Tag: iab-elections

Biden tells officials he’s ‘definitely running’ but formal announcement could wait for summer | CNN Politics

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CNN
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President Joe Biden often envisions what he could accomplish with a second term, advisers and allies who speak with him say, but he has expressed no urgency to formally launch a campaign to win another four years in office.

The president has not settled on a campaign manager, narrowed down whether a headquarters would be placed in Philadelphia or Wilmington, Delaware, or selected a date to make a reelection bid official.

Long known for stretching out major decisions – including several times as a senator when he was weighing a run for president – Biden is offering up one final wait for Democrats as they look ahead to next year’s vote.

“In what I think is the unlikely chance that he ultimately decides not to run this time, he will need to do so soon enough that other candidates can get into the field to be competitive,” said Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, the president’s close friend and ally. “I am encouraging him to run, and I think he will run. But he will make that decision on his timeline, not mine.”

The President has been notoriously deliberate over the course of decades in public office, often putting off major decisions until the 11th hour. But holding off on making a reelection announcement is rooted in far more practical considerations, aides say, first and foremost of which is focusing on governing matters such as raising the debt ceiling and avoiding getting drawn into the political fray a moment sooner than he must.

“He’s not ambivalent about serving a second term, but he’s in no rush to be a candidate again,” a longtime Democratic adviser, who has worked closely with Biden over the years, told CNN. “What’s the upside?”

That question came into sharp view this week, given how former President Donald Trump dominated the conversation and commanded outsize attention with his arraignment on criminal charges in New York. And the Democratic Party has largely coalesced behind Biden, particularly since the midterm elections last fall, and know the lack of a serious primary threat offers him “the ability to move on his own time,” a senior White House official said.

Biden has told several elected officials in private conversations that he’s in – “I am definitely running,” he told one person a few weeks ago, according to that person – but he has been less forthcoming on timing.

April had for a while been seen as a likely timeline for announcing his candidacy, given that it comes four years after he jumped into the race in 2019. And as vice president, he joined then-President Barack Obama in opening a reelection campaign in April 2011.

The timing of a Biden announcement is now more likely to be the summer rather than spring, three Democratic officials say, with a target date still not determined.

“President Biden has been clear that he intends to run, and his focus is on finishing the work he’s doing for American families: continuing to bring manufacturing back from overseas, further cutting the deficit by having rich special interests pay their fair share, and standing up for fundamental rights like the freedom to choose,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told CNN. “There has never been a timeframe for any announcement.”

Outside of interviews, Biden has remained mostly silent about his reelection plans.

That made two nods he gave recently to a likely run more notable. During an event handing out national Arts and Humanities medals at the White House last month, Biden said certain people were “ready to run” and, noting novelist Colson Whitehead’s two Pulitzer Prizes, said he was “kind of looking for a back-to-back myself.”

The allusions were hardly lost on anyone in the East Room, many of whom were ardent supporters of Biden’s last presidential bid and are eager to back a campaign for a second term.

For other observers, including some in touch with the president that week, the asides also felt like subtle brushback against those who still question whether he actually plans to run again.

Signs of a pending campaign have been hard to miss.

Biden has spent the opening months of the year traveling the country to promote the accomplishments of the first half of his term at events that could easily be confused for campaign stops. He has intensified his attacks on Republicans, including taking aim at anti-LGBTQ laws in Florida championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely contender for the GOP nomination. And a string of moves on immigration, crime and energy have bolstered Biden’s image as a moderate while angering some liberals for appearing to back off his prior promises.

Taken together, the portrait is of a candidate-in-waiting. Yet Biden has put off making a final decision about running again, and the time frame for a potential announcement – never set in stone – appears to be extending further into the year.

Last year, senior advisers to Biden discussed launching the reelection campaign early in the new year, and some members of Biden’s family, too, are said to have favored an announcement as early as February. But that once-debated aspirational timeline has come and gone. Now, sources say, a reelection announcement taking place even by the end of April doesn’t appear guaranteed.

So far, the stretched-out timeline doesn’t appear to be worrying Democrats, at least outwardly.

“I have no doubt President Biden will run again and will win,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democratic congressman who has long been a booster of Biden running, attended his very first fundraiser in April 2019 in Philadelphia on the day he launched and who hosted Biden a few weeks ago in his district for the official release of the budget. “As far as when he exactly officially announces his reelection campaign, I couldn’t care less. It’s meaningless.”

Obama formally launched his reelection campaign in April 2011. George W. Bush filed official papers to run for reelection in May 2003 but didn’t begin actively campaigning until much later. Donald Trump declared his intention to run again the day he entered office in 2017.

All of those presidents’ reelection bids were considered givens. While Biden has said from the get-go that he intends to run again, he faces perpetual misgivings over his advanced age and soft approval ratings. In a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS released Thursday, just a third of Americans said Biden deserves to be reelected, with a majority in his own party saying they would like to see someone else as the Democratic nominee for president next year.

One person familiar with internal deliberations said a reason there is not a great sense of urgency is because potential Republican presidential candidates, too, have been slow to launch their campaigns. So far, the only major GOP candidates to have formally declared runs have been Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

Sources also said Biden feels that as an incumbent president, without any serious primary challengers, he has more time to make a final decision. And some close to Biden suggest there is political upside to waiting.

“Why not just let the Republicans try to out-crazy each other for a little while?” asked one former White House official.

As Democrats wait for Biden to officially declare a bid for a second term, some crucial decisions for the party remain in limbo. Among those is the location for the 2024 Democratic National Convention, as well as where a Biden reelection campaign would be headquartered – both decisions that need final sign-off from the President himself. He is said to personally favor a Wilmington, Delaware, base for his reelection campaign, though there has been active talk of centering it in Philadelphia as well.

Inside the White House, deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon and senior adviser Anita Dunn – in consultation with other senior Biden aides – have been running point on preparations for a reelection campaign.

Multiple sources said that names that have emerged for potential senior roles on the campaign include Jenn Ridder, national states director for Biden’s 2020 campaign, and Sam Cornale, executive director of the Democratic National Committee. Preston Elliott, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s former campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, director of White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and Quentin Fulks, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s ex-campaign manager, are also said to be up for possible senior jobs.

Other names in the mix include Emma Brown, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s former campaign manager, Roger Lau, deputy executive director at the DNC, Addisu Demissie, former campaign manager for New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s 2020 presidential campaign, Mitch Stewart, founding partner of 270 Strategies, and Rob Flaherty, director of digital strategy at the White House.

Other top Democratic strategists who have been approached for jobs on the campaign declined to sign on, citing personal or professional reasons. And Biden himself hasn’t engaged deeply on the staffing for the senior levels of his potential campaign – another sign that an announcement, at least for now, appears to remain in the distance.

Many of Biden’s longest-serving and most trusted advisers are expected to remain at the White House for the duration of the campaign, setting up a potentially awkward dynamic for any campaign manager. There is a general expectation that at least one of Biden’s longtime advisers would transfer from the White House to a campaign job, but it remains to be seen whom that would be.

Other recently departed White House officials, including former chief of staff Ron Klain and ex-communications director Kate Bedingfield, have also suggested they are prepared to assist the campaign.

At the handful of Democratic fundraising events the president has held over the past month, he has made only vague allusions to reelection.

“We have a real choice in this election – unrelated to me, unrelated to me – between the Democrats and Republicans and what they stand for and what they’re about,” Biden said in Las Vegas, careful not to run afoul of federal rules barring fundraising before officially declaring his candidacy.

Even as those around the president wait for an official 2024 decision, there is an air of inevitability about an eventual announcement. Those close to the White House have pointed to some of Biden’s recent policy decisions that have tacked to the center as sending an important signal that his mind is all but made up.

Earlier this year, Biden blindsided many Democratic lawmakers when he announced that he would not veto legislation to block a controversial Washington, DC, crime bill that critics had painted as being weak on crime. The Biden administration has also rolled out a number of tough proposals aimed at curbing the entry of migrants at the US southern border, to the dismay of many Democratic lawmakers and immigration activists.

A number of other domestic policy announcements aimed at eliminating so-called “junk fees” and lowering the price of insulin – all moves considered to have broad appeal – have also signaled to Biden allies a pivot to reelection mode.

Hear what first lady thinks about Biden’s reelection plans

But that air of inevitability is also creating jitters among some Democrats, who worry that an unexpected scenario in which Biden decides not to seek a second term would spell disaster for the party.

“Because there’s no clear backup plan. There’s no one else to get fired up about,” said one Democratic congressman. “It’s not like you see anybody else lining up in the wings to really to take him on.”

Biden himself, along with his wife, have said in interviews they intend to mount another campaign barring unforeseen events.

Yet both have given themselves some room to back away.

“It’s Joe’s decision,” the first lady told CNN’s Arlette Saenz during a trip to Africa earlier this year. “And we support whatever he wants to do. If he’s in, we’re there. If he wants to do something else, we’re there too.”

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April 7, 2023
What happens next after the Tennessee House ousted 2 Democrats | CNN

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CNN
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Just hours after the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel two Democratic lawmakers, their pictures and profiles had already been removed from the state’s General Assembly website, a symbol of the vacant seats that now need to be filled.

Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were kicked out of the legislature by their colleagues in a vote Thursday. A third member also up for expulsion, Rep. Gloria Johnson, survived the vote, which required two-thirds majority support in the Republican-dominated chamber.

All three had been accused by Republicans of “knowingly and intentionally” bringing “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives” after they led a gun control protest on the House floor last month without being recognized, CNN affiliate WSMV reported.

In the wake of a deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, which killed three 9-year-olds and three adults, Jones said he and other lawmakers were blocked from raising the issue of gun violence on the House floor, with their microphones being cut off whenever they raised the topic, according to WSMV.

According to the expulsion resolutions, Jones, Pearson and Johnson “began shouting without recognition” during their protest, and “proceeded to disrupt the proceedings of the House Representatives.”

Republican leaders in the chamber condemned the lawmakers’ actions and moved quickly to remove their committee assignments and schedule a vote for their expulsion. Jones, Pearson and Johnson decried the Republicans’ actions as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated. Jones and Pearson are both young, Black men while Johnson is a White woman.

As focus now shifts to filling the two new vacancies in the state House, local lawmakers in Jones’ and Pearson’s districts are working to determine their next steps, including possibly returning the ousted lawmakers to the chamber.

According to the Tennessee Constitution, since there is more than twelve months until the next general election in November 2024, a special election will be held to fill the seats.

In the time between when a seat becomes vacant and when a special election can be held, “the legislative body of the replaced legislator’s county of residence at the time of his or her election may elect an interim successor,” the state Constitution says.

In Jones’ case, the local legislative body is the Metropolitan Council of Davidson County in Nashville. The council has scheduled a special meeting on Monday afternoon to address the vacancy of the District 52 seat and possibly vote on an interim successor.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper has expressed his support for Jones and said on Twitter he believes the council will send him “right back to continue serving his constituents.”

Jones told CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday that if he’s appointed by the council, he will serve. “I have no regrets. I will continue to stand up for my constituents,” he said.

For Pearson’s District 86 seat, the local legislative body is the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis.

Commission chairman Mickell Lowery plans to call a special meeting regarding Pearson’s expulsion, CNN affiliate WMC reported, but the timing of the meeting isn’t yet known.

Pearson said he hopes to “get reappointed to serve in the state legislature,” and referring to the Shelby County commissioners, he said, “A lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this White supremacist-led state legislature.”

No date has been set for a special election but state law provides a time frame for when the governor should schedule them.

A “writ of election” for “primary elections for nominations by statewide political parties to fill the vacancy” must be scheduled within 55 to 60 days, state code says. And a general election to fill the vacancy must be scheduled within 100 to 107 days.

According to Tennessee law, a state representative must be at least 21 years old, a US citizen, a resident of the state for at least three years and a resident of their county for one year preceding the election.

They must also be a qualified voter of the district, which requires a resident to be 18 years old and free of certain felony convictions.

Both Jones and Pearson meet those qualifications.

And while the state Constitution says members can be expelled for disorderly behavior with a two-thirds majority vote, they cannot be expelled “a second time for the same offense.”

If Jones and Pearson are elected again, the Tennessee House Republican Caucus said in a statement it hopes “they will act as the thousands who have come before them – with respect for our institution, their fellow colleagues, and the seat that they hold.”

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April 7, 2023
Defying China, US House leader and Taiwan president present a united front | CNN

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Taipei, Taiwan
CNN
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Defying Beijing’s repeated threats, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy presented a carefully choreographed united front in California on Wednesday against an increasingly powerful and aggressive China.

For Taiwan, the rare high-level, bipartisan meeting is a timely show of US support, as China ramps up diplomatic and military pressure on the self-ruling island it claims as part of its territory.

But the encounter also carries great risks: the last time Tsai met with a US House Speaker – during Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last August, Beijing retaliated by holding days of large-scale military drills and firing missiles over the island, pushing tensions to their highest in decades.

This time around, Beijing’s initial reaction appears more restrained. Its Foreign Ministry has condemned the meeting and pledged to take “strong and resolute measures,” though so far that has not translated into any specific military response.

To avoid provoking Beijing and triggering another military crisis, American and Taiwan officials have portrayed Tsai’s visit as nothing out of the ordinary, citing an abundance of precedents for a Taiwan leader to transit through the US.

But the political significance of Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy is unavoidable. It is the highest-level audience a sitting Taiwan president has received on American soil, with an official second in line to the presidency after the vice president.

Their meeting at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library highlighted the strengthening ties between Taipei and Washington, even though they remain unofficial in nature.

“I believe our bond is stronger now than at any time or point in my lifetime,” McCarthy said at a press conference after the meeting. “America’s support for the people of Taiwan will remain resolute, unwavering and bipartisan.”

Tsai reciprocated his pledge of solidarity, noting “we’re stronger when we are together.”

“In our efforts to protect our way of life, Taiwan is grateful to have the United States by our side,” she said, standing alongside McCarthy with Reagan’s Air Force One as a backdrop. “The constant and unwavering support reassured the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated and we are not alone.”

Under Washington’s longstanding “One China” policy, the US acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the island of 23 million. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, it is also bound by law to provide the democratic island with the means to defend itself.

Austin Wang, an assistant professor in political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the meeting illustrated the importance of the Taiwan issue in US politics.

“Whether it’s worth the risk depends on what will happen next,” he said. “If the meeting is a cornerstone to speed up further economic and military cooperation…(then it) is worth the risk.”

Following the meeting Wednesday, McCarthy tweeted the United States should continue to boost its support for Taiwan. “We must continue arms sales to Taiwan and make sure such sales reach Taiwan on time. We must also strengthen our economic cooperation, particularly with trade and technology,” he tweeted.

Beijing’s ruling Communist Party sees Taiwan as an inseparable part of its territory, despite having never controlled it – and has vowed to “reunite” the island with mainland China, by force if necessary.

To undermine its legitimacy, Beijing has spent decades chipping away at Taipei’s dwindling diplomatic allies and blocking its participation in international organizations – including the World Health Organization.

The US maintains an unofficial relationship with Taiwan after switching its diplomatic relations to Beijing decades ago.

Last month, Honduras also switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, leaving the island democracy with only 13 remaining allies.

But instead of becoming increasingly isolated from the global community, Taiwan has steadily built its international influence by expanding unofficial relationships with friendly Western nations – while also emphasizing shared values in maintaining its ties with official allies.

Tsai’s high-profile meeting in California followed a trip to Central America, where she met with allies in Guatemala and Belize to promote “democracy and prosperity.”

Tsai addressed parliaments in both countries and signed agreements to deepen their partnerships. While transiting in New York earlier in the trip, she also received a global leadership award from the Hudson Institute, a US think tank based in Washington DC.

Analysts say since Tsai became president in 2016, her government has increasingly shifted the focus of Taiwanese diplomacy on developing unofficial ties with Western democracies to compensate for the loss of official recognition.

Last month, Taiwan welcomed a 150-person Czech delegation, led by the speaker of the lower chamber of the Czech parliament, as a growing number of European countries raised concerns over the future of Taiwan following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

While President Tsai makes a high-profile trip to the Americas, her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou is also making a historic visit to mainland China – the first such trip by a current or former Taiwanese president since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

At a time of mounting pressure from Beijing, their parallel visits have come to present different visions for the future of the self-governing democracy.

Taiwan is set to elect a new president next year, when questions about the island’s political future are bound to arise. Having served two terms, Tsai is not eligible for re-election, but her vice president William Lai is expected to run.

Having lost to Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party in two presidential elections, the Kuomintang, or KMT, is doing all it can to avoid another defeat.

“We know that in Taiwan, that at every presidential election, China is the fundamental issue that matters most,” said Lev Nachman, an assistant professor in politics at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

The 2024 elections will be no different, and it’s just a matter of how the China issue is framed, he said.

“We already see, for example, the KMT trying to frame this as a case between war and peace, in which the KMT brings peace and the DPP brings war.”

The KMT is widely seen as more Beijing-friendly than the DPP.

When he was president between 2008 and 2016, Ma focused on establishing greater economic cooperation between Beijing and Taipei. The proposal sparked large-scale protests that saw demonstrators occupying Taiwan’s legislature for weeks.

In 2015, Ma held an historic meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Singapore – the first such meeting between political leaders of both sides of the Taiwan Strait in decades.

During his trip to China, Ma met with the director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, noting the importance of maintaining exchanges across the Taiwan Strait and “doing everything possible” to avoid conflict.

“People on both sides of the strait belong to the same Chinese nation and are descendants of the Chinese people,” he said last week.

In contrast to Ma, Tsai does not acknowledge that Taiwan and China belong to the same nation. Instead, she has repeatedly emphasized that the island’s future can only be decided by its own people.

“We will continue to bolster our national defense and demonstrate our determination to defend ourselves in order to ensure that nobody can force Taiwan to take the path China has laid out for us,” she said at national day celebrations in 2021.

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April 6, 2023
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. files paperwork to run for president as a Democrat | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in 2024 as a Democrat.

The filing was confirmed Wednesday by his campaign treasurer, John E. Sullivan.

The 69-year-old is the son of former New York senator, US attorney general and assassinated 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy Jr. is a longtime vaccine skeptic. He has promoted discredited claims linking vaccines and autism and founded the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He has also railed against the coronavirus vaccine and has criticized the federal government’s handling of the pandemic.

In 2019, three members of his family – his sister Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, brother Joseph P. Kennedy II and niece Maeve Kennedy McKean – forcefully denounced his anti-vaccine views in a Politico Magazine op-ed, arguing that he was “part of a misinformation campaign that’s having heartbreaking – and deadly – consequences.”

In 2022, Kennedy Jr. invoked Nazi Germany in an anti-vaccine speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. The previous year, Instagram took down his account “for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.”

Kennedy had tweeted last month that he was considering a presidential run.

“If it looks like I can raise the money and mobilize enough people to win, I’ll jump in the race,” he said.

His tweet also pointed supporters to his website: “Let Bobby know you want to see his leadership in the White House,” the site says while asking for donations.

As an environmental lawyer, Kennedy worked with a group that led the Hudson River cleanup. He also worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-founded an environmental law firm.

Should he go through with his presidential bid, Kennedy would be the latest in a long line of family members to enter politics.

His sister Kathleen served as the lieutenant governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003. His brother Joseph was a congressman from Massachusetts from 1987 to 1999. And more recently, his brother Chris Kennedy was an unsuccessful candidate for governor of Illinois in 2018.

The last Kennedy to hold elected office was his nephew former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III, who lost a Democratic Senate primary in 2020. (He is now the US special envoy for Northern Ireland.) Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former President Kennedy, is currently the US ambassador to Australia.

The 2024 Democratic presidential race is only beginning to take shape, with President Joe Biden expected to announce his bid for a second term. Author Marianne Williamson launched a second long-shot campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination last month.

On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump jump-started the race for the party nomination, announcing his third bid for the White House last year. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are also in the race, while other well-known contenders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, are weighing bids of their own.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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April 5, 2023
Democrats optimistic about saving abortion access in Wisconsin after liberal’s state Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The victory of a liberal judge in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election marks a significant political realignment toward the left in a crucial swing state, potentially closing the door on an era of Republican dominance with issues such as abortion rights at stake.

With liberals now poised to effectively control the seven-judge court, Democrats are newly optimistic about saving abortion access in the state, establishing a firewall against any Republican challenges to the 2024 elections and potentially redoing GOP-drawn state legislative and congressional maps. That combination of issues proved a potent force in a race that attracted massive turnout and spending.

And as they did in last year’s midterms in some places around the country, Democrats, once again, appear to have capitalized on a broad backlash to the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and a base still energized by the specter of another Donald Trump presidency.

Republican-supported Daniel Kelly lost the technically nonpartisan contest to Democratic-backed Janet Protasiewicz, who will begin a 10-year term this summer, effectively flipping control of the divided bench to liberals. Conservative Justice Patience Roggensack’s retirement opened the seat, triggering a contentious race that attracted national attention – and donor dollars. It was the most expensive state judicial election in the country ever.

“Anger about Roe hasn’t dissipated. Fear for our democracy remains. Voters are still alarmed by the MAGA extremism of candidates like Dan Kelly. And if this race is an early bellwether – we can safely say that Republicans didn’t learn their lesson in 2022,” said Sarah Dohl, the chief campaigns officer for Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group.

Wisconsin has emerged as one of the country’s most competitive political fronts, with ground that’s expected to again be hotly contested in next year’s presidential and Senate races. But the state government – outside the governor’s office – has been bossed by Republicans. Since defeating GOP Gov. Scott Walker more than four years ago, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed roughly 150 bills and been hamstrung in pursuing large parts of his own agenda. Now, GOP policy gains at the state level – most notably its crushing of public sector labor unions – are in doubt.

In the years before Trump’s emergence, the Wisconsin GOP ran roughshod over state politics and sought to export its national playbook around the country. Walker entered the 2016 GOP presidential primary as an early favorite, pitching his state as a model for the nation. But like so many others in that year’s Republican field, he never got off the blocks as Trump thundered to the nomination.

That fall, Trump shattered the Democratic illusion of a “blue wall” in the Upper Midwest, defeating Hillary Clinton by fewer than 25,000 votes in the Wisconsin general election.

But Trump’s victory also triggered a backlash – and a mini Democratic resurgence at the state level.

Evers was first elected governor during the 2018 Democratic wave. He won a second term last year. And though Republican Sen. Ron Johnson held his seat in 2022, Trump had lost the state two years earlier by a little more than 20,000 votes. His false allegations of 2020 election fraud infuriated Democrats, along with many swing voters, and ultimately in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race hobbled Kelly, who faced blowback for his role in advising GOP officials in their efforts to hatch a fake electors scheme

And while the court could find itself ruling on election laws again, abortion may the most immediate battle to reach the justices.

The state’s high court is expected to decide a lawsuit challenging an 1849 law that bans nearly all abortions, which had been dormant for decades but snapped back into place with last year’s US Supreme Court ruling. Protasiewicz, Wisconsin Democrats and allied groups such as Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Emily’s List all worked to frame the race as another referendum on abortion rights.

“For over a decade, anti-choice ideologues have held their iron grip on Wisconsin’s highest court, leaving voters hungry for change,” NARAL president Mini Timmaraju said in a statement. “Judge Janet’s resounding victory comes as abortion access faces an onslaught of attacks by extremist state courts determined to tear up our rights at every step.”

Victory for abortion rights activists follows a similar result in neighboring Michigan, which voted last fall to enshrine abortion and other reproductive rights into the state constitution while reelecting Democratic women to its three most powerful executive offices. Those results continued a streak of successes for Democrats who dug in hard on the issue – a political winner in many swing states and legislative districts.

Kelly, the conservative in Wisconsin, was coy about how he would rule on a slate of potential hot-button cases, but his past writings and work for anti-abortion groups allowed Protasiewicz, who signaled her skepticism about the ban, to attack him on the issue. Her past comments also suggest a new day’s dawning for the labor community and Democrats seeking to upend the state’s skewed legislative maps.

“Everything from gerrymandering to drop boxes to Act 10 may be revisited to women’s right to choose,” Protasiewicz told Wisconsin Radio Network in February. (Act 10 eliminated collective bargaining for most public sector employees.)

And with another presidential election on the horizon, her willingness to consider attempts to roll back or reverse restrictive voting laws or regulations could have clear national implications.

The state’s voter ID laws, put in place by Republicans, are among the strictest in the country. Wisconsin’s high court played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2020 election, rejecting a Trump lawsuit aimed at invalidating Joe Biden’s victory – but only by a 4-3 margin with one conservative justice siding with the liberals.

In the event of another challenge like that, Democrats would now only need their allies to hold the line to prevent a similar bid.

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April 5, 2023
Progressive Brandon Johnson will be elected Chicago mayor, succeeding Lori Lightfoot, CNN projects | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Chicago voters will choose Brandon Johnson, a progressive Cook County commissioner backed by the powerful teachers union, as the city’s next mayor, CNN projects.

Johnson will win Tuesday’s runoff election over Paul Vallas, a moderate former city schools superintendent who had campaigned on a pro-police message in a race where concerns about violent crime were central.

Johnson told supporters his victory had “ushered in a new chapter in the history of our city” and demonstrated a “bold, progressive movement” that he said should be a blueprint for the country.

“Now, Chicago will begin to work for its people – all the people. Because tonight is a gateway to a new future for our city; a city where you can thrive no matter who you love or how much money you have in your bank account,” he said.

Vallas said at his election night event that he had called Johnson to concede the race.

“This campaign I ran to bring the city together would not be a campaign that fulfilled my ambitions if this election is going to divide us more. So it’s critically important that we use this opportunity to come together, and I’ve offered him my full support on his transition,” Vallas said.

Vallas and Johnson were competing to replace Mayor Lori Lightfoot, whose bid for a second term ended when she finished third in the nine-candidate February 28 first round – failing to advance to the top-two runoff.

Lightfoot had sparred with two of the most powerful forces in this year’s mayor’s race: the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed Vallas, and the Chicago Teachers Union, which backs Johnson – a former teacher and union organizer.

The clash between those two unions is part of a larger battle over how the city handled the Covid-19 pandemic – a period during which violent crime increased and schools were shut down.

Vallas campaigned on a pro-police, tough-on-crime message. He vowed to fill hundreds of vacancies in the Chicago Police Department, and said he would emphasize community policing and place officers on public transit, after a recent violent crime spike at the Chicago Transit Authority’s trains and stations alarmed many commuters.

He also highlighted Johnson’s history of supporting calls to “defund the police” – a message that became popular with progressives in 2020 in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd but that has since receded amid violent crime increases in Chicago and other cities. Top Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have long rejected the slogan.

Johnson said during the campaign that he did not want to slash police spending. He said he would promote 200 new detectives, arguing that solving more crimes would increase Chicago residents’ trust in police and deter crime.

In his victory speech Tuesday night, Johnson nodded to his clashes with Vallas over crime and policing. He said he envisions “a city that’s safer for everyone by investing in what actually works to prevent crime. And that means youth employment, mental health centers, ensuring that law enforcement has the resources to solve and prevent crimes.”

Vallas and Johnson spent the weeks leading up to the runoff courting the approximately 45% of the electorate that did not vote for either candidate in February.

They were particularly focused on Black and Latino voters outside of Johnson’s progressive base and Vallas’ support in White ethnic neighborhoods and the northwestern portion of the city.

Vallas featured Black mainstays of Chicago politics, including former Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White and former US Rep. Bobby Rush, in his closing television advertisement touting his Democratic credentials.

Johnson had argued that Vallas was too conservative for the electorate of a city where 83% of voters backed the Democratic presidential ticket in 2020. He highlighted donations Vallas’ campaign received from business interests and Republicans, as well as digital ads paid for by a PAC with ties to former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

“When you take dollars from Trump supporters and try to pass yourself as a part of the progressive movement – man, sit down,” Johnson said at a rally in Chicago with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders last week.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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April 4, 2023
Wisconsin voters are deciding control of state Supreme Court in most consequential election of 2023 | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Wisconsin voters on Tuesday are deciding the outcome of a state Supreme Court race that could be the most consequential election of the year.

The race between Democratic-backed Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz and Republican-backed former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly could both break a decadelong era of Republican dominance in one of the nation’s most important swing states and prove pivotal in the fight over the future of abortion access. It’s the most expensive state judicial race ever.

Conservatives currently hold a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin high court. But the retirement of conservative Justice Patience Roggensack has given liberals an opening to retake control for at least the next two years, and with it fundamentally shift the political landscape in a state that has been ensnared in political conflict for more than a decade. The race could also effectively decide how the court will rule on legal challenges to Wisconsin’s 1849 law banning abortion – which took effect after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.

Wisconsin is one of 14 states that directly elect their Supreme Court justices, and winners get 10-year terms. The races are nominally nonpartisan, but political parties leave little doubt as to which candidates they support. Spending in this year’s race – which reached $28.8 million as of March 29, according to the Brennan Center – has far surpassed the previous record for spending on a state judicial contest: $15.4 million in a 2004 Illinois race.

Republican sway in Wisconsin began with Gov. Scott Walker’s election in 2010 – a victory that was followed by the passage of union-busting laws and state legislative districts drawn to effectively ensure GOP majorities, all green-lit by a state Supreme Court where conservatives have held the majority since 2008.

Walker lost his bid for a third term to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2018. But Evers has been hamstrung by the Republican-led legislature, with the conservative Supreme Court breaking ties on matters such as a 2022 ruling during the once-a-decade redistricting process in favor of using Republican-drawn legislative maps rather than ones submitted by Evers. The decision cemented Republicans’ solid majority in the state legislature.

Revisiting those maps, which Protasiewicz has criticized, could lead to new state legislative districts that are less favorable to Republicans if she is victorious.

The court has also shaped Wisconsin elections in other ways. It barred the use of most ballot drop boxes last year and ruled that no one can return a ballot in person on behalf of another voter. The court played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2020 election in Wisconsin: Justices voted 4-3, with conservative Brian Hagedorn joining the court’s three liberals, to reject former President Donald Trump’s efforts to throw out ballots in Democratic-leaning counties.

Tuesday’s election will set the stage for the 2024 presidential race, with the court likely to be asked to weigh in again on election rules, including the state’s voter identification law, and potentially sort through another round of legal challenges afterward.

But the most immediate battle likely to reach the justices as early as this fall is over Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances.

Groups on both sides of the abortion divide have poured vast sums into the race and have attempted to mobilize voters ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Though the two candidates have refused to say how they’d rule on the issue, they’ve left little doubt about their leanings.

In a debate last month, Protasiewicz said she was “making no promises” on how she would rule. But she also noted her personal support for abortion rights, as well as endorsements from pro-abortion rights groups. And she pointed to Kelly’s endorsement by Wisconsin Right to Life, which opposes abortion rights.

“If my opponent is elected, I can tell you with 100% certainty, that 1849 abortion ban will stay on the books. I can tell you that,” Protasiewicz said.

Kelly, who has done legal work for Wisconsin Right to Life, shot back, saying Protasiewicz’s comments were “absolutely not true.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking about that abortion ban,” he said. “You have no idea. These things you do not know.”

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April 4, 2023
Erdogan’s political fate may be determined by Turkey’s Kurds | CNN
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Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.

Abu Dhabi, UAE
CNN
—

Turkey’s persecuted pro-Kurdish party has emerged as a kingmaker in the country’s upcoming election, playing a decisive role that may just tip the balance enough to unseat two-decade ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a key setback to the Turkish president and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) last month announced that it would not put forward its own presidential candidate, a move analysts say allows its supporters to vote for Erdogan’s main rival.

“We are facing a turning point that will shape the future of Turkey and (its) society,” said the HDP in a statement on March 23. “To fulfill our historical responsibility against the one-man rule, we will not field a presidential candidate in (the) May 14 elections.”

It is a twist of irony for the Turkish strongman, who spent the better half of the past decade cracking down on the party after it began chipping away at his voter base. Its former leader Selahattin Demirtas has been in prison for nearly seven years and the party faces possible closure by a court for suspected collusion with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and affiliated groups. But its influence may nonetheless determine the course of Turkey’s politics.

The HDP’s decision not to field a candidate came just three days after head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan’s main rival, visited the party’s co-chairs. He told reporters that the solution to Turkey’s problems, “including the Kurdish problem” lies in parliament,” according to Turkish media.

Kilicdaroglu, who represents the six-party Nation Alliance opposition bloc, is the strongest contender to run against Erdogan in years. And while the HDP hasn’t yet announced whether it will put its weight behind him, analysts say it is the kingmaker in the elections.

“It was a carefully crafted political discourse,” Hisyar Ozsoy, deputy co-chair of the HDP and a member of parliament from the predominantly Kurdish province of Diyarbakir, told CNN. “We are not going to have our own candidate, and we will leave it to the international community to interpret it the way they wish.”

Experts say the crackdown on the HDP is rooted in the threat it poses to Erdogan politically, as well as its position as one of the main parties representing Turkey’s Kurds, an ethnic minority from which a separatist militant movement has emerged.

The party and the Kurdish people have had a complicated relationship with Erdogan. The leader courted the Kurds in earlier years by granting them more rights and reversing restrictions on the use of their language. Relations with the HDP were also cordial once, as Erdogan worked with the party on a brief peace process with the PKK.

But ties between Erdogan and the HDP later turned sour, and the HDP fell under a sweeping crackdown aimed at the PKK and their affiliates.

Kurds are the biggest minority in Turkey, making up between 15% and 20% of the population, according to Minority Rights Group International.

It is unclear if the HDP will endorse Kilicdaroglu, but analysts say that the deliberate distance may be beneficial for the opposition candidate.

The accusations against the HDP place it in a precarious position during the elections. It currently faces a case in Turkey’s Constitutional Court over suspected ties to the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Knowing it may be banned at any moment, its candidates are running under the Green Left Party in parliament.

If the opposition is seen as allying with the HDP, Erdogan’s AK Party may use its influence in the media to discredit it as being pro-PKK, said Murat Somer, a political science professor at Koc University in Istanbul and author of Return to Point Zero, a book on the Turkish-Kurdish question in Turkey.

The HDP’s threat to Erdogan’s hold on power became apparent after the June 2015 election, the first general election it participated in. It won 13% of the seats, denying the ruling AK Party its majority for the first time since 2002. Erdogan, however, called a snap election five months later, which led to a drop in the HDP’s support to 10.7%, as well as the restoration of the AK Party’s overall majority.

“They are a kingmaker in these elections because the HDP gets about half of the votes of the Kurdish population in Turkey,” said Somer, adding that the other, more conservative Kurdish voters have traditionally voted for Erdogan’s AK Party. And last month, the Free Cause Party (HUDA-PAR), a tiny Kurdish-Islamist party announced support for Erdogan in the elections. The party has never won seats in parliament.

The HDP knows that its position is key to the outcome of next month’s vote, but that it’s also in a delicate situation.

“We want to play the game wisely, and we need to be very careful,” said Ozsoy, adding that the party wants to avoid a “contaminated political climate” where the elections are polarized “between a very ugly ultra-nationalist discourse against Kilicdaroglu and others.”

The party was founded in 2012 with a number of aims, said Ozsoy, one of which was “peaceful and democratic resolution of the Kurdish conflict.”

Somer said that the party was seen to be “an initiative” of the PKK, which later led to a heavy government crackdown on it in the name of counterterrorism.

Its former leader Demirtas remains an influential figure.

The Turkish government has been trying to link the HDP to the PKK but has so far failed to prove “a real connection,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

A post-Erdogan Turkey may give some breathing space to the Kurds and Kurdish-dominated parties in Turkey, Aydintasbas told CNN, noting that many Kurdish voters have recently left Erdogan’s camp. “For HDP, this is more than just an ideological choice,” she said. “It’s a matter of survival.”

Ozsoy says his party understands what’s at stake, not only for Turkey’s Kurds but for all its minorities.

“We are aware of our responsibility here. We are aware of our role. We know we are in a kingmaker position,” the HDP lawmaker said.

Two women arrested for not wearing hijab following ‘yogurt attack’

Two women were arrested in Iran for failing to wear the hijab in public, after a man threw a tub of yogurt at them at a store in the city of Shandiz on Thursday, according to Mizan News Agency, the state-run outlet for Iran’s judiciary.
Background: A video and report published by the Mizan News Agency showed footage of the man approaching one of the unveiled women and speaking to her before he grabs a tub of yogurt and throws it, hitting both women on the head. The video appears to show a male staff member removing the man from the store. The two women were arrested, as well as the man who threw the yogurt, according to local media.

Why it matters: Iranians have taken to the streets in protest for several months against Iran’s mandatory hijab law, as well as other political and social issues across the country. The Iranian government has continued to crack down on the protests, and on Saturday, Iran’s Ministry of Interior said that the “hijab is an unquestionable religious necessity.”
Oil prices surge after OPEC+ producers announce surprise cuts

Oil prices spiked Monday after OPEC+ producers unexpectedly announced that they would cut output. Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped 5.31% to $84.13 a barrel, while WTI, the US benchmark, rose 5.48% to $79.83. Both were the sharpest price rises in almost a year. The collective output cut by the nine members of OPEC+ totals 1.66 million barrels per day.
Background: The reductions are on top of the 2 million barrels per day (bpd) cuts announced by OPEC+ in October and bring the total volume of cuts by OPEC+ to 3.66 million bpd, equal to 3.7% of global demand. In a note Sunday, Goldman Sachs analysts said the move was unexpected but “consistent with the new OPEC+ doctrine to act pre-emptively because they can, without significant losses in market share.”

Why it matters: The White House pushed back on the cuts by OPEC+. “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty – and we’ve made that clear,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said. “We’re focused on prices for American consumers, not barrels.” In October, OPEC+’s decision to cut production had already rankled the White House. US President Joe Biden pledged at the time that Saudi Arabia would suffer “consequences.” But so far, his administration appears to have backed off on its vows to punish the kingdom.
Iran blames Israel for the killing of second IRGC officer, vows to respond

A second Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer died following an attack in Syria on Friday, according to Iranian state media on Sunday. Iranian state media said the Iranian military adviser died after an Israeli attack near the Syrian capital Damascus left him wounded. The attack also killed another IRGC officer. In a tweet on Sunday, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said the alleged Israeli attack wouldn’t go unanswered. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Sunday that Iran has the right to respond to “state terrorism.”
Background: The Friday airstrike hit a “site in the Damascus countryside,” Syrian state news agency SANA said. Israel declined CNN’s request for comment on reports of airstrikes near Damascus on Friday, saying its military doesn’t comment on reports in the foreign media. Iranian influence has grown in Syria since a civil war broke out in the country more than a decade ago, with the IRGC building a substantial presence as “advisers” to the Syrian armed forces.

Why it matters: The Israeli military declined to comment, but it has previously claimed responsibility for attacks it has described as Iranian-linked targets in Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting Sunday: “We are exacting a high price from the regimes that support terrorism, beyond Israel’s borders. I suggest that our enemies not err. Israel’s internal debate will not detract one iota from our determination, strength and ability to act against our enemies on all fronts, wherever and whenever necessary.”
What’s the difference between Persians and Arabs?

Comedian @MazJobrani shares with me his thoughts on touring the Middle East, his support for Iran’s protests, and his latest comedy special: pic.twitter.com/UvYwVgJIlw

— Becky Anderson (@BeckyCNN) March 31, 2023

Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani, who has been touring the Middle East, spoke to CNN’s Becky Anderson about his support for the protests in his homeland, saying that he used his standup comedy platform to highlight the “brutality against the Iranian people.”

“It was an opportunity for me to say, ‘let’s keep fighting,’” he said.

Watch the interview here.

China and Brazil have reached an agreement to ditch USD and use their own currencies—China Daily pic.twitter.com/q33U4kVO5Q

— IRNA News Agency (@IrnaEnglish) March 30, 2023

An Iranian state news outlet is gloating at what it sees as the demise of the US dollar.

IRNA recreated a popular meme to mark China and Brazil’s decision to reportedly ditch the US dollar as an intermediary in trade, citing the Chinese state news outlet, China Daily. It shows two men representing China and Brazil posing in front of a grave labelled “USD.”

The meme was pinned to the top of IRNA’s Twitter page, and was met with laughter and ridicule. “Dream on,” said another user, pointing to the dollar’s use as the main reserve currency around the world.

China Daily said that the agreement was part of “the rising global use of the Chinese renminbi.” It would reportedly enable China and Brazil to conduct trade and financial transactions using local currencies instead of the dollar.
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April 3, 2023
Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin concedes election | CNN

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CNN
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Finland’s left-wing Prime Minister Sanna Marin conceded defeat on Sunday in the Nordic country’s parliamentary election as the opposition right-wing National Coalition Party (NCP) claimed victory in a tightly fought contest.

The pro-business NCP was expected to win 48 of the 200 seats in parliament, narrowly ahead of the nationalist Finns Party with 46 seats and Marin’s Social Democrats on 43 seats, justice ministry election data showed with all ballots counted.

“We got the biggest mandate,” NCP leader Petteri Orpo said in a speech to followers, vowing to “fix Finland” and its economy.

He will get the first chance at forming a coalition to obtain majority in parliament as Marin’s era as prime minister was expected to end.

“We have gained support, we have gained more seats (in parliament). That’s an excellent achievement, even if we did not finish first today,” the prime minister said in a speech to party members.

Marin, 37, the world’s youngest prime minister when she took office in 2019, is considered by fans around the globe as a millennial role model for progressive new leaders, but at home she has faced criticism for her partying and her government’s public spending.

While she remains very popular among many Finns, particularly young moderates, she antagonized some conservatives with lavish spending on pensions and education they see as not frugal enough.

The NCP has led in polls for almost two years although its lead had melted away in recent months. It has promised to curb spending and stop the rise of public debt, which has reached just over 70% of GDP since Marin took office in 2019.

Orpo accused Marin of eroding Finland’s economic resilience at a time when Europe’s energy crisis, driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine, has hit the country hard and the cost of living has increased.

Orpo has said he will negotiate with all groups to obtain a majority in parliament, while Marin has said her Social Democrats may govern with the NCP but will not go into government with the Finns Party.

Marin called the Finns Party “openly racist” during a debate in January – an accusation the nationalist group rejected.

The Finns Party’s main goal is to reduce what leader Riikka Purra has called “harmful” immigration from developing countries outside the European Union. It also calls for austerity policies to curb deficit spending, a stance it shares with the NCP.

Most notable of Marin’s foreign policy actions has been her push, along with President Sauli Niinisto, for the country to make a watershed policy U-turn by seeking NATO membership in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

That process is now almost complete, with Helsinki expected to join within days after all the Western defense alliance’s 30 members approved the accession.

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April 2, 2023
Abortion foes take aim at ballot initiatives in next phase of post-Dobbs political fights | CNN Politics

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CNN
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After a string of recent ballot-box victories for abortion rights groups, opponents of the procedure are redoubling their efforts – including, in some places, pushing to make it harder to use citizen-approved ballot measures to guarantee abortion access.

An anti-abortion coalition in Ohio, for instance, recently unleashed a $5 million ad buy targeting an effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution through a ballot initiative – just as the initiative’s organizers won approval to collect signatures to put the question to voters in November. Meanwhile, legislators in Ohio and other states are weighing bills that would make it more difficult to pass citizen-initiated changes to state constitutions.

The US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year left abortion laws up to the states, and abortion rights groups quickly scored wins on ballot measures in six of them – including in the battleground state of Michigan, where voters protected abortion access, and in the Republican strongholds of Kansas, Kentucky and Montana, where voters defeated efforts to restrict abortions.

“What we saw in the midterms last year was a wake-up call,” said Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. She said helping local groups defeat abortion-related ballot measures is one of the top three priorities for the group’s state affairs team.

Groups on both sides of the abortion divide have poured big sums into an upcoming state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin that has seen record spending and offers a key test of the potency of the abortion issue among voters in a battleground state. Whether a conservative or liberal candidate wins a swing seat Tuesday on the seven-member high court there could determine the fate of abortion rights in the state. A Wisconsin law, enacted in 1849, that bans nearly all abortions is being challenged in court and is likely to land before the state Supreme Court.

More fights over ballot initiatives on abortion are stirring to life around the country. In addition to Ohio – where a state law banning abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy has been put on hold by a judge – abortion rights proponents have begun to push ballot proposals in South Dakota and Missouri. Most abortions are now illegal in those two states.

And groups in at least more six states are considering citizen initiatives as a way to guarantee or expand access to abortions, said Marsha Donat, capacity building director at The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which helps progressive groups advance ballot measures.

Ohio, however, looms as the next big abortion battleground on the 2023 calendar – with skirmishes already underway in the courts, the state legislature and on the airwaves.

A state “fetal heartbeat” law that prohibits many abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy took effect when the US Supreme Court struck down Roe with its decision last June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. But the law has been put on hold by a judge in Cincinnati in a case that’s expected to end up before the state’s high court.

Abortion rights supporters recently won approval to begin collecting signatures to put a measure on the November ballot that would guarantee Ohioans’ access to abortion. If approved by voters, state officials could not prohibit abortion until after fetal viability, the point at which doctors say the fetus can survive outside the womb.

The initiative says that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions” on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion.

It also would bar the state from interfering with an individual’s “voluntary exercise of this right” or that of a “person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right.”

A conservative group called Protect Women Ohio immediately launched an ad campaign – putting $4 million on the air and $1 million into digital advertising – to cast the amendment as one that would strip parents of their authority to prevent a child from having an abortion or undergoing gender reassignment surgery, although the proposed constitutional amendment makes no mention of transgender care.

Officials with Protect Women Ohio argue that the initiative’s language is broad enough to be interpreted as extending to gender reassignment surgery, an assertion initiative proponents say is false.

In the campaign aimed at defeating the amendment, “we’ll make sure they have to own every last word of this radical initiative,” said Aaron Baer, the president of Center for Christian Virtue and a Protect Women Ohio board member, told CNN. “They chose this language for a reason, and we’re not going to let them off the hook.”

Lauren Blauvelt – who chairs Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom, the group promoting the initiative – said the ad “is completely wrong” and called it an “unfortunate talking point from the other side.”

“Our amendment … creates the fundamental right that an individual can make their own reproductive health care decisions” and does not touch on other topics, she said.

But the ad campaign highlights the effort to link abortion to the transgender and parental rights issues currently animating conservative activists.

Susan B. Anthony’s Pritchard said she believes that her side can win on the issue of limiting abortions but “we believe also that we broaden our coalition and broaden awareness of what these things actually do when we highlight the parental rights issue that is very real.”

The initiative’s supporters need to collect more than 413,000 signatures from Ohioans by July 5 to qualify for the November ballot. Under current Ohio law, changes to the state’s constitution can be approved via ballot initiative by a simple majority of voters.

A bill introduced by Republican state Rep. Brian Stewart would increase that threshold to 60% and would mandate that the signatures needed to put an amendment on the ballot come from all 88 counties in the state, instead of 44, as currently required.

Ohio state Senate President Matt Huffman backs raising the threshold and also supports holding an August special election to change the ballot initiative rules. If successful, the higher threshold would be in effect before November’s election when voters could consider adding abortion rights to the state constitution.

Neither Huffman nor Stewart responded to interview requests from CNN.

Ohio lawmakers recently voted to end August special elections, citing their expense and low participation. But Huffman recently told reporters in Ohio that a special election – with a potential price tag of $20 million – would be worth the expense if it helped torpedo the abortion initiative.

“If we save 30,000 lives as a result of spending $20 million, I think that’s a great thing,” he said, according to Cleveland.com.

The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center is tracking 109 measures across 35 states that could affect initiatives put to voters in 2024. Some would increase the threshold for an initiative to pass. Others would increase the minimum number of signatures – or require that they come from a broader geographic area – before an initiative could qualify for the ballot in the first place, Donat said.

Many of the bills that seek to make it more difficult to pass ballot initiatives do not specifically target abortion issues. But they come as progressive groups increasingly turn to the initiative process as a way to bypass Republican-controlled legislatures and put a raft of issues – from legalizing marijuana to expanding Medicaid eligibility and boosting the minimum wage – directly to voters.

“Attacks, through state legislatures, on the ballot measure process have been pretty consistent and pretty aggressive for the last several (election) cycles,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which has helped pass progressive measures in red states.

Hall said the abortion issue, while not the sole focus of current efforts to curb ballot initiatives, has put “additional fuel on an already burning fire.”

In Missouri, a state law banning most abortions – including in cases of rape and incest – took effect last year after Roe was overturned. A group called Missourians for Constitutional Freedom has filed petition language that proposes adding abortion protections to the state constitution via ballot initiative. In recent cycles, voters in Missouri have expanded Medicaid eligibility and legalized recreational marijuana use through such initiatives.

This year, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature is weighing making it harder for those initiatives to succeed. In February, the state House voted to raise the bar for amending the state constitution from a simple majority to 60%. Voters would have to approve the higher threshold.

“I believe the Missouri Constitution is a living document but not an ever-expanding document,” Republican state Rep. Mike Henderson, the measure’s sponsor, said during House floor debate. “And right now, it has become an ever-expanding document.”

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April 1, 2023
Bolsonaro greeted by small group of supporters on return to Brazil for first time since riots | CNN

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Brasilia, Brazil
CNN
—

Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro returned to the country on Thursday for the first time since his election defeat that culminated in thousands of his supporters rioting in protest at the result.

The far-right politician flew back to Brasilia from Florida, where he stayed for three months in self-imposed exile after he failed to win reelection in last year’s presidential election. Bolsonaro has never formally conceded defeat and filed a petition contesting the result, but it was rejected by the country’s electoral court.

Military police were on high alert in and around the airport, setting up checkpoints on the main road as about 50 Bolsonaro supporters gathered to welcome him. Authorities had earlier asked supporters to stay away from the airport.

The small group of supporters at the airport’s international arrival hall all wore yellow and green Brazilian soccer jerseys, some draped in flags.

One man on a motorcycle carrying a large Brazilian flag was turned away by police at the checkpoint, a CNN team on the ground reported, in line with the tight security plan announced by authorities Wednesday.

Bolsonaro then traveled to the headquarters of his center-right Liberal Party in Brasilia, where a small group of supporters were waiting outside to greet him.

He was set to attend a reception hosted by his party before traveling to his residence, CNN Brasil reported.

Bolsonaro, who denies inciting violent attacks in the capital Brasilia on January 8, faces an investigation into his alleged involvement upon his return, among other legal troubles.

Speaking to CNN affiliate CNN Brasil at Florida’s Orlando airport late Wednesday, Bolsonaro said he would not lead the opposition to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva on his return – despite rallying support from conservative activists and far-right groups during his three-month stay in the United States.

“You don’t have to oppose this government. This government is an opposition in itself,” Bolsonaro told CNN Brasil.

Instead, Bolsonaro said he planned to help his party center-right Liberal Party “as an experienced person,” collaborating with “whatever they wish,” CNN Brasil quoted the former president as saying. He added that he will tour the country in preparation for next year’s municipal elections.

Bolsonaro’s return comes as political divisions run deep in Brazil after he left the country in December last year just days before Lula’s inauguration.

Though he denounced the invasion of Brasilia by his supporters, in the days following the election he welcomed peaceful demonstrations while his party filed petitions for an audit of voting machines, alleging fraud. He fed his followers crumbs of misinformation about election fraud and made vague comments hinting at a potential coup.

The attacks in Brasilia bore similarities to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, when supporters of ex-US President Donald Trump – a close ally of Bolsonaro – stormed Congress in an effort to prevent the certification of his election defeat.

Brazil’s Supreme Court is investigating Bolsonaro’s alleged involvement in the Brasilia riots, particularly to find out who or how far-right mobs that support the ex-leader ended up ransacking the seats of government.

Bolsonaro is also under scrutiny over jewelry he allegedly received as a gift from the Saudi Arabian government while in office. On Wednesday, he denied any “irregularities,” stating that “the objects were registered,” CNN Brasil reported.

Brazilian federal prosecutors are also investigating whether Bolsonaro tried to smuggle two sets of diamond jewels into the country without paying import taxes.

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March 30, 2023
In 2024 Republicans may complete a historic foreign policy reversal | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The GOP in 2024 is moving toward a reprise of its most consequential foreign policy debate ever in a presidential primary. Only this time, the results may be reversed.

The 1952 GOP presidential nomination fight proved a turning point in the party’s history, when Dwight Eisenhower, a champion of internationalism and alliance with Europe to contain the Soviet Union, defeated Sen. Robert Taft, a skeptic of international alliances who wanted to shift America’s focus from defending Europe toward confronting communist China.

A similar divide is opening within the GOP now. In a distant echo of Taft, former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the race’s two front-runners have both declared that defending Ukraine against Russia is not an American “vital interest” and “distracts” (as DeSantis put it) from the more important challenge of confronting China. Other likely 2024 candidates, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, come closer to upholding the Eisenhower position that the US must remain steadfast in protecting Europe against Russian aggression – and insisting that abandoning Ukraine would embolden China and other potential US adversaries.

After Eisenhower’s landmark victory over Taft in 1952, every Republican presidential nominee over the next six decades – a list that extended from Richard Nixon through Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney – identified more with the internationalist than isolationist wing of the party.

But Trump broke that streak when he won the nomination in 2016 behind a message of brusque economic nationalism and skepticism of international alliances. Now, the GOP appears on track for a 2024 nomination fight which may demonstrate that Trump’s rise has lastingly shifted the party’s balance of power on foreign policy – and ended the long era of GOP internationalism Eisenhower’s victory began.

The fact that DeSantis unveiled his views about Ukraine in a statement to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a fierce opponent of American engagement with allies, underscored the governor’s determination to court Trump’s base with his provocative remarks. After several days of intense criticism from Republican internationalists, DeSantis retreated last week from his description of the war as a “territorial dispute” and called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a war criminal,” much harsher language than Trump has ever used. But DeSantis, in his interview with British journalist Piers Morgan for another Fox outlet, also reiterated his skepticism of open-ended US support for Ukraine. “I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement,” the governor said.

Even with his qualifying statements last week, DeSantis’ skeptical posture toward Ukraine shows the magnetic pull that Trump has exerted on his party, tugging it away from the Eisenhower tradition.

“Trump-ism is the dominant tendency in Republican foreign policy and it’s isolationist, its unilateralist, its amoral,” said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former director of policy planning at the State Department under George W. Bush. The “traditional institutional approach to the world [which was] … the dominant Republican approach since World War II … has clearly been eclipsed for now,” said Haass, who also held foreign policy positions in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former US permanent representative to NATO under Barack Obama, agrees. The fact that both 2024 GOP front-runners are expressing a broad skepticism about US engagement abroad, he said, raises the possibility that Republican “internationalists have not only lost in ’16 and ‘20” when Trump headed the GOP ticket, “but have lost the party forever.”

The 1952 presidential election, by contrast, was the moment when GOP internationalists seemed to win the party forever. Leading into World War II, the party had been closely split between an internationalist wing determined to counter Adolf Hitler and imperial Japan and an isolationist faction resistant to entanglement in the intensifying confrontation with fascism, especially in Europe. The divide was both ideological and geographic, pitting generally more moderate internationalist East Coast Republicans (many of them tied to Wall Street and international finance) against more conservative isolationist forces centered in the small towns and small businesses of the Midwest and the far West.

The Japanese surprise attack that triggered the US entry into World War II ended the political viability of a purely isolationist stance.

“After Pearl Harbor there was no way to be a strict isolationist and a national political [figure],” said Joyce Mao, an associate professor of history at Middlebury College and author of the book “Asia First,” which recounts the GOP foreign policy debates of that era.

After World War II, Republican internationalists joined with Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman to build the international institutions meant to prevent another global war: the United Nations, the Marshall Plan to economically rebuild Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to militarily defend it from the Soviet Union. Eisenhower, who had organized the Allied invasion of Europe on D-Day in 1944, was firmly in that camp and, in fact, returned to Europe in January 1951 to serve as NATO’s first supreme commander.

But Robert Taft led a block of “old guard” congressional Republicans that remained much more skeptical of European commitments. Taft, a senator from Ohio and the son of former Republican president William Howard Taft, had generally opposed American aid to Europe before Pearl Harbor and even after the war he pushed to reduce the Marshall Plan and voted against the creation of NATO. Like many of the Republicans who initially resisted involvement in World War II, Mao noted, Robert Taft in the post-war period tried to separate himself both from that isolationist past and the contemporary priorities of GOP internationalists like Eisenhower by arguing for an “Asia First” foreign policy that would shift resources and emphasis from defending Europe to confronting the Communists who had seized control of China.

“Eisenhower was viewed by Taft and his colleagues as much too moderate,” Mao said. “His European focus was deemed by that conservative wing of the party as much too similar to the liberal Democrats. If this was going to be a moment for conservatism to reassert itself not only against liberalism but also against the moderates in the Republican Party, China provided an ideal plank” to do so.

All these strains culminated in the landmark battle for the 1952 GOP presidential nomination. Taft, the Republican Senate leader, was a passionate favorite of conservatives. Eisenhower, still in Europe as NATO supreme commander, was in many respects a reluctant candidate. But as Stephen Ambrose showed in his classic biography, Eisenhower felt compelled to run largely from fear that Taft would lead the US out of NATO, while simultaneously risking a catastrophic war in China. (Eisenhower was also deeply disenchanted with Truman’s leadership.) Eisenhower resigned his NATO position, returned to the US, mobilized enough support from the GOP’s internationalist wing to beat Taft at the 1952 Republican convention, and then decisively won the presidency that November. “Eisenhower became president precisely because he did not trust this version of isolationism in Taft,” said Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who served as a senior adviser for strategic planning on the National Security Council under George W. Bush.

Both as a general election candidate and as president, Eisenhower tried to minimize his public conflicts with his party’s “old guard.” But he unmistakably steered the party (and the nation) toward acceptance of American global leadership within a robust international system of alliances. With only modest variation, that became the dominant foreign policy ideology of the GOP for the next 60 years under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Late in that period, George W. Bush offered a different emphasis by stressing unilateral American action over coordination with allies, but even he emphasized the need for the US to remain engaged with the world. “It’s a pretty unbroken streak,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of “Rule and Ruin,” a history of the struggles between GOP conservatives and moderates.

Taft-like isolationism, coupled with nativist opposition to immigration and protectionist opposition to free trade, first resurfaced as a major force in the GOP with the long-shot presidential campaigns of conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan in 1992 and 1996. Two decades later, Trump revived that same triumvirate of isolationism, protectionism and nativism – what scholars sometimes call “defensive nationalism” – in his winning drive for the 2016 GOP nomination.

Though some traditional GOP internationalists had hoped that Trump in office might moderate those impulses, as president he barreled down all those roads, repeatedly clashing with traditional allies. Now, DeSantis’ choice to echo Trump in devaluing Ukraine – following the calls from so many House conservatives to reduce the US commitment there – is deflating another hope of the GOP’s beleaguered internationalist wing: that Trump’s ascent represented a temporary detour and the party would snap back to its traditional support for international engagement once he left office.

“Trump-ism has to be taken seriously,” as a long-term force in GOP thinking about the world, Haass said. The foreign policy center of gravity in the Republican Party, he added, has moved toward “a much more pinched or minimal American relationship with the world, [with] not a lot of interest in contributing to global responses to challenges like climate change or pandemics.”

Even before DeSantis qualified his comments in the interview with Morgan, Feaver believed the Florida governor was trying to find a position on Ukraine somewhere between Trump’s undiluted skepticism and the unreserved support of Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. But, Feaver said, by including such inflammatory language as “territorial dispute” in his initial comments, DeSantis demonstrated the risks of pursuing such a strategy of “triangulation.”

“Triangulation is a risky game because if you get the language off, you may commit yourself in a campaign to a line that makes no sense when you are governing,” Feaver said. “This is one of the hardest problems for newcomers and challengers when they are campaigning for president. By giving applause lines that work for the narrow segments of ideologically hardened factions that they are trying to win over for the primary, they can lock themselves into policy positions that are not sound when they actually win.”

As an example, Feaver said DeSantis’ insistence that the US should shift more attention from countering Russia to containing China – an argument he repeated with Morgan – was illogical because “abandoning Ukraine assists China’s most significant ally, Russia.” Haley made a similar case in her recent Wall Street Journal article criticizing DeSantis (though not by name) for his comments to Carlson. “It’s naive to think we can counter China by ignoring Russia,” Haley wrote.

Daalder points out another logical flaw in the updated “Asia First” arguments from DeSantis and Trump. “If the US were to abandon its allies in Europe … our allies in Asia are going to ask, ‘What’s to say they are not going to do the same with regards to China?’” Daalder said. “By demonstrating your willingness to stand up to Russia you are also strengthening the view that in Asia that when it comes to it that we will be there to help them.”

But polls leave no doubt that both prongs of the modern Robert Taft position – that the US should reduce its commitment to Europe-focused international alliances and harden its resistance to China – have a substantial base of support in the contemporary Republican coalition. In a Gallup poll released earlier this month, by a lopsided margin of 76% to 12%, Republican voters were more likely to identify China than Russia as the principal US adversary in the world. (More Democrats picked Russia than China.) Polls have also found a steady decline in Republican support for US aid to Ukraine: polls this year by both the Pew Research Center and Quinnipiac University found that the share of GOP voters who believe the US is doing too much now equals the combined percentage who think it is doing too little or the right amount. (Quinnipiac found big majorities of Democrats and independents still believe the US is doing the right amount or not enough.)

The latest Chicago Council on Global Affairs annual survey also tracks a broader retreat from the world among GOP voters. In that poll, conducted last November, the share of Republicans who said the US should take an active role in world affairs fell to 55% – the lowest the survey has ever recorded. Underscoring that erosion, a slight majority of Republicans in the poll said the costs of an active US international role now exceed the benefits.

Opinions in the GOP about whether the US should do more or less in Ukraine don’t vary much along lines of education or age, the Pew poll found. But generally, these surveys show that the turn away from global leadership is most powerful among two distinct groups of Republicans: those who are younger, and those who lack college degrees. While a solid three-fifths of Republicans with a college degree in the Chicago Council poll said the benefits of US leadership exceed the costs, for instance, a majority of non-college Republicans disagreed. Younger Republicans were also much more likely than those over 60 to say the costs exceed the benefits.

It’s probably no coincidence that those two groups – Republicans without a college degree and those who are younger – have consistently registered as Trump’s strongest supporters in early polls about the 2024 race.

Trump is signaling that in a second term he will likely push even further in an isolationist and protectionist direction. John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, has said he believed the former president came close to withdrawing the US from NATO and would likely do so if elected to a second term. Trump certainly hinted at that possibility in a recent campaign video in which he declared, “we have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” Trump has also said he would impose a four-year plan “to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods, everything from electronics to steel to pharmaceuticals.” That would be a wrenching change in the global economy.

In all these ways, Trump is promising to fulfill Robert Taft’s vision from seven decades ago – and to erase Eisenhower’s lasting victory in setting the GOP’s direction. DeSantis does not appear to have decided to jump entirely on that Trump train – but neither is he lying down on the tracks to stop it. With these two men far ahead of any potential rival, it seems highly likely that the GOP in 2024 will continue to move away from Eisenhower-style international cooperation toward a volatile compound of isolationism and unilateralism. And that could generate enormous turbulence across the globe.

Trump’s first term, as Daalder noted, was a chaotic time for the international order and traditional US alliances. But “If an isolationist leader gets elected president in 2024,” Daalder added, “you haven’t seen nothing yet.”

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March 27, 2023
Trump leans into extremism at first 2024 rally as legal woes mount | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Donald Trump is igniting his White House bid at a moment of unprecedented peril in the criminal investigations against him – a confluence that could send America into a new political and legal collision.

Trump’s wild rhetoric at his first official 2024 campaign rally Saturday previewed the divisive national moment ahead should he be indicted in any of multiple criminal probes. As he whipped up a demagogic fervor in Waco, Texas, to try to secure a new presidency dedicated to “retribution,” Trump’s extremism – laced with suggestions of violence – left no doubt he would be willing to take the country to a dark place to save himself.

Yet Trump’s chilling warnings that the Biden administration’s “thugs and criminals” have created a “Stalinist Russia horror show” by “weaponizing” justice against him also spelled electoral danger for a GOP hurt by his authoritarianism in recent elections. An extraordinary prolonged character attack on Ron DeSantis, in which Trump depicted his biggest potential rival of 2024 tearfully begging for his endorsement in 2018, demonstrated the political firestorm the Florida governor will have to deal with if he jumps into the White House campaign.

Even with the ex-president’s reputation for hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric, such demagoguery has never previously been heard in the first official rally of any modern American election campaign.

Meanwhile, House committee chairs eager to appeal to the Trump base are increasing their efforts to use the power of their Republican majority to thwart Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s inquiry into Trump – even before it releases any possible indictment or evidence. House Oversight Chair James Comer told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the GOP moves were justified because the investigation into Trump’s alleged role in a hush money scheme to pay an adult film actress was based purely on politics.

“This is the, for better or worse, leading contender for the Republican nomination of the presidential election next year, as well as a former president of the United States,” the Kentucky Republican told Jake Tapper.

Many legal experts have questioned whether the potential Bragg investigation will produce the strongest of cases against Trump, who’s also facing several other probes over his actions around the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents. (Trump, who maintains he’s done nothing wrong, so far has not been charged in any of the criminal probes against him.)

And given the greater national impact of those other investigations, a possible attempt to use a business accounting violation in this yearslong hush money case to suggest a possible violation of campaign finance law could be especially controversial. Yet Comer’s comments also created the implication that an ex-president or White House candidate could be protected from investigation even if they had committed a criminal offense. This gets to the core of the possible cases against Trump: Would failing to investigate him and charge him, if the evidence justifies such a step, mean an ex-president is above the law? Or would some attempts to call him to account risk subjecting him to a level of scrutiny that other citizens might not face?

Comer and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, who were among the three committee chairs writing to Bragg this weekend with intensifying demands for his testimony, won a warm shout-out from Trump at his rally in Texas, reflecting the way the new House GOP is acting as a political tool for the ex-president and his radical campaign. Bragg responded to the chairmen in a statement saying it was not appropriate for Congress to interfere with local investigations and vowed to be guided by the rule of law. He was backed up this weekend by nearly 200 former federal prosecutors who wrote a letter denouncing efforts to intimidate him.

The grand jury in the Trump case is expected to reconvene on Monday, following a week of rampant public speculation over whether Bragg would call more witnesses and whether the case was sufficiently serious to merit the potential first indictment ever of an ex-president. Trump falsely predicted earlier this month that he would be arrested last Tuesday – a move that fired up an effort by his allies to intimidate Bragg. But the week came and went without any indictment news.

CNN reported last week that the district attorney’s office was trying to determine whether to call back Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to refute the testimony provided by attorney Robert Costello, who appeared at the request of Trump lawyers – or to call an additional witness to buttress its case before the grand jurors consider a vote on whether to indict the former president.

The escalating confrontation over Bragg’s inquiry came as other investigations around Trump seemed to be nearing their own conclusions.

In a totally separate case on Friday, Trump’s primary defense attorney, Evan Corcoran, appeared before a grand jury in Washington, DC, that is hearing evidence over the ex-president’s handling of classified documents at his home in Florida, including possible obstruction of justice when the government tried to get those documents back. Prosecutors have made clear in court proceedings that are still under seal that they believe Trump tried to use Corcoran to advance a crime.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Friday that Corcoran’s appearance represented a serious development for Trump. “That is an unprecedented thing that we’re seeing, and Evan Corcoran is in a position to provide unbelievably damaging testimony against him,” he said.

Besides looking into the documents issue, special counsel Jack Smith is investigating Trump’s conduct around the 2020 election – which even this weekend the former president again falsely claimed he had won – and in the run-up to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In another probe related to the 2020 election, a district attorney in Georgia said at the end of January that decisions were “imminent” in the investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in the key swing state. CNN reported last week that prosecutors are considering bringing racketeering and conspiracy charges.

Charges in any one of these investigations would test the strength of the country’s political and judicial institutions, given that an ex-president and current presidential candidate is involved. And the fact that Trump is showing such willingness to inflame the country’s politics in his own defense makes this a deeply serious moment for the nation.

Trump’s fiery rally in Waco pulsated with falsehoods about the 2020 election and his one-term presidency and misrepresented the legal cases against him. Coming a day after he warned in a social media post about “death and destruction” if he is indicted, his speech boiled with conspiracy theories and personal resentments – rhetoric that is especially dangerous in the aftermath of January 6. It wasn’t lost on observers that his event coincided with the 30th anniversary of a law enforcement raid on a cult compound in Waco that’s seen on the far right as a symbol of government overreach, although the campaign maintained the location had been chosen for convenience.

The ex-president has often used extremist speeches to try to get more time in the limelight or more attention, whether from adoring onlookers or outraged critics. It is too early to judge how well his tactic is working in the 2024 campaign and as his legal plight seems to worsen. To date, there have been no big protests of the kind Trump has repeatedly called for. The price his supporters could pay for turning violent has also been demonstrated by the hundreds of convictions of those who invaded the Capitol more than two years ago after his big Washington rally. So there is at least the possibility that while Trump remains widely popular with his GOP base, his angry rhetoric lacks the power that it once did.

But it is also clear after this first campaign rally that Trump, who is still leading the Republican pack for 2024, has crossed a new political line. He is painting a picture of a decrepit and powerless nation – plagued by corruption, rigged elections and the criminal manipulation of the law against his supporters – that is far more extreme than the “American carnage” he invoked in his inaugural address in 2017.

“The abuses of power that are currently with us at all levels of government will go down as among the most shameful, corrupt and depraved chapters in all of American history,” Trump said, lashing the US as a “third world banana republic.”

“Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state,” he said at one point.

And while Trump’s intent is to shock, history suggests that authoritarians seeking power follow exactly the same playbook of populist nationalism – discrediting free elections, demonizing the legal system and taking aim at vulnerable sectors of society – that Trump is pioneering in his new campaign.

His rally was also notable for the fact that it was almost totally dominated by his grievances and complaints, which may well hint at a sense of foreboding over his legal position. “Every piece of my personal life, financial life, business life and public life has been turned upside down and dissected like no one in the history of our country,” Trump said.

This raises a question of whether he’s offering a message, rooted in his obsessions, that a majority of Republican voters would actually want to sign up for, even those who considered his presidency a success. In 2016, Trump emerged as an unlikely but highly skilled vehicle for the conservative grassroots, much of which felt patronized by politicians and left behind in a wave of globalization that sent millions of blue-collar jobs overseas.

DeSantis may be trying something similar in 2024. In the early moves of his yet-to-be-declared campaign, the Florida governor has positioned himself as the champion of conservative voters who believe their way of life is under attack from liberals and multiculturalists pushing a “woke” ideology. One of the key questions of the GOP primary campaign will be whether this approach could appeal to more Republican voters than Trump’s incessant attempts to portray investigations into him as a symptom of a wider attack by a corrupt government on his followers.

But ahead of yet another potentially pivotal week, Trump is proving that he will not turn away from the defining tactic of his political career: subjecting the country’s institutions to ever more intense and unprecedented stress tests.

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March 26, 2023
House committee chairmen double down on Manhattan DA oversight efforts | CNN Politics

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The chairmen of three House committees sent a letter Saturday to the Manhattan district attorney leading the probe into Donald Trump, doubling down on their efforts to intervene in the hush money investigation ahead of possible criminal charges against the former president.

The letter from the chairmen of the House Judiciary, Oversight and Administration committees to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg pushed back on his case against appearing for a transcribed interview with their panels and argued that they now feel compelled to consider whether Congress should take legislative action on three separate issues “to protect former and/or current Presidents from politically motivated prosecutions by state and local officials.”

The letter – written by Republicans Jim Jordan, James Comer and Bryan Steil – comes after they initially called on Bragg earlier this week to testify before their committees and criticized his investigation into Trump as an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.”

Bragg is investigating Trump’s alleged role in a scheme to pay adult-film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election to keep silent about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.

Bragg’s general counsel had initially responded on Thursday, telling the House committee leaders that they lacked a “legitimate basis for congressional inquiry” and noting that their requests for information “only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene.”

The chairmen claimed in Saturday’s letter that Bragg had not disputed “the central allegations at issue” — that his office is under “political pressure from left-wing activists and former prosecutors” and is “planning to use an alleged federal campaign finance violation, previously declined by federal prosecutors, as a vehicle to extend the statute of limitations on an otherwise misdemeanor offense and indict for the first time in history a former President of the United States.”

They argued that the potential criminal indictment of a former president and 2024 presidential candidate “implicates substantial federal interests, particularly in a jurisdiction where trial-level judges also are popularly elected.”

Bragg responded to the chairmen’s letter Saturday evening on Twitter, writing, “We evaluate cases in our jurisdiction based on the facts, the law, and the evidence. It is not appropriate for Congress to interfere with pending local investigations. This unprecedented inquiry by federal elected officials into an ongoing matter serves only to hinder, disrupt and undermine the legitimate work of our dedicated prosecutors. As always, we will continue to follow the facts and be guided by the rule of law in everything we do.”

Going further than they have before, Jordan, Comer and Steil wrote in the letter that they may choose to consider three areas of legislation, including broadening “the preemption provision in the Federal Election Campaign Act,” adding that such a measure could “have the effect of better delineating the prosecutorial authorities of federal and local officials in this area and blocking the selective or politicized enforcement by state and local prosecutors of campaign finance restrictions pertaining to federal elections.”

The second piece of legislation they may consider regards tying federal funds to improved metrics for public safety funds — a measure they say would be prompted by allegations that the Manhattan DA is using public safety funds for his investigation into Trump.

They also may consider a measure overhauling the authorities of special counsels and better delineating their relationships with other prosecuting entities, they said, arguing that the circumstances of the Trump investigation “stem, in part, from Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation.”

This story has been updated with a response from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

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March 25, 2023
Biden, DOJ won’t assert privilege in Trump deposition in lawsuit brought by fired FBI official | CNN Politics

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The Justice Department said Friday that neither it nor the Biden White House would assert certain privileges in depositions of former President Donald Trump and FBI Director Christopher Wray that have been ordered in a lawsuit brought by an ex-FBI official whose termination Trump pushed for when he was president.

The new filing from the Justice Department in the lawsuit brought by former FBI official Peter Strzok is the latest example of the Biden administration having to weigh the protections of the presidency against the extraordinary legal cases related to President Joe Biden’s predecessor.

Strzok’s lawsuit alleges that Trump’s political agenda prompted his firing and that the Justice Department broke the law in publicly releasing texts he had exchanged with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. The texts revealed that Page and Strzok – who both worked on the Trump-Russia probe when it was in its early stages – had expressed anti-Trump sentiments and that they were engaged in a romantic, extramarital affair. Trump repeatedly called for Strzok’s ouster before he was terminated in 2018. Page has also brought her own lawsuit over the release of texts.

The Justice Department had sought to quash the subpoenas of Trump and Wray, but was unsuccessful, with DC District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruling that both men had to sit for depositions. Jackson’s ruling, which she issued after a sealed hearing in February, also said the depositions must be limited to less than two hours and that they must focus on a narrow set of issues in the case.

When the Justice Department was seeking to quash the subpoenas, it had indicated that the presidential communications privilege could limit what questions Wray could answer about his communications with Trump concerning the matters in dispute in the lawsuit. Jackson ordered the DOJ to indicate by late March whether Biden would assert privilege in the depositions and Friday’s filing indicated the administration would not engage in a privilege fight.

“The Executive Office of the President will not assert the Presidential Communications Privilege, and Defendants will not assert the Deliberative Process Privilege, with respect to the authorized topics,” the filing said. It added that a representative of Trump was made aware of the ruling ordering the depositions and said that “Former President Trump has not requested an assertion of privilege over any of the information within the scope of the authorized deposition.”

The department, however, signaled in the filing that it still might appeal Jackson’s order, with a footnote stating that “Defendants expressly reserve their rights to seek further review of this Court’s February 23, 2023 decision.”

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March 25, 2023
Vice President Kamala Harris hires Stephanie Young to be new senior adviser | CNN Politics

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Stephanie Young, a veteran Democratic aide, has been tapped to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ new senior adviser to focus on messaging and outreach.

Young’s role is a new position for the vice president’s office, meant to take a birds-eye approach to manage Harris’ overall communications platform and political engagement but not fill the role of a day-to-day communications director. Her second communications director in two years, Jamal Simmons, departed the office around New Year’s for family reasons. The role still has not been filled.

Harris’ image has been under intense scrutiny since taking office. The vice president has been the target of snubs from both Democrats and Republicans, who’ve criticized her performance in various rounds of negative stories. It’s led to an often defensive messaging strategy from the office, with aides focused on protecting the vice president and the White House sharing social media posts depicting how in lockstep she is with President Joe Biden. Allies of Harris have complained that she’s under the spotlight more than any other modern day vice president, a reality that often appeared to catch the administration off guard in the beginning of its tenure.

A White House official said Young’s role would mirror that of an inner circle senior counselor meant to be at the nexus of political engagement and messaging. CNN previously reported that a possible restructuring has remained underway for months to give Harris what several involved feel is a much needed role of senior counselor, in absence of a communications director.

The vice president’s chief of staff Lorraine Voles announced Young’s new position in an email to staff Friday afternoon.

“In her new role, she will advise the Vice President on messaging and manage communications. Having previously served in the public engagement team of the Obama Administration, Stephanie will also leverage her previous experience to inform the outreach strategy and efforts of the office,” Voles wrote in the email obtained by CNN.

Young’s new role will likely prove useful as Biden is expected to launch a bid for reelection in the coming months, with Harris at his side. Young will join the office after serving as the Executive Director of When We All Vote, a voting initiate launched by former first lady Michelle Obama. Young also worked for the Obama White House, House Democratic Leadership and the Congressional Black Caucus.

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March 24, 2023
Before he represented Trump, defense attorney speculated Stormy Daniels saga was true and payment could be seen as an in-kind campaign contribution | CNN Politics

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Former President Donald Trump’s defense attorney repeatedly speculated as a legal pundit that Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels likely happened and that the $130,000 payment made to Daniels days before the 2016 election could be seen as an in-kind campaign contribution, contradicting his recent legal and public defense of Trump.

Joe Tacopina, a defense attorney representing Trump in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office investigation of Trump, made the comments in 2018 as a prominent legal commentator – years before he would ultimately represent the former president in the case that may indict Trump.

In multiple appearances on CNN in the spring of 2018, Tacopina speculated that Trump had an affair with Daniels after she detailed their encounter and because “to me, you know it means it’s true because he hasn’t threatened to sue” nor did he tweet about it. He also said that as a lawyer, he would have advised Trump to admit to the affair and move on.

“I mean, it’s remarkable when you talk about the president of the United States, but it, honestly, it’s not remarkable when you’re talking about Donald Trump, the president of the United States,” Tacopina said. “No one was here, is going, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this!’ This is why I’ve been saying since day one if they had just said, ‘Yeah, OK.’ I mean, he survived much greater – I don’t even know if they’re called scandals – but episodes than this. This is from 2006. I mean, this is way before he was the president.”

“I’ve said all along, if he had just come out and said, ‘Yeah, I did. So what?’ And just chalk that up to another one of the things on his list of minor scandals, he gets through,” said Tacopina in another appearance on CNN in 2018.

“But she went into great detail about her one-night stand with him. What else can she say? There is nothing else to tell,” added Tacopina.

And in the spring of 2018, Tacopina acknowledged that the episode could put Trump in jeopardy “because this could be looked as an in-kind contribution at the time of the election. This is a real problem. And they both, and I’m telling you this, the reason we’re here, I strongly believe is because of the words of both Michael Cohen and Donald Trump.”

But five years later, acting as Trump’s defense attorney, Tacopina reversed his argument, calling the payment to Daniels “plain extortion,” dismissing potential campaign finance violations and repeating Trump’s denials that he ever had the affair.

“This was a plain extortion. And I don’t know, since when we’ve decided to start prosecuting extortion victims. He’s denied, vehemently denied, this affair,” said Tacopina on “Good Morning America” last week. “But he had to pay money because there was going to be an allegation that was gonna be publicly embarrassing to him, regardless of the campaign. And the campaign finance laws are very, very clear, George, that you cannot have something that’s even primarily related to the campaign to be considered campaign finance law.”

In a statement to CNN, Tacopina said that he offered his opinion based on a hypothetical and that “my mind hadn’t changed about the issue but what has changed is that I learned the facts.”

The comment is just one of many that Tacopina made about the former president, according to a CNN KFile review of other comments. In one appearance, made in February 2021 on WABC radio, a local New York station, Tacopina said Trump deserved impeachment for his verbal attacks inciting his supporters – who he called “a bunch of idiots” and “lunatics” – to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“I don’t think he did anything criminal,” Tacopina said on WABC in February 2021 when discussing the riot. “Did I think he did something impeachable? Yes, I do.”

“Do I think they’re divisive? Yes. Do I think he spreads hate? Yes. Do I think everything he’s done is wrong? No. Do I think he did some good things? Yes. So I like to just sort of call it like I see it, and I’m not so partisan one way or another,” Tacopina continued. “But you know, when you say to a bunch of lunatics, a bunch of, you know, people who have had a propensity towards violence. Before these groups that are gathered, you know, which was a planned gathering, ‘Hey, go to the Capitol and fight and fight.’ Fight for what? Go to the Capitol and fight for what does fight mean to these idiots? What do you think it meant?…They killed people.”

“Do I think he thought they were gonna break some windows and do some things? Absolutely,” he later added.

Tacopina would later represent one of the Capitol rioters who assaulted Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who later died of natural causes on January 7; the rioter was sentenced to 80 months in prison.

Tacopina also previously criticized the former president for attacking the justice system.

“This is the Justice Department, how it works every single day of the week. But for some reason, the president cannot cope with that,” said Tacopina in 2018.

“What chills me as a lawyer, forget about being a defense lawyer or a former prosecutor as I am, is that our president is attacking the foundation of our justice system in this country by calling to question the FBI, the Justice Department, his own attorney general, every judge whoever rules against him. Yeah, it’s just unhealthy for the sort of the health of this justice system.”

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March 24, 2023
Biden kicks off ‘Invest in America’ tour next week | CNN Politics

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CNN
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As he gears up for a likely reelection campaign, President Joe Biden on Tuesday will kick off a three-week tour to highlight the impact of his signature legislative accomplishments as the impacts of those laws begin to be felt around the country, according to a White House official.

The “Invest in America” tour will see Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden and nearly a dozen Cabinet members hit more than 20 states – including key battleground states like Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania – over the next three weeks.

The tour is the White House’s most coordinated, concerted push to date to accomplish what White House officials see as their central task this year: implementing legislation and making sure Americans know what Biden has accomplished. Polling published last month indicated the White House has its work cut out: 62% of Americans said they believe Biden has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing,” according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Biden will make his first of multiple stops on Tuesday with a visit to a semiconductor manufacturer in Durham, North Carolina, which has announced plans to build a $5 billion chips manufacturing facility that will create 1,800 new jobs, spurred on by passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, which incentivizes domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

Other Cabinet secretaries and top White House officials will highlight the effects of other pieces of legislation in the tour’s first week: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will highlight airport safety and infrastructure projects in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma; Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will visit fiber optic cable manufacturers in North Carolina; and Biden’s infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu will highlight electric vehicle manufacturing in Tennessee, among others.

Harris, who is traveling to Africa next week, will make stops when she returns to highlight the growth of domestic manufacturing, the official said. The first lady, a community college teacher, is expected to highlight workforce training programs.

“From shovels hitting the ground on new infrastructure projects made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to new electric vehicle manufacturing facilities as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, to communities benefitting from high-speed internet because of the American Rescue Plan, to new semiconductor fabs thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act, the tour will highlight how the President’s Investing in America agenda is growing the economy from the middle-out and bottom-up, not top down,” the White House said in a statement.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and Small Business Administration Administrator Isabel Guzman are expected to travel as part of the three-week tour.

The tour coincides with a two-week congressional recess in April and will also include stops with members of Congress.

Biden will head to North Carolina a day after convening a meeting of his “Invest in America” Cabinet, which is comprised of key Cabinet officials working to implement the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan.

Biden and his Cabinet will highlight the direct and indirect impacts of those laws – including private sector investments spurred on by pieces of legislation – and the impact on state and local economies at each stop.

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March 24, 2023
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates clash over 1849 abortion ban in lone debate | CNN Politics

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The two candidates battling for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court clashed Tuesday over the state’s 1849 abortion ban in their lone debate, underscoring the high stakes of an election that could decide the issue in one of the nation’s most important swing states.

Former Justice Daniel Kelly, a conservative, and liberal opponent Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz will square off April 4 in an election that will decide the balance of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In a state where control is split between a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled legislature, the high court could decide the outcome of legal battles over the state’s abortion laws, its legislative maps and more.

The debate – the only one scheduled between Protasiewicz and Kelly – took place on the same day Wisconsin voters began casting early ballots in person.

It’s the nation’s most expensive judicial contest on record, with about $30 million already spent on advertising and counting, as there are two weeks remaining in the campaign. Wisconsin is one of 14 states in the country that directly elects Supreme Court justice in this manner.

Protasiewicz focused her attacks on Kelly on abortion, with the state’s 1849 ban on nearly all abortions currently being challenged in court and likely to land before the state Supreme Court.

“If my opponent is elected, I can tell you with 100% certainty, that 1849 abortion ban will stay on the books. I can tell you that,” Protasiewicz said in Tuesday’s debate.

She said she is “making no promises” on how she would rule on the 1849 abortion law. But she also noted her personal support for abortion rights, as well as endorsements from pro-abortion rights groups. And she pointed to Kelly’s endorsement by Wisconsin Right to Life, which opposes abortion rights.

Kelly shot back that Protasiewicz’s comments are “absolutely not true.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking about that abortion ban,” he said. “You have no idea. These things you do not know.”

The debate took place before a crowd of about 100 people who were seated in an auditorium at the offices of the State Bar of Wisconsin in Madison. The candidates answered questions from a panel of three Wisconsin reporters as the audience watched in silence.

The rhetoric grew increasingly bitter and testy, particularly on the topics of abortion, redistricting and criminal sentencing, with the two rivals standing several feet apart on a small stage. The differences that have been aired in a multi-million television ad campaign came alive.

Kelly looked directly at his opponent and repeatedly raised pointed questions about her integrity, saying at one point: “This seems to be a pattern for you, Janet, telling lies about me.” He called her by her first name, Janet, rather than judge.

Protasiewic only occasionally looked toward her challenger, but pushed back against an allegation that she is soft on crime: “I have worked very hard to keep our community safe, each and every day I’m on the bench.”

Kelly accused Protasiewicz of handing down light sentences to violent offenders.

He cited the case of Anton Veasley, who in 2021 was convicted of child enticement and third degree sexual assault and was released after Protasiewicz stayed his five-year prison sentence with four years of probation, giving him credit for 417 days he’d already spent in jail.

“We look at the sentencing she has composed and the reasoning she used to reach those conclusions, and that’s just irresponsible to allow dangerous convicted criminals back out so easily with no repercussions into the communities they just got done victimizing,” Kelly said.

Protasiewicz acknowledged that “hindsight is 20/20.” But she said Kelly was mischaracterizing her record.

“I have sentenced thousands of people. And it’s interesting that a handful of cases have been cherry-picked and selected and twisted, and insufficient facts have been provided to the electorate,” she said.

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March 23, 2023
With Trump facing legal peril, DeSantis steps out and sharpens attacks | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has stylized himself as a political brawler willing to take on all comers, from Disney and the corporate media to high school students wearing masks.

But his brewing battle with Donald Trump was for months a one-sided affair.

That changed this week when DeSantis for the first time leaned into the burgeoning rivalry in earnest. In public remarks, DeSantis goaded the former president’s legal troubles and invited comparisons between their leadership style and character. He doubled down by granting a lengthy interview to Piers Morgan, a noted Trump supporter-turned-critic, and didn’t push back as the British television host assailed the former president as untruthful and intensely jealous of his one-time ally’s political success.

The two laughed over Trump’s attempts to nickname DeSantis.

“You can call me whatever you want,” DeSantis said in an excerpt of the interview published in the New York Post, “just as long as you also call me a winner.”

DeSantis until now has mostly brushed off questions about his 2024 aspirations even as he makes moves toward a likely campaign for president. The noticeable shift in approach comes as the extraordinary legal troubles surrounding Trump have intensified in recent days, with the possibility of an indictment hanging over the former president and bringing unprecedented uncertainty to the looming GOP nominating contest.

It also follows a coordinated campaign by Trump’s allies over the weekend to pressure potential Republican rivals to stand by the former president as a Manhattan grand jury considers evidence related to a hush-money payment scheme to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Other Republican presidential contenders came to Trump’s defense by leveling accusations at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the Democrat readying a decision on whether to indict Trump. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is still weighing a bid, told ABC News, “It just feels like a politically charged prosecution here.” Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, a longshot candidate, called the grand jury probe “a textbook case of politicizing prosecutorial power.” And former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said it was “more about revenge than justice.”

DeSantis, though, opted to poke the bear, telling a Panama City, Florida, crowd on Monday that he doesn’t “know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.” Hours later, with Trump surrogates publicly fuming on social media, DeSantis stood by the quip during his interview with Morgan. He went on to tout the no-nonsense management of his administration, pandemic response and 19-point victory last fall – encouraging a contrast with Trump’s chaotic four years in office that culminated with a loss to Joe Biden.

It was enough for Morgan to declare in the New York Post that the Florida governor had “finally taken the gloves off,” and Trump and his allies responded as if that was the case. Trump adviser and spokesman Jason Miller tweeted that DeSantis “has finally shown his true colors. An establishment Never Trumper who despises the MAGA base and was faking it the entire time.”

Yet DeSantis’ criticism of Trump remained mostly implicit and shrouded in subtext – an uncharacteristically reserved counter punch for a political figure who once cosplayed as a “Top Gun” pilot to drive home the point he will “never back down from a fight” and ended his reelection campaign by suggesting he was created by God to be a fighter.

Morgan’s frequent attempts to bait DeSantis into attacking Trump – at one point comparing their relationship to Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster – were mostly met with familiar dodges. DeSantis suggested that is unlikely to change even as he and Trump appear headed for a collision course.

“If I were to run, I’m running against Biden,” DeSantis said. “Like (Trump and DeSantis) are competing for the Republican, potentially, I get that, but ultimately you know the guy I’m gonna focus on is Biden because I think he’s failed the country. I think the country wants a change. I think they want a fresh start and a new direction and so we’ll be very vocal about that.”

Trump, meanwhile, has for weeks escalated attacks on DeSantis, characterizing the governor and former ally as ungrateful, disloyal and a mediocre political talent boosted by Florida’s sunshine. On Monday, Trump leveled a series of personal attacks against DeSantis and elevated a photo that suggested DeSantis had behaved inappropriately with teenage girls while teaching history in Georgia in his early 20s, an image the former president previously shared on social media.

“It gets to the point where you’re a candidate by default and you have to engage,” one DeSantis adviser told CNN. “The governor can’t afford to be marginalized from the get go. He clearly made the calculus it was time to push back.”

Even as DeSantis sharpens his critiques of Trump, he is pivoting elsewhere toward the former president as he inches closer to a bid for the White House. He has so far avoided outlining any significant policy differences between himself and his former ally-turned-future rival. Instead, DeSantis has ditched some long-held beliefs in favor of adopting Trump’s more populist leanings.

Once an outspoken proponent of arming Ukraine as a member of Congress, DeSantis recently characterized Russia’s aggression in Eastern Europe as a “territorial dispute,” aligning himself with Trump. (After considerable blowback from his party, DeSantis told Morgan his words had been “mischaracterized” and clarified he believed “Russia was wrong to invade.”)

Earlier this month, he asserted, “We’re not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans,” a clear break from his days as a tea party Republican who supported privatization of Social Security and raising the retirement age to 70. Trump recently declared that entitlement programs shouldn’t be included in federal budget negotiations.

In his recent travel to early nominating states, DeSantis has also fashioned his likely candidacy on many of the most animating pillars of Trump’s first run for president, including immigration, attacking the media and questioning the security of elections. His moves against so-called “wokeness” in society are the ripples from Trump’s 2016 gripes against political correctness.

DeSantis’ advisers and allies believe the chief challenge for DeSantis is not differing himself from Trump on policy, but demonstrating to Republican primary voters that he can be more effective at enacting a platform. Trump, without the baggage, as some have offered.

Or, as Trump recently put it, “Whatever I want, he wants.”

To many Republican primary voters, Trump and DeSantis are viewed as politically aligned, leaving voters with a choice centered on electability and less on policy differences. In a recent CNN poll of potential GOP voters, 40% say they would most likely back Trump and 36% would vote for DeSantis. No other candidate reached double digits.

“What the Republican voters are going to look at at the end of the day is where is our best chance of winning because both men resonate with Republican voters on policy,” Chris Ager, the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, told CNN in a recent interview. “If the policies are both good, then who has the best chance of winning and implementing them again? I think that’s going to be a bigger factor in many decisions.”

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March 23, 2023