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RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel told Trump she’d resign as chair
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told former President Donald Trump during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago Monday that she would step down from her role in the party, a GOP source told CBS News.
McDaniel told Trump that she’s a “team player” and will do what’s in the best interest of the party. Trump and McDaniel plan to discuss her future after the South Carolina primary on Feb. 24.
After the meeting, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that he would “be making a decision the day after the South Carolina Primary as to my recommendations for RNC Growth.”
“Nothing has changed. This will be decided after South Carolina,” RNC spokesperson Keith Schipper told CBS News in a statement Tuesday night.
The news, first reported by the The New York Times, comes with increased calls from within the Republican party for McDaniel to step down. She has been chairwoman of the RNC since 2017 and had just won a fourth term as chair in January.
But in 2023, the RNC had its worst fundraising year in a decade, and it entered 2024 with just $8 million in its coffers, its lowest cash on hand since 2014, according to FEC reports.
In January, a resolution was circulated within the RNC to name Trump the “presumptive nominee,” even with former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley still in the race, but the petition was later withdrawn.
If Trump were to win the GOP nomination, he would have access to the RNC’s data and ground operations, as well as its fundraising arm and legal fund. Last year, the former president’s legal bills added up to about $50 million, according to FEC reports.
In November, then-presidential candidate and Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy called on McDaniel to step down at the Miami Republican primary debate, and he also launched a petition to oust McDaniel.
“There is a cancer in the Republican establishment,” Ramaswamy said, pointing at McDaniel from the debate stage.
Trump has also cast doubt on McDaniel’s future as chair twice this week in interviews.
“I think she did great when she ran Michigan for me. I think she did okay, initially. I would say right now there’ll probably be some changes made,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.
And in an interview Monday night with Newsmax, Trump was asked if it was time for McDaniel to step aside as chair.
“Well, I think she knows that. I think she understands that,” Trump said.
Musadiq Bidar and Shaan Sachdev contributed to this report.
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One year after October 7 attacks, anger and anguish persist
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Delia Ephron’s tale of love, cancer, and second chances, now on Broadway
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Delia Ephron’s tale of love, cancer, and second chances, now on Broadway
Writer Delia Ephron, famous for rom-coms like “You’ve Got Mail,” knows how to dream up a fairy-tale storyline. But Ephron’s Broadway debut later this month comes directly from the pages of her life.
Ephron has written about intimate things before, but now it is her own life that is on the stage for everyone to see. She said it was not easy, “because I am basically introverted.”
But she sure makes it look easy. When “Sunday Morning” first interviewed Ephron two-and-a-half years ago, she’d just finished a best-selling memoir, “Left on Tenth.” Now she’s turned that book into a play, telling her remarkable story of beating the odds. She said, “It’s the story of a woman who loses her beloved husband of 38 years, and a man from her past drops into her life and she falls madly in love. And then shortly afterwards I got diagnosed with a terrible disease, a fatal leukemia. And I survived.”
That’s right: seven years ago, because of her blood cancer, Delia Ephron was given four months to live. She’d already lost her sister, Nora, and her husband, Jerry, to cancer. But she somehow found love again, and got married in the hospital while undergoing chemo (a wedding that Dr. LaPook, a friend of Ephron’s, recorded).
Five-time Tony Award-winner Susan Stroman is directing the play. “It’s about second chances, and love, and life, and being brave enough to take those second chances, ’cause most people aren’t,” she said.
Stroman and Ephron share something in common they wish they didn’t. “I sadly lost my husband to AML, to leukemia,” Stroman said. “So, when I started to read the play, I knew everything about what was going on. I didn’t have to research anything, ’cause I had lived it, too.”
She said it is “tricky” to direct the play’s turns from humor, to tragedy, and back again. But it’s a trick Stroman mastered – as “Sunday Morning” watched, tagging along every step of the way, from the first meet-and-greet, to an early rehearsal, to the stage of the James Earl Jones Theatre.
Emmy Award-winner Julianna Margulies plays Ephron. “They’re saying it’s a rom-com, and it is,” Margulies said. “It’s romantic, and it’s funny, and it’s wonderful, but bring tissues, in case you need them.”
LaPook asked stage legend Peter Gallagher (who plays Peter Rutter, Ephron’s newfound love), “The play is about two people falling in love who are not in their 20s or 30s; they’re older than that. What’s the significance of that?”
“Well, you know, you’re closer to death!” Gallagher replied. “Everything is precious. And I think that’s another thing that the audience is going to recognize and feel.”
Asked about the play’s life lessons for the audience, Ephron said, “We plan our lives out as a young person: ‘Oh, I wanna get married. I wanna have children. I wanna have a career.’ You know, you make all these things. But then you don’t think, ‘Oh, what’s gonna happen to me after I’m 50? What life do I want then?’ It’s a much more open book. And this is about seizing those years and really creating something.”
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Story produced by Amiel Weisfogel. Editor: Remington Korper.