Fox News host Laura Ingraham laid out why the national GOP is "effectively useless" on "The Ingraham Angle."

LAURA INGRAHAM: One would think that the supposed brainiacs and the old GOP guard would have straightened out the Pentagon, straightened out the intel community. Right? Wrong. Both institutions these days, they're just as woke as academia. After watching all these developments, most Republican voters who are populist, whether or not they identify that way, they've come to conclude that the GOP as a national institution is effectively useless. Now, state GOP may be effective in places like Alabama or Florida, but the national GOP? It's not going to stop China. It's not going to push the Republicans to enforce the borders. It's not going to reform the Pentagon. It's not going to lower the debt. It just won't. In fact, it was the acceptable wing of the GOP that gave Biden one of his biggest crowning achievements. That boondoggle infrastructure bill. 

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Voters see this and they think- Thanks, Mitch. And once you've concluded that the national GOP doesn't work well, you may as well support Trump. Well, maybe it's just a protest vote anyway, right? So if the GOP wants to change this dynamic, I'm not saying they should, but if they want to change this dynamic, they need to start winning. They need to start seeing articles in the national media about how Biden got played by McConnell, not the other way around. 

We need to see progressives complaining that their guys are rolling over for Republicans instead of the other way around. And most of all, we need to see that the GOP has both the will and the ability to defeat the political forces, undermining America at home and abroad. Winning fixes everything. Reagan won a bunch of battles in the 1980s and the Bushes were still running on those victories in the 2000s. If the GOP starts winning again, most of its problems are going to go away. If the folks who run the GOP really want to beat Trump and nominate someone else, they need to show that they can beat the Democrats. And so far, no good.

Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza was convicted by a Russian court of treason Monday, and sentenced to 25 years in prison for speaking out against Putin's invasion of Ukraine at the outset of the war last year. 

Kara-Murza, who has survived two poisoning attempts that he blames on Putin, was originally arrested last April after returning to Moscow from Arizona, where he gave a speech to the state House of Representatives. 

"These are very dark times in Russia today. These are times when we have hundreds of political prisoners, and that number is only going to grow now as people are arrested for taking part in antiwar demonstrations," Kara-Murza, a friend of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, told lawmakers in March 2022. "Every day we hear of new arrests and new detentions and new repressions against our friends."

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The U.S. State Department condemned Kara-Murza's sentence Monday and called for his immediate release, as well as the release of Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin, two Putin critics who are currently imprisoned in Russia. 

"Mr. Kara-Murza is yet another target of the Russian government’s escalating campaign of repression," a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. "We renew our call for Mr. Kara-Murza’s release, as well as the release of the more than 400 political prisoners in Russia."

The Russian Embassy in the U.S. appeared to reference Kara-Murza's Arizona speech Monday, while accusing the U.S. of "a blatant attempt to influence the independent judicial system of the Russian Federation."

"What reaction would follow if an American would walk, as if to his workplace, to a foreign parliament, speaking allegations against the leadership of his own country and actively participating in development of sanctions?" the Russian Embassy said, according to state media outlet Tass. 

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Kara-Murza, a dual Russian-British citizen, was convicted under a law passed days after Russia's invasion that criminalizes spreading "false information" about the country's military. 

British Embassy officials have attended Kara-Murza's court hearings and have raised his case with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

"Russia’s lack of commitment to protecting fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression, is alarming," British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement. "We continue to urge Russia to adhere to its international obligations including Vladimir Kara-Murza’s entitlement to proper healthcare."