US Rep. Buck to resign next week, narrowing GOP’S slim majority
DENVER — Republican Rep. Ken Buck said Tuesday that he’ll resign next week, narrowing his party’s razor-thin House majority and potentially throwing an obstacle in the way of Rep. Lauren Boebert’s effort to succeed him.
Buck, a staunch conservative who already declined to run for reelection as he became increasingly critical of his party’s handling of former President Donald Trump, made his announcement in the midst of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Buck’s March 22 departure will trigger a special election to serve the remainder of his term. Republicans control the House 219-213.
Under Colorado law, that must happen within 85 to 100 days — or right around the June 25 GOP primary to run in the November race to serve a full term.
Several Republicans are already running to replace him in November, including Boebert, who moved across the state to run for Buck’s more Republican-friendly seat anchored in Colorado’s eastern plains. But political insiders were already noting Tuesday that Buck’s timing could block Boebert from taking over his seat.
It all depends on the timing of the special election, which must be held between June 15 and June 30. A committee of Colorado Republicans will pick the party’s nominee to serve the remainder of Buck’s current term, and it’s unclear if they would choose Boebert, who has no prior ties to the district.
If the special election happens before the primary or even the day of it, the likely Republican winner — now a member of Congress — will have an advantage in the primary, as GOP voters will have just backed them. This would make it harder for other primary contenders who hope to represent the party in November’s race.
Immigration order: The U.S. Supreme Court extended a pause Tuesday on a Texas law that would allow police to arrest migrants accused of crossing into the country illegally as federal and state officials prepare for a showdown over immigration enforcement authority.
Justice Samuel Alito’s order extending the hold on the law until Monday came a day before the previous hold was set to expire.
The extension gives the court an extra week to consider what opponents have called the most extreme attempt by a state to police immigration since an Arizona law that was partially struck down by the Supreme Court in 2012.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law, known as Senate Bill 4, in December. It is part of his heightened measures along the state’s boundary with Mexico, testing how far state officials can go to prevent migrants from crossing into the U.S. illegally after border crossing reached record highs.
Senate Bill 4 would also give local judges the power to order migrants arrested under the provision to leave the country or face a misdemeanor charge for entering the U.S. illegally. Migrants who don’t leave after being ordered to do so could be arrested again and charged with a more serious felony.
In an appeal to the high court, the Justice Department said the law would
profoundly alter “the status quo that has existed between the United States and the States in the context of immigration for almost 150 years.”
Peterson killing: Scott Peterson appeared virtually in court Tuesday in Redwood, California, nearly 20 years after he was convicted of killing his pregnant wife, as his lawyers asked a judge to order new DNA tests and allow their investigators to access evidence connected with a burglary across the street from the couple’s Modesto home.
Peterson was sentenced to death after a jury found him guilty of murder in the deaths of Laci and the unborn child they planned to name Conner. Prosecutors said he killed Laci and dumped her body in San Francisco Bay on Christmas Eve 2002.
The death sentence was later overturned, and he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
The Los Angeles Innocence Project has taken up Peterson’s case.
Online influencer: A court in Bucharest, Romania, on Tuesday granted a request by British authorities to extradite the divisive online influencer Andrew Tate, but only after legal proceedings against him in Romania have been concluded, his spokesperson said.
The Bucharest Court of Appeal’s decision came after Tate, 37, and his brother Tristan Tate were detained Monday on arrest warrants issued by British authorities over allegations of sexual aggression in a U.K. case dating back to 2012-2015.
The appeals court ordered the Tate brothers to be released, spokesperson Mateea Petrescu said.
Andrew Tate is charged in a separate case in Romania with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
He was arrested near Bucharest in December 2022 along with his brother and two Romanian women. Romanian prosecutors formally indicted all four in June and they have denied the allegations.
Joint China-iran-russia drill: China, Iran and Russia have begun a joint naval drill in the Gulf of Oman, a crucial waterway near the mouth of the Persian Gulf, officials said Tuesday.
Footage aired by Chinese state television and a video released by the Russian navy showed the ongoing drill, known as “Marine Security Belt 2024.”
More than 20 ships, support vessels and combat boats from the three countries, as well as naval helicopters, are involved in the exercise.
Skorean medical protest: South Korea’s government criticized senior doctors at a major hospital Tuesday for threatening to resign in support of the weekslong walkouts by thousands of medical interns and residents that have disrupted hospital operations.
About 12,000 junior doctors in South Korea have been off the job for a month to protest a government plan to sharply increase medical school admissions.
Officials say the plan is meant to add more doctors to deal with the country’s rapidly aging society, but doctors say universities can’t handle an abrupt, steep increase in the number of students, and that would eventually hurt the quality of South Korea’s medical services.
The government began steps a week ago to suspend the licenses of the striking doctors, after they missed a government-set Feb. 29 deadline for their return.
The walkouts now threaten to enter a critical phase as senior doctors at the Seoul National University Hospital and its affiliated hospitals decided Monday to resign en mass if the government doesn’t come up with measures that can address the dispute by early next week.
The government fears that senior doctors at other major university hospitals could take similar steps.