Democrat Patty Judge, a former Iowa lieutenant governor and agriculture secretary, will announce this weekend that she will run for Senate against Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the New York Times reported on Thursday.

The Des Moines Register later confirmed that Judge will launch a challenge to Grassley.

Judge's entrance into the race would come as Democrats try to use Senate Republicans' refusal to consider President Obama's Supreme Court nominee as political leverage. Grassley is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would typically hold hearings for the nominee, and the Iowa senator has been adamant that he will not hold a hearing for Obama's nominee.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday addressed those who mocked his stone-faced expression during a press conference on Super Tuesday.

"No, I wasn’t being held hostage," Christie said at a press conference in New Jersey. "I wasn't upset. I wasn’t angry."

The governor explained that because it was a press conference, not a rally, he did not think it would be "appropriate" for him to smile, cheer and clap.

In what may be an unprecedented speech by a major American political figure, former presidential nominee Mitt Romney implored his fellow Republicans on Thursday not to nominate the frontrunner Donald Trump for president.

"If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished," Romney said in a nationally televised speech at the University of Utah.

Republican lawmakers will deliver speeches at the Conservative Political Action conference on Thursday.

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A New Hampshire state lawmaker who sits on the House Children and Family Law committee was arrested Tuesday and arraigned Wednesday for attempting to lure a 14-year-old girl into a sexual encounter.

Law enforcement said Republican Rep. Kyle Tasker sent sexually oriented messages to a teenage girl and arranged to meet her on a beach on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. However, police had taken control of the girl's social media account and met Tasker on the beach instead. Tasker sent some inappropriate messages to the girl during a House committee meeting, according to the AP.

After former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Wednesday announced that he would deliver a speech on the 2016 race on Thursday, Donald Trump quickly went after Romney as a "failed candidate."

Romney will reportedly call Trump a "phony" and a "fraud" during his Thursday speech. The Republican presidential frontrunner published a series of tweets bashing Romney on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Failed Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney is having a news conference tomorrow to criticize me. (1/2)

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2016

In an interview set to air on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) contrasted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), saying that while Cruz at least has a "set of values" that he sticks to, Rubio "doesn’t stand for anything."

"I don’t like a lot of the things that he stands for, in fact, most everything he stands for. But I have some degree of respect for him because he believes in something. He has a set of values," Reid said of Cruz on Sirius XM's "The Agenda with Ari Rabin-Havt," according to a preview clip of the interview published on Wednesday.

Donald Trump on Wednesday released a proposal for a health care plan that would replace Obamacare if Trump is elected president.

"Since March of 2010, the American people have had to suffer under the incredible economic burden of the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare," Trump said in a statement. "This legislation, passed by totally partisan votes in the House and Senate and signed into law by the most divisive and partisan President in American history, has tragically but predictably resulted in runaway costs, websites that don’t work, greater rationing of care, higher premiums, less competition and fewer choices."

In his statement on the proposal, Trump says he is offering proposals "that should be considered by Congress so that on the first day of the Trump Administration, we can start the process of restoring faith in government and economic liberty to the people."

The Secret Service said Wednesday that their agents were not involved in removing a group of black students from a Donald Trump campaign rally in Georgia on Monday.

"Reports that the Secret Service escorted attendees out of the premises at an event in Georgia this past Monday evening are false. The Secret Service does not escort attendees out of protectees’ events in such circumstances and it was not the Secret Service who did so at that event," the agency said in a statement, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) on Tuesday said that he still thinks that Donald Trump is preferable over a Democratic presidential candidate, even if Trump purposefully avoided disavowing former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, according to the Huffington Post.

The Huffington Post asked Rounds on Tuesday about Trump's Sunday interview regarding Dukes endorsement of his campaign. The Huffington Post noted to Rounds that after Tapper told Trump that he was "just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan," Trump said he didn't know anything about Duke.