
New RNC memo gives details of merger with Trump campaign
CNN
Republican National Committee members have received a three-page memo from Chairman Michael Whatley announcing and explaining various aspects of the RNC’s merger with the Trump campaign.
Republican National Committee members have received a three-page memo from Chairman Michael Whatley announcing and explaining various aspects of the RNC’s merger with the Trump campaign. The memo arrives days after former President Donald Trump clinched the GOP nomination and nearly a week after Donald Trump’s handpicked team took the reins. “As is tradition and governed by applicable law, the RNC is merging operations with the Trump campaign. We are now a united operation, and a united front,” Whatley wrote. Whatley and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, were elected to succeed the outgoing chair and co-chair without any challengers on March 8. The memo highlights the committee’s key priorities, including a focus on claims of election fraud. “Our election integrity priorities this cycle will include a broader effort over the coming months to challenge voter identification and signature verification rules which were put into place for the 2020 election. The RNC’s new posture as it relates to this litigation will be an aggressive, proactive effort to ensure that it will be easy to vote and hard to cheat,” Whatley wrote. Trump himself was drawn to backing Whatley, the former North Carolina Republican Party chairman, in part because of his work and focus on claims of election fraud, CNN previously reported.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.

Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.

Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.

As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.









