President Donald Trump withdrew his endorsement of Oklahoma GOP congressional candidate Jackson Lahmeyer on Wednesday, and threw his support behind Republican rival Mark Tedford, a dramatic reversal that came shortly before Lahmeyer publicly announced he was suspending his campaign.

Lahmeyer told Fox News Digital, however, that he made the decision to end his campaign the night before and informed his wife and campaign team before Trump’s endorsement switch.

«I made my decision to drop out of the race last night,» Lahmeyer told Fox News Digital. «I decided to choose my wife over my ambition. I informed my wife about my decision late last night and then my campaign team early this morning. My decision did not take place because of the decision of POTUS this afternoon.»

AP results showed Tedford finishing first with 32.2% and Lahmeyer second with 25.9%, advancing both Republicans to a runoff election to succeed Rep. Kevin Hern, who is running for the U.S. Senate.

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Trump had previously endorsed Lahmeyer as a «MAGA Warrior» and longtime ally, making Wednesday’s endorsement switch one of the more notable reversals of the 2026 midterm cycle.

At approximately 2:23 p.m., Trump announced on Truth Social that he was backing Tedford.

«I greatly appreciate Jackson Lahmeyer’s hard work under difficult circumstances — He has always been with me, and I will always be with him,» Trump wrote. «But, when it comes to the current Congressional race for Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District, I will be supporting America First Patriot, Mark Tedford.»

SNUBBED BY TRUMP, GOP CANDIDATES FIGHTING FOR RE-ELECTION ACT LIKE THEY HAVE HIS BACKING ANYWAY

President Donald Trump attends a bilateral meeting at the Hotel Royal Évian in Évian-les-Bains, France, Monday, during the Group of 7 summit. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The president described Tedford as «Pro Trump and MAGA all the way» and said the state lawmaker had his «Complete and Total Endorsement.»

At approximately 2:32 p.m., Lahmeyer announced on X that he was suspending his campaign.

«After prayerful consideration with my wife, Kendra, and my team over the last twenty four hours, I’ve made the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for Congress,» Lahmeyer said.

«I do not want to be a distraction to my family, my church, and the great people of Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District, who deserve a strong conservative voice representing them in Washington.»

Fox News Digital reached out to Lahmeyer, Tedford and the White House for comment. A White House official referred Fox News Digital to Trump’s Truth Social statement and did not provide additional comment.

INSIDE STEFANIK’S EXIT AND HOW THE TRUMP ENDORSEMENT THAT NEVER CAME WAS ‘BIGGEST PIECE’ OF THE ‘PUZZLE’

Lahmeyer was seeking to represent Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District in Washington, D.C. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images, File)

Trump’s decision marked a sharp turn from his earlier endorsement of Lahmeyer, whom he praised before Oklahoma’s June 16 primary.

The endorsement reversal came after a turbulent stretch for Lahmeyer’s campaign. The Daily Mail published reports regarding Lahmeyer’s communications with former Miss Oklahoma USA Caitlin Simmons Key. 

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Lahmeyer later acknowledged that he had crossed «a boundary line through text messaging» while disputing what he described as a misleading characterization of the situation.

Neither president Trump nor the White House publicly explained the reason for the endorsement change. Tedford is now positioned as the likely Republican nominee in the strongly GOP district.

El presidente estadounidense, Donald Trump, aseguró este miércoles que el acuerdo con Irán para poner fin a la guerra iniciada el 28 de febrero se firmará “pronto”, “quizás” jueves o viernes y prometió que será “un muro contra el arma nuclear”.

“Lo más probable es que firmemos un acuerdo. Ellos quieren firmar un acuerdo y se han comportado de manera muy adecuada”, precisó el mandatario norteamericano, durante una rueda de prensa en Evian, en el este de Francia, al final de una cumbre del G7.

Trump volvió a cargar contra el histórico acuerdo nuclear firmado por Barack Obama y defendió el nuevo memorando que negocia con Irán. “El acuerdo de Obama fue uno de los más estúpidos que vi jamás, un camino hacia el arma nuclear, y el mío es un muro contra un arma nuclear, que no van a tener nunca”, lanzó el mandatario ante los periodistas.

Trump insistió en que el entendimiento con Teherán podría poner fin a casi cuatro meses de tensión, pero advirtió que todavía falta para que se concrete. “He hecho acuerdos toda mi vida, algunos que estaban cerrados al cien por cien y al final no se concretaron. Con los acuerdos nunca se sabe, pero lo averiguaremos bastante pronto”, reconoció el líder republicano, dejando en claro que el proceso aún no está cerrado.

Un memorando “sólido” y críticas al pasado

El presidente estadounidense aseguró que el memorando de entendimiento, que podría formalizarse este viernes en una ceremonia en Bürgenstock, Suiza, es “muy sólido” y detallado.

“No es un documento de dos párrafos, sino un memorando largo y bastante detallado que desembocará en un contrato formal”, explicó Trump, quien remarcó que el objetivo es evitar que Irán acceda a un arma nuclear.

Durante la cumbre, Trump reiteró que el conflicto con Irán no comenzó hace pocos meses, sino que se remonta a su primer mandato. “Esto no empezó hace tres y cuatro meses, sino hace años, cuando eliminé a (el general Qassem) Soleimani”, recordó el mandatario.

“Aquello fue un acontecimiento enorme, algunos dicen que el mayor ocurrido en Oriente Medio en los últimos 50 años”, agregó, en referencia al operativo militar que terminó con la vida del influyente comandante iraní.

Trump también dijo que Washington “sí envió una copia” de su acuerdo con Irán a Israel, tras informaciones sobre tensiones con el primer ministro Benjamin Netanyahu.

Aunque insistió en que mantiene una buena relación con Netanyahu, reafirmó en la cumbre del G7 sus críticas a la campaña de Israel contra Hezbollah en Líbano, señalando que Israel “podría hacer un trabajo mucho mejor”.

El magnate republicano reiteró que Estados Unidos “tomará” el uranio altamente enriquecido de Irán, incluso si “no tiene valor”, y prometió un diálogo “paralelo” con los países del Golfo sobre misiles balísticos.

Trump afirmó que el pacto con Irán evita una catástrofe económica

Trump también sostuvo que el pacto cerrado con Irán evita la “catástrofe económica” que se habría producido en caso de continuar el conflicto y cumple los objetivos marcados “y mucho más”.

“No quería ver una catástrofe económica. Si esto hubiera continuado, esto es lo que habría pasado. (…) Hemos alcanzado un acuerdo que logra todo lo que nos propusimos, todo y mucho más: poner fin al conflicto actual, reabrir el estrecho de Ormuz y evitar que Irán obtenga nunca un arma nuclear”, dijo en su conferencia de prensa final de la cumbre del G7, en la que apareció acompañado por los secretarios de Estado, Marco Rubio; del Tesoro, Scott Bessent; de Comercio, Howard Lutnick, y el representante de Comercio, Jamieson Greer.

“Si no tuviéramos este acuerdo, podríamos haber lanzado bombas durante otras dos semanas, tres, cuatro, dos años. El estrecho de Ormuz nunca se abriría”, añadió el líder republicano.

Trump también advirtió que si Irán “no se comporta”, se retomarán los bombardeos. “Si no están preparados, seguiremos bombardeándoles hasta que lo estén. Es increíble lo que pueden conseguir las bombas”, añadió.

Elon Musk reignited international attention on Britain’s grooming gangs scandal this week, amplifying a citizen-funded report that accuses the U.K. government of failing to protect children and teenagers from organized sexual exploitation.

«The politicians who turned a blind eye to the Rape of Britain must go to prison,» Musk wrote on X on June 16, after Rupert Lowe, the Great Yarmouth MP and leader of Restore Britain, released a more than 200-page independent report into the scandal.

The report, authored by barrister Graham Smith and released through Rupert Lowe’s independent grooming gangs inquiry, was funded through public donations. Its Crowdfunder page showed roughly $1.1 million raised from more than 23,000 supporters as of Wednesday. 

Lowe’s report argues that many Britons no longer trust the government to investigate its own failures after years of outrage over grooming gang cases in towns including Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oxford and Oldham, where girls were groomed, raped, trafficked and abused by groups of men, including a high number of Pakistani decent, while police, social services and local authorities repeatedly failed to intervene.

ELON MUSK DEMANDS UK ACT ON GROOMING GANG SCANDAL AMID GROWING CALLS FOR PROBE: ‘NATIONAL INQUIRY NOW!’

The Lowe report claims that grooming gangs «operated with either the active or passive consent of public authorities» and describes the scandal as a «rotting stain» on Britain’s history. Its recommendations include a sweeping overhaul of sentencing guidelines, life imprisonment starting points for organized child rape, deportation of foreign nationals convicted of group-based child sexual exploitation, a dedicated Crown Prosecution Service unit, stronger protections for child witnesses and possible private prosecutions against officials accused of failing victims.

«If they fail to take the necessary steps, we will deploy private prosecutions to obtain justice at last,» Lowe wrote in the report.

The report also makes claims about the ethnicity and religion of offenders, arguing that Muslim men, particularly men of Pakistani heritage, were overrepresented in organized grooming gang cases. It claims the number of victims could reach at least 250,000 when known local patterns are extrapolated nationally.

A woman poses at her home in England, Britain, January 8, 2025. She was 14 when she was sexually abused by a grooming gang in Rochdale. (Hollie Adams/Reuters)

That figure has not been verified by the British government. Baroness Louise Casey’s government-commissioned 2025 audit found serious institutional failures and said authorities had often avoided difficult questions about ethnicity out of fear of racism accusations. 

She wrote, «We found that the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, so we are unable to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data.»

However, her report also stated that «Despite the lack of a full picture in the national data sets, there is enough evidence available in local police data in three police force areas which we examined which show disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation, as well as in the significant number of perpetrators of Asian ethnicity identified in local reviews and high-profile child sexual exploitation prosecutions across the country, to at least warrant further examination.»

Her audit also identified other perpetrators, including White British, European, African or Middle Eastern individuals.

FARAGE SLAMS SECRET AFGHAN REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT TO UK, CLAIMS SEX OFFENDERS AMONG ARRIVALS

A supporter wearing a plastic policeman’s helmet and holding fake money criticizes the way the police dealt with the grooming gang scandal on January 29, 2022, in Telford, England. (Martin Pope/Getty Images)

Emma Schubart, a research fellow at the U.K.-based think tank the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital: «The government should take this report seriously. While some of its headline figures rely on extrapolation and parts of its methodology will rightly be challenged, it raises questions about grooming gangs, institutional failures and offender demographics that cannot simply be ignored.»

The British government has already launched a statutory national inquiry into grooming gangs across England and Wales. The inquiry was formally established in April 2026 and is expected to examine institutional failures, local and national responses, possible cover-ups and the role of ethnicity, religion and culture in group-based child sexual exploitation.

Elon Musk arrives for U.S. President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 4, 2025. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

A Home Office spokesperson told Fox News Digital: «The grooming gangs scandal is one of the darkest moments and most shameful failures in our nation’s history, and we pay tribute to the immense bravery of those who have shared their experiences in the fight for justice.»

«We are determined to get victims and survivors the answers they deserve. That is why we have launched the Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs with legal powers to hold institutions to account for past failures, and backed the police with record funding to track down and put perpetrators behind bars,» the spokesperson said. «There will be no hiding place for those responsible.»

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told Parliament last year that more than 800 previously closed grooming and child sexual exploitation cases had been identified for formal review, with the figure expected to rise above 1,000. She also said the government would introduce mandatory reporting, aggravated offenses for grooming offenders and new ethnicity and nationality data collection.

STATE DEPARTMENT WARNS UK OVER GROOMING GANG HANDLING: ‘UNSPEAKABLE ABUSE’

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a press conference at Downing Street in London to announce government action to protect children online on June 15, 2026. (Carlos Jasso/Pool Photo via AP)

Prime Minister Keir Starmer previously rejected attacks over his handling of the scandal, accusing critics of spreading «lies and misinformation» and saying some were more interested in politics than victims. Starmer has defended his record as former director of public prosecutions, saying he reopened closed cases and changed the prosecution approach to child sexual exploitation.

A central counterpoint to Lowe’s report is that Britain has already held multiple inquiries into child sexual abuse and grooming gangs, including the seven-year Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, and that the urgent priority should be implementing recommendations and prosecuting offenders rather than launching parallel investigations.

But others say the very existence of a privately funded inquiry shows a deeper collapse of public trust. They argue that previous investigations exposed failures but did not deliver enough accountability for victims or consequences for officials who ignored warnings.

«Perhaps the most striking finding is not in the report itself but in how it was funded,» Schubart told Fox News Digital. «The fact that more than 20,000 people contributed to a citizen-funded inquiry reflects a growing lack of confidence that public institutions are willing to confront the issue fully. Whether you agree with every conclusion or not, that loss of trust should concern policymakers just as much as the report’s findings.»

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A protestor holds a placard accusing the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, of ignoring the Grooming Gang scandal during a rally. Millwall fans joined with supporters of other London football teams in a demonstration called «Football Lads Against Grooming» on a march to Downing Street.  (Lab Ky Mo/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The issue has also drawn public criticism from the Trump administration. The State Department previously warned the U.K. over its handling of the grooming gangs scandal, saying thousands of girls had suffered «unspeakable abuse» before authorities acted.

Lowe said that the government’s statutory inquiry risks becoming another long process that delays accountability, comparing it to other British scandals where official reckoning came only years later.