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  • Your Trump questions answered. Yes, he can still run for president if indicted | CNN Politics

    Your Trump questions answered. Yes, he can still run for president if indicted | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Could he still run for president? Why would the adult-film star case move before any of the ones about protecting democracy? How could you possibly find an impartial jury?

    What’s below are answers to some of the questions we’ve been getting – versions of these were emailed in by subscribers of the What Matters newsletter – about the possible indictment of former President Donald Trump.

    He’s involved in four different criminal investigations by three different levels of government – the Manhattan district attorney; the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney; and the Department of Justice.

    These questions are mostly concerned with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s potential indictment of Trump over a hush-money payment scheme, but many could apply to each investigation.

    The most-asked question is also the easiest to answer.

    Yes, absolutely.

    “Nothing stops Trump from running while indicted, or even convicted,” the University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard Hasen told me in an email.

    The Constitution requires only three things of candidates. They must be:

    • A natural born citizen.
    • At least 35 years old.
    • A resident of the US for at least 14 years.

    As a political matter, it’s maybe more difficult for an indicted candidate, who could become a convicted criminal, to win votes. Trials don’t let candidates put their best foot forward. But it is not forbidden for them to run or be elected.

    There are a few asterisks both in the Constitution and the 14th and 22nd Amendments, none of which currently apply to Trump in the cases thought to be closest to formal indictment.

    Term limits. The 22nd Amendment forbids anyone who has twice been president (meaning twice been elected or served part of someone else’s term and then won his or her own) from running again. That doesn’t apply to Trump since he lost the 2020 election.

    Impeachment. If a person is impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate of high crimes and misdemeanors, he or she is removed from office and disqualified from serving again. Trump, although twice impeached by the House during his presidency, was also twice acquitted by the Senate.

    Disqualification. The 14th Amendment includes a “disqualification clause,” written specifically with an eye toward former Confederate soldiers.

    It reads:

    No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

    Potential charges in New York City with regard to the hush-money payment to an adult-film star have nothing to do with rebellion or insurrection. Nor do potential federal charges with regard to classified documents.

    Potential charges in Fulton County, Georgia, with regard to 2020 election meddling or at the federal level with regard to the January 6, 2021, insurrection could perhaps be construed by some as a form of insurrection. But that is an open question that would have to work its way through the courts. The 2024 election is fast approaching.

    If he was convicted of a felony – reminder, he has not yet even been charged – in New York, Trump would be barred from voting in his adoptive home state of Florida, at least until he had served out a potential sentence.

    First off, there’s no suggestion of any coordination between the Manhattan DA, the Department of Justice and the Fulton County DA.

    These are all separate investigations on separate issues moving at their own pace.

    The payment to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels occurred years ago in 2016. Trump has argued the statute of limitations has run out. Lawyers could argue the clock stopped when Trump left New York to become president in 2017.

    It’s also not clear how exactly a state crime (falsifying business records) can be paired with a federal election crime to create a state felony. There are some very deep legal dives into this, like this one from Just Security. We will have to see what, if anything, Bragg adds if he does bring an indictment.

    Of the four known criminal investigations into Trump, falsifying business records with regard to the hush-money payment to an adult-film actress seems like the smallest of potatoes, especially since federal prosecutors decided not to charge him when he left office.

    His finances, subject of a long-running investigation, seem like a bigger deal. But the Manhattan DA decided not to criminally charge Trump with regard to tax crimes. Trump has been sued by the New York attorney general in civil court based on some of that evidence.

    Investigations in Georgia with regard to election meddling and by the Justice Department with regard to January 6 and his treatment of classified data also seem more consequential.

    But these cases are being pursued by different entities at different paces in different governments – New York City; Fulton County, Georgia; and the federal government.

    “I do think that the charges are much more serious against Trump related to the election,” Hasen said in his email. “But falsifying business records can also be a crime. (I’m more skeptical about combining that in a state court with a federal campaign finance violation.)”

    One federal law enforcement source told CNN’s John Miller over the weekend that Trump’s Secret Service detail is actively engaged with authorities in New York City about how this arrest process would work if Trump is ultimately indicted.

    It’s usually a routine process of fingerprinting, a mug shot and an arraignment. It would not likely be a public event and clearly his protective detail would move through the building with Trump.

    New York does not release most mug shots after a 2019 law intended to cut down on online extortion.

    As Trump is among the most divisive and now well-known Americans in history, it’s hard to believe there’s a big, impartial jury pool out there.

    The Sixth Amendment guarantees “the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”

    Finding such a jury “won’t be easy given the intense passions on both sides that he engenders,” Hasen said.

    A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in March asked for registered voters’ opinion of Trump. Just 2% said they hadn’t heard enough about him to say.

    The New York State Unified Court System’s trial juror’s handbook explains the “voir dire” process by which jurors are selected. Those accepted by both the prosecution and defense as being free of “bias or personal knowledge that could hinder his or her ability to judge a case impartially” must take an oath to act fairly and impartially.

    We’re getting way ahead of ourselves. He hasn’t been indicted, much less tried or convicted. Any indictment, even for a Class E felony in New York, would be for the kind of nonviolent offense that would not lead to jail time for any defendant.

    “I don’t expect Trump to be put in jail if he is indicted for any of these charges,” Hasen said. “Jail time would only come if he were convicted and sentenced to jail time.”

    The idea that Trump would ever see the inside of a jail cell still seems completely far-fetched. Hasen said the Secret Service would have to arrange for his protection in jail. The logistics of that are mind-boggling. Would agents be placed into cells on either side of him? Would they dress as inmates or guards?

    Top officials accused of wrongdoing have historically found a way out of jail. Former President Richard Nixon got a preemptive pardon from his successor, Gerald Ford. Nixon’s previous vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned after he was caught up in a corruption scandal. Agnew made a plea deal and avoided jail time. Aaron Burr, also a former vice president, narrowly escaped a treason conviction. But then he left the country.

    That remains to be seen. Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent and current global head of security for Teneo, said on CNN on Monday that agents are taking a back seat – to the New York Police Department and New York State court officers who are in charge of maintaining order and safety, and to the FBI, which looks for potential acts of violence by extremists.

    The Secret Service, far from coordinating the event as they might normally, are “in a protective mode,” Wackrow said.

    “They are viewing this as really an administrative movement where they have to protect Donald Trump from point A to point B, let him do his business before the court, and leave. They are not playing that active role that we typically see them in.”

    The New York Times published a report based on anonymous sources close to Trump on Tuesday that suggested he is, either out of bravado or genuine delight, relishing the idea of having to endure a “perp walk” in New York City. The “perp walk,” by the way, is the public march of a perpetrator into a police office for processing.

    “He has repeatedly tried to show that he is not experiencing shame or hiding in any way, and I think you’re going to see that,” the Times reporter and CNN political analyst Maggie Haberman said on the network on Tuesday night.

    “I do think there’s a part of him that does view this as a political asset,” said Marc Short, the former chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, during an appearance on CNN on Wednesday. “Because he can use it to paint the other, more serious legal jeopardy he faces either in Georgia or the Department of Justice, as they’re politically motivated.”

    But Short argued voters will tire of the baggage Trump is carrying, particularly if he faces additional potential indictments in the federal and Georgia investigations.

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  • Shift in San Francisco politics serves as warning from Asian American voters to Democrats in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Shift in San Francisco politics serves as warning from Asian American voters to Democrats in 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Allene Jue used to vote in a simple, rapid manner – scan the names on the ballot and pick the Asian sounding names.

    That was before 2020.

    “Something turned on during the pandemic and lit a fire,” said Jue, a Chinese American mother of two girls, ages 3 and 5, living on the west side of San Francisco. Throughout the pandemic, Jue watched as violent hate crimes against Asian Americans brought fear to the community with not enough response from local law enforcement or prosecutors. As the school closures wore on and on in California, Jue saw her local school board discuss progressive policy issues like renaming schools ahead of focusing on simply returning students to the classroom.

    Jue, who generally considers herself a Democrat, recalled her anger at liberal local politicians.

    “They care about policies that don’t really help someone who just lives in the city and just want to be safe, who wants their kids to be educated well,” she said. “They forgot the core problems for regular people. I wanted to do something to try to change and take that power back. It was fear and frustration, a lot of frustration, that I turned into action.”

    Her involvement began with stuffing envelopes for recall campaigns against the district attorney and several school board members and then grew – she even appeared in Chinese language campaign ads for a moderate Democrat running for city supervisor.

    It was a political awakening replicated to varying degrees by other Asian Americans in San Francisco, resulting in a series of political upheavals in one of the United States’ most progressive cities – including a moderate White man unseating a progressive Chinese American incumbent for supervisor of the majority-Asian American Sunset District

    California activists warn that these shifts in the politics of San Francisco – a place that has long been a beacon for progressives – are a signal to national Democrats ahead of 2024 that the party needs a course correction with the fastest growing racial group in the US – Asian Americans.

    “I see this frustration with the direction of the party,” said Charles Jung, a civil rights attorney and local Bay Area advocate. “Asian Americans feel like Democrats are focused on the wrong things, that they’ve let ideology run amok. If Democrats don’t redouble their efforts to focus on core Democratic issues, they will lose people of color over time.”

    Supervisor Joel Engardio, a gay married man who by most national standards is a liberal, describes himself as a moderate in San Francisco. And he is quick to criticize the word “progressive.”

    “To me, progressive is forward thinking, moving into the future and building a better city,” said Engardio from his San Francisco City Hall office. “For too long, we have not followed that definition of progressive. Progressive is a city that works and functions and builds toward the future.”

    Engardio unseated a Chinese American incumbent last year, becoming the first non-Asian supervisor to represent the majority Asian American district in more than 20 years. He campaigned on removing roadblocks for small businesses, putting more police officers on the streets, and using merit-standards for public schools. He said his supervisor race, while close, sends a broader political message about the limits of liberal ideology.

    “We should all pay attention that San Francisco, the most liberal place in America, is saying enough. We want safe streets. We want good schools. That should tell anyone – pay attention,” said Engardio.

    CNN national exit polls do show the pendulum shifting among Asian American voters in recent elections. In 2018, during the Donald Trump presidency, Asian Americans overwhelmingly supported Democrats by 77% vs. Republicans at 23%. In 2022, Asian Americans remained supportive of Democrats, but that preference slid 58% vs. Republicans at 40%.

    That’s a significant shift, warns Jung. “You saw a substantial double-digit erosion of support from Asian Americans from this midterm election to 2018. And incidentally, it’s not just Asian Americans, you saw the same thing among Hispanic voters,” he said. “I think if Democrats don’t redouble their efforts to focus on core democratic issues, they will lose people of color over time.”

    While Asian Americans may be thought of as a Democratic constituency, Jung warns recent history shows that wasn’t always the case.

    CNN’s historical exit polls on congressional vote choice show Asian American voters were closely divided or tilting toward Republicans in the 1990s. But since 1998, they have generally leaned toward the Democratic Party, by varying margins.

    Erosion among Asian and Latino voters, said Kanishka Cheng of grassroots community building organization Together SF, is explained by Democrats forgetting the core values for immigrant communities.

    Kanishka Cheng is the founder of community building organization Together SF and Together SF Action, whose mission includes fighting against crime, homelessness and high housing costs through change at San Francisco's city hall.

    “Democrats have a really hard time talking about public education and public safety,” said Cheng. “That’s the common denominator between the Asian and Latino community – we are immigrant communities. We came to America for stability and opportunity. Public safety and public education are the things that give us stability and opportunity. We need education and we need to feel safe.”

    Engardio said that message came through loud and clear as he knocked on “14,000 doors, talking to voters. My advice is to talk about what they need, and actually, listen.”

    Listening to Asian American voters is the work that Forrest Liu continues in the Sunset District as 2024 approaches. A former Bay Area finance worker, Liu left the business world and became an Asian community advocate to fight hate crimes targeting Asians.

    Liu spends his day conducting field interviews to try to understand the political shift that took place among San Francisco’s Asian voters, because Liu believes it’s predictive of what will happen in the upcoming national elections. “I want to understand why they made the decisions they made last year and what they want moving forward. And what we should be advocating for,” said Liu.

    What he’s learned so far, he said, is the community is far savvier than politicians may think.

    “There are some politicians out there who are like, ‘Let me get in a photo with some Asian people. Let me walk through Chinatown, shake hands with a few Asian community leaders and that’s it. I got the Asian vote,’” said Liu. “No. You actually need to be in tune with what this demographic needs.”

    Liu said the political discontent that led to Engardio’s victory remains, even as publicity around “Stop Asian Hate” may have faded.

    “‘Why should I feel unsafe?’ I would say that’s the summary of the emotion of the people I’m interviewing. They still feel unsafe.”

    You hear three languages spoken in Jue’s house – English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Her 5-year-old daughter, Eloise, is in a Cantonese immersion kindergarten, though she also speaks Mandarin. Lucille, 3, speaks Mandarin to her parents. Jue flips from one language to the next, a product of the multilingual public schools in San Francisco.

    “I’m a public school kid, from kindergarten all the way to college,” she said. “There is a common background from my core group – children of immigrants who went through public school.”

    Work hard, strive for educational success, and build a safe community – that’s what Jue and her generation grew up seeking.

    The effects of the pandemic began to crack into all those core values. The attacks targeting Asian American – which spiked 567% from 2019 to 2021 in San Francisco – worried Jue.

    07 Asian American Voters Allene with Kids

    “I’m Asian, my family’s Asian. If I have to worry about just stepping out to run an errand, I think that’s a huge problem and I can’t live in a city like that,” she said.

    Amid those concerns in 2021, Jue noticed the school board vote to rename 44 schools whose names were linked to former presidents like Abraham Lincoln, stating the names were linked to “the subjugation and enslavement of human beings/ or who oppressed women.”

    The school district at that time still had shared no public plan for reopening schools.

    Jue, juggling working at her tech job and raising kids about to enter pre-school, was incensed.

    Jue was among the Asian Americans in San Francisco who rolled out recall actions first against the school board, recalling three members. Jue then helped the successful effort to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, which a majority of the west side Asian communities backed.

    Last November, Jue volunteered for her neighboring district’s supervisor race – where Engardio successfully challenged the Sunset district’s sitting city supervisor. She was featured in two Mandarin and Cantonese campaign ads.

    Like many political shifts, Jue said the Sunset District was driven by discontent. And Jue said that discontent, while felt most profoundly in her city, is not limited to San Francisco.

    The self-described socially liberal-fiscal conservative said while she is a registered Democrat, she struggles with the current state of the party entering 2024. “I don’t think they’ve gotten those basics down yet, like crime and education,” said Jue. “I know of folks that have traditionally voted Democrat that are now voting Republican because they do not feel that the Democratic Party is representing them.”

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  • Ramen noodles and drained savings: FEC weighs allowing candidates to use political cash to pay themselves bigger salaries | CNN Politics

    Ramen noodles and drained savings: FEC weighs allowing candidates to use political cash to pay themselves bigger salaries | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    When Nabilah Islam began running for Congress in the 2020 cycle, she said she quickly discovered the high price of her decision.

    “It was impossible for me to have a full-time job and wage a competitive campaign,” the Georgia Democrat recalled. So, she gave up her work as a campaign consultant, paused paying her student loans and went without health insurance – in the middle of a pandemic – because she could no longer afford to pay the premiums. She drained her savings to pay living expenses.

    “I was eating ramen and turkey sandwiches every day,” said Islam, who lost her bid for a House seat and now serves in the Georgia state Senate. “It was one of the hardest things I had ever done in my life.”

    Now, the Federal Election Commission is taking up a request that Islam lodged in 2021 to change some of the federal rules governing the use of political cash. At a hearing Wednesday, the regulators weighed boosting the amount of campaign money candidates can use to pay themselves while running for office. They also are considering whether to allow federal candidates to use donors’ money to underwrite health insurance premiums and other benefits.

    Although the FEC now allows candidates to use campaign funds to pay themselves a salary, the agency set strict limits. That salary is capped at the annual salary for the office they are seeking or their earnings in the year before they became a candidate, whichever is the lower amount.

    The limits are aimed at preventing candidates from enriching themselves at donors’ expense, but they also bar candidates who were unemployed or at home caring for children in the prior year from using contributors’ money to draw a candidate salary.

    Supporters of the change say it would make it easier for a broader spectrum of Americans to run for federal office, including full-time caregivers, students and people from working-class backgrounds. But critics question whether it would encourage grift.

    “The reality is that giving up your salary for a year or two to run for Congress is unsustainable for most working people,” said Liuba Grechen Shirley, a former House candidate and founder and CEO of the Vote Mama Foundation, which aims to overcome the obstacles mothers face in running for office. She supports the rule change.

    “We have to make it the norm that candidates pay themselves a livable wage, so that they can run for office because that’s how we start to change the system,” she told CNN in an interview this week.

    Running for Congress is a time-consuming and expensive enterprise. The average successful House winner in the 2022 midterms spent nearly $2.8 million in campaign funds, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political money.

    And members of Congress, as a group, are far wealthier than the general US population. An OpenSecrets analysis of congressional financial disclosures reports in 2020 found that more than half the people in Congress that year were millionaires.

    Although a record number of women serve in Congress, they still make up just over a quarter of total representation, according to the Center for American Woman and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University.

    Only about 28% of all candidates for the House in 2022 were women, said Kelly Dittmar, CAWP’s director of research, underscoring that the gender disparities start long before Election Day.

    “If you could tell a potential candidate that they would have greater financial security if they decided to wage a campaign for office, then it might increase the pool of candidates, including women,” Dittmar said.

    The limits don’t just affect women.

    Maxwell Frost rides an elevator on his way to be interviewed on a podcast in Orlando, Florida, on August 30, 2022.

    Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, who last year became the first Gen Z candidate to win a congressional seat, told the commissioners he “put himself in a bad financial place” by seeking a House seat.

    The 26-year-old Democrat said he left his job at a gun-violence prevention organization to run for office but quickly realized that he couldn’t sustain campaigning and driving part-time for Uber as he had planned.

    Frost drew headlines late last year after a landlord denied his application to rent an apartment in Washington, DC, because of his low credit score.

    “I did overcome the odds,” he testified Wednesday. “But there are often consequences when you participate in a system that’s not set up for you.”

    The FEC, which is not likely to make a decision in the coming weeks, is considering a range of options.

    Among them: Allowing candidates to earn, on a pro-rated basis, up to 50% – or as much as 100% – of the federal office they are seeking, regardless of what they earned in the year before they launched their campaigns. Rank-and-file members of Congress earn $174,000 a year, with those in top leadership positions collecting more.

    Other options include allowing candidates to receive a salary that’s tied to a $15-an-hour rate or to the minimum wage set by federal or state law.

    So far, a range of individuals and organizations – including the campaign arms for House Democrats and Republicans – have expressed general support for a change, although they diverge on the specific remedies.

    Some Republicans on the panel, including Commissioner James “Trey” Trainor, questioned whether the agency is overstepping its bounds by weighing a rule change and should instead ask Congress to change the federal law that bars candidates from converting campaign contributions to personal use.

    Bradley Smith, a former Republican FEC commissioner, testified that the agency should be wary of going too far with “feel-good rule-making.”

    “Why not allow candidates to pay for haircuts, better clothes, better food to keep a candidate’s energy up and fundraising or recharging time at the country club, all of which could be helpful to a campaign?” he asked.

    The commission also is considering whether to allow candidates to begin drawing a donor-funded salary as soon as they file a statement of candidacy rather than waiting, as is currently required, for primary ballot deadlines, which vary widely by state.

    Frost, the freshman congressman from Florida, also urged the commission to allow candidates to continue drawing a campaign salary after the election as they wait for their salaries as officeholders to kick in.

    Although the FEC often deadlocks along partisan lines, the commission has signaled an openness to easing some rules for candidates in the past.

    In 2018, the agency opened the door to candidates using campaign contributions to pay for child care benefits, following a request from Grechen Shirley. She said she did so after trying for months to juggle care for her small children while running for a House seat in Long Island. “I would literally be nursing my son, while my daughter put hairclips in my hair, and I’d have my headphones on and would be dialing for dollars,” she said.

    To date, 59 federal candidates have used campaign dollars for child care, according to Vote Mama. The group now is pressing states around the country to extend the policy to state and local candidates.

    This year, 19 bills to do so have been introduced in 13 states, Grechen Shirley said.

    Last year, Islam, 33, made history by becoming the youngest woman and the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia state Senate. Although she is not currently planning another run for Congress, she said she is determined to see federal policy change.

    “I’m very persistent,” she said. “No one should have to go through all that in order to run for office.”

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  • Grand jury indictments, explained | CNN Politics

    Grand jury indictments, explained | CNN Politics

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    CNN takes a closer look at the legal drama surrounding Donald Trump. Watch “CNN Primetime: Inside the Trump Investigations” Tuesday, March 21 at 9 p.m. ET.



    CNN
     — 

    While the country anticipates the first-ever indictment of a former president – assuming Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charges Donald Trump with a crime – it’s worth looking at the mechanics of what’s going on in the legal system and how the process that applies to everyone is being applied to Trump.

    It’s hard enough to keep track of all the cases involving Trump:

    • Bragg is looking at a payment back in 2016 to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.
    • Fulton County prosecutors in Georgia are looking at Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results there.
    • A Department of Justice special counsel is looking at both the election meddling and his treatment of classified documents.

    One thing that ties all those investigations together – regarding hush money, election meddling and the documents – is that all three have been or are being presented to a grand jury.

    You’ll recall the foreperson for the special grand jury in Georgia spoke to CNN and other news outlets last month. She drew some criticism from legal watchers that she publicly discussed the broad outlines of evidence – but also made clear that it is a grand jury of regular people who must agree with prosecutors that there is enough evidence to bring a case.

    The old adage, meant to expose the one-sided grand jury portion of the judicial process, is that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” It’s just that easy.

    That turn of phrase has long been attributed, perhaps inaccurately, to the former chief judge of New York’s Court of Appeals, Sol Wachtler. If you’re watching the coverage of a possible Trump indictment, trust me, someone will repeat the phrase.

    A critic of the grand jury process, Wachtler wanted the state to scrap the system. He was clearly unsuccessful.

    I reached out to Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor and author of the new book, “Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It,” for a refresher on how grand juries and indictments work. Our conversation, conducted by phone, is below.

    WOLF: What should we know about the difference between a grand jury and a trial jury?

    HONIG: A grand jury decides to indict, meaning to charge a case. A trial jury determines guilt or non-guilt.

    A grand jury is bigger, typically 23 members, and the prosecutor only needs the votes of a majority of a grand jury – as opposed to a trial jury, which has to be unanimous.

    The standard of proof in a grand jury is lower than a trial jury. In a grand jury, you only have to show probable cause, meaning more likely than not. But of course in a trial setting, you need to show proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

    The other thing to know is a grand jury is an almost entirely one-sided process.

    Usually the only people allowed in the room at all are the grand jurors, the prosecutors, the witnesses and a court reporter.

    In some instances, including New York, there’s a limited right of a potential defendant to present some evidence, but no defense lawyers are allowed in the room.

    There’s no cross-examination of the prosecution’s evidence. There’s no presentation of defense evidence.

    Close to every time a prosecutor seeks an indictment from a grand jury, he or she will get an indictment from the grand jury.

    WOLF: How would you define “indictment”?

    HONIG: It’s a document setting forth formal charges against the defendant.

    WOLF: We have three grand juries that are top of mind – for election meddling in Georgia, at the federal level for declassified documents and then the Manhattan DA. How much variation is there in grand juries between city, county and federal?

    HONIG: There are minor variations, but the basics remain the same.

    Here’s an example of one of the minor variations in New York State, but not in the federal system, meaning for DOJ. The defendant does have some limited right to be notified and given a chance to testify or present defense evidence, which we saw play out over the last week with Trump and then him asking Robert Costello to testify.

    That’s not the case federally. You do not have to give a defendant a chance to testify or present evidence. That’s one slight variation. But the basic fundamentals are the same.

    WOLF: All of these cases have been going on, at some level, literally for years. So we have this coincidence of them potentially coming to a head at the same time. That is going to feed the “witch hunt” narrative that Trump pushes.

    HONIG: Especially given that all three investigations have been pending for years. January 6 has been pending for two-and-change years. Mar-a-Lago is going on about two years. Fulton County is two-plus years, and the hush money is six-and-a-half years.

    I think the argument will be, when you have three or four different investigations, all of which have been outstanding for multiple years – if they all culminate within a fairly brief stretch as we head into the 2024 election, as multiple people, including Donald Trump, have declared their candidacies.

    You’re just naturally subjected to that type of criticism, that they’re targeting a candidate, perhaps a front-runner, of the other party.

    WOLF: What do you make of that?

    HONIG: I’ve been critical of all three investigations for moving too slowly. I don’t assume the worst. I don’t assume that that’s being done intentionally to get it as close to the election as possible.

    I think the more likely scenario is just they’re moving too slow. They’re too myopic and bureaucratic in their approach. That’s what I’ve said publicly about (Attorney General Merrick) Garland and (Fulton County District Attorney) Fani Willis for sure.

    WOLF: And now we have a sort of deadline because the election is happening.

    HONIG: It’s not a formal deadline. But it is a widely observed practice that you don’t want to take an overt dramatic step like drop an indictment or hold a trial close to an election.

    With DOJ, it’s a 60-day rule, or sometimes it’s understood as a 90-day rule. I think it’s unlikely that a judge would force Donald Trump and/or prosecutors to try a case, let’s say in the summer of 2024, with the presidential election just around the corner.

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  • Taiwan’s President to transit US on Central America trip, but no word on meeting with Speaker McCarthy | CNN

    Taiwan’s President to transit US on Central America trip, but no word on meeting with Speaker McCarthy | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Taiwan confirmed Tuesday that President Tsai Ing-wen will transit the United States en route to Central America at the end of the month, but there was no word on whether a highly anticipated meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will take place.

    Tsai will head to New York on March 29 before visiting Guatemala and Belize, presidential spokeswoman Lin Yu-chan told reporters. She will then stop in California before returning to Taiwan.

    When asked whether Tsai will meet with McCarthy, as has been widely reported in recent weeks, the presidential office refused to provide any details of her itinerary in the US.

    McCarthy told reporters earlier this month that he’ll meet with Tsai when she is in the US but didn’t specify a date. He also did not rule out the possibility of taking a trip to Taiwan himself in addition to their meeting.

    Any face to face meeting between McCarthy and Tsai is likely to infuriate China’s ruling Communist Party, which claims democratic Taiwan as its own territory despite never having controlled it.

    China launched massive war drills near Taiwan last summer, including firing multiple missiles over the island, when McCarthy’s predecessor Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei – the first such trip by a sitting House speaker in 25 years.

    When initial reports of Tsai’s planned trip emerged earlier this month, China hit out, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning saying Beijing “resolutely opposes all official exchanges between US and Taiwan.”

    Mao added that Beijing was “seriously concerned” about the prospect of a meeting between Tsai and McCarthy.

    “China urges the US to cease all official exchanges with Taiwan, and stop upgrading substantive relationship with Taiwan,” she added.

    Taiwan’s refusal to confirm details of a potential McCarthy meeting in advance is not surprising given the geopolitical sensitivities.

    Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last year was only officially made public once her plane landed, although it was reported by Western media ahead of time.

    See why tensions are rising between US and China over Taiwan

    Guatemala and Belize are two of Taiwan’s few remaining official diplomatic allies.

    Last Tuesday, Honduras President Xiomara Castro said she planned to switch diplomatic recognition to Beijing.

    That move would leave Taiwan with just 13 official diplomatic allies, mostly small nations in Latin American and the Pacific.

    However, Taiwan has de-facto, but non-official, diplomatic relations with many Western nations including the United States.

    During her trip to Taipei last year, Pelosi, a California Democrat, said the visit intended to make it “unequivocally clear” the US would “not abandon” the democratically governed island.

    The US maintains close unofficial ties with Taiwan, and is bound by law to provide Taiwan with defensive arms.

    Taiwanese leaders, including Tsai, have previously transited through the US on their way to other places.

    Tsai most recently visited the US in July 2019 when she stopped over in New York before heading to Haiti, a diplomatic ally of Taiwan.

    US officials have engaged in multiple communications with Chinese officials in recent weeks to remind them of past precedents regarding US transits of Taiwanese presidents, a senior administration official told reporters.

    The official noted that that any transit to the US of Tsai should not be used by China as a pretext for an aggressive response.

    Tsai’s planned trip comes as Taiwan and the United States ramp up efforts to counter China’s growing military capabilities.

    It also coincides with former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou’s visit to mainland China, the first such trip by a former Taiwanese leader since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

    Ma served as Taiwan’s president between 2008 and 2016, during which he drew stronger economic ties between China and Taiwan but kept Beijing’s push for “reunification” at bay.

    The two trips are taking place at a politically sensitive time.

    Taiwan is scheduled to hold its next presidential election in January next year. Tsai is not eligible for re-election.

    Fears of a potential Chinese invasion, which have loomed over Taiwan for more than seven decades, are particularly high, supercharged by both Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s increased assertiveness and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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  • Supreme Court urged by DOJ and other parties to sidestep independent state legislature dispute | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court urged by DOJ and other parties to sidestep independent state legislature dispute | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    As the Supreme Court deliberates behind closed doors over a case that many believe could be one of the most consequential voting rights disputes ever to reach the high court, the Justice Department and some other parties involved are suggesting the case be dismissed due to major developments since oral arguments.

    If the justices were to ultimately remove the case from the docket it would sidestep a major dispute over the so-called the Independent State Legislature theory pushed by conservatives and supporters of former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election for now.

    The case has captured the nation’s attention, because Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are asking the justices to adopt a long dormant legal theory and rule that state courts and other state entities have a limited role in reviewing election rules established by state legislatures when it comes to federal elections.

    Critics say the Independent State Legislature theory could revolutionize electoral politics going forward if fully adopted and could lead to state legislatures having absolute authority in the area without the necessary judicial oversight.

    The actual case before the justices presents a redistricting dispute out of North Carolina, involving a North Carolina Supreme Court decision from February 2002 that invalided the state’s congressional map. The state Supreme Court struck the map as an illegal partisan gerrymander and replaced it with a temporary court-drawn map more favorable to Democrats.

    The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the GOP’s appeal of that decision in December. At arguments, a lawyer for the lawmakers asked the justices to adopt the Independent State Legislature theory, and some of the justices appeared to express some support for a version of the doctrine.

    But after the case was argued, and before the justices have rendered an opinion, new developments occurred on the ground in North Carolina.

    That’s because after the last election, the North Carolina Supreme Court flipped its majority to Republican. In February, the newly composed state Supreme Court announced it had voted to take the unusual step and rehear a dispute concerning the maps.

    That development prompted the US Supreme Court to ask the parties on both sides to explain whether the justices still had the authority to hear the case or whether it should be dismissed. Central to the question is whether the state court has issued a “final judgment” in the case clearing the way for US Supreme Court review.

    Solicitor General Elizbeth Prelogar told the justices in a letter Monday that the NC decision grant of rehearing “makes it difficult to conclude that the state court has entered a final judgement.”

    At the same time, Prelogar acknowledged the maneuvering had created a “novel” predicament and the justices “could reasonably reach a different conclusion.”

    An attorney for the state of North Carolina, which is also opposed to the Republican lawmakers’ stance in the case, agreed the case should be dismissed. Sarah G. Boyce of the North Carolina Department of Justice stressed that the US Supreme Court cannot step in now because, “further proceedings remain”.

    But Common Cause, a group that opposes the GOP lawmakers, disagreed with the position taken by its own side and urged the justices to decide the case.

    Neal Katyal, a lawyer for the group, stressed that the court should use the North Carolina case to decide the Independent State Legislature doctrine issue rather than wait until it arises again on an emergency basis “during the 2024 election cycle.”

    And his opponent, David Thompson, a lawyer for the North Carolina Republican lawmakers, agreed on that point.

    He argued in his letter that the justices still have jurisdiction because the North Carolina Supreme Court decision was final, and the re-hearing order is directed at subsequent decisions made by the state high court.

    “This court is therefore fully possessed of jurisdiction to decide” the case, Thompson wrote.

    If the US Supreme Court ultimately decides to dismiss the case out of North Carolina, it will likely be asked in short order to take up the same kind of dispute brought by a different party. Ohio’s attorney general, for instance has a pending request with the court to take up a similar dispute.

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  • Trump’s legal team seeks to throw out special grand jury report on 2020 election interference in Georgia | CNN Politics

    Trump’s legal team seeks to throw out special grand jury report on 2020 election interference in Georgia | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Attorneys for former President Donald Trump have asked for a judge to toss the final report and evidence from a special grand jury in Georgia that spent months investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election.

    Trump’s attorneys also are asking that a judge disqualify the Fulton County District Attorney’s office from overseeing the investigation, according to a new court filing.

    “President Donald J. Trump hereby moves to quash the SPGJ’s [special purpose grand jury’s] report and preclude the use of any evidence derived therefrom, as it was conducted under an unconstitutional statute, through an illegal and unconstitutional process, and by a disqualified District Attorney’s Office who violated prosecutorial standards and acted with disregard for the gravity of the circumstances and the constitutional rights of those involved,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing.

    The motion to quash the special grand jury’s work and disqualify the district attorney’s office from pursuing any charges in the case is Trump’s first effort to intervene in the long-running investigation conducted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat. It signals the aggressive approach Trump’s attorneys are likely to take in fighting any potential charges Trump could face.

    So far, no one has been charged in Georgia.

    Willis’ office is considering bringing racketeering and conspiracy charges, CNN reported Monday.

    CNN has requested comment from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office.

    The wide-ranging objections by Trump’s attorneys cover a number of decisions by the judge who oversaw the grand jury, the conduct of the Fulton County district attorney and a variety of interviews last month by the special grand jury’s foreperson.

    A special grand jury investigating Trump and his associates concluded its work in December and a judge overseeing the panel made small slivers of the report public in February. After the partial release, a foreperson for the panel went on a media tour during which she indicated roughly a dozen individuals had been recommended for criminal charges.

    The foreperson, Emily Kohrs, declined to say whether the special grand jury recommended criminal charges for Trump, telling CNN last month: “There may be some names on that list that you wouldn’t expect. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about – I don’t think you will be shocked.”

    Special grand juries in Georgia can issue subpoenas and collect evidence, such as documents and testimony, but they cannot issue indictments. Instead, they write a final report that includes recommendations on whether anyone should face criminal charges. Then it’s up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek indictments from the regularly seated grand juries.

    Trump’s attorneys raised objections to several issues related to the special grand jury process, including the series of interviews by the foreperson and a recent media interview with other members of the special grand jury, who spoke to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution anonymously.

    “The results of the investigation cannot be relied upon and, therefore, must be suppressed given the constitutional violations,” Trump’s attorneys argued in the new filing. “The foreperson’s public comments in and of themselves likewise violate notions of fundamental fairness and due process and taint any future grand jury pool.”

    Trump’s team also argued that Willis’ office should have been disqualified from overseeing the entire case when we she was blocked from investigating now-Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump ally who served as a fake elector after the 2020 election. They also took issue with the media interviews Willis has provided.

    “The resulting prejudicial taint cannot be excised from the results of the investigation or any future prosecution,” Trump’s attorneys wrote, adding that the media interviews “violate prosecutorial standards and constitute forensic misconduct, and her social media activity creates the appearance of impropriety compounding the necessity for disqualification.”

    Trump’s legal team raised objections as well with how Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney oversaw the grand jury and interviews he provided after the panel’s work concluded. CNN was among the media outlets to interview McBurney.

    “The Supervising Judge made inappropriate and prejudicial comments relating to the conduct under investigation as well as potential witnesses invocation of the Fifth Amendment,” according to the Trump attorneys. “He improperly applied the law and subsequently denied appellate review while knowing his application of the law in that manner had vast implications on the constitutionality of the investigation.”

    They argued that McBurney was incorrect in determining the special grand jury was a criminal investigative body, a decision that weighed heavily with other judges who forced out-of-state witnesses to comply with subpoenas they received to appear before the panel.

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  • Trump shadow looms large over House GOP policy retreat | CNN Politics

    Trump shadow looms large over House GOP policy retreat | CNN Politics

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    Orlando, Florida
    CNN
     — 

    House Republicans had hoped to use their annual retreat to get on the same page about upcoming policy battles and devise a strategy to preserve their fragile majority.

    Instead, they find themselves playing defense for former President Donald Trump.

    While most Republicans had hoped to steer clear of any presidential politics – despite being in Florida, home to two major potential GOP rivals in 2024 – Trump’s announcement over the weekend that he expects to be imminently arrested has put him back in the center of the conversation and forced Republicans to publicly rally to his side. Even some GOP lawmakers who have called for the party to move on from Trump have lined up to offer their full-throated defense of the ex-president, attacking the Manhattan District Attorney’s office that is investigating Trump as a political witch hunt.

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy, echoing calls from inside his conference, has instructed GOP-led committees to investigate whether the Manhattan DA used federal funds to probe a payment made by Trump’s then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election.

    McCarthy said Sunday that he already talked to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, about an investigation into the matter, and hinted that there could be more developments on that front soon.

    “Remember, we also have a select committee on the weaponization of government, this applies directly to that. I think you’ll see actions from them,” McCarthy told reporters at a news conference kicking off their three-day policy retreat.

    But Republicans weren’t in complete lockstep with Trump. McCarthy carefully broke with Trump’s calls to protest and “take our nation back” if he is arrested, which has sparked concerns of political violence reminiscent of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

    “I don’t think people should protest this, no,” McCarthy said. But he added: “You may misinterpret when President Trump talks … he is not talking in a harmful way, and nobody should. Nobody should harm one another … We want calmness.”

    Firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, however, offered a different take.

    “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with calling for protests,” she told reporters after the news conference on Sunday. “Americans have the right to assemble and the right to protest. And that’s an important constitutional right. And he doesn’t have to say ‘peaceful’ for it to mean peaceful. Of course he means peaceful.”

    The latest Trump drama is once again threatening to divide the GOP and overshadow their carefully-laid messaging plans – a familiar predicament for Republicans who served in Congress while Trump was in office and spent years being forced to answer for his regular controversies. Republican leaders who had hoped to focus on their legislative agenda during the first news conference of their policy retreat instead fielded numerous questions from reporters about Trump and the Manhattan DA’s investigation.

    Asked whether he thinks it would be appropriate for Trump to run for president if he is ultimately convicted, McCarthy said: “He has a constitutional right to run.”

    Multiple Republican lawmakers – including House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik – have endorsed Trump, while at least two of his staunch supporters have thrown their weight behind other candidates in the race: South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman is backing former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    Most GOP lawmakers, however, have been reluctant to pick sides just yet, waiting to see how the field develops. Even McCarthy, who credited his speakership to Trump, has yet to make his preference known.

    “I could endorse in the primary, but I haven’t endorsed,” he told reporters on Friday. When pressed on if he will do so, he again repeated: “I could endorse but I haven’t.”

    Aside from a potentially bruising GOP primary contest, House Republicans have other major internal battles on the horizon. They are about to dive into some of the most complicated and divisive policy fights of their razor-thin majority, including lifting the nation’s borrowing limit, funding the government, reauthorizing federal food stamp programs and deciding whether to continue aid for Ukraine.

    Part of their goal during their annual retreat is to just get the conference in sync ahead of these looming debates.

    “The value of something like this is, can we keep the era of good feelings going within the Republican conference?” said Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, who chairs the centrist-leaning Main Street Caucus. “This is gonna be a nice opportunity for us to just get in the same room, have a couple hundred of us breathe the same air, and remind ourselves that we have more in common than we have apart.”

    While the GOP has notched a handful of victories since taking over the House, including a resolution to overturn a DC crime bill, most of their bills have been messaging endeavors thus far. And even measures that were thought to be low-hanging fruit, like a border security plan, have proved more challenging than expected in their slim majority.

    House Republicans know their biggest challenges lie ahead.

    “The question is really going to be as we get into phase two,” GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who co-leads a bipartisan caucus with Democrats, told CNN. “The real test is going to be the must-pass pieces of legislation.”

    The GOP’s investigations on a wide array of subjects, including Hunter Biden’s business deals and the treatment of January 6 defendants, have caused some consternation among the party’s moderates. And some were also skeptical about the need for a congressional response to a potential Trump indictment.

    “I’m going to wait until I hear more facts and read the indictment itself,” Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who represents a district President Joe Biden won, told CNN. “I have faith in our legal system. If these charges are political bogus stuff, and they may be, it will become clear enough soon.”

    GOP leaders are nonetheless expressing confidence in their ability to stay united.

    “House Republicans are working as a team,” House GOP Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota said at the Orlando news conference. “Because that’s what the American people elected us to do.”

    Bacon framed the stakes of the legislative fights with Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to come by saying, “We need to be the governing party that voters trust. This will determine 2024 results. This means we can’t cave to Biden’s and Schumer’s demands, but we can’t refuse to find consensus and make agreements on must pass legislation.”

    GOP Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who told CNN he is willing to shut down the government if conservatives do not get what they are calling for pertaining to the debt ceiling, reflected on how House Republicans could learn from their Democratic counterparts in presenting a unified front.

    “They’re better than us at the carrot and the stick. If they get in line, they get the carrot. If they don’t, they get the stick. They all tout the unity thing. Maybe that’s one of our weaknesses,” he told CNN.

    The must-pass pieces of legislation expose not only the fault lines of a slim majority, but also underscore the hurdles House Republicans face in cementing their transition from a nay-saying minority to a governing majority.

    “Campaigning is for dividing. Governing is for uniting,” GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas told CNN, adding that sentiment must extend beyond House Republicans to Biden and Senate Democrats.

    “I’d say in general, not everybody comes up here to be serious legislators. A lot of people come up here for fame and fortune. I spent 20 years in the military. I’m focused on being a serious legislator,” he added.

    Fitzpatrick told CNN, “It’s definitely an adjustment,” when describing the House Republicans’ transition from minority to majority, particularly for those members who have not served in the majority before. But Fitzpatrick pointed to the fact that the messaging bills that Republicans have brought to the floor so far have passed almost unanimously.

    Some of the House GOP’s biggest hurdles will come in trying to write a budget blueprint, which they hope will kick off negotiations over the raising debt ceiling, where Republicans are demanding steep spending cuts.

    Further complicating the GOP’s goal to balance the budget and claw back federal spending, Republican leaders – egged on by Trump – have vowed not to touch Social Security and Medicare.

    Norman acknowledged how difficult it is going to be to coalesce around a framework that the entire conference can agree on. Before leaving Washington, the far-right House Freedom Caucus laid out their own hardline spending demands in the debt ceiling fight.

    “I don’t expect to get 218 on the first blush. What we present, there’s gonna be some gnashing of teeth,” he told CNN. “Every dollar up here has an advocate.”

    Burchett told CNN he stands behind the proposals being pushed by the Freedom Caucus.

    “It seems like every time the conservatives are the only ones that compromise. And we are just going to have to say no compromise,” he told CNN, adding he is willing to shut down the government on this issue. “I did it under Trump, and I’ll sure as heck do it under Biden.”

    McCarthy said he thought it was “productive” for his members to outline “ideas” for the budget, and dismissed the idea that anyone was drawing red lines.

    Asked about Biden’s insistence that House Republicans show them their budget before negotiations can continue, McCarthy replied, “Why do we have to have a budget out to talk about the debt ceiling? We’re not passing the budget, we’re doing a debt ceiling.”

    He added that he has told the president, “We’re not going to raise taxes, and we’re not going to pass a clean debt ceiling, but everything else is up for negotiation.”

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  • Mike Pence calls potential Trump indictment ‘not what the American people want to see’ | CNN Politics

    Mike Pence calls potential Trump indictment ‘not what the American people want to see’ | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence balked at the idea of a potential indictment of Donald Trump, categorizing any possible prosecutorial actions as “politically charged” and “not what the American people want to see.”

    Speaking with ABC’s Jon Karl during a taped interview Saturday, Pence defended any peaceful protests that may break out at Trump’s behest, after the former president called for his supporters to “take our nation back,” while still condemning the egregious violence that the country witnessed at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    “The American people have a constitutional right to peacefully assemble,” Pence said, adding, “The frustration the American people feel about what they sense is a two-tiered justice system in this country, I think is well founded. But I believe that people understand that if they give voice to this – if this occurs on Tuesday, that they need to do so peaceful and in a lawful manner.”

    Pence’s comments underscore his attempts to walk a fine line in issuing criticism and support for his former boss amid mounting expectations that he will vie for the Republican presidential nomination. Just last week, at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, DC, the former vice president issued his most blistering comments yet about Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol.

    “President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable,” Pence said at the dinner.

    Trump has repeatedly pushed back on that assertion and argued Pence was at fault because he didn’t attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.

    “The president’s wrong,” Pence told ABC. “He was wrong that day, and I had actually hoped that he would come around in time, Jon, that he would see that the cadre of legal advisers that he surrounded himself with had led him astray. But he hasn’t done so and it’s … I think it’s one of the reasons why the country just wants a fresh start.”

    Pence said the former president let him and the country down on January 6 and Trump’s continued discourse on the events is one of the reasons why the former duo has gone their “separate ways.”

    Still, Pence maintained he is “taken aback at the idea of indicting a former president of the United States.”

    Trump said Saturday that he expects to be arrested in connection with the yearslong investigation into a hush money scheme involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels and he called on his supporters to protest any such move.

    In a social media post, Trump, referring to himself, said the “leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday of next week” – though he did not say why he expects to be arrested. His team said after Trump’s post that it had not received any notifications from prosecutors.

    Law enforcement has discussed how to navigate the potential indictment on a criminal charge by a New York county grand jury and the choreography around the possibility of an unprecedented arrest of a former president.

    Should he be indicted, Trump is expected to surrender and be processed and arraigned at a New York courthouse, which includes fingerprinting and mug shots, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

    “At a time when there’s a crime wave in New York City, the fact that the Manhattan DA thinks that indicting president Trump is his top priority just tells you everything you need to know about the radical left in this country,” Pence said Saturday.

    Turning to the subpoena he received from the special counsel investigating Trump’s post-2020 election activities, Pence said he is not challenging all the elements of the subpoena and that he and his lawyers aren’t asserting executive privilege. Trump, though, has already cited executive privilege in a motion to prevent Pence from testifying before a grand jury.

    As for 2024, Pence said he is “giving serious consideration” to a White House bid, and, speaking to reporters in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, he said, “No one is above the law, and I’m confident President Trump can take care of himself. My focus is going to continue to be on the issues that are affecting the American people.”

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  • Republicans’ views of the US have become more pessimistic, polling shows | CNN Politics

    Republicans’ views of the US have become more pessimistic, polling shows | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Heading into the next presidential election, an analysis of CNN polls shows that Republicans have reverted to the deeply negative national outlook they held prior to Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016. They again are convinced the nation is in decline, and more often defensive against demographic and cultural changes in US society.

    In a poll conducted late in the summer of 2016, following Trump’s nomination, roughly half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (49%) said America’s best days lay behind us. And while most said they considered the country’s increasing diversity enriching, 37% said they felt the increasing number of people of many different races, ethnic groups and nationalities in the US was, instead, threatening American culture.

    Three years later, during Trump’s presidency, only 18% of the party said the nation was past its peak days, with a similar 20% viewing diversity as a cultural threat.

    Since then, the GOP has reversed course, becoming less pluralistic and even more pessimistic. In CNN’s latest polling, released this week, the share of Republican-aligned adults who said the country’s best days are over had skyrocketed to 70%, while the percentage saying that America’s culture was threatened by increasing racial and ethnic diversity rebounded to 38%. In a question not asked in 2019, a broad 78% majority of Republican-aligned Americans also say that society’s values on sexual orientation and gender identity are changing for the worse.

    The party’s shift in perspective over the past four years took place across demographic lines. Between 2019 and 2023, the belief that the country’s best days are behind it rose by more than 40 percentage points across age, educational and gender lines. Additionally, the share considering diversity a threat rose by double digits in each group. That may suggest that the results sometimes represent not deep-seated beliefs so much as a reaction to the current political environment, including which party holds the presidency.

    But the survey also finds Republicans and Republican-leaners are far from wholly unified in their views, with a constellation of interrelated political, demographic and socioeconomic factors dividing views.

    One of the most persistent gaps appears along educational lines, with Republican-aligned college graduates less likely than those without degrees to favor a more active government, say the country’s best days have passed or to consider the country’s increased diversity threatening – though both groups share similarly negative views about changing values around gender and sexuality.

    Age also plays a role, as do gender and race: Those younger than 45 are less likely than older adults to call racial diversity a threat or to say values on gender identity and sexual orientation are changing for the worse, with a similar divide between GOP women and men, and between White people and people of color aligned with the party.

    Differences within the GOP are often magnified when demographics intersect. Roughly half (51%) of Republican-aligned adults ages 45 or older who don’t have a college degree say they consider the country’s increased diversity threatening, an opinion shared by a third or fewer within any other combination of age and education. And, within the GOP, 54% majority of male, White evangelical Christians find such diversity threatening, a view not shared by most of their female counterparts, or by majorities of those of other combinations of racial and religious backgrounds.

    Republicans’ unease with the way that the US is changing ties into opinions of Trump’s legacy. In the latest poll, a 57% majority of Republican-aligned adults who call racial diversity threatening also say it’s essential that the next GOP nominee would restore the policies of the Trump administration. So do nearly half of those who say values on gender and sexuality are changing for the worse (49%) or who feel the nation’s best days have come and gone (46%) – in each case, a significantly higher figure than among those who don’t share those views. Belief that Trump has had a good effect on the Republican Party, meanwhile, is 14 percentage points higher among those who say the US has peaked than among those who say its best days lie ahead.

    What’s less clear is whether those outlooks will drive support for Trump and his campaign, particularly with presumptive rivals like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also building messages around similar themes. At this early stage in the campaign, Republicans and Republican leaning-independents who say the US’s best days have passed are about equally likely to say they’d be enthusiastic about the possibility of a DeSantis nomination as they are to say the same of Trump. Relatively few currently express similar excitement about former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

    It’s also too early to tell what next year’s GOP primary electorate will look like. That’s a key factor, given the likely demographic divides both in whom Republicans support and in how likely they are to vote at all. Older and more highly educated voters are more likely to turn out. Exit polling suggests that in past cycles, older and more highly educated voters tended to turn out disproportionately. This far from the start of voting, it’s hard to tell who’s likely to show up, but both demographics and political preference could play a role in determining initial levels of enthusiasm heading into the election season. In the latest CNN poll, Republicans and Republican-leaners over age 45 who supported Trump were far more likely to report extreme enthusiasm about participating in next year’s primaries than those over 45 with a different candidate preference, or younger Republicans and Republican-leaners regardless of the candidate they back.

    The CNN poll was conducted by SSRS from March 8-12 among a random national sample of 1,045 self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents drawn from a probability-based panel. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results among the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 points, it is larger for subgroups.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Voters of color are a big reason Trump leads the GOP primary | CNN Politics

    Voters of color are a big reason Trump leads the GOP primary | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump holds an average double-digit advantage over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in national 2024 Republican primary surveys. That, in itself, isn’t notable given Trump, the frontrunner, has been ahead of DeSantis (by far his nearest competitor or potential competitor) since polling began about the race.

    But what may surprise is how Trump is ahead. An average of CNN/SSRS and Quinnipiac University polls released this week reveals that Trump’s lead may, in large part, be because of his clear edge among potential Republican primary voters of color.

    Trump was up an average of 55% to 26% over DeSantis among Republican (and Republican leaning independent) voters of color in an average of the two polls.

    Among White Republican voters, the race was well within the margin of error: Trump’s 38% to DeSantis’ 37%.

    I should note the combined voter of color sample size of the CNN/SSRS and Quinnipiac University is about 200 respondents. This isn’t particularly large, but it’s more than large enough to say with a high degree of statistical confidence that Trump is ahead among them and that he is doing better among them than he is among White Republicans.

    The fact that Trump is doing considerably better among Republican voters of color than White Republicans flies in the face of the fact that many Americans view Trump as racist. I noted in 2019 that more Americans described Trump as racist than the percentage of Americans who said that about segregationist and presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968.

    But Trump’s overperformance with Republican voters of color makes sense in another way. The Republican primary race right down is breaking down along class lines just like it did during the 2016 primary.

    Trump’s base is made up of Republicans whose households pull in less than $50,000 a year. He led this group of voters by 22 points over DeSantis in our CNN poll. He trailed DeSantis by 13 points among those GOP voters making at least $50,000 a year. This is a 35 point swing between these two income brackets.

    Republican voters of color are far more likely than White Republicans to have a household income of less than $50,000 a year. According to the CNN poll, 45% of Republican voters of color do compared to just 28% of White Republicans.

    Trump’s lead among Republican voters of color comes at a time when they’re becoming a larger part of the party. During the Republican primary season in 2016, voters of color were 13% of Republican voters. Today, they’re closer to 18%.

    To put that into some perspective, White voters with a college degree are about 28% of Republican potential primary voters. Trump, of course, has historically struggled among well educated White voters, even within own party.

    While voters of color don’t make up nearly the same share of the Republican party as White voters with a college degree, the difference isn’t all that large. This means that if Trump ultimately does as well with Republican voters of color as the current polling indicates, it would be a good counterbalance for his weakness among White voters with a college degree.

    Trump doing better among Republican voters of color now is after he dramatically improved among all voters of color during the 2020 general election. While he still lost among them in 2020 by 45 points to Joe Biden in exit poll data, this was down from his 53-point loss in the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton. (Other data shows a similar improvement for Trump.)

    Trump’s improvement with voters of color occurred even as his margin among White voters declined between 2020 and 2016. In fact, Trump probably would have won the 2020 election had he had slightly less slippage among White voters between 2016 and 2020.

    Indeed, the Republican Party as a whole has been improving among voters of color. The party’s 38-point loss among that bloc for the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms was a 5-point improvement from 2020. Its margin among White voters stayed the same in exit poll data.

    Put another way: The shift among voters of color from 2022 to 2020 could have provided the winning margin for Republicans to take back the House.

    The question going into 2024 is whether voters of color will continue their shift to the Republican Party and with Trump in particular. If they do, they could provide them both with a big boost.

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  • Democratic Arizona senator says there are ‘risks involved’ in potential Trump indictment | CNN Politics

    Democratic Arizona senator says there are ‘risks involved’ in potential Trump indictment | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly acknowledged there are “risks involved” in the potential indictment of former President Donald Trump by the Manhattan district attorney while reiterating that “nobody in our nation is or should be above the law.”

    “I would hope that if they brought charges that they have a strong case, because this is, as you said, it’s unprecedented. And, you know, there’s certainly, you know, risks involved here,” Kelly said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    Kelly also defended Trump’s calls on social media for his supporters to stage protests and “take our nation back” ahead of a possible indictment and called on law enforcement agencies to do their part to keep any protests peaceful.

    “The president’s supporters, they have First Amendment rights, and they should be able to exercise those peacefully. I think it’s going to be important for law enforcement to pay attention to, you know, protests and make sure it doesn’t rise to the level of violence,” Kelly told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

    Trump said Saturday he expects to be arrested in connection with the yearslong investigation into a hush money scheme involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels and called on his supporters to protest any such move.

    In a social media post, Trump, referring to himself, said the “leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday of next week” – though he did not say why he expects to be arrested. His team said after Trump’s post that it had not received any notifications from prosecutors.

    The former president has been agitating for his team to get his base riled up and believes that an indictment would help him politically, multiple people briefed on the matter told CNN – a posture that potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu acknowledged on Sunday in a separate interview with Tapper.

    “I think it’s building a lot of sympathy for the former president,” Sununu said on “State of the Union.”

    “So, I just think that the – not just the media, but really a lot of the Democrats have misplayed this, in terms of building sympathy for the former president. And it does drastically change the paradigm as we go into the ’24 election,” he said.

    Kelly on Sunday declined to say whether he would support fellow Arizona senator Independent Kyrsten Sinema if she decides to run for re-election, but praised her record in the Senate, calling her “very effective.”

    “I’ve worked with her very closely over the last two years. I mean, really, in a very positive way. She’s very effective in the United States Senate. We’ve gotten a lot done and I look forward to doing that, you know, over the next months in the – in the rest of this year,” Kelly said.

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  • Trump and Le Pen backed these Dutch farmers — now they’ve sprung an election shock | CNN

    Trump and Le Pen backed these Dutch farmers — now they’ve sprung an election shock | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A farmers’ protest party in the Netherlands has caused a shock after winning provincial elections this week just four years after their founding. Could their rise have wider implications?

    The Farmer-Citizen Movement or BoerburgerBeweging (BBB) grew out of mass demonstrations against the Dutch government’s environmental policies, protests that saw farmers using their tractors to block public roads. The BBB is now set to become the largest party in the Dutch senate.

    The developments have thrown the Dutch government’s ambitious environmental plans into doubt and are being watched closely by the rest of Europe.

    The movement was powered by ordinary farmers but has become an unlikely front in the culture wars. Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen have voiced support, while some in the far right see the movement as embodying their ideas of elites using green policies to trample on the rights of individuals.

    On Wednesday, the Farmer-Citizen Movement landed a large win in regional elections, winning more seats in the senate than Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD party.

    The first exit poll showed the party was due to win 15 of the Senate’s 75 seats with almost 20 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile Rutte’s ruling VVD party dropped from 12 to 10 seats – leaving it without a Senate majority. Results on Thursday showed the BBB party had won the most votes in eight of the country’s 12 provinces.

    Wednesday’s election win is significant as it means the party is now set to be the largest in the Upper House of Parliament, which has the power to block legislation agreed in the Lower House – throwing the Dutch government’s environmental policies into question.

    As the election results emerged overnight on Wednesday, BBB leader Caroline van der Plas told domestic broadcaster Radio 1: “Nobody can ignore us any longer.

    “Voters have spoken out very clearly against this government’s policies.”

    Newspapers described the election outcome this week as a “monster victory” for the Farmer-Citizen Movement, which has enjoyed support from sections of society who feel unsupported by Rutte’s VVD party.

    For Arjan Noorlander, a political reporter in the Netherlands, the provincial election results this week have made the country’s political future very hard to predict. “It’s a big black hole what will happen next,” he told CNN.

    “They don’t have a majority so they would have to negotiate to form a cabinet and we have to wait and see what the impact will be.”

    Tom-Jan Meeus, a journalist and political columnist in the Netherlands, believes Wednesday’s result is reflective of a “serious dissatisfaction” with traditional politics in the country.

    “This party is definitely part of that trend,” he told CNN.

    “However, it’s new in that it has a different agenda from previous anti-establishment parties but it fits in the bigger picture that has been around here for 25 years now.”

    Meeus believes that the shock rise in support for the BBB party largely comes from those living in small, rural villages who feel disillusioned by government policies.

    “Although it’s a small country, there’s this perception that people living in the western, urbanized part of the country are having all the goods from government policies, and people living in the countryside in small villages believe that the successful people in Amsterdam, in the Hague, in Utrecht are having the goods, and they suffer from it.

    “So the feeling is that the less successful, less smart people are trapped by a government who doesn’t understand what their problems are.”

    Noorlander agrees the main topic they’ve been talking about recently is the position of the farmers in the Netherlands, because of “the pollution and environmental rules mainly made in Brussels by the EU, they were pushing against that.”

    “They want farmers to have a place in the Netherlands. That’s their main topic but it became broader in these last few months. It’s become the vote of people living in these farming areas, outside the big cities, against the people in the big cities making the policies and being more international.”

    The Farmer-Citizen Movement was established four years ago in response to the government’s proposals for tackling nitrogen emissions.

    The Dutch government launched a drive to slash emissions in half by 2030, pointing the finger at industrial agriculture for rising levels of pollution that were threating the country’s biodiversity.

    The BBB party has fought back against the measures – which include buying farmers out and reducing livestock numbers – instead placing emphasis on the farmers’ livelihoods that are at risk of being destroyed.

    Farmers have protested against the government’s green policies by blocking government buildings with tractors and dumping manure on motorways.

    Meeus believes that this week’s election win for the BBB means the agenda to tackle the nitrogen crisis is now in “big trouble.”

    “This vote obviously is a statement from a big chunk of the voters to say no to that policy,” he said.

    According to Ciarán O’Connor, a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, says the BBB have built a platform off the back of the protest movement for their party being the representative of the ‘true people.’

    The BBB, he says, “have been one of the leading driving forces behind getting people out to protest but also shaping the ideologies and beliefs that power a lot of the movement; rejecting or disputing climate change or, at least, measures that would negatively impact farmers livelihoods and businesses; wider EU skepticism; burgeoning anti-immigration and anti-Islam views too.”

    Former US President Donald Trump has promoted the protest at various points during his speeches in the past year. At a rally in Florida last July, he told crowds: “Farmers in the Netherlands of all places are courageously opposing the climate tyranny of the Dutch government.”

    The Farmer-Citizen Movement has also won support from the far-right.

    A report from The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism describes how what began as local protests got the attention of extremists and conspiracists, in particular seeing it as proof of the so-called “Great Reset” theory of global elites using the masses for their own benefit.

    According to O’Connor, the movement aligns with a populist viewpoint of climate action as a new form of tyranny imposed by out-of-touch governments over ordinary citizens.

    “One of the tactics used by the Dutch farmers’ protest movement has been using tractors to create blockades. International interest in the farmers’ protest movement, and this method of protest, really grew in 2022 not long after the Canadian trucker convoy that was organized and promoted by a number of far-right figures in Canada, the US and internationally too,” he said.

    “For many far-right figures, this movement was viewed as the next iteration of that ‘convoy’ type of protest and they viewed it as a people’s protest mobilising against tyrannical or out-of-touch governments.”

    For some analysts, however, for the far right to claim the Dutch protests is premature.

    “I wasn’t incredibly impressed by that,” Meeus said. “Generally the perception of the problem that was in the heads of the far-right people from Canada and the United States was pretty far off, as far as I’ve seen.

    “It remains to be seen whether the Farmer-Citizen Movement will present itself as a far-right party.”

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  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg is honored at a Supreme Court she wouldn’t recognize | CNN Politics

    Ruth Bader Ginsburg is honored at a Supreme Court she wouldn’t recognize | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was lauded by former clerks and colleagues at a memorial ceremony held at the Supreme Court on Friday – an institution she’d scarcely recognize if she were still on the bench.

    During the special session of the court, delayed because of Covid-19, Chief Justice John Roberts pointed to Ginsburg’s dedication to equality and said she “changed our country profoundly for the better.”

    Attorney General Merrick Garland said her opinions were “concise and elegant.”

    Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, a former clerk, called the justice’s work the “stuff of legend.” (Prelogar also revealed Ginsburg’s passion for chocolate fondue.)

    But as the legal luminaries mingled in the Great Hall outside the marble-lined chamber, little was said about how much the court has changed in the 130 weeks since Ginsburg’s passing.

    Fresh on the minds of many is the unprecedented leak last May of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a disclosure the court described as a “grave assault on the judicial process.”

    In addition, however, the current conservative majority, including Ginsburg’s replacement, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is working expeditiously to reverse much of what Ginsburg stood for in areas such as reproductive health, voting rights, affirmative action, administrative law and religious liberty.

    In the past few months, the court has seen its approval ratings plummet amid claims that it has become irreparably political. Even the relationships between the justices, while cordial, have frayed in public over debates concerning the court’s legitimacy.

    As conservatives praise the court’s new season, others mourn the dismantling of Ginsburg’s life work.

    “We are in the midst of a constitutional revolution, and the praise being lavished on Ruth Bader Ginsburg today, should not cause us to lose sight of that fact,” said Neil S. Siegel, a professor at Duke University and former Ginsburg clerk.

    Lara Bazelon, a law professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, put it more forcefully in an interview with CNN: “The current court is taking a wrecking ball to her legacy to smash it to smithereens.”

    Ginsburg died at 87 years old on September 18, 2020, having spent some 40 years as a federal judge – 27 on the high court. She worked until the end, even dialing into oral arguments from her hospital bed in Baltimore in May 2020 to chastise a lawyer for the Trump administration. The case at hand concerned a religion-based challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employer-provided health insurance plans cover birth control as a preventive service.

    “You have tossed entirely to the wind what Congress thought was essential, that is that women be provided these services with no hassles, no cost to them,” Ginsburg said.

    After her death – less than seven weeks before Election Day – then-President Donald Trump praised her. “She was an amazing woman whether you agree or not she was an amazing woman who led an amazing life,” he said, while as expected, moving with dispatch to push through the nomination of a candidate believed to be Ginsburg’s ideological opposite in many areas: Justice Amy Coney Barrett .

    The shift from Ginsburg to Barrett is akin to 1991 when Justice Thurgood Marshall, a legend of the civil rights movement who often cast his votes with the liberals on the bench, was replaced with Justice Clarence Thomas, who has become a hero of the conservative right.

    The philosophical differences between the two jurists was almost immediately evident in disputes over the religious liberty implications of state Covid restrictions.

    When Ginsburg was still alive, the court ruled in favor of the states with Roberts serving as the swing vote. But after Barrett’s confirmation, the houses of worship won.

    Barrett – a former clerk to Ginsburg’s friend, the late Justice Antonin Scalia – has also embraced the constitutional theory of originalism, a judicial philosophy championed by Scalia. Under the doctrine, the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original public reading.

    Just last term the court divided along familiar ideological lines in several cases and Barrett sided with the majority, cementing the court’s conservative turn.

    Barrett’s presence also means that Roberts no longer controls the court, as there are five votes to his right on some of the most divisive issues of the day.

    “He is no longer empowered to moderate the very conservative direction in which the court’s other conservatives are pushing the institution,” Siegel said.

    The biggest blow for liberals last term came in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito that reversed Roe – a decision that had been on the books during Ginsburg’s entire tenure.

    While she enjoyed a cordial relationship for the most part with her colleagues, Siegel and Bazelon said she would have been surprised by specific references Alito made to an article she wrote in 1992 as a lower court judge.

    On the 3rd page of his opinion Alito argued that when Roe was decided it was such a broad decision that it “effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single state.” He went on to say that it has “embittered our political culture for a half century.” After that sentiment he cited Ginsburg’s article in a footnote, where she wrote that the sweep of the decision had “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believed, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.”

    Some believe Alito included the quotation to point out that Ginsburg, along with others, felt like the court may have moved too fast too soon in the opinion. But others question his use of the citation, especially because Ginsburg never questioned the result of the decision, only its reasoning in certain sections.

    “Alito’s citation is both cynical and misleading, implying that Justice Ginsburg disapproved of the Roe holding,” Bazelon said.

    That couldn’t be “farther from the truth,” she said, pointing out that Ginsburg’s disagreement was that the reasoning should have “honed in more precisely on the women’s equality dimension.” She noted that Ginsburg always agreed with the result of the opinion.

    In the last years of her life Ginsburg was asked what would happen if the court were to ever overturn Roe and she said that it would have a particularly harsh impact on women who did not have the means to travel across state lines to obtain the procedure.

    Those words were echoed in the joint dissent last term filed by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in Dobbs. “Above all others, women lacking financial resources will suffer from today’s decision,” they wrote.

    On Friday, Breyer, now retired, sat in the front row, next to retired Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy was replaced in 2018 by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who also voted to overturn Roe.

    During her final term, Ginsburg may have known Roe was in jeopardy. There were, after all, likely five members skeptical of the opinion. But she may have felt that Roberts could be persuaded to stop short of overturning precedent out of respect for the stability of the law.

    The very fact that she thought Roe could be in danger, was a signal that Ginsburg saw changes afoot before her passing. She often lamented the politicization of the court that she thought could be traced partly to the confirmation process. She noted that in 1993 when she was nominated by President Bill Clinton she was confirmed by a vote of 96-3 even though she had served as a lawyer for the liberal ACLU. In modern day confirmation hearings, that vote would have been much closer.

    Last term, in a rash of 6-3 decisions the fissures were evident.

    After dodging Second Amendment cases for years, for example, the court crafted a 6-3 opinion marking the widest expansion of gun rights in a decade.

    Kagan dissented when a 6-3 court curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, a writing that seemed to trigger Kagan’s inner Ginsburg. She criticized the court for stripping the EPA of the “power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”

    “The Court appoints itself – instead of Congress or the expert agency – the decision-maker on climate policy,” she said.

    “I cannot think of many things more frightening,” Kagan concluded.

    The conservative court is not finished.

    In 2013, Ginsburg wrote a scathing dissent when Roberts penned an opinion gutting a key section of the historic Voting Rights Act.

    Ginsburg wrote at the time that weakening the law when it “has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

    This term, the court is tackling another section of the same law.

    And the court is considering whether to bar colleges and universities from taking race into consideration as a factor in admissions plans.

    In 2002, Ginsburg memorably wrote about why such programs are necessary. “The stain of generations of racial oppression is still visible in our society, and the determination to hasten its removal remains vital,” she said.

    On Friday former clerk Amanda L. Tyler spoke lovingly about her late boss who, she said, had been described as a “prophet, an American hero, a rock of righteousness, and a national treasure.”

    She said Ginsburg had “the best qualities a judge can have: lawyerly precision, an abiding dedication to procedural integrity, a commitment to opening up access to the justice system to ensure that the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”

    The event in the great hushed hall, like many other memorials, served as a reunion of sorts for Ginsburg’s family and her acolytes and a respite from the court’s regular order. On Monday, the justices take the bench again for a new set of cases.

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  • South Carolinians Haley and Scott aim to win over Christian conservatives in their home state | CNN Politics

    South Carolinians Haley and Scott aim to win over Christian conservatives in their home state | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    South Carolinians Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, along with other presidential hopefuls, are set to address a Christian conservative forum on Saturday and present their vision for 2024 as they eye the White House and aim to make their case to a crucial voting bloc in the early voting state.

    The forum, hosted by the Palmetto Family Council, is a chance for speakers to share their stances on issues and engage with conservative voters. But even as Haley, the Palmetto State’s former governor, and Scott, its junior US senator, look to win over their fellow South Carolinians, the two Republicans that have so far dominated the race are notably missing: former president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, was the first Republican to challenge her former boss for the GOP presidential nomination. She kicked off her campaign last month in Charleston, calling for a new generation of leadership and recently spoke to a packed crowd at Myrtle Beach. She’s tried differentiating herself with her foreign policy experience and has centered her campaign on calling for congressional term limits, stronger border security, fiscal responsibility and increased domestic energy production.

    As for Scott, this forum is the latest sign that the Republican senator is testing the waters of the 2024 race. While he has dodged questions about whether he’s planning to run for president, Scott has been laying the groundwork for a campaign by taking his Faith in America “listening tour” to the key voting state of Iowa and South Carolina.

    On Saturday, Scott is expected to deliver a speech hitting several themes in the roughly 25 minutes allotted to him, according to a source familiar. The Republican senator will talk about his faith, the role it played in shaping him as an elected official, how he views the country’s direction, including sharp criticism of President Joe Biden’s agenda but ending with a message of redemption and “better days ahead,” the source told CNN.

    Speakers are allowed to use the time allotted to them however they wish – either delivering a speech, taking questions from the audience, or a combination of both, according to Justin Hall, Palmetto Family Council’s communications director.

    Haley and Scott long have been friends and political allies. In 2012, Haley appointed Scott to the vacant seat left by Sen. Jim DeMint, saying Scott had “earned the seat” from his personality and record. But after Haley announced her presidential bid, Scott declined to endorse her, according to The Post and Courier, in a sign that he could seek the presidency himself. Both had also attended the anti-tax group Club for Growth’s donor retreat in Palm Beach earlier this month alongside other potential GOP candidates.

    GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who’s been weighing a presidential run, will also speak at the forum. Former Vice President Mike Pence, another likely 2024 candidate, was invited but is speaking at a foreign policy panel in Iowa the same day. Other potential candidates who also were extended an invitation but don’t plan to attend include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and South Dakota Gov. Kirsti Noem.

    Much of the early 2024 conversation has revolved around Trump and DeSantis, who isn’t yet a declared candidate. Both were invited to the Palmetto Family Council forum, but neither is expected to attend, according to Hall.

    Trump and DeSantis led a recent CNN poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents of who they’d most likely support for the 2024 Republican nomination. Haley trailed the two at 6%, while Scott was at 2%.

    South Carolina was key to Trump’s political rise in 2016. He won the Republican primary there, solidifying his status in a crowded Republican field as the frontrunner. Trump made the state one of his first stops in January in his first appearance on the campaign trail since announcing his bid for reelection.

    DeSantis, meanwhile, intends to wait until after the Florida legislative session concludes to decide whether to run for president. His national book tour had stops in Iowa and Nevada, but he has yet to visit South Carolina.

    The forum falls a little less than a year out from the crucial South Carolina GOP primary. Republican voters in the state have picked the eventual Republican nominee in nearly every cycle since 1980, except for 2012.

    “We believe that the road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue runs straight through the Palmetto State,” Hall told CNN, adding that the forum “certainly could jumpstart the campaign push in South Carolina.”

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  • French workers may have to retire at 64 and many are in uproar. Here’s why | CNN

    French workers may have to retire at 64 and many are in uproar. Here’s why | CNN

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    Paris
    CNN
     — 

    Impromptu protests broke out in Paris and across several French cities Thursday evening following a move by the government to force through reforms of the pension system that will push up the retirement age from 62 to 64.

    While the proposed reforms of France’s cherished pensions system were already controversial, it was the manner in which the bill was approved – sidestepping a vote in the country’s lower house, where President Emmanuel Macron’s party crucially lacks an outright majority – that arguably sparked the most anger.

    And that fury is widespread in France.

    Figures from pollster IFOP show that 83% of young adults (18-24) and 78% of those aged over 35 found the government’s manner of passing the bill “unjustified.” Even among pro-Macron voters – those who voted for him in the first round of last year’s presidential election, before a runoff with his far-right adversary – a majority of 58% disagreed with how the law was passed, regardless of their thoughts about the reforms.

    Macron made social reforms, especially of the pensions system, a flagship policy of his 2022 re-election and it’s a subject he has championed for much of his time in office. However, Thursday’s move has so inflamed opposition across the political spectrum, that some are questioning the wisdom of his hunger for reforms.

    Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne conceded in an interview Thursday night with TF1 that the government initially aimed to avoid using Article 49.3 of the constitution to crowbar the reforms past the National Assembly. The “collective decision” to do so was taken at a meeting with the president, ministers and allied lawmakers mid-Thursday, she said.

    For Macron’s cabinet, the simple answer to the government’s commitment to reforms is money. The current system – relying on the working population to pay for a growing age group of retirees – is no longer fit for purpose, the government says.

    Labor minister Olivier Dussopt said that without immediate action the pensions deficit will reach more than $13 billion annually by 2027. Referencing opponents of the reforms, Dussopt told CNN affiliate BFMTV: “Do they imagine that if we pause the reforms, we will pause the deficit?”

    When the proposal was unveiled in January, the government said the reforms would balance the deficit in 2030, with a multi-billion dollar surplus to pay for measures allowing those in physically demanding jobs to retire early.

    For Budget Minister Gabriel Attal, the calculus is clear. “If we don’t do [the reforms] today, we will have to do much more brutal measures in the future,” he said Friday in an interview with broadcaster France Inter.

    “No pensions reform has made the French happy,” Pascal Perrineau, political scientist at Sciences Po university, told CNN on Friday.

    “Each time there is opposition from public opinion, then little by little the project passes and basically, public opinion is resigned to it,” he said, adding that the government’s failure was in its inability to sell the project to French people.

    They’re not the first to fall at that hurdle. Pensions reform has long been a thorny issue in France. In 1995, weeks-long mass protests forced the government of the day to abandon plans to reform public sector pensions. In 2010, millions took to the streets to oppose raising the retirement age by two years to 62 and in 2014 further reforms were met with wide protests.

    An anti-pension reform demonstrator writes

    For many in France, the pensions system, as with social support more generally, is viewed as the bedrock of the state’s responsibilities and relationship with its citizens.

    The post-World War II social system enshrined rights to a state-funded pension and healthcare, which have been jealously guarded since, in a country where the state has long played a proactive role in ensuring a certain standard of living.

    France has one of the lowest retirement ages in the industrialized world, spending more than most other countries on pensions at nearly 14% of economic output, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

    But as social discontent mounts over the surging cost of living, protesters at several strikes have repeated a common mantra to CNN: They are taxed heavily and want to preserve a right to a dignified old age.

    Macron is still early in his second term, having been re-elected in 2022, and still has four years to serve as the country’s leader. Despite any popular anger, his position is safe for now.

    However, Thursday’s use of Article 49.3 only reinforces past criticisms that he is out of touch with popular feeling and ambivalent to the will of the French public.

    Politicians to the far left and far right of Macron’s center-right party were quick to jump on his government’s move to skirt a parliamentary vote.

    “After the slap that the Prime Minister just gave the French people, by imposing a reform which they do not want, I think that Elisabeth Borne should go,” tweeted far-right politician Marine Le Pen on Thursday.

    Members of Parliament of left-wing coalition NUPES (New People's Ecologic and Social Union) hold placards as French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne addresses deputies to confirm the force through of the pension law without a parliament vote on Thursday.

    The leader of France’s far-left, Jean-Luc Melenchon was also quick to hammer the government, blasting the reforms as having “no parliamentary legitimacy” and calling for nationwide spontaneous strike action.

    For sure, popular anger over pension reforms will only complicate Macron’s intentions to introduce further reforms of the education and health sector – projects that were frozen by the Covid-19 pandemic – political scientist Perrineau told CNN.

    The current controversy could ultimately force Macron to negotiate more on future reforms, Perrineau warns – though he notes the French President is not known for compromise.

    His tendency to be “a little imperious, a little impatient” can make political negotiations harder, Perrineau said.

    That, he adds, is “perhaps the limit of Macronism.”

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  • Nigerians to vote in governorship polls as ruling party scrambles to regain lost ground in key states | CNN

    Nigerians to vote in governorship polls as ruling party scrambles to regain lost ground in key states | CNN

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    Lagos, Nigeria
    CNN
     — 

    Nigerians will on Saturday vote in delayed governorship polls, weeks after a controversial and disputed presidential election.

    The gubernatorial race will be decided in 28 of Nigeria’s 36 states as the ruling party scrambles to regain lost ground in key states.

    But all eyes will be on the tense contest for control of the country’s wealthy Lagos State, which analysts say will be the “most competitive” in the state’s history.

    “This may be the most competitive governorship election in Lagos State,” political analyst Sam Amadi tells CNN.

    “Many have tried to upturn Lagos in the past and failed because of the entrenched power of Bola Tinubu. As President-elect, his influence may have grown in Lagos but the Obidients are strong,” Amadi says, speaking of supporters of Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi.

    Obi caused shockwaves when it emerged he beat President-Elect Bola Tinubu in his Lagos home turf but placed third in the presidential poll.

    Obi has rejected Tinubu’s victory and is contesting the results in the courts.

    The presidential elections on February 25 were widely criticized for widespread delays, outbreaks of violence and attempts at voter suppression.

    Several observers including the European Union also said the election fell short of expectations and “lacked transparency.”

    The battle for Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub and one of Africa’s largest cities has typically been a two-party race that has never been won by the opposition.

    This is partly credited to political godfather and kingmaker, Bola Tinubu, who is said to have handpicked every Lagos governor since leaving office in 2007.

    Tinubu’s firm grip on Lagos politics now faces an unprecedented threat in Obi’s third-force Labor Party, after losing on home turf.

    Obi is the first presidential candidate from the opposition to win in Lagos.

    Amadi says his popularity with young people might be the game changer in the Lagos gubernatorial poll.

    “They (Obidients) won Lagos in the last (presidential) poll but feel cheated and suppressed. So we might see a more vehement fight. It depends on how motivated and aggrieved the Obidients feel now,” he said.

    Fifteen candidates are seeking to unseat incumbent Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the ruling All Progressives Congress party, who is seeking a second term. But only two are viewed as real threats to his reelection.

    Considered a long shot only a few weeks ago, Labor Party’s Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour is now riding on Obi’s wave and has gained momentum following his party’s surprise win in Tinubu’s stronghold,

    The People’s Democratic Party’s Azeez Olajide Adediran, also known as Jandor, is another strong contender aiming to clinch the Lagos seat for his party for the first time.

    Adediran’s party has polled second in every governorship vote in Lagos since the return to civilian rule in 1999.

    Both men tell CNN they are confident of victory. “For the first time, PDP is going to take Lagos, and I’m going to be the governor,” says Adediran. “People are really tired … the streets of Lagos are yearning for a breath of fresh air and that is what we represent,” he adds.

    A wall is decorated with campaign posters of Lagos gubernatorial candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Abdul-Azeez Olajide Adediran (Jandor) and running mate Funke Akindele in Lagos, on March 7, 2023.

    Rhodes-Vivour told CNN the time to liberate Lagos from “state capture” has come, and he’s next in line to govern the state.

    “I’m next governor of Lagos state,” he declared. “You cannot stop an idea whose time has come. The idea of a new Lagos … that is powered by the people and works for the people as opposed to state capture; that idea, its time has come and no matter what they do, they can’t stop it. That’s where the confidence comes from.”

    Governor Sanwo-Olu has asked voters to re-elect him because of his achievements, which he touts have brought “significant progress” to Lagos, including his commendable handling of the COVID pandemic.

    Lagos gubernatorial candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Babajide Sanwo-Olu is seen in Lagos on January 24, 2023.

    But the governor has failed to pacify angry young people who accuse him of playing a role in the shooting of peaceful protesters railing against police brutality in 2020 by Nigerian soldiers.

    Sanwo-Olu admitted to CNN at the time that footage showed uniformed soldiers firing on peaceful protesters but recently denied ordering the shooting.

    Analyst Amadi tells CNN the gubernatorial poll in Lagos will be a contest between retaining or evicting the old guard.

    “Lagos is a fight between status quo and change,” Amadi said.

    “The incumbent Sanwo-Olu has a good chance of holding his job. But he faces a serious challenge from Gbadebo (Rhodes-Vivour) who has the momentum (of the Obi wave). Jandor (Adediran) is left behind because PDP had been dismantled in southern Nigeria and has no enthusiasm factor in Lagos,” Amadi said.

    “Sanwo-Olu has not been spectacular but is believed to have performed well in some aspects of keeping Lagos going. He may survive the popular revolt on Saturday … but watch out for an upset if the scaremongering of APC and the loss of trust in INEC’s integrity do not demotivate the young voters,” he added.

    Besides attempts at voter suppression, a widespread loss of confidence in the electoral body’s ability to conduct credible elections has eroded the electorate’s trust in the democratic process.

    Only 26% of Nigeria’s more than 93 million registered voters turned up to vote in the last election. This was much lower than the 2019 poll when a third of registered voters ended up voting.

    David Ayodele of civic group EiE Nigeria, tells CNN the February 25 election “deepened the trust deficit between the (electoral) commission and the electorates.”

    Ayodele urged the electoral body to redeem itself in the weekend poll by “naming and prosecuting INEC officials who were caught tampering with the electoral process.”

    Last month, Lagos police authorities said they were investigating an audio clip, in which two men were heard threatening residents of a local community to vote for candidates of the ruling APC or risk being evicted from the area.

    Polls will open from 8:30 a.m. local time (3:30 a.m. ET) Saturday and are expected to close at 2:30 p.m. (9:30 a.m. ET).

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  • Chicago mayoral candidates Johnson and Vallas clash over policing in debate | CNN Politics

    Chicago mayoral candidates Johnson and Vallas clash over policing in debate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Chicago mayoral candidates sparred over public safety in a televised debate Thursday night ahead of the April 4 runoff, which has become the latest big-city mayoral race to test voters’ views on crime and policing.

    Paul Vallas accused progressive rival Brandon Johnson of backing the “defund the police” movement, while Johnson charged that Vallas’ plans to ramp up hiring of police officers would be slow and unrealistic.

    Vallas and Johnson, both of whom say they are Democrats and are competing in a nonpartisan contest, advanced to the runoff after the February 28 primary, when incumbent Lori Lightfoot finished third, dashing her reelection hopes.

    Chicago is an overwhelmingly Democratic city: 83% of its voters backed President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. But Vallas and Johnson are on opposite sides of the party’s divide over police policies.

    Vallas, a more conservative former public schools chief backed by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, has focused his campaign on a pro-police, tough-on-crime message. He has vowed to stem an exodus of city police officers and put more cops on Chicago Transit Authority buses and trains.

    Johnson, a progressive Cook County commissioner who is endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, has at times backed the “defund the police” movement. He now says he would not cut police spending but would seek to invest more in impoverished areas.

    In Thursday night’s debate, broadcast on ABC 7, Vallas repeatedly highlighted Johnson’s previous comments in which he had broadly backed shifting public dollars away from policing and toward community-based programs.

    “I’m not going to defund the police, and you know that. You know that. I have passed multi-billion dollar budgets, over and over again,” Johnson said.

    Johnson has said he would promote 200 new detectives to solve more violent crimes. He also said he would seek to crack down on gun violence by more vigorously enforcing “red flag” laws, which allow courts to temporarily seize firearms from anyone believed to be a danger to themselves or others.

    “The best way to engender confidence in public safety, you’ve got to catch people,” Johnson said.

    Vallas said he would rapidly fill thousands of police vacancies, and put those officers on public transit and in communities.

    “There is no substitute for returning to community-based policing,” Vallas said. “You can’t have confidence in the safety of public transportation when there are not police officers at the platforms and police officers at the stations.”

    The race has focused largely on crime. Violence in the city spiked in 2020 and 2021. And though shootings and murders have decreased since then, other crimes – including theft, car-jacking, robberies and burglaries – increased last year, according to the Chicago Police Department’s 2022 year-end report.

    In their previous debate, Vallas had largely sought to remain above the fray while Johnson went on the attack. But on Thursday night – in a move that portended a more contentious turn in a race with at least three more debates and three candidate forums remaining – Vallas went on the attack in the debate’s opening minutes.

    Vallas criticized Johnson’s proposals to increase several taxes, including hotel and jet fuel taxes, a $4-per-head business tax and a higher sales tax on high-end properties.

    Johnson responded that Vallas is proposing spending increases on public safety without detailing how he would pay for them.

    “You can’t run a multi-billion dollar budget off of bake sales,” Johnson said.

    The two also butted heads over school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic and the role schools play in combating crime.

    Vallas said he would seek to open public schools to students during periods they would typically be closed – including weekends, summers and holidays – to “give kids a safe place to go.”

    He also lambasted Johnson, who is a teacher and is backed by a union that publicly fought with Lightfoot over when to return to in-person learning, for school shutdowns.

    Fifteen months of closures, Vallas said, is “not investing in people.”

    Johnson said that Vallas was using a “Republican talking point” in criticizing school closures during the pandemic.

    “That’s a part of your party,” Johnson said, showing how he has tried to cast Vallas as too conservative for the overwhelmingly blue city.

    Biden and other top Democratic officials, including Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, have stayed out of the runoff.

    Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn are among the rare national voices to wade into the mayoral race, all endorsing Johnson. In a statement this week, Sanders said Johnson “has been a champion for working families in Chicago.”

    Vallas has influential local endorsements, including several city aldermen and former Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, who four times was the top Democratic statewide vote-getter. Meanwhile, Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County board president, endorsed Johnson.

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  • The two biggest 2024 Republican names would mean bad news for Ukraine | CNN Politics

    The two biggest 2024 Republican names would mean bad news for Ukraine | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Russia might be bogged down in its vicious onslaught on Ukraine, but President Vladimir Putin is winning big elsewhere – in the Republican presidential primary.

    The two highest-polling potential GOP nominees – former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – are making clear that if they make it to the White House, Ukraine’s lifeline of US weapons and ammunition would be in danger and the war could end on Putin’s terms. Their stands underscore rising antipathy among grassroots conservatives to the war and President Joe Biden’s marshaling of the West to bankroll Kyiv’s resistance to Putin’s unprovoked invasion.

    “The death and destruction must end now!” Trump wrote in replies to a questionnaire from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson about the war and US involvement. DeSantis, answering the same questions, countered with his most unequivocal signal yet that he’d downgrade US help for Ukraine if he wins the presidency. “We cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland,” he wrote.

    Trump’s warnings that only he can stop World War III and DeSantis’ main argument that saving Ukraine is not a core US national security interest will likely gain even more traction following one of the most alarming moments yet in the war on Tuesday. The apparent downing of a US drone by a Russian fighter jet over the Black Sea was a step closer to the scenario that everyone has dreaded since the war erupted a year ago – a direct clash between US and Russian forces.

    “This incident should serve as a wake-up call to isolationists in the United States that it is in our national interest to treat Putin as the threat he truly is,” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said in a Tuesday statement that read as an implicit rebuke of his party’s leading presidential hopefuls. Others, like Texas Sen. John Cornyn, said DeSantis’ position “raises questions.”

    But the reproach from some senior Senate Republicans may not matter much in today’s GOP. As they fight to outdo one another’s skepticism of Western help for Ukraine, Trump and DeSantis are showing how “America First” Republicans have transformed a party that was led by President Ronald Reagan to victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Their influence is sure to deepen the split in the US House between traditional GOP hawks and followers of the ex-president that is already threatening future aid to Ukraine – even before the 2024 presidential election.

    That divide is playing out in the early exchanges of the GOP primary race as other candidates, including ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence, warn that failing to stop Putin now could lead to disastrous confrontations later. Haley staked out a far more hawkish position on Ukraine in a statement on Tuesday. The former South Carolina governor warned that Russia’s goal was to wipe Ukraine off the map, and that if Kyiv “stopped fighting, Ukraine would no longer exist, and other countries would legitimately fear they would be next.”

    But her position might help explain why she’s trailing in early polls of the race. A new CNN/SSRS poll on Tuesday, for instance, found that 80% of Republicans or Republican-leaning independents thought it was important that the GOP nominee for president believe the US “should not be involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine.”

    GOP political calculations will have a profound geopolitical impact.

    Rising Republican skepticism of US aid to Ukraine presents President Volodymyr Zelensky with the most critical test yet of his international campaign for the weapons and ammunition Ukraine needs to survive. It will also bolster Putin’s apparent belief that he can outlast Western resolve and eventually crush Ukrainian resistance. The possibility that a Republican successor in the White House could abandon Ukraine will also become a bigger issue for Biden, increasing the pressure on him to shore up support among Americans for his policy in Ukraine, which polls show has ebbed a bit in recent months.

    If the war is still going on next year, the 2024 election could become a forum for a wide-ranging debate that will ask the American people to decide between twin impulses that have often divided the nation throughout its history – does the US have a duty to stand up for freedom and democracy anywhere, or should it indulge its more isolationist tendencies?

    Unless Trump or DeSantis fade in the coming months, Ukraine’s fate could effectively be on the ballot in primary races next year and in the November general election. And Biden’s vow to stick with Zelensky “for as long as it takes” could have an expiration date of January 20, 2025 – the next presidential inauguration.

    The rhetoric on Russia coming from the biggest 2024 names caused alarm on Capitol Hill, where many top Republican House committee chairman and senior senators are pressing Biden to do more to support Ukraine – including with the dispatch of F-16 fighter jets.

    Speaking on Hugh Hewitt’s radio program, Sen. Marco Rubio seemed to rebuke his state’s governor – arguing the US does have a national security interest in Ukraine and wondering whether DeSantis’ inexperience was a factor. “I don’t know what he’s trying to do or what the goal is. Obviously, he doesn’t deal with foreign policy every day as governor, so I’m not sure,” Rubio said.

    South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who’s already backed Trump’s 2024 White House bid, warned that those who said Ukraine didn’t matter were also effectively saying the same of war crimes.

    “We’re not invading Russia, we’re trying to expel the Russians from Ukraine, and no Americans are dying, and it is in our national interest to get this right,” Graham told CNN’s Manu Raju.

    Still, while Rubio and Graham represent traditional GOP foreign policy orthodoxy, their comments may only help DeSantis and Trump make their points since many pro-Trump voters often see them as part of a neo-conservative bloc in the party that led the US into years of war in the Middle East.

    South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, also said he disagreed with DeSantis, but he acknowledged that his own stance may not reflect where his party is now. “There are probably going to be other candidates in ’24 on our side who may share that view, and certainly it’s held by Republicans around the country,” Thune said of DeSantis’ perspective.

    The most noteworthy replies to Carlson’s questionnaire came from DeSantis, who has not yet officially launched a campaign, but was revealed by Tuesday’s CNN/SSRS poll to be Trump’s most threatening potential rival. The governor is encroaching on the ex-president’s ideological turf, and after speaking out more generally against current US policy in recent weeks, has now adopted a position apparently designed to hedge against the ex-president’s attacks on the issue.

    “While the U.S. has many vital national interests – securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party – becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis said.

    In response to a question about whether the US should support “regime change” in Russia, the Florida governor appeared to suggest the US is engaged in such a policy, warning that any replacement for Putin might prove “even more ruthless.” There is no indication that the US government is engaged in any attempt to topple Putin. DeSantis did not specifically say he would halt US military aid to Ukraine, leaving himself some political leeway if he were elected president. There remains some doubt about his true beliefs since CNN’s KFile has reported that as a member of Congress he called for the US to send lethal aid to Ukraine.

    But his most recent comments were remarkable in echoing Putin’s talking points. By referring to a “territorial dispute,” the governor minimized Russia’s unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation that Putin insists has no right to exist. His answer on regime change also bolsters a yearslong claim by the Russian leader that Washington is trying to drive him from power, and may be highlighted by the propagandists in Moscow’s official media.

    DeSantis’ responses to Carlson on the war also underscore how the normal relationship between political leaders and media commentators has been inverted by Fox and its star anchor. Carlson warmly approved of DeSantis’ answers, which appeared calculated to win his approval. This put Carlson in the amazing position of potentially curating what could end up being US foreign policy on one of the most critical questions since the end of the Cold War.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently performed a similar genuflection, providing Carlson with exclusive access to US Capitol surveillance tapes from the January 6, 2021, insurrection, which the Fox anchor used to undermine the truth about the most serious attack on US democracy of the modern era.

    In his responses to Carlson, Trump repeated his unprovable claim that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he were president. He demanded an end to the fighting and peace talks that would effectively vindicate the invasion by Putin, to whom he often fawned when he was in the Oval Office. “The President must meet with each side, then both sides together, and quickly work out a deal. This can be easily done if conducted by the right President,” Trump said. “Both sides are weary and ready to make a deal,” he added, in a comment that does not reflect the reality of the war.

    Given that her views contradict Carlson’s, Haley publicly released her answers on Ukraine – and also accused DeSantis of copying Trump’s positions.

    “The Russian government is a powerful dictatorship that makes no secret of its hatred of America. Unlike other anti-American regimes, it is attempting to brutally expand by force into a neighboring pro-American country,” she wrote. “It also regularly threatens other American allies. America is far better off with a Ukrainian victory than a Russian victory.”

    Haley’s statement epitomized the divisions on the war that will animate Republican primary debates that begin later this year – and that will be closely watched in both Kyiv and Moscow. She wouldn’t be Putin’s preferred candidate.

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  • Republicans are having a ‘malaise’ moment | CNN Politics

    Republicans are having a ‘malaise’ moment | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The Make America Great Again movement isn’t so sure that’s possible anymore.

    That’s according to a new CNN poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents conducted by SSRS. While the poll is most focused on the political landscape ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the number that stands out most is the one that suggests a deep pessimism about what’s to come.

    This is from CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy:

    Just 30% of all Republicans and Republican-leaners say the country’s best days are still ahead of it – a dramatic shift from 2019, when Trump held the White House and 77% were optimistic that the best was ahead, and lower even than the 43% who said the same in the summer of 2016, prior to Trump’s election.

    It’s natural that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents would have a dimmer view during a Democratic administration, but the decline from the end of the Obama administration is noteworthy.

    Toward the end of the Trump administration, strong majorities on both sides of the political aisle (67% of those who lean toward Democrats and 77% of those who lean toward Republicans) said the country’s best days were ahead.

    That less than a third of those who lean toward the GOP say the same thing today suggests a dramatic mood shift.

    Note: When we refer to poll respondents in this story, we’re referring both to Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

    There have been warnings about a general national depression before. Then-President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation in July 1979 – 10 days after scuttling a previously planned speech about the energy crisis and subsequently trying to speak to a cross section of Americans – and declared a “crisis of confidence” in the country.

    “For the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years,” Carter said in the remarks, which were mocked by his opponents as his “malaise” speech, although he did not use the word “malaise.”

    The lack of optimism he transmitted to the country has been blamed for contributing to his loss in the presidential election a year later.

    The opinion columnist David French recently wrote in The New York Times that Carter’s speech sounds almost prophetic when read through the lens of today’s political climate.

    “It’s an address better suited to our time than to its own,” according to French.

    It’s certainly true that some of the themes Carter touched on – inflation, energy prices, political divisions and an intractable political process – hit a nerve today.

    “The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America,” Carter said back then.

    He added: “Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy.”

    It’s hard not to read that last line from Carter and consider another detail from the new CNN poll. More than halfway into Joe Biden’s presidency and after all the allegations of 2020 voter fraud have been examined and rejected, a solid majority of Americans who lean toward the GOP – 63% – still do not believe Biden legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency.

    Telling hard truths and encouraging a national therapy session turned out not to be winning politics for Carter and may have actually teed up Ronald Reagan to argue that he could chart a new and more optimistic course than Carter.

    There’s a lot of overlap here. Of the Republicans-leaners who think Biden did not legitimately win, 78% also think the country’s best days are behind us.

    Among the White Republicans and Republican-leaning independents without a college degree who form Trump’s political base, 75% said the best days are behind us in CNN’s poll.

    There’s some more optimism among Republican-leaning Americans with a college degree, who were more likely to prefer Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the new poll: 64% said the best days are behind us.

    Trump, who has officially launched his campaign, has the strongest support among potential GOP primary voters in the CNN poll. DeSantis, who has not formally launched a campaign, is close behind. Neither man has the support of more than 40% of that potential electorate.

    Both men are pushing the idea to their followers that government has been weaponized against them by a racially and culturally sensitive elite – which both Trump and DeSantis derisively refer to as “woke.”

    There is another shift Agiesta and Edwards-Levy note:

    Most Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (61%) say that the country’s increasing racial, ethnic and national diversity is enriching American culture, but a sizable and growing share see it as a threat.

    The 38% who consider those changes a threat now is about twice as high as four years ago, and similar to where the party stood in 2016.

    Meanwhile, a broad 78% majority of Republican-aligned Americans say that society’s values on sexual orientation and gender identity are changing for the worse.

    And 79% say the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses, just a touch below the share who felt that way at the height of the Tea Party movement during Barack Obama’s presidency.

    I couldn’t help read that portion of CNN’s poll and think of the new column by CNN’s Ronald Brownstein, about how Republican-controlled state governments are working to seize the powers of local governance from Democratic-run cities and counties.

    From Brownstein:

    These range from Georgia legislation that would establish a new statewide commission to discipline or remove local prosecutors, to a Texas bill allowing the state to take control of prosecuting election fraud cases, to moves by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey to dismiss from office elected county prosecutors who are Democrats, and a Mississippi bill that would allow a state takeover of policing in the capital city of Jackson.

    While the specifics of these efforts vary from minimum wage and family-leave laws to recycling policies, he argues the larger political struggle is over crime and political justice reform.

    Brownstein notes “an unmistakable racial dimension to these confrontations.”

    He writes, “In many instances, state-level Republicans elected primarily with the support of White, non-urban voters are looking to seize power from, or remove from office, Black or Hispanic local officials elected by largely non-White urban and suburban voters.”

    CNN’s John King put an interesting segment on his “Inside Politics” show in which he applied those current poll numbers to how the GOP primary actually works.

    The fact is that many states award all of their delegates to the highest vote-getter in the primary even if that vote-getter does not receive anywhere near a majority of votes.

    King noted that in 2016, when Trump first secured the GOP nomination, he lost the first contest in Iowa and won in New Hampshire and South Carolina, but with only about a third of the primary vote.

    He ultimately got about 45% of primary votes compared with the 50% split among his three chief rivals. That means the votes are likely out there to defeat Trump. But for now, it would mean Republicans would likely have to coalesce around a single alternative.

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