Category: USA

A judge presiding over Donald Trump’s New York fraud trial confronted a dilemma that the political world has struggled to address: how to rein in the former president’s anger, tantrums, and disregard for rules. This extraordinary day in court saw Trump ordered to testify about his conduct, offering a glimpse of what lies ahead as he faces four criminal trials in the coming year, adding complexity to the upcoming election season.

In a surprising reversal of power dynamics, the judge in New York firmly rebuked the former president, declaring him “not credible” and underscoring that no one is above the law. As a defendant, Trump is now constrained from acting and speaking without restraint, a dynamic that will extend beyond the current trial, setting a pattern for his legal battles as he positions himself as the front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination.

Despite two impeachments and an electoral defeat, Trump’s ability to incite public outrage, manipulate facts, and distort reality has been largely unchecked. However, the courtroom’s commitment to factual accuracy may pose a challenge.

Trump has exhibited simmering frustration during the ongoing fraud trial, which could result in his eponymous company being prohibited from conducting business in New York. The presiding Judge Arthur Engoron had ruled before the trial began that Trump, his organization, and adult sons had engaged in fraudulent activities by inflating the value of his assets, a ruling the former president has appealed.

Trump’s apparent frustration erupted in unusual incidents on Wednesday. He seemingly violated a gag order by making a new attack on the judge’s clerk, labeling Engoron as partisan. In response, the judge called a hearing and fined Trump $10,000 for breaching the gag order, which specifically prohibited him from targeting court personnel. Trump, however, denied the accusation and claimed he was referring to his former associate, Michael Cohen, who had testified against him. Trump was previously fined $5,000 for an earlier violation of the same gag order, involving a social media post targeting the judge’s clerk.

These fines may be relatively insignificant for Trump, considering his wealth, but they serve as a reminder of the legal consequences he may face in multiple trials. These trials cover a range of topics, from his business dealings to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, mishandling classified documents, and a hush money payment to an adult film star. Trump denies any wrongdoing in all these pending cases.

In another dramatic moment, Trump left the courtroom in a huff after the judge refused to dismiss the case due to what appeared to be inconsistent testimony from Cohen regarding Trump’s request to inflate financial statements. The judge firmly rejected the motion, contradicting the Trump team’s argument that Cohen was a crucial witness.

Trump’s tendency to provide ongoing commentary to reporters, despite the trial not being televised, indicates that he might be a challenging client for his legal team. This behavior could persist in his future trials, potentially causing more problems. However, the courtroom customs and legal constraints do not bend to emotional or political arguments, rendering Trump’s outbursts ineffective.

Trump’s behavior aligns with his strategy of leveraging his fame and public profile to shape perceptions. While lawyers argue the case in the courtroom, Trump conducts his own public trial in the corridors. Trump expressed his belief that he’s being treated unfairly, stating, “We are being railroaded here.” Nevertheless, unlike his past as a business tycoon and president, his emotional outbursts won’t secure his desired outcomes, as the court’s rules and the law remain steadfast.

CNN’s senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, noted that aggressive cross-examination by Trump’s legal team is permissible, but inconsistencies in testimony do not automatically end a case. “It doesn’t mean game over, let’s go home,” Honig explained.

Trump’s legal defense strategy has evolved into a political campaign that portrays him as a victim of a legal system manipulated by President Joe Biden to undermine his 2024 White House bid. This strategy has been successful in the GOP primary, helping him amass campaign funds to cover legal expenses and maintain a strong media presence, diverting attention from his campaign rivals.

Several judges are grappling with how to handle Trump’s unconventional behavior. Judge Tanya Chutkan, overseeing the federal election subversion trial in Washington, temporarily suspended a gag order to consider Trump’s request to pause the order during his appeal. She previously warned Trump that as a criminal defendant, he has limitations on what he can say about a case, which Trump’s legal team challenged, claiming it’s an attempt to silence him and hinder his presidential campaign.

The American Civil Liberties Union and its Washington, DC, chapter surprisingly supported Trump in this case, arguing that the broad gag order violated his First Amendment rights. However, prosecutors requested Chutkan to reinstate the order, citing Trump’s recent social media posts about potential witnesses.

Trump’s history of acting with impunity, both in business and politics, is now shaping his defense in legal cases. In the federal election subversion case, his team argues that his efforts to overturn the election were part of his official duties and thus immune from prosecution. Special counsel Jack Smith countered this, asserting that such a stance would allow a sitting president to act unlawfully without fear of prosecution.

During his tenure, Trump often claimed unchecked authority, stating that “the authority is total” when one is the president and falsely asserting that he had the right to do anything as president due to Article II. Trump’s constitutional arguments suggest that a potential second term would be even more lawless, as he has hinted at using the legal system for retribution against his adversaries.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney warned that if Trump regains the presidency, there would be “no guardrails” in his administration. While Trump faces legal constraints for now, his future actions as a potential president remain uncertain.

As we approach the one-year mark before the 2024 presidential election, new polling data sheds light on President Biden’s vulnerability. His consistently low approval ratings, concerns about his age, and neck-and-neck competition with former President Trump in head-to-head polls have raised alarms, particularly in battleground states.

Within the Democratic Party, there’s a division of opinion about the implications of these findings. Some criticize Biden’s team for perceived complacency, while others argue that he needs to energize his base. On a more optimistic note, some Democrats believe that Trump is a risky bet for a general election due in part to the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 events.

A Democratic strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed concerns: “What the White House has not come to terms with is, next year’s election is going to be a referendum on the president — and right now he is losing that vote.”

The strategist further highlighted the astonishing aspect of Biden being tied with a former president facing numerous charges. Trump would be a slight favorite in a 2024 rematch if the election were held today, based on national polling and the electoral college dynamics.

National polling averages, such as RealClearPolitics (RCP), have shown Trump leading for the past month, although he trailed Biden during most of the summer. An Emerson College poll even gave Trump a 2-point lead nationally.

Moreover, recent Bloomberg/Morning Consult polls in key states, including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, revealed Biden trailing, though by relatively narrow margins. It’s worth noting that Biden won all four of these states in the 2020 election.

While not all polls indicate a grim outlook for Biden, the closeness of the numbers underscores ongoing concerns within Democratic circles. Biden’s age, as the oldest president ever, has raised red flags. Several surveys have shown that over 70 percent of the public has doubts about his ability to serve a second term.

His overall approval rating, as per data from FiveThirtyEight, was a mere 41 percent with 54 percent disapproving.

Vice President Harris shares a similar approval rating, which becomes electorally relevant due to concerns about Biden’s age. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has consistently argued that a vote for Biden in 2024 would effectively usher in a Harris presidency.

For some on the left, given the tight election polls, it is imperative for Biden to energize the Democratic base, including Black and Latino voters, as well as younger voters.

As President Biden faces the lead-up to the 2024 election, energizing key demographics may prove to be a complex task. There have been limited advancements on issues significant to the Black community, such as voting rights. Immigration remains a contentious topic and one where the President’s approval ratings are notably lower. Additionally, young progressives often hold more progressive policy stances than the President, making it crucial to galvanize this base.

Michele Weindling, the political director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-oriented progressive group, emphasized that simply portraying Biden as the “lesser of two evils” may not suffice. She noted that Biden’s age isn’t inherently a hindrance to rallying younger voters, pointing to the enthusiasm among youthful progressives for Senator Bernie Sanders, who is over 82 years old.

However, Weindling highlighted significant policy disparities between her group and the President, including issues like climate change and the Israel-Palestine conflict. She stressed the urgency of addressing ongoing conflicts, such as the Israel-Gaza situation.

Some Democrats are more optimistic about Biden’s chances in the 2024 election. They draw parallels with past Democratic presidents like Obama and Clinton, who overcame challenging polling periods in their first terms to secure reelection. Proponents also cite Biden’s robust job creation record, declining inflation, and the expectation that the benefits of his legislative achievements will become more apparent over time.

Biden’s experience and measured demeanor are seen as assets that could appeal to many voters. His recent visit to Israel and his efforts to address international crises, including the war in Ukraine, have been highlighted as indications of his leadership.

Nonetheless, the most significant factor buoying Democratic optimism is the current state of the Republican Party. Former President Trump, the presumed GOP nominee, is entangled in various legal matters, including a civil trial and allegations related to January 6, election interference in Georgia, business conduct in New York, and the handling of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago. Additionally, the Republican House has been without a Speaker for over two weeks, reflecting internal divisions and challenges in governing.

The general perception is that these factors may hinder the Republican Party’s ability to effectively govern, contributing to guarded Democratic optimism about the 2024 election. Despite the closeness of the polls, many Democrats would prefer to be in President Biden’s position than that of former President Trump.

As the 2024 election approaches, the political landscape appears finely balanced, keeping many Democrats on edge.

The Supreme Court has granted a second major case on social media, focusing on whether the Biden administration violated the 1st Amendment by urging platforms to combat “misinformation and disinformation” related to COVID-19.

Three conservative justices dissented, advocating to maintain a judge’s order that prohibited administration officials from contacting social media sites, emphasizing the importance of protecting private speech. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, criticized the court’s decision to take on the issue, considering it “highly disturbing.”

The Supreme Court now faces two opposing perspectives on how the 1st Amendment’s free speech right applies to social media. These perspectives were supported by conservative judges from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

The first perspective argues that a state (in this case, Texas) doesn’t violate the 1st Amendment by imposing heavy fines on privately operated social media platforms for alleged discrimination against conservative viewpoints.

The second perspective suggests that federal officials violated the 1st Amendment by “significantly encouraging” social media sites to remove disinformation.
In both cases, Republican officials from Texas, Louisiana, and Missouri, along with 5th Circuit judges, assert that conservative viewpoints are unfairly suppressed on social media.

In the previous month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a free-speech challenge to a Texas law granting the state the authority to regulate prominent social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The law was criticized by NetChoice, a coalition of tech groups, for violating the free-speech rights of social media sites, but the 5th Circuit upheld it on the basis of combating “censorship.” The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the law with a 5-4 vote.

The new case emerged from a lawsuit initiated by Republican state attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana, who alleged that federal officials, including the surgeon general and the FBI, had conspired to “censor disfavored speech” by “significantly encouraging social media platforms” to remove certain content.

They brought their complaint to U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee in Monroe, Louisiana, who issued a broad order on the Fourth of July that prohibited numerous federal officials and agencies from “urging or encouraging” the removal of “protected speech” from social media. He described the administration’s actions as “arguably … the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

The Biden administration appealed to the 5th Circuit, and in early September, a different panel of three judges upheld most of the judge’s ruling. They argued that administration officials had engaged in a campaign to pressure social media companies into suppressing content disapproved by the government.

The injunction prohibits the White House and its employees from taking actions that coerce or significantly encourage social media companies to remove protected free speech content. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, representing the government, filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, asking it to block the judge’s order and rule on the constitutional dispute.

She contended that the case involves an unprecedented injunction that empowers the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to oversee the Executive Branch’s communications with and about social media platforms. She argued that the states lacked standing to sue, and White House officials had the right to speak out against the spread of falsehoods about COVID vaccines or the 2020 election.

The complaints from the Republican state attorneys general extended beyond COVID-19, as they claimed that “the FBI orchestrated a deceptive campaign to induce platforms to censor the New York Post’s October 14, 2020 story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, just before the 2020 election.” They also alleged that federal censorship activities intensified when President Biden took office in early 2021.

Jeff Landry, the Louisiana attorney general who initiated the lawsuit, was elected as the state’s governor last week.

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio failed in his second attempt to become speaker of the House, again falling short of the 217 votes needed to be elected and casting doubt about the way forward in the still-leaderless lower chamber.

Jordan won just 199 votes in the House on Wednesday morning, with 22 Republicans withholding their support and voting for a variety of protest candidates. All 212 Democrats voted for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s leader in the House.

Jordan’s total was one fewer than the 200 he secured on the first ballot on Tuesday, a sign that he has struggled to make any inroads among the GOP holdouts. Four Republicans who voted for him on Tuesday defected in the latest vote, while he picked up support from two others. One member who was absent for the first ballot also supported Jordan in this round.

Republican Lawmakers rejected Rep. Jim Jordan for House speaker on a first ballot Tuesday, October 17^th, as an unexpectedly numerous 20 holdouts denied the hard-charging ally of Donald Trump the GOP majority needed to seize the gavel.

Additional voting was postponed as the House hit a standstill, stuck while Jordan works to shore up support from Republican colleagues to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy for the job. Reluctant Republicans are refusing to give Jordan their votes, viewing the Ohio congressman as too extreme for the powerful position of House speaker, second in line to the presidency. Next votes were expected Wednesday.

“We’re going to keep working,” Jordan said at the Capitol as evening fell. It’s been two weeks of angry Republican infighting since McCarthy’s sudden removal by hard-liners, who are now within reach of a central seat of U.S. power. The vote for House speaker, once a formality in Congress, has devolved into another bitter showdown for the gavel.

Jordan (R-Ohio) secured 200 of the necessary 217 votes, while Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) got the full backing of Democratic members, with 212 votes. Jordan had gained some major momentum, picking up endorsements from key players who had initially said they would not vote for him. But during Tuesday’s midday vote, 20 Republicans cast votes for other members.

Jordan’s loss of 20 GOP votes – one more than former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in his first of 15 votes to secure the gavel – has left the GOP even more uncertain when it can reach consensus over who should lead the party. A second planned vote was abruptly postponed from Tuesday evening to Wednesday.

Many in the party are rallying behind efforts that would give McHenry more power to act as a temporary Speaker, expanding a role otherwise appears to be largely dedicated to organizing the process of electing a new speaker.

Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.) – who has pledged to continue to vote for McCarthy for speaker – told reporters Tuesday that moves to further empower McHenry have gained momentum – “as they should.”

The political climb has been steep for Jordan, the combative Judiciary Committee chairman and a founding member of the right-flank Freedom Caucus. He is known more as a chaos agent than a skilled legislator, raising questions about how he would lead. Congress faces daunting challenges, risking a federal shutdown at home if it fails to fund the government and fielding Biden’s requests for aid to help Ukraine and Israel in the wars abroad.

With the House Republican majority narrowly held at 221-212, Jordan can afford to lose only a few votes to reach the 217 majority threshold, if there are no further absences.

Jordan conferred immediately afterward with McCarthy, who fared nearly as badly in January, having lost almost as many votes on the first of what would become a historic 15 ballots for the gavel.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, retired on Friday with a passionate address that indirectly criticized former President Trump, asserting that the U.S. military’s allegiance isn’t pledged to a “wannabe dictator.”

In the previous week, Trump had accused Milley of “treason” for allegedly conducting back-channel reassurances with his Chinese counterpart towards the end of his tenure, even suggesting the Army general should face execution.

Milley delivered his remarks at a ceremony in Virginia, stating, “We are unique among the world’s militaries. We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or a dictator.”

He continued, “And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America — and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

Appointed by Trump in 2018, Milley frequently found himself at odds with the former president, notably in the incident involving St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C., during the racial injustice protests ignited by George Floyd’s murder in June 2020.

Milley briefly appeared alongside Trump, wearing combat fatigues, as Trump walked to St. John’s for a photo opportunity. Later, the four-star general publicly apologized for creating the perception that the military was involved in domestic politics, expressing regret for his presence — a move that didn’t sit well with Trump.

During that same summer, Milley supported the initiative to rename Army bases bearing the names of Confederate generals, a position that clashed with Trump’s views.

In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Milley sought to ensure a peaceful transition of power when he assured his Chinese counterpart that the American government had no intentions of initiating hostilities, as documented in the book “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

Following the election, with concerns of a potential coup by Trump, Milley instructed his subordinates not to follow orders from anyone unless he was involved, as reported in “Peril.”

While Trump was not directly mentioned during Friday’s ceremony at Joint Base-Myer Henderson Hall, the speakers lavished praise on Milley for his over four decades of service to the country in the military.

President Biden commended Milley’s invaluable partnership, describing him as “unwavering in the face of danger.” Biden recounted an incident where Milley had run across a bridge laden with mines to prevent two battle tanks from crossing with wounded troops.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin referred to Milley as both a scholar and a warrior, emphasizing his dedication to leading the joint military forces.

The ceremony also featured the swearing-in of the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., formerly the Air Force chief of staff.

The world’s seen hundreds of thousands of pictures of Donald Trump. But this one’s different.

In Donald Trump’s mug shot taken at the Fulton County Jail on Thursday, he’s looking straight into the camera. His platinum blonde cotton candy wisp of hair shimmers in the harsh jailhouse lighting. His eyes are locked in a hard stare. His mouth is flattened in a grimace. Instead of smiling like some of his co-defendants, he appears to be scowling.

The mug shot was released by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office roughly an hour after the former President was booked as inmate P01135809 over charges that he illegally schemed to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Trump’s booking in Atlanta is the fourth time he’s faced criminal charges in six months, but the first time his face has been captured for the iconic symbol of a run-in with the law. In previous cases, the courts agreed Trump didn’t need to have a mug shot taken, prompting his campaign to design a fake mug shot, print it on T-shirts and offer them for sale at $36 each in an effort to galvanize his base.

Mug shots have been taken since the 1800s to help authorities identify people accused of a crime if they escape or don’t show up for court, or later, after being convicted and released, to help authorities recapture them if they’re accused of other crimes. Trump’s face is so well known, taking another image of him is hardly necessary, and authorities during his previous appearances agreed to waive the requirement. But not Fulton County, Georgia.

Speaking to reporters at the Atlanta airport after being booked, Trump said that he did “nothing wrong” and called the case a “travesty of justice.” He added: “We have every right to challenge an election we think is dishonest.”

While several of Trump’s Republican rivals for president have criticized the multiple prosecutions against him, they have also acknowledged that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

Trump is the first President to ever pose for a mug shot. The closest history has to offer was the 1872 arrest of President Ulysses S. Grant, who was taken to a local police station in Washington, D.C. for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage. No mug shot was taken in the incident.

(AP) — A day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, as the country was still reeling from the violent attempt to halt the transfer of presidential power, a local Republican Party official greeted a group of computer experts outside the election office in a rural county in south Georgia, where they were given access to voting equipment.

Their intent was to copy software and data from the election systems in an attempt to prove claims by President Donald Trump and his allies that voting machines had been rigged to flip the 2020 election to his challenger, Democrat Joe Biden, according to a wide-ranging indictment issued late Monday.

Several of those involved are among the 19 people, including the former president, charged with multiple counts in what Georgia prosecutors describe as a “conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”

The charges related to the breach of election equipment in Coffee County highlight that the pressure campaign by the former president and his allies didn’t stop with state officials and lawmakers, but extended all the way down to local government. Relying on Georgia’s racketeering law, the type of prosecution more typically associated with mobsters, the indictment alleges the events in Coffee County were part of a wider effort by Trump associates to illegally access voting equipment in multiple states.

“The one thing that Coffee County shows, and these other counties as well, is that the effort behind Jan. 6 didn’t stop on Jan. 6,” said Lawrence Norden, an election security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s School of Law. “The ongoing effort to undermine and sabotage elections has continued.”

The security breach inside the election office in Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, is among the first known attempts by Trump allies to access voting systems as they sought evidence to back up their unsubstantiated claims that such equipment had manipulated the presidential vote. It was followed a short time later by breaches in three Michigan counties involving some of the same people and again in a western Colorado county that Trump won handily.

While the county-level equipment breaches have raised alarms about election data falling into the wrong hands and prompted two other prosecutions, they were absent from the recent federal indictment of Trump alleging interference in the 2020 election. The Georgia case is the first to argue that the breaches were part of a conspiracy by Trump and his allies to overturn the results.

Four people face six counts related to the breach in Coffee County, including conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit computer theft and conspiracy to defraud the state. They are lawyer and Trump ally Sidney Powell, former Coffee County elections director Misty Hampton, former Coffee County GOP Chair Cathy Latham, who also served as a false elector for Trump, and Scott Graham Hall, an Atlanta-area bail bondsman who prosecutors say is associated with longtime Trump adviser David Bossie.

A lawyer for Powell declined comment, while messages seeking responses from the others were not immediately returned.

Although Trump continues to promote his claims about the election, multiple reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states where he disputes his loss — including in Georgia, which counted the presidential ballots three times — have confirmed Biden’s win. Trump’s claims also were rejected by dozens of judges, including several he appointed. His attorney general and an exhaustive review by The Associated Press found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have changed the results.

After the 2020 election, Trump and Powell pushed various conspiracy theories about voting machines, specifically related to the Dominion Voting Systems equipment used in Georgia. Dominion earlier this year reached a $787 million settlement with Fox News over false claims aired on the network, including by Powell.

Court documents in Georgia show Powell hired a forensic data firm on Dec. 6, 2020, to collect and analyze Dominion equipment in Michigan and elsewhere, and prosecutors allege the breach of election equipment in Coffee County was “subsequently performed under this agreement.”

On Jan. 7, 2021, Hall and employees of the data firm traveled to the election office to copy software and data from voting equipment and were greeted outside by GOP official Latham and then taken on a tour of the office by elections director Hampton, according to the indictment and video surveillance obtained in an unrelated case about Georgia’s electronic voting machines.

Later videos showed Hampton opening the office on Jan. 18, when it was otherwise closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. She allowed in Douglas Logan and Jeff Lenberg, both of whom have been active nationally in efforts to challenge the 2020 election and were part of the effort to examine voting machines in Michigan.

Neither Logan or Lenberg were charged in Monday’s indictment.

Logan’s company, Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based firm with little election experience, was later hired by GOP lawmakers in Arizona to conduct a review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County. It ultimately confirmed Biden’s win but claimed to find various irregularities — claims that election experts said were inaccurate, misleading or based on a flawed understanding of the data.

In Coffee County, the men worked late into the evening, returning the following day. Lenberg also was seen at the office on at least three more days later that month, according to information collected in the separate voting machine lawsuit. Hampton resigned soon after their visits amid allegations of fraudulent timesheets.

This week’s indictment also mentions a Dec. 18, 2020, session in the Oval Office, where Trump allies including Powell and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, proposed ordering the military to seize voting machines and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of voter fraud in Georgia and other battleground states Trump lost.

In Michigan, authorities have charged three people in connection with breaches in three counties, including former Republican state attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno, who along with the others has pleaded not guilty.

So far, the special counsel assigned to the case has not charged any of the employees who handed over the voting equipment nor has he charged those who were asked to analyze them. In a statement, the special counsel said they had been deceived.

With Monday’s indictment, Hampton becomes the second top county election official to be charged in connection with a security breach in their office. The first was Tina Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, who has emerged as a prominent figure among those who say voting machines are rigged. Both are no longer working in elections.

Prosecutors allege Peters and her deputy were part of a “deceptive scheme” to provide unauthorized access to the county’s voting systems during a May 2021 breach that eventually resulted in a copy of the voting system hard drive being posted online.

Weeks afterward, Peters appeared at an event hosted by Trump ally Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who has been seeking to prove the 2020 election was stolen and has called for a ban on voting machines.

Peters has denied wrongdoing and faces trial later this year, Her deputy pleaded guilty to lesser charges as part of an agreement with prosecutors.

Experts have described the unauthorized Colorado release as serious, saying it could provide a “practice environment” that would allow anyone to probe for vulnerabilities that could be exploited during a future election. Experts also worry it could be used to spread misinformation about voting equipment.

Colorado’s chief election official, Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold, said accountability is crucial to deterring any future attempts to illegally access voting systems. “We cannot allow election officials to destroy elections from within,” she said.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a business visionary running for the Republican presidential nomination, has released a rundown of expected decisions for the U.S. Supreme Court, with an end goal to feature his moderate certifications to early-state citizens who might have one or two serious misgivings of an up-and-comer without a political foundation.

The move reverberations one made by Donald J. Trump in the 2016 official mission, when he was all the while confronting inquiries from Republican electors about his past as a Democrat from New York who had once upheld fetus removal privileges and had showed up additional moderate on specific issues.

The roster includes two senators — Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah — former Solicitor General Paul Clement and a half-dozen of the nation’s most conservative federal appellate court judges. Some of them have worked to limit abortion and transgender rights.

Ramaswamy also named seven judges, from various federal district courts, the U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, as a pool from which he would select U.S. circuit court nominees if he is elected.

“We were looking for diversity of vantage points on the Constitution, but without a diversity of commitment to the originalist understanding of the Constitution,” Ramaswamy said in an interview with NBC News.

Ramaswamy’s rundown, detailed prior by Axios, incorporates legal advisers who have controlled on different parts of the Republican culture wars, including strict issues, free discourse, antibody commands and transsexual privileges. In a proclamation, Mr. Ramaswamy looked to differentiate his way to deal with that of President Biden, who promised during his mission to designate the main Person of color to the most noteworthy court, which he did when he named Ketanji Brown Jackson. Mr. Ramaswamy excused that move as “purely skin-deep diversity.”

Ramaswamy stated, “The unwavering dedication to the principles of originalism and commitment to a constitutionalist judicial philosophy is what each of the individuals I would appoint share.” Our courts are the last line of guard against a managerial express that guidelines by fiat, enacts from the seat, smothering opportunity and truth.”

Ramaswamy said he, his staff and what helpers portray as “outsider associations” went over every one of the compositions and choices of the nine appointed authorities on his rundown, zeroing in on originalism — the legal way of thinking that depends on the expressions of the Constitution when it was composed rather than an understanding in light of current perspectives — and a “guarantee to a constitutionalist legal way of thinking.”

In early-state and national polls, Ramaswamy is polling well behind Mr. Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Be that as it may, Mr. Ramaswamy has committed broad opportunity to Iowa, where his rundown of judges for a potential open Supreme Court seat could matter.

His list includes Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas. Mr. Lee was on Mr. Trump’s initial list in 2016. Mr. Cruz has been mentioned on lists of prospective conservative jurists, but his decision to object to certifying the 2020 election’s Electoral College outcome would raise hackles among Democrats, who may cite other objections as well.

Judge James Ho, who serves on the Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit, which incorporates Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, is additionally on the rundown. An individual from the moderate Federalist Society and a previous representative for Equity Clarence Thomas, Judge Ho has been a vocal rival of the right to a fetus removal.

Another legal adviser, Judge Lawrence Van Dyke of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, was designated for that situation by Mr. Trump in 2019. At that point, the American Bar Association said in a letter that it had worries that he wouldn’t be reasonable for L.G.B.T.Q. individuals.

Others on the rundown incorporate Appointed authority Lisa Branch, an individual from the Federalist Society who sits on the Court of Allures for the eleventh Circuit; Paul D. Forebearing, a previous specialist general; Judge Thomas M. Hardiman of the Court of Allures for the Third Circuit, who was on Mr. Trump’s underlying short rundown to supplant Equity Antonin Scalia; Judge Justin R. Walker of the Court of Allures for the Locale of Columbia Circuit; and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John K. Bush.

Former President Trump predicted Wednesday that he will soon face arrest and indictment for his role in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump is basing that assessment on the fact that his attorneys have been informed he is a target of the federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.

If Trump is indeed indicted, it would be the third case in which he has been charged this year. Possible charges loom in a fourth case in Georgia.

Here is a roundup of the legal challenges Trump faces.

New York and the hush money payments

Trump’s first criminal indictment is in many ways the least compelling.

In early April, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg laid out 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.

The charges relate to three stories about Trump’s personal life. The most famous of these centers on porn actress Stormy Daniels, who alleges she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. A $130,000 deal to buy Daniels’s silence was sealed by Michael Cohen, Trump’s now-estranged attorney, in the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.

The Bragg indictment also encompasses payments made by Trump allies to another woman — former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who alleges she had a sexual relationship with him, and an additional, smaller deal allegedly aimed at silencing a former Trump Tower doorman.

The charges, in simple terms, are that the Trump Organization concealed these hush-money payments in its official business records.

Theoretically, Trump could face a four-year jail sentence on every count, which would make for a maximum sentence of 136 years. However, most legal experts consider it inconceivable the sentence would be anywhere close to that punitive, even if he is found guilty.

Trump has pleaded not guilty. His allies contend that a criminal case would not even have been brought against a private citizen who engaged in the same conduct.

Mar-a-Lago and the classified documents

Trump’s second indictment — and the first to come from special counsel Jack Smith, who is also investigating Jan. 6 — is significantly stronger.

Trump has been charged with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, one count of making false statements and four additional offenses pertaining to different forms of concealment.

A Trump aide, Walt Nauta, is the co-defendant on five of the charges and has been individually charged for making false statements.

The indictment lays out its case in some detail, with several accompanying photos.

It includes a transcript of a conversation in which Trump appears to acknowledge that at least one document in his possession is “secret information” and “highly confidential.”

There are also allegations that, if true, look like textbook examples of obstruction. The indictment includes an episode where, under subpoena to produce documents, Trump muses as to whether his legal team could simply not “play ball,” or deny he possesses the relevant documents.

There are also allegations that boxes of documents were moved at Trump’s direction, seemingly to hide them from Trump’s own attorney.

The obstruction charge alone carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all the charges at a June 13 arraignment in Miami. He has furiously attacked Smith in speeches and on social media, and his legal team has sought to delay a trial until after the 2024 election.

The investigation into Jan. 6

In his Truth Social post Wednesday morning, Trump said that the official notification that he was a target “almost always means an arrest and indictment.”

The former president is correct on that point.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander are among those reported to have testified to the grand jury.

An indictment is expected any day now, and much speculation concerns what the actual charges will be.

Multiple news outlets reported Wednesday that the warning letter mentions federal statutes relating to deprivation of rights, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and tampering with a witness.

The referrals made to the Department of Justice (DOJ) by the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 late last year also provide some possible clues.

Referrals have no real legal force, but the committee prodded the DOJ to look at possible charges of inciting or aiding an insurrection; obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the United States; and conspiracy to make a false statement.

If charges are indeed pressed, Trump is virtually certain to plead not guilty.

In a second Truth Social post Wednesday, he contended he had “the right to protest an Election that I am fully convinced was Rigged and Stolen.”

The ongoing Georgia probe

Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis first asked for a grand jury to be empaneled in January 2022. Her request was fulfilled four months later.

Willis’s original request contended that there was a “reasonable probability” that the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia were “subject to possible criminal disruptions.”

Even among Trump loyalists, there has long been trepidation about the Georgia probe.

The main reason is that Trump was recorded during a phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) on Jan. 2, 2021.

In that call, Trump — still the president — pressed Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overcome President Biden’s narrow margin of victory in the state. Biden had carried the Peach State by fewer than 12,000 votes.

Trump also warned ominously that Raffensperger could face criminal consequences if he did not comply. Raffensperger later wrote that he construed Trump’s words as “a threat.”

It’s possible, of course, that Willis in the end indicts nobody — or that she indicts Trump allies but not the former president himself.

She has suggested a charging decision will be made by Aug. 18

Depending on their political affiliation, Americans had a wide range of opinions regarding the most recent decisions made by the Supreme Court, including those that restricted the use of race-based affirmative action in higher education and prevented student loan forgiveness.

New surveying directed by ABC News/Ipsos shows that Americans’ reactions to the High Court have been uneven, with the level of conservatives and free thinkers who view the court’s choices as driven by governmental issues remaining to a great extent unaltered. Meanwhile, Democrats are becoming more and more vocal about their belief that the justices base their decisions on their political opinions rather than the law. While just 33% of conservatives and a big part of free movers say the court leads basically based on hardliner political perspectives, 3/4 of leftists currently have that perspective – – a spike of 20 rate focuses since eighteen months prior when the inquiry was posed to in a January 2022 ABC News/Ipsos survey.

ABC News sought out poll participants to learn more about their perspectives. According to follow-up interviews with poll respondents, there is a high degree of polarization, and opinions within partisan groups are somewhat varied. Individuals from the two players have differing insights about the level of the court’s politicization, whether it involves concern, and the thing to do about it. All respondents requested to be recognized simply by their most memorable names aside from where generally showed.

Conservatives

A solid greater part of conservatives – – around 66%, as indicated by ABC News/Ipsos surveying – – accept that High Court judges pursue their choices based on regulation, not legislative issues.

Asha Urban, who spoke with ABC News earlier this month at a Trump rally in South Carolina, says that the justices are focused on the law. She advised, “Rule on the law, and push other things back to the states that need to be ruled in the states.”

Urban believes that former President Donald Trump’s tenure was marked by the appointment of three Supreme Court justices. She also believes that the Trump-appointed justices are reversing a legacy of politicized rulings prior to his presidency.

She stated, “He campaigned on bringing in conservative judges who would be constitutionalists rather than politicians.” I believe that is what the vast majority of us need.”

Michael, a South Carolina Republican, has a different perspective. He was surprised to learn that Republicans were more likely than Democrats to believe that Supreme Court justices rule based on their personal political views. He is one of about a third of Republicans who believe this.

He jokingly stated, “It distresses me that I might lean toward the Democrats.” He concurs with the court’s new choices on governmental policy regarding minorities in society and understudy loans. In any case, the 74-year-old is worried by the way that the court’s navigation could turn out to be in an exposed fashion political later on – – a pattern he sees as connected with the country’s polarization overall.

He stated, “I’m worried that they’re not following the law.” They weren’t chosen. We have no recourse when a president serves them up—and it’s for life. They can’t be voted out.

Concerns about the direction of the court were expressed by Dwight Edward Allen, a 47-year-old Kentucky man who describes himself as “more of a conservative than a Republican.” While he accepts that the judges pursue sound legitimate choices more often than not, including their new choice with respect to educational loans, he said that the court is turning out to be more political, and explicitly that it is “going in reverse.”

“That is great assuming you’re white or special, yet in the event that you’re simply attempting to scrape by, then, at that point, it’s not,” he said.

Democrats According to ABC News/Ipsos polling, many Democrats view the Supreme Court as an increasingly politicized institution after a year of controversial rulings.

One such Democrat who is concerned about partisanship on the Supreme Court is Natalie. She stated that her upbringing as a Filipina immigrant gave her a profound appreciation for nonpartisan judicial systems and that she is concerned about what she sees as the weakening of democracy in the United States as a whole.

“I know what it’s like to live under a dictatorship because I spent my childhood in the Philippines under martial law. She stated, “I know what it’s like when the politicians in power influence the Supreme Court.”

Natalie said that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on affirmative action, President Joe Biden’s policy on student loan debt, and abortion show that the court doesn’t always follow the law.

“Experiencing childhood in a nation where we generally admired the majority rule standards of the US, and perceiving how it’s getting disintegrated the present moment, is troubling to me,” she added.

Another Democrat who is concerned about partisanship on the court, Vicki, claims that politics have become more influential on the court in the past year. She shared, “I think that they are more partisan now than they have been in the past.”

Vicki emphasized that justices should adhere to the letter of the law and should not be influenced by political parties or politicians—something that, according to her, has not been the case in recent months.

She stated, “I idealistically believe that they should be ruling based on what is written in the Constitution, rather than what the party supporting the president that appointed them might support.”

According to ABC News/Ipsos polling, independents are roughly evenly divided regarding whether the court rules primarily on the basis of the law.

Greg Freeman, an autonomous, said that albeit the ongoing High Court judges’ decisions convey hardliner inclinations, they are sensible translations of the law.

He stated, “Even though it appears that what they’re doing right now is partisan…” He added, “I think we’re just seeing that the decisions of the court are very reflective of the presidents who nominated them.”

That Freeman still has faith in the Court despite partisanship. The 49-year-old South Carolinian, who asserts that he has major concerns with both political parties, views it as a natural part of a democracy’s power struggles.

“At the point when certain issues were deciphered contrastingly in past High Court decisions, moderates jumped on a ‘liberal’ court. In an email to ABC News, Freeman wrote, “Liberals are railing against a mostly conservative court now that the reverse is arguably true.” Partisanship in the Court is the same old thing, and it has a major impact in how presidents are picked by citizens. Continuously has, consistently will.”

Dan, another California independent, concurred with Freeman’s diagnosis but expressed concern about the trend. He declined to discuss specific cases but stated that he senses that the court has become more political over the past decade. He self-identifies as a swing voter.

“The current court appears to be biased, in my opinion,” he stated. “I’m concerned that the current Supreme Court would change long-term positions.” A decade prior, I could never have said that.”

Dan said that he wouldn’t uphold extending the quantity of judges on the court, an answer that has been proposed by a few Vote based legislators, assuming that the judges were still politically named. However, he expressed broad support for the establishment of term limits for Supreme Court justices and other measures to make the court less partisan.

The high school student government vote in the classic 1999 film “Election” has everything: bare desire, crusade banner destroying, voting form control, unfaithfulness and then some Tracy Flick is played by Reese Witherspoon, who can differentiate between “morals” and “ethics” and always raises her hand first in class. Jim McAllister, who has been named teacher of the year three times, is played by Matthew Broderick. He doesn’t like Tracy and gets a popular jock to run against her for student body president.

In any case, what the skilled author Tom Perotta probably couldn’t envision was a political race wherein two disliked competitors get down to business for president. That doesn’t occur in secondary school, even in an ironical film.

While a great deal can occur before the primaries start one year from now, the two driving competitors right now, President Joe Biden and previous President Donald Trump, are both disagreeable with the American public.

Only 41% of Americans, according to a June CNN poll, approve of Biden’s performance. Trump finished his administration in 2021, days after the January 6 US State house revolt, with a typical endorsement rating that was even lower – 39%. 59% of all Americans believe that Trump should end his campaign following his indictment this year on federal charges of mishandling classified documents.

“This puts a lot of Americans in a position they don’t want to be in,” Harry Enten wrote last month. At this point, a historically high percentage of them dislike either man. “A plurality (36%) viewed neither candidate favorably, while 33% viewed Trump favorably and 32% viewed Biden favorably,” according to a CNN poll.

“Even with his mediocre approval ratings,” Biden has advantages over some of his predecessors, according to historian Julian Zelizer. He has “a formidable legislative record,” as he puts it. He can boast of a robust economy with numerous jobs and price stability now that inflation has subsided. But he argued that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s primary challenge must concern the president. Biden also benefits from the specter of a second Trump presidency, which is enough to rally Democrats and scare voters who might otherwise be tempted by a challenger.

Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush are just a few examples from history who lost out in crucial primaries. Large numbers of Biden’s 2020 allies are disappointed with the president, and any assaults Kennedy will release could additionally harm Biden and give an establishment to conservatives to pursue him in the mission,” composed Zelizer. If Biden’s name is not on the ballot, RFK Jr. could even win the New Hampshire primary. The president is in favor of depriving that state of its right to hold the first-in-the-nation primary in favor of South Carolina, which was the state that gave Biden’s 2020 campaign a lot of energy.

The climactic finish to the High Court term kept on resonating the week before. It was just a year prior that the court’s moderate larger part upset Roe v. Swim, a disagreeable move that permitted liberals to score a few major political wins and keep away from a lamentable midterm political race.

The current year’s choices, dismissing governmental policy regarding minorities in society in school confirmations and striking down Biden’s understudy loan pardoning plan, are more averse to assemble electors, contended David Imprint.

David Mark wrote, “Democrats plan to put the Supreme Court on trial in the lead up to the elections in 2024.” However, Democrats face the challenge of the court’s views on the issues pertaining to higher education being more in line with voters’ values than their own. However their political fight intend to defame the High Court has as of recently been to a great extent effective, liberals are ready to make a significant error on the off chance that they expect the current year’s choices will push more individuals against the court and in this way further into Popularity based arms… ”

“Consider that in the country’s transcendent blue stronghold of California, Biden cavorted to triumph against Trump. However, on the same ballot, voters rejected a measure repealing California’s affirmative action ban from 1996 by 57%-43%.

Problem with free speech Kara Alaimo wrote that a Supreme Court decision “that makes it harder to hold people responsible for harassment” got lost in the rush of the end of the term. Online harassment is protected by the First Amendment unless the perpetrator disregards a “substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence,” according to the court, which overturned a man’s conviction for stalking and inflicting “emotional distress” on singer Coles Whalen.

“While the court may claim to be defending free speech by ruling that the threats were protected by the First Amendment,” the decision is likely to censor and silence harassment victims.

In court and beyond, “Finding the right balance between free speech and protecting people from abuse is difficult.”

When asked about the ideal age of a president, around half of Americans (49%) say they prefer someone in their 50s, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Another 24% say it’s best for a president to be in their 60s, while 17% say they should be in their 40s.

Just 3% of Americans say they prefer a president to be in their 70s or older. An equally tiny share (3%) say it’s best for a president to be in their 30s. (The minimum age for a presidential candidate is 35.)

The survey asked Americans about the best age for presidents generally. It did not refer to President Joe Biden – at 80, the oldest president in U.S. history – or former President Donald Trump, who is 77.

Age differences in views of the ideal age for a president

Younger adults are more favorable than older Americans toward presidents being in their 30s and 40s. About half (48%) of adults under the age of 30 say it is ideal for a president to be in their 30s or 40s; only 6% of adults over the age of 50 share this view.

By contrast, older adults prefer a president who is in their 60s or older. For example, 41% of adults in their 50s or older say they prefer a president in their 60s or older. Only 11% of adults in their 30s or younger say the same.

Partisan views of the ideal age for a president

Democrats and Republicans have similar views about the best age range for a president.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are slightly more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners (25% vs. 15%) to prefer presidents in their 30s and 40s, while Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to prefer presidents in their 60s or older (32% vs. 24%). However, these minor differences are largely due to the age composition of the parties.

Among Democrats, views on the ideal age range for a president are similar to what they were during the 2020 presidential election cycle. The question was not asked of Republicans in the 2019 survey.

The most significant obstacle President Biden faces in winning re-election next year appears to be voters’ concerns that he is too old to serve another four-year term.

Biden, at 80 years old, is now the most seasoned individual to act as president, and he would be 86 toward the finish of his subsequent term.

The life span would beat whatever other president who served overwhelmingly. Reagan completed his second term at the age of 77, while Trump, who is favored to win the GOP nomination, completed his first term at the age of 74.

In order to persuade voters that he possesses the mental and physical capacity to run for reelection, Biden has some work to do.

An astounding 68 percent of electors in a new NBC News survey said they stress over Biden’s wellbeing with 55% reflecting “major” concerns.

In a USA Today/Suffolk College survey of leftists and Free movers, 37% say the president’s age made them less inclined to decide in favor of him. According to a third survey conducted by The Economist and YouGov, 45% of independents believe that Biden’s health and age “severely limit his ability to do the job.”

“The president’s age is surely going to be a headwind on his re-appointment crusade. The surveying says as much, and the models will surely continue to come as he is in the public eye,” said Stewart Verdery, who served in previous President George W. Bramble’s organization.

However, Monument Advocacy’s CEO, Verdery, suggested that Biden’s age might not be as important in a general election against Trump, who is 77 years old.

“On the off chance that he were possible going against a cutting edge JFK on a boat, it very well may be a greater amount of an issue. However, “the president’s age may cause swing voters to pause before they still pull the lever for him,” he stated, “as long as his main adversary is in Mar-a-Lago.”

Questions about Biden’s health were pushed back this week by the White House.

“The president — shoot, he voyaged yesterday, he’s voyaging again today. During the midterms, you saw how far he traveled. What’s more, particularly his unfamiliar travel, this is somebody who is unquestionably dynamic as president,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday.

In recent speeches, Biden has become increasingly self-deprecating about his age, joking that he is 198, 103, or 110.

He has reportedly sought advice from Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is encouraging him to own his longevity like Harrison Ford and Mick Jagger. He has acknowledged that his age is a concern for some voters.

“Incidentally, I’ve been doing this quite a while. I realize I don’t look that old. I know. I’m somewhat under 103,” Biden said in ongoing comments. ” Yet, in all seriousness … I was a really strong congressperson.”

In any case, the 80-year-old president’s age is likewise now something that persists into all that he does, putting a physical or verbal stagger under an alternate sort of magnifying lens.

At the point when he stumbled and fell at an occasion recently, there were stresses over his wellbeing. To his political enemies, it was proof of his delicate state, regardless of whether a more youthful man could likewise have stumbled.

Biden, who has a long history of making false statements, mistook Ukraine for Iraq twice on Monday night and Tuesday.

These errors are used by opponents as evidence that Biden has fallen behind and should not run for a second term.

Conservative official competitor Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a meeting with Fox News this week, said he thinks California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is “moving behind the scenes,” and it would be intriguing to perceive how things work out “on the off chance that Biden doesn’t conclusively make it.”

“They would have a genuine comedian show in the event that Biden couldn’t make it,” he added. His remarks reverberation individual conservative official applicant Nikki Haley, who said in April that Biden is probably not going to “make it” to 86.

A few political examiners think the GOP is behaving recklessly in pursuing Biden’s age, regardless of whether it is an issue for certain electors. According to them, it might enrage older voters.

“You can call attention to it, however you would rather not incline in that frame of mind here,” said GOP specialist Doug Heye. ” Tone is significant here. You can discuss botches that he’s made, etc. However, if you go over the top, you run the risk of being attacked, particularly by older voters.

Jim Kessler, chief VP for strategy for the Majority rule think tank Third Way, said the best thing for the White House to do is center around the president’s achievements.

“They can make a counterargument, which is that his experience has had the effect. And what he has accomplished over the past two and a half years is close to a biblical miracle, if you look at it,” he stated. Like, nobody thought the quantity of bipartisan bills passed the last Congress was conceivable. What’s more, it worked out. He outsmarted Vladimir Putin.”

Biden’s use of a CPAP machine to improve his sleep quality was confirmed this week by the White House after reporters noticed lines on his face.

Republicans say that Trump has an advantage over Biden because of his apparent energy, even though he is close to 80.

If they win the debate and nominations for their respective parties, Heye stated, voters will eventually be able to compare the two.

Democrats are ignoring the verbal gaffes, pointing out that they also occurred when Biden was younger.

“President Biden’s age has been an issue since before the 2020 political race, and he’s been famous for making blunders the majority of his political vocation. “There really isn’t much new here,” a supporter of Biden stated.

Biden faces different difficulties, including the economy and child Tracker Biden’s legitimate issues, which have drawn GOP examination. His lower approval ratings, which have remained around 40%, are also due to these factors.

In any case, many see age as an issue where Biden will by and by need to demonstrate something to the electorate.

“The No. Regardless of where I am, one thing I hear about Biden is his age. Furthermore, that is valid for individuals who like them. That is valid individuals who could do without him,” Heye said. ” Therefore, he has a real issue there.”

Former President Donald Trump appeared somber and quiet in a Miami courtroom, hands clasped and leaning back in his chair at times, speaking aloud only to utter the words “not guilty” to 37 federal counts stemming from his handling of classified documents on Tuesday, June 13^th, 2023, marking the first time in US history that a former president will face criminal charges.

Astoundingly, it was the second time in three months that Trump has been indicted. Trump also faces criminal charges in a New York state court where he pleaded not guilty in April to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. In addition, he still faces investigations surrounding attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and the special counsel’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

This marks the first instance of a former president facing federal charges. Among the charges are a violation of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy, and false statements, as confirmed by Trump’s attorney, Jim Trusty, on CNN.

The investigation focuses on Trump’s management of classified documents brought to his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort after leaving the White House in 2021 and any possible obstruction or government attempts to retrieve the material. Trump announced on Truth Social that he was informed of the indictment by the Justice Department and is “summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.” He referred to the situation as the “Boxes Hoax.”

This federal indictment marks the second time Trump has faced criminal charges this year, following the Manhattan district attorney’s 34-count charge against him for falsifying business in April. However, the special counsel’s indictment signifies a new and more dangerous legal stage for the former president, who is running for office again in 2024 while dealing with criminal charges in two jurisdictions and two ongoing investigations into his conduct.

The charges come seven months after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel, in response to Trump announcing his presidential run, to maintain the investigation’s independence from the Biden Justice Department. Trump now faces federal charges from the special counsel while attempting to defeat President Joe Biden in the upcoming election. The White House declined to comment on the situation Thursday evening.

Trump has consistently criticized the special counsel investigation and other inquiries into his conduct as politically motivated. He maintains that any criminal charges will not hinder his 2024 campaign. In a four-minute video released on Thursday, Trump reiterated past claims, stating that the Justice Department is being weaponized and investigations into him are “election interference.” He insisted, “I am an innocent man. I did nothing wrong.”

CNN sources revealed that Trump and his team pre-recorded the video response before the Justice Department officially informed him of the indictment, as initially reported by The New York Times.

Throughout his personal, professional, and political life, Trump has largely evaded legal consequences. He has settled several private civil lawsuits over the years and resolved disputes involving the Trump Organization. As president, he was impeached twice by the Democrat-led House but avoided conviction by the Senate.

However, after leaving office, Justice Department criminal investigations into the retention of classified information at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election cast a shadow over him. Smith’s ongoing investigation into the January 6 events and efforts to overturn the election further darkens this cloud.

In addition to the Manhattan district attorney’s April indictment, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to announce in August whether her investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia will result in any charges.

Trump’s congressional allies swiftly rallied to his defense on social media, just as they had done when he was indicted in New York in April. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted that it was “a dark day for the United States of America.” House GOP conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, said in a statement, “The radical Far Left will stop at nothing to interfere with the 2024 election in order to prop up the catastrophic presidency and desperate campaign of Joe Biden.” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, tweeted, “Sad day for America. God Bless President Trump.”

Several Democrats who investigated Trump during his presidency claimed that the indictment demonstrated that no one is above the law. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who led the House’s first impeachment of Trump in 2019, wrote, “Trump’s apparent indictment on multiple charges arising from his retention of classified materials is another affirmation of the rule of law. For four years, he acted like he was above the law. But he should be treated like any other lawbreaker. And today, he has been.”

The Justice Department’s inquiry into Trump’s handling of documents from his time in office came to light in August when FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, seizing thousands of documents, including around 100 marked as classified. The Trump Organization was also subpoenaed for surveillance footage from the resort. Prosecutors were investigating potential criminal mishandling of national security information and obstruction of justice.

The DOJ previously claimed that classified documents were “likely concealed and removed” from a storage room at Mar-a-Lago in an effort to “obstruct” the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s possible mishandling of classified materials. After Trump returned 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives in January, the Justice Department subpoenaed him in May for any remaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump was indicted last week on 37 counts related to more than 100 classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago in August. The charges include willful retention of national defense information and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Trump surrendered to authorities at the federal courthouse in Miami. He pleaded not guilty and left the courthouse roughly two hours later. At his initial court appearance, Trump was represented by attorney Todd Blanche and former Florida Solicitor General Chris Kise.

Trump signed a bond document that prohibits him from discussing his case with certain witnesses — an unusual anti-witness-tampering provision added by U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman that the prosecution had not sought.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Goodman presided over the arraignment, but the case will be overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who ruled in Trump’s favor in an earlier dispute in the investigation.

Later that night, Trump in a speech to his supporters claimed that according to the Presidential Records Act, “I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided by FBI agents.”

The National Archives and Records Administration said in a news release last week that the Presidential Records Act “requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations” and that outgoing presidents are required to separate personal documents from presidential records before they leave office.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon, whom Trump appointed in 2019, is reportedly overseeing the case for now. She previously appointed a special master to examine the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last year at the Trump team’s request, and was criticized for delivering Trump several perplexing legal wins in the first phase of the documents case proceedings.

In the days since his indictment, Trump has indicated on his social network Truth Social that he intends to fight the charges, calling them the product of a political “witch hunt” and an attempt to interfere with the 2024 election.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday showed 61% believe the federal charges “related to Trump’s handling of classified documents are serious.” By contrast, pollsters found that just 52% of those surveyed in April said the same about a New York grand jury indictment against Trump on charges stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn actress in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges, says he’s seeking a “speedy trial,” “consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused.” But “speedy” in the federal justice system is a relative term. It may be months before Trump’s trial begins.

So, what comes next after Trump’s arraignment, where the former president pleaded “not guilty” to more than three dozen federal charges, including willful retention of classified information and obstruction of justice, over his handling of classified documents post-presidency?

As President Joe Biden gears up for a potential second term, he enjoys a significant lead over his declared Democratic challengers. However, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS reveals that his declining favorability ratings and the perception that his reelection would be detrimental to the nation could pose difficulties.

Only 33% of Americans believe that a Biden victory in 2024 would signify progress or triumph. The poll also highlights a drop in favorable opinions of Biden, from 42% in December to 35% currently. Furthermore, an earlier release of the same poll showed Biden’s presidential approval rating at a meager 40%, one of the lowest for a first-term president since Dwight Eisenhower at this stage in their tenure.

Within the Democratic party, 60% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters support Biden as the frontrunner for next year’s Democratic nomination, while 20% favor activist and lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and 8% support author Marianne Williamson. Another 8% would back an unspecified “someone else.”

The majority of Biden’s primary supporters are unwavering, with 58% stating they will definitely support him, while 42% admit they could change their minds. In contrast, only 19% of those backing other candidates are firmly committed, with 81% open to changing their minds.

The poll indicates that Biden is likely to gain the support of most Democratic-aligned voters in 2024, with only 14% saying they wouldn’t back him in the primary and 7% stating they definitely wouldn’t support him in November 2024 if he secures the party’s nomination.

However, the results suggest that Biden may struggle to retain Democratic-aligned White non-college voters in the general election next year, as 16% say they definitely won’t support him in November 2024, compared to just 1% of White Democratic-aligned voters with college degrees and 5% of Democratic-aligned voters of color.

Biden’s vulnerabilities in the nomination race primarily lie among Democratic-leaning independents (40% support him for the nomination, compared to 67% among self-identified Democrats) and younger voters (49% under 45 years old support him, as opposed to 68% of those aged 45 or older).

A majority of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters would consider supporting either Kennedy (64% support or would consider him) or Williamson (53% back her or would consider her), but few seem deeply committed to either candidate.

Among those open to considering Kennedy, 20% cite his connection to the Kennedy family as the main reason, with one respondent stating, “I liked his dad (RFK) and his uncle (JFK) a lot. I would hope he has a similar mindset.” Many are simply curious and want to learn more about him, with 17% saying they don’t know enough to rule him out and 10% claiming they are open-minded and would consider any candidate. Some would back any Democrat (10%) or anyone who is not Trump (5%). Only 12% say they would consider him due to their support for his views or policies, and 4% specifically mention his environmental policy stances.

Of those who would consider Williamson, nearly 3 in 10 (28%) say they don’t know enough about her, 16% would consider her because she’s a Democrat, 8% would consider any candidate or are open-minded, and 9% view her as an alternative to Biden. One respondent said, “She is better than Joe Biden. I haven’t heard of her though.” Another 10% desire a female candidate, and 12% support her views or policies. One person commented, “She may not have a great political resume but she cares about important issues.”

The majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters do believe it’s likely that Biden will become the party’s candidate, with 55% saying it’s extremely or very likely, 28% deeming it somewhat likely, 11% considering it not too likely, and a mere 5% believing it’s not at all likely.

Securing public support for a second term might be an uphill battle for President Joe Biden. A significant 66% of Americans believe that a Biden victory would result in a setback or disaster for the country. In comparison, former President Donald Trump’s prospects appear slightly better, with 43% considering a Trump win as a triumph or step forward and 56% seeing it as a disaster or setback. Both candidates receive similar percentages regarding the perception of their victory as disastrous (44% for Trump and 41% for Biden). Among independents, 45% view a Trump win as disastrous, while 35% hold the same opinion for a Biden win.

The overarching negativity towards Biden can be attributed to a more pessimistic outlook among his party members compared to the optimism Trump enjoys from Republicans. A substantial 82% of Democrats perceive a Trump victory as disastrous, whereas 83% of Republicans feel the same about a Biden win. However, 85% of Republicans consider a Trump win a triumph or step forward, compared to 73% of Democrats expressing the same sentiment for Biden.

One advantage that Biden held over Trump in the 2020 election – a stronger favorability rating – may have dissipated. The poll reveals that 35% of Americans have a favorable view of Biden, while 57% have an unfavorable one, which is strikingly similar to Trump’s figures. Biden’s positive ratings have dropped from 42% in December, and among independents, his favorability has declined from 35% to 26%.

Biden’s ratings are significantly more negative than those of the three living Democratic past presidents. Barack Obama is the most positively viewed of all the living presidents tested in the poll, with 57% holding a favorable view and 35% an unfavorable one. Public opinion on Jimmy Carter is also positive, with 43% favorable and 21% unfavorable, while 36% are unsure or unable to rate him. Bill Clinton’s ratings are evenly split, with 41% expressing a favorable view and 42% an unfavorable one.

The CNN Poll, conducted by SSRS from May 17-20, included a random national sample of 1,227 adults drawn from a probability-based panel, featuring 432 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who are registered to vote. Surveys were administered either online or via telephone with a live interviewer. The full sample results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 points, while the margin of sampling error for Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters is 6.2 points.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis formally announced on Wednesday, May 24, 2023 that he is running for president in 2024. “Well, I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” he said during an event with Twitter owner Elon Musk on the site’s audio platform. “But we know our country’s going in the wrong direction. We see it with our own eyes. And we feel it in our bones.”

“We must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years,” DeSantis said on Twitter, in a chat withElon Musk and their mutual ally, David Sacks, a venture capitalist. “The tired dogmas of the past are inadequate for a vibrant future.”

Earlier Wednesday, ahead of the event with Musk, DeSantis also filed with the Federal Election Commission. It makes official a decision that was widely expected since November when DeSantis won reelection in resounding fashion and captured the attention of a party longing to turn the page from recent defeats. He steps into the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination later than other contenders and having failed to freeze more still from jumping in, but is better funded, better known and polling higher than all but one: Donald Trump.

The former president has treated DeSantis, whom he once endorsed for Florida governor, as his top foe for months, assailing him regularly on social media and in interviews. A super PAC aligned with Trump has spent millions attacking DeSantis on national television, setting expectations for a bruising primary between the two former allies.

To overcome Trump, DeSantis will need to convince Republican voters he is best positioned to take on President Joe Biden next November. That will likely involve winning over conservatives who may still look back fondly on Trump’s presidency while also coalescing support among Republicans eager for new blood to lead the party.

DeSantis, 44, has spent months laying the groundwork to make that case. He has traveled the country extensively, styling himself as a leader in the right’s culture wars and presenting a new vision for a Republican Party that uses elected powers to punish political opponents and force conservative orthodoxy on institutions and businesses. Working with his state’s GOP-controlled legislature, DeSantis has stacked up multiple policy victories – including banning abortion after six weeks, eliminating permits to carry a concealed gun in public, enacting a universal school voucher law and targeting access to transgender health care – all of which will serve as a platform as he launches his campaign.

“I think that (DeSantis) and former President Donald Trump, they have a lot in common, which they don’t want to hear, but I think it’s the truth,” Wisconsin voter Steve Frazier said after DeSantis spoke at a recent GOP dinner in Marathon County. “Unfortunately, they’re running possibly for the same office, and that’s a conflict for people like myself, in that we may have two very, very qualified men running for the same position.”

DeSantis has continued to generate headlines for his yearlong fight with Disney, his state’s most iconic business and a vital economic engine, over a new law that bans certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. After Disney put out a statement opposing the measure, DeSantis plotted a takeover of the special taxing district that allowed the entertainment giant to build its iconic theme park empire in Central Florida.

The move put Florida businesses on notice and alarmed even some in the GOP, who questioned whether elected executives should use state power to punish a company. Undeterred, DeSantis has made his clash with Disney a central part of his political story, devoting an entire chapter of his recent memoir to the saga. Disney has sued DeSantis, accusing the governor of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights, while DeSantis has vowed not to cave.

Though eager to take on private businesses, reporters and sometimes his own party, DeSantis has largely avoided directly confronting Trump. Instead, he has opted for more subtle comparisons between their tenures in office. He has maligned the lack of action during Trump’s first four years while listing off his own accomplishments as governor. He regularly touts the lack of “drama” and “leaks” in his administration, a clear jab at the chaos that often engulfed the Trump White House.

“If I were to run, I’m running against Biden,” DeSantis said in a recent interview with British television host Piers Morgan.

That same day, though, DeSantis seemed to poke fun at Trump over his alleged affair with an adult film star that is at the heart of a Manhattan district attorney’s case against the former president.

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star,” he said at a news conference. To many, DeSantis had signaled he was ready to mix it up with Trump. But a week later, as Trump was indicted, DeSantis backed off and instead criticized the prosecutor who filed the charges.

The walk back was illustrative of Republican struggles to challenge Trump head-on that date back to the 2016 presidential primary. The former president’s GOP rivals have often opted instead to target the contender perceived as the biggest threat to overcoming Trump: DeSantis. Already, 2024 hopefuls such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have lobbed attacks at the Florida governor with more frequency than they have criticized Trump.

“The subject of most of the attacks at the first debate are going to be DeSantis, not Trump,” said Alex Conant, a veteran of several presidential campaigns. Conant is familiar with what it is like to be running behind Trump. He advised Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in 2016 and watched as the Florida Republican faced arrows from the rest of the GOP field in a debate leading up to the New Hampshire primary. Rubio never recovered. DeSantis’ team, Conant said, needs “to be eyes-wide-open that he’s going to be targeted at every moment of the first debate.”

DeSantis will have more resources than most to weather those attacks. A super PAC supporting his political ambitions, Never Back Down, had already raised $30 million in its first month after launching and has spent millions boosting DeSantis and responding to negative ads from Trump allies in early primary states. He has more than $85 million parked in a state political committee that his team has for more than a year planned to shift into a federal committee – possibly Never Back Down – though some campaign finance watchdogs have suggested that plan would run afoul of the law.

DeSantis, for a time, was also a favorite among the deep-pocketed Republican donors who have soured on Trump and are ready to finance an alternative. However, that support has somewhat cooled of late, with several key financiers expressing reservations about DeSantis. His hard turn right, his antagonistic feud with Disney and perceived personality faults have caused some to look for others to get behind.

Thomas Peterffy, a billionaire businessman who has donated $570,000 to DeSantis’ political committee over the years, recently told the Financial Times that he and other GOP donors were turned off by DeSantis’ stance on “abortion and book banning” and were “holding our powder dry.” DeSantis has championed a new state law that requires approval of books in classroom libraries and makes it easier for the public to flag schoolbooks to be pulled for review.

However, without another major Trump alternative emerging, DeSantis allies remain convinced that Republican donors ready to move on from the former president will ultimately get behind the Florida governor.

“There’s a broad acceptance that this is really settling into a two-person race, and there is a lot of personal appreciation for President Trump but realistic understanding he does not have the best chance to beat Biden,” former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, founder of the Never Back Down super PAC, told CNN in March. “He does not have the best chance to win the Senate and keep the House as demonstrated by history.”

While it’s still very early, there’s at least a chance that the 2024 presidential election could look a lot like the 2020 presidential election. President Joe Biden recently confirmed that he’s seeking a second term, and his predecessor and 2020 opponent, former President Donald Trump, already had launched his campaign to reclaim the White House.

For several decades now, neither major political party has been keen on giving unsuccessful nominees a second bite of the apple. The last time that happened was in 1968, when Republicans chose Richard Nixon, who had lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960.

But that hasn’t always been the case. Should a Biden-Trump sequel come about, it would be the seventh presidential rematch in U.S. history, and the first since the 1950s. In the first four rematches, the outcome was different the second time around; in the most recent two, the outcomes were the same as the first match-up.

Here’s a look at the presidential rematches the country has experienced so far, and the varying political contexts in which they came about:

The country’s first actively contested presidential elections proved conclusively that the Constitution’s elaborate mechanism for electing presidents wouldn’t work once parties were added to the mix.

Originally, each presidential elector cast two ballots, with the candidate receiving the most becoming president and the runner-up becoming vice president. This worked fine the first two elections, when George Washington and John Adams were the clear favorites. But in 1796, when the Federalist Party backed Adams for the presidency and the Democratic-Republican Party supported Thomas Jefferson, the system’s flaws quickly became apparent.

In order to elect their preferred pair as president and vice president, both parties tried to arrange for a few of their electors to either cast only one ballot or vote for someone other than their party’s intended running mate (Thomas Pinckney for the Federalists, Aaron Burr for the Democratic-Republicans). In theory, that would ensure that the intended two men came out on top and in the right order. In practice, in an era of slow communications over great distances, such plans would have been difficult to pull off even if the parties were united and firmly disciplined.

Which they weren’t. Neither the Federalists nor the Democratic-Republicans were fully sold on their respective tickets. (Alexander Hamilton, for one, worked secretly to get some Federalist electors from Southern states to withhold their votes for Adams, in hopes of boosting Pinckney into the top spot – a ploy which backfired when New England Federalists found out about it and refused to cast ballots for Pinckney.) And the electors were free to disregard their party’s “official” picks and cast their two votes however they wished, so long as one went to someone from a state other than their own.

The end result was, as historian Gordon Wood called it, “a confused and chaotic affair.” Although records are incomplete, at least nine electors voted for Jefferson and Pinckney. One voted for Adams and Jefferson. Two cast votes for Washington, who had made it clear he didn’t want the job any longer. In all, 13 men received at least one electoral vote. Adams squeaked out a win, but Jefferson came in second and took the vice presidency.

Adams and Jefferson faced each other again in 1800, and the results were almost as chaotic. This time Jefferson and Burr defeated Adams’ ticket, but because all their electors voted for both of them (rather than a few abstaining or voting for someone else), they tied for first place. That meant the outgoing House of Representatives – still controlled by Federalists, whose candidates had lost the election – got to decide whether Jefferson or Burr would be the next president. The House deadlocked for a week and slogged through 35 ballots before finally choosing Jefferson on the 36th. Before the next election, the 12th Amendment was ratified to require separate balloting for president and vice president – and, it was hoped, to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson, 1824 and 1828

But the new system wasn’t foolproof either, as the four-sided election of 1824 demonstrated. By that time the Democratic-Republicans, who’d won every election since 1800 and driven the Federalists into near-oblivion, had splintered into rival factions. No fewer than five prominent public figures sought the presidency in 1824: Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, former Gen. Andrew Jackson, House Speaker Henry Clay, Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun (though he eventually decided to stand for vice president instead). When the dust settled, no one had come close to winning a majority of either the popular or electoral votes.

That sent the election to the House again, which had to choose from among the top three vote-getters. Clay, who had been eliminated, used his influence to swing the vote in Adams’ favor; soon after, Adams appointed Clay as secretary of state. That in turn touched off furious charges by Jackson and his supporters that the two men had conspired in a “corrupt bargain” and effectively launched Jackson’s 1828 campaign.

Jacksonians spent four years attacking Adams and building a new party, the Democrats, to take him on. In 1828, Jackson won clear popular- and electoral-vote victories, and he went on to serve two terms as president.

Van Buren, Jackson’s vice president and one of the main architects of the Democratic Party, ran for the top job himself in 1836. But opponents of the Jackson-Van Buren administration were coming together into a new national party: the Whig Party.

The Whigs were still a work in progress in 1836, and Van Buren ended up facing multiple “opposition” candidates who ran in different states. The most successful, retired Gen. William Henry Harrison, carried seven states and won 37% of the popular vote. Although Van Buren won the presidency, Harrison’s performance brought him renewed prominence.

By 1839, the Whigs were organized enough to hold a national convention, which nominated Harrison for the following year’s election. Van Buren’s popularity, meanwhile, had plunged due to the Panic of 1837 and the perception that he was an effete, out-of-touch aristocrat. After a campaign marked by such innovations as sloganeering, mass rallies, image-creation and what today we would call PR stunts, Harrison won the popular vote by 6 percentage points and beat Van Buren decisively in the Electoral College.

Grover Cleveland vs. Benjamin Harrison, 1888 and 1892

In 1884, Democrat Cleveland had broken the Republicans’ 24-year lock on the presidency and was widely praised as honest, thrifty and hardworking. But he was vulnerable, having alienated many important industries by advocating for lower tariffs. Republicans, who favored high “protective” tariffs, nominated Harrison, who had an impressive pedigree (as William Henry Harrison’s grandson), a Civil War record that made him popular with veterans (Cleveland had hired a substitute to serve in his place), and was from the swing state of Indiana. Even though Cleveland outpolled him in the popular vote, Harrison prevailed in the Electoral College.

As Cleveland left the White House, his wife reportedly told the staff to “take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house … for I want to find everything just as it is now when we come back again four years from today.” Although Cleveland stayed out of politics at first, by 1891 he was openly criticizing the Harrison administration and the Republican-controlled Congress for raising tariff rates and increasing the money supply by coining more silver dollars. The following year, Cleveland easily won renomination, defeated Harrison and, as Mrs. Cleveland had predicted, returned to the White House.

William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan, 1896 and 1900

Shortly after Cleveland’s reelection, the U.S. economy plunged into a deep depression. That, along with labor unrest and continuing agitation over monetary policy, turned Cleveland’s own party against him. In 1896, the Democrats turned to Bryan, a forceful opponent of the gold standard and advocate of the “free and unlimited coinage of silver,” which he claimed would aid debt-ridden farmers and working people by inflating the money supply.

The Republicans nominated Ohio Gov. William McKinley, a business-oriented conservative who favored high tariffs and the gold standard, which he called “sound money.” McKinley’s campaign raised unprecedented sums from big corporations and used it to forge a coalition of industrial workers and urban dwellers (especially immigrants) in the Northeast and Midwest.

Despite traveling thousands of miles and giving hundreds of speeches, Bryan came up short in both the popular and electoral votes. But he came close enough that he had no real opposition for the Democratic nomination in 1900, when he faced McKinley again.

By then the free-silver issue had receded somewhat, while questions of American imperialism (exemplified by the Spanish-American War and the annexation of Hawaii) came more to the fore. But with the war over and the U.S. economy booming, McKinley won a slightly higher share of the popular vote than he had in 1896, and flipped six states that Bryan had carried four years earlier (while Bryan flipped only one).

Eisenhower, who had led the Allied armies to victory in Europe during World War II, was so popular that both major parties spawned “Draft Eisenhower” movements. Eisenhower eventually declared himself a Republican and won a closely contested battle for the GOP nomination. The Democrats, who had no obvious front-runner after then-President Harry Truman took himself out of the race, eventually nominated Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson.

Eisenhower, though a political newcomer, proved to be a formidable campaigner, attacking the Democrats over “Korea, Communism and corruption.” He ended up taking 55% of the popular vote in 1952, winning all but nine states.

Four years later, with the Korean War over and the U.S. economy booming, Eisenhower faced no opposition within his party for another term. Stevenson, however, had to fend off several challengers before securing his renomination. For all that, Stevenson had even less success against Eisenhower his second time around: The incumbent president rolled to victory with 57% of the popular vote and the electoral votes of all but seven states.