Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) called on Republican donors to force candidates who have little to no chance to win the Republican nomination for president out of the race to prevent Donald Trump from winning. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee-turned-chief critic of the former president within the GOP wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that any candidate had a shot of beating Mr Trump if the contest became a two-person race. “For that to happen, Republican megadonors and influencers – large and small – are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed,” he said. Mr Romney set the deadline of 26 February, which would be after the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary, the Nevada caucus and the South Carolina primary. He said plenty of Republican candidates with no chance of winning benefit greatly from their candidacies. “Left to their own inclinations, expect several of the contenders to stay in the race for a long time,” Mr Romney noted. “They will split the non-Trump vote, giving him the prize. A plurality is all that is needed for winner-take-all primaries.” Mr Romney also cited the presidential candidacy of his father, the late George Romney, when he ran in 1968 and how many moderate Republicans got behind him before the elder Romney dropped out and they pledged their support to Nelson Rockefeller to stop Richard Nixon. But Mr Romney said such circumstances don’t exist today because of the rise of super PACs, which allow for unlimited fundraising. “A few billionaires have already committed tens of millions of dollars,” he said. “They have a responsibility to give their funds with clear eyes about their candidate’s prospects.” Mr Romney is the only Republican Senator who voted to convict Mr Trump for both of the former president’s impeachments in 2020 and 2021. The former Massachusetts governor said donors who back a candidate with a slim chance should receive a hard pledge that they will drop out and back the candidate with the best chance of beating Mr Trump by 26 February. “Donors may think that party leaders can narrow the field,” he wrote. “Not so. Candidates don’t listen to party officials, because voters don’t listen to them either. And the last people who would ever encourage a candidate to withdraw are the campaign staff and consultants who want to keep their jobs for as long as possible.” Polling in early states showed Mr Trump continues to hold a commanding lead in many of the early states, including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. “Our party and our country need a nominee with character, driven by something greater than revenge and ego, preferably from the next generation,” he said. “Family, friends and campaign donors are the only people who can get a lost-cause candidate to exit the race. After Feb. 26, they should start doing just that.” Read More Trump news – live: Trump shares QAnon post on Truth Social as ex-NYPD boss hands evidence to Jan 6 probe Watch: Jill Biden meets France’s first lady to celebrate US rejoining Unesco Hunter Biden's guilty plea is on the horizon, and so are a fresh set of challenges Judge vacates desertion conviction for former US soldier captured in Afghanistan Putting a floating barrier in the Rio Grande to stop migrants is new. The idea isn't.

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Every now and then, there’s an element of online discourse that reminds you how much of a cesspit social media is. The search for the OceanGate Expeditions submarine is one of them. Ever since a craft containing five people went missing on a journey to observe the wreckage of the Titanic on Sunday, our timelines have been full of people making light of the situation - they must be seeing a very different news story to the one we're seeing. The Titan submersible is equipped with a four-day emergency oxygen supply. It is estimated that the five missing passengers have just 24 hours of oxygen supply left inside the vessel. A Canadian aircraft searching for the missing Titan submarine detected intermittent “banging” noises from the vicinity of the last known location of the divers, and the search continues. It’s the deepest undersea rescue operation in history covering some 10,000 square miles of ocean and the sheer scale of the operation is hard to grasp. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter As families wait anxiously to hear details of the rescue mission, social media users across the world have been joking about the situation; sharing memes about which nostalgic games controller they’d choose to steer the craft, and showing contempt for the gravest of situations. The people trapped in the 6.5 metre sub somewhere in the mid-Atlantic ocean were revealed to include British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate founder Stockton Rush, along with Surrey-based businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood. Friends of the people trapped on board have also speculated that those on the vessel could currently be dealing with hypothermia if the vessel has lost power. Many have been highlighting the material wealth of those on board on social media, as if somehow the fact that there are billionaires on board who spent £250,000 to head on the expedition in the first place justifies the ridicule and indifference to human life. It’s social media at its grimmest, and if Elon Musk’s deranged tinkering hadn’t already, seeing the lack of empathy for an unimaginably terrifying situation play out on Twitter, with so many gleefully giggling away at the horror of it all, I’m starting to think I wouldn’t mind seeing the back of the whole wretched platform forever. There are plenty of people on Twitter who have recognised such, and voiced their anger at the ghoulish reactions they’ve been seeing online. One wrote: “The tweets joking about the missing #OceanGate sub make me physically ill. These are real people you are mocking. Their wealth is immaterial. Have some effing compassion.” “idk man i know we hate rich people but i think if you’re laughing at the idea of any non-evil person dying perhaps the most nightmarish death imaginable, it may be time to log off for a little,” a Twitter user said. Another said: “Two of the people on the Titanic submarine are a father and his teenage son. His wife and daughter are back home absolutely terrified. Sorry to be a buzzkill guys but maybe we shouldn’t joke about it or make fun of these people for how they spent their money, they are real humans.” A user commented: “The entire online discussion surrounding the OceanGate submarine is an indictment on the vile nature of social media. “Five people are either dead or starving of oxygen (imagine the terror) and Twitter is awash with jokes/hot takes about them. “Gross.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The 9/11 Families United coalition condemned the "hypocrisy and greed" of US PGA Tour leaders after the bombshell announcement on Tuesday that the Tour will...

Sporting events tend to attract some high-profile names to sing the national anthem before the competition gets underway – from Lady Gaga’s take on the “Star Spangled Banner” at the 2016 Super Bowl, to Homeland actor Damian Lewis singing “God Save the King” at Sunday’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Yes, really. Taking over from Eurovision runner-up Sam Ryder, who performed it at the F1 race last year, the Wolf Hall star decided to deliver a jazzier rendition of the song alongside a saxophonist in sunglasses. As Lewis - who released his debut album Mission Creep last month - dragged out almost every word of the well-known chorus, one spectator was caught on camera letting out a small laugh, before the performers finished up their song with a flyover from the iconic Red Arrows. At least that offered some pre-show entertainment for those in attendance. Meanwhile, those watching at home decided to have some fun with some memes, because of course they did: Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In amongst all this ridicule, one Twitter user joked The Simpsons – the iconic animated series which has become famous for seeming to ‘predict’ cultural events – managed to see Lewis’s cringeworthy performance coming: Taken from the season two episode “Dancin’ Homer”, in which the dysfunctional dad becomes the team mascot for the Springfield Isotopes baseball team, the musician picked to sing the American national anthem is that of “Bleeding Gums” Murphy – the jazz singer and saxophonist who is Lisa Simpson’s idol. As he takes to the mic to sing the “Star Spangled Banner” at 7:30pm, Murphy proceeds to deliver a version which – like Lewis’s – stretches out every word and has a more soulful feel to the melody. However, taking 26 minutes to finish his performance, the Simpsons family (all except Lisa) and the rest of the crowd can be seen getting more and more exhausted as the song progresses, to the extent they all collapse back in their seats as soon as he finishes singing. Ouch. And this wasn’t the only bit of drama to emerge from Sunday’s British Grand Prix, as Suicide Squad actor Cara Delevingne was slammed for her “rude” response to an interview request on the grid from Sky Sports F1 presenter and racing legend Martin Brundle. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The North Carolina Zoo has welcomed three litters of red wolf pups, bringing in a dozen new members of the world's most endangered wolf species.

Tori Spelling's suspicion about her "Beverly Hills 90210" character Donna Martin has been confirmed.