changes are notable since Harris has offered unusually few details on her platform if she were elected president.

Harris’ main campaign website offers no policy platform, and her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention largely avoided policy specifics.

Trump took a jab at Harris at a recent rally on this point.

“Now she’s saying ‘oh we want to build a strong border,’” Trump told his supporters. “Where has she been for three and a half years as we took in 20 million people, many of them horrible criminals?”

Harris is not alone in announcing new policy ideas, apparently to appeal to moderate voters. Trump announced at a recent rally that IVF treatments should be free to women, either paid for by insurers or the government.

Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is taking fire for her new "price-gouging" ban that critics say is little more than communism-style "price controls" where government heavily regulates industries.

Harris’ effort to address elevated consumer prices hits at a key pain point for Americans, but the details of how Harris plans to go about fixing that problem will be the subject of close scrutiny when she lays out the plan at a North Carolina rally Friday. Harris is expected to unveil a broader economic plan at the same rally, but so far there are few details on specifically how she will address inflation. Prices have risen more than 20% overall since she and President Joe Biden took office.

Harris’ campaign this week touted the “federal ban on corporate price-gouging” to help Americans with high grocery prices and prevent "excessive" profits. Harris' campaign said she would also order the Department of Justice to take a look at mergers between grocers and food producers.

Critics of the plan immediately blasted it as “price controls,” anti-capitalism and noted similar ideas failed in other countries. They also argue Harris is blaming corporations for high prices when inflation fueled by government spending is really to blame.

“Price controls might sound good to some, but they do not work,” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “They lead to supply shortages and in the end, higher prices. Looks like Kamala Harris is a communist at heart.”

Price gouging is currently already illegal, but the Biden-Harris administration has argued that corporations have taken advantage of elevated inflation to raise prices even higher.

“Tomorrow, Vice President Harris, a person who has never built a business, doesn’t understand profit and loss, has never met payrolls, and who has never competed in a consumer market, is going to propose federal price controls,” U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said in a statement. “That should terrify every American. She claims that Congress needs to ban ‘price gouging,’ which is already widely illegal and not the cause of high prices. The skyrocketing prices created by the Biden-Harris administration aren’t price-gouging, it’s inflation.”

Price controls are a feature of communistic “command and control” economies, the reason Harris will likely seek to avoid the term, if her plan will truly include price controls at all, and why such a strong reaction broke out against the plan this week.

“[Harris’] solution to the Harris Price Hikes she caused is big government on steroids – where Washington bureaucrats stick their hands into American businesses and say what they can and can’t sell a product for,” Scott said. “It never works because it causes companies to make much less of something – destroying supply and causing a mass shortage of goods.”

Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran in the Republican presidential primary and is considered a potential cabinet appointee if former President Donald Trump is elected, called out Republicans on the issue, asking whether they would have “the spine” to critique Harris’ plan.

“The GOP has a wide-open opportunity to embrace capitalism again,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “No, that doesn’t mean blindly reciting neoliberal shibboleths about spreading ‘democracy through capitalism’ abroad (that doesn’t work: see China). But it *does* mean embracing exceptionalism & merit over protectionism & patronage here at home. That’s the fork in the road ahead for our own movement.”

Polling shows that inflation remains a top concern for voters and small business owners. Inflation has slowed from its breakneck pace earlier in the Biden-Harris term, but some goods and services have continued to rise.

As The Center Square previously reported, roasted coffee prices rose 9.1% and dairy product prices increased 9.4% in the past two months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pork and “processed young chickens” prices saw slightly higher increases.

So far, Harris’ policy agenda has been sparse, and what record she does have on the border and her time as a prosecutor she has tried to distance herself from, making this new policy agenda crucial for her campaign.

The sloped roof where a would-be assassin took aim at former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania wasn’t safe enough for snipers.

This is a reason for not posting someone there, U.S. Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle said in an interview with ABC News on Tuesday.

“That building, in particular, has a sloped roof at its highest point,” she said. “And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof.”

“And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside,” Cheatle added.

The comment comes three days after 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire on a crowd in Butler, Pa., less than 15 minutes after Trump took the stage, striking him in the ear. Trump was wounded but has continued his schedule, arriving in Milwaukee, Wis., on Sunday for the Republican National Convention and appearing in the main arena Monday night.

Since then, authorities – namely the Secret Service – have faced tough questions about the apparent security lapses that allowed the gunman to scale the roof 147 yards from the stage at the Butler Farm Show Grounds.

Eyewitnesses can be seen on video shouting for police to intervene as they watched Crooks belly crawl into position. Law enforcement was also stationed inside the building.

In a separate report from NBC News, a local official said a Butler Township police officer was boosted to the roof of the building, where he grabbed onto a ledge and saw Crooks, who then turned his rifle toward the officer. Unable to grab his weapon or radio, the officer dropped eight feet to the ground, injuring his ankle.

Vice President Kamala Harris has a fight on her hands if she wants to inherit the Democratic presidential mantle after President Joe Biden’s time is over, according to a new poll.

The Politico/Morning Consult poll shows that voters have serious doubts about Harris’ electability.

The poll found only 14% of voters said it was “very likely” Harris would win a general election for president if she became the Democratic nominee. Another 20% said it was “somewhat likely.”

The poll is especially noteworthy given Biden's age. The incumbent president is 81 years old and appears increasingly in decline.

A moment of confusion for Biden at a June 6 D-Day ceremony went viral last week, the latest in a string of similar incidents. At the same time, Biden remains competitive with former President Donald Trump, though several polls suggest Trump has a lead over the president.

Biden's incidents have led some to speculate that Democrats could or should try to replace Biden at the Democratic convention in Chicago in August. That would be a highly unusual, though not impossible, move. Removing Biden would naturally raise the question about who could replace him, but for now voters seem to lack confidence that Harris could win.

The poll also looked ahead to 2028: “If President Joe Biden were not in the running for president in 2028, which of the following Democrats, if any, would you want to be the Democratic candidate for president?”

While Harris was top of the list among Democrats, she only received 21% support. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg both received 10% support each, while 41% said they were unsure or didn't know.

Only 42% of those polled described Harris as trustworthy, and 44% described her as honest, according to the poll.

Notably, only 36% of those surveyed said Biden should replace Harris as his VP on the ticket.

Lawmakers plan to interrogate the head of Eco Health Alliance, the group accused of conducting dangerous coronavirus research in Wuhan, China just before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will hold a public hearing May 1 where Dr. Peter Daszak is expected to testify. Daszak is the president of Eco Health Alliance, a U.S. nonprofit health research company that used taxpayer-funded grants to conduct coronavirus research.

The lawmakers on the committee also allege that newly obtained documents show Daszak’s previous testimony misled the committee or misrepresented the facts.

“These revelations undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview,” the letter said. “The Committees have a right and an obligation to protect the integrity of their investigations, including the accuracy of testimony during a transcribed interview. We invite you to correct the record.”

One of those obtained documents appears to show Daszak saying he plans to work with Wuhan researchers.

A federal grant database shows that Eco Health Alliance received millions of dollars since 2014 from the federal government to study coronaviruses that originate in animals and in some cases can transfer to humans, with an emphasis on China.

A key and highly disputed part of the inquiry is whether Eco Health Alliance’ research included making coronaviruses more dangerous,.

Under former President Donald Trump, the federal National Institutes of Health cut all funding to the group in question over the controversy.

Under the Biden administration, funding has been restored, and NIH has emphatically stated that Eco Health Alliance did not play a role in the start of the pandemic.

“Unfortunately, in the absence of a definitive answer, misinformation and disinformation are filling the void, which does more harm than good,” NIH said in a 2021 statement. “NIH wants to set the record straight on NIH-supported research to understand naturally occurring bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded through a subaward from NIH grantee EcoHealth Alliance. Analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.”

In 2022 and 2023 NIH awarded Eco Health Alliance a total of at least $1,230,594 to research “the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.”

The idea that the COVID-19 virus began in a Wuahn lab was once denounced as a conspiracy theory but has now gotten more widespread credibility.

The FBI announced last year after its investigation that COVID-19 most likely came from a Wuhan lab. That news came just after the Department of Energy also said the Wuhan lab was most likely the origin of COVID-19, though neither agency expressed a high degree of confidence in that theory.

Other groups have suggested it came from the Wuhan wet market, though no definitive answer has been settled on.

(The Center Square) – The former head of Wisconsin’s Republican Party and the man in charge of this summer’s Republican National Convention says he doesn’t see anyone but Donald Trump getting the nomination.

Reince Priebus told News Talk 1130’s WISN that after the former president’s resounding win in the Iowa Caucuses, Trump is the presumptive nominee.

“I think that Donaald Trump exceeded expectations,” Priebus said. “I think that he exceeded the mental threshold that Democrats and people that don’t like Trump wanted to out there. ‘Oh, he didn’t get 50%.’ I think it ended up being 51%.”

Trump doubled the vote totals of both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Halley in Monday night’s caucuses.

Priebus said that kind of victory will make it tough for either challenger to find a path forward, especially DeSantis, Priebus said.

“His play is that he is going to get second in South Carolina. That he’s going to talk to donors about whether any of these cases are going to matter, in regard to President Trump, and whether he should stay in to see how things go,” Priebus said. “[But] nothing has panned out in terms of those hopes and wishes.”

Haley, Priebus said, has a slightly different play. But he also doesn’t see it panning out.

“There is a small play that, maybe, Nikki Haley can somehow rally in New Hampshire, and somehow win in South Carolina,” Priebus said. “Her play is that she is going to have this inside straight going through New Hampshire. The reality is that Super Tuesday is March 5. Fifteen states are rolling on March 5. You need to have an enormous amount of money, and an enormous number of volunteers combined to do well in 15 state primaries,”

Priebus said that’s “a tough hill to climb.”

As for Trump’s play moving forward, Priebus said the former president needs to start running as the only Republican in the race and focus that race on President Biden,

“Act like the other campaigns don’t matter to you. Slowly focus on Joe Biden, do all of your speeches about him. Go to New Hampshire and South Carolina and start acting like you are the presumptive nominee. That’s number one,” Priebus said.” Number two, I’d start making demands through your campaign to say ‘I’m the presumptive nominee.’ And I would want the party to call me the presumptive nominee.”

Priebus said it looks more and more like nothing is going to stop the former president from getting the nomination at Milwaukee’s RNC in July.