Joe Biden

Arkansas Republican Governor and former Trump White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has just a 48% approval rating among her constituents in a new poll, making her the state's least popular governor over the last two decades.

Respondents of the 25th annual Arkansas Poll — which queries residents on their approval of both elected officials and major issues like the economy, public education, and health — notably registered their dissatisfaction with Sanders' administration while she's in the midst of a corruption probe. CBS affiliate THV 11 reported that Sanders' approval rating among Arkansans is far below that of former Arkansas governors Asa Hutchinson, Mike Beebe, and her father, Mike Huckabee, who each polled at 57%, 70%, and 66%, respectively, in the first years of their administrations.

As if losing his speakership weren't bad enough, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) now faces the prospect of being booted out of Congress all together.

Politico reports that Trump-loving MAGA Republican David Giglio is launching a primary challenge against McCarthy, all while heaping praise on the rebellious eight Republicans who voted to remove the Californian Rep. as speaker.

Donald Trump started off the day with a series of posts blaming President Joe Biden for his legal woes and attacking a federal judge overseeing his prosecution in the election subversion case.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan reinstated a gag order Sunday against the former president that prohibits him from publicly targeting court personnel, potential witnesses or the special counsel’s team, but hours later Trump lashed out at her and threatened to prosecute Biden if he wins re-election, and he started off Monday with social media posts on the same theme.

Newly elected House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) may come across as “mild-mannered,” “soft-spoken,” but don't be fooled – he has deep and abiding ties to some of the most anti-democratic extremists in U.S. politics, according to one scholar on American religion.

The back-bench Louisiana Republican managed to take over the gavel from ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) following three weeks of chaos, and his lawyerly efforts to help Donald Trump overturn his election loss in 2020 flow from his ties to a broad nondenominational network of religious extremists working to end American democracy, wrote expert Matthew D. Taylor in a new column for The Bulwark.

Early Monday the "Morning Joe" panel was alternately amused and concerned by comments Donald Trump made over the weekend in multiple speeches that seem to indicate he is in mental decline.

After showing clips of the former president seemingly not knowing whether he was in Iowa or South Dakota --mistaking Sioux City for Sioux Falls -- and making misstatements about Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whom he called a close friend, the panel speculated the pressures of multiple criminal trials are finally getting to him.

"I'm just speaking a fact, I'm not trying to be -- I'll be accused of being nasty -- but this is just the truth. If this was Joe Biden, what networks would be on a loop right now playing it and then talking about perhaps having a doctor on about his mental acuity?" co-host Mika Brzezinski offered. "There is such a disconnect in reality here in terms of the two frontrunners for president."

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

"Look, so we have two candidates running for president who are likely to be the nominees of both the parties, who are older than most Americans are comfortable with," Morning Joe contributor Katty Kay replied. "Joe Biden gets an awful lot of attention for his age and a lot of scrutiny, and it is clearly damaging him in the polls which is why he now has a primary challenger which he probably wouldn't if it weren't for the age question. It's a real concern."

"Donald Trump, over the last month or so, has shown, he too, is a man who is nearing 80," she continued. "Maybe that is his age that is coming into play. At the moment it doesn't seem to be impacting him with his supporters, but age has a way of -- we've seen this, Mika, -- you and me, with our parents, right? It catches up on them."

"Let's see how the stress of a campaign, the stress of multiple, very intense legal suits against him affects his health and mental acuity and stamina over the course of the next year," Kay added. "Just because it is not having an impact on him in the polls at the moment doesn't mean it won't in a year, a year out, a year more of trials, and a year more of age. At that age, it makes a difference."

Panelist Johnathan Lemire chimed in, "To Katty's point, both [Trump and Biden] 77 and above. Yes, polls suggest the age doesn't seem to hurt Trump as much as it hurts Biden, but maybe next year, that does change."

"We have seen a number of his erratic statements, behavior, his mistakes --Trump, that is -- it's really picked up in recent weeks," he elaborated. "Those close to him suggest it is the pressure of the trials. The Biden campaign blasted the clip out of him mixing up the Sioux City and Sioux Falls thing, on Twitter/X. This is not the man you want at the helm."

Watch below or at the link.

New York attorney general Letitia James considered investigating Rudy Giuliani years ago over his efforts to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine.

The Manhattan district attorney's office received emails last week revealing internal discussions at the attorney general's office in 2020 about the potential investigation, although the idea was quickly shot down, an agency official familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast.

Donald Trump used his First Amendment rights to claim he was having his First Amendment rights violated by President Joe Biden's administration.

In one of his many rants on social media Sunday, Trump claimed, The Corrupt Biden Administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech. NOT CONSTITUTIONAL!"

The pressing need for a new budget deal to keep the government from shutting down, along with a caucus split on helping Ukraine, has all the hallmarks of handing newly-elected House Speaker Michael Johnson (R-LA) more than he can handle as he heads into his first full week in te top spot.

According to a report from Vox, there are some within the Republican Party who believe Johnson bit off more than he can chew by agreeing to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in the leadership position and more GOP chaos could be headed his way.

CNN host Jake Tapper blasted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) after she offered a resolution to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for leading a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Before signing off his weekly State of the Union program on Sunday, Tapper noted that Greene's censure resolution seemed to be more about defending the Jan. 6 defendants than opposing Tlaib.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Sunday delivered a rapid-fire takedown of Donald Trump, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that the former president “never finishes what he started.”

Speaking with Tapper on Trump’s hot-and-cold relationship with the Republican Jewish Coalition, Christie noted that Trump “deserves credit for” several accomplishments in his first term. But, Christie warned, “what a second Trump presidency looks like will be much, much different.”

“I wouldn’t count on anything from Donald Trump, except one thing you can always count on: he will lie to get himself ahead and always put himself first before any interest and certainly before our country and Israel,” Christie said.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

“Donald Trump never finishes what he started,” Christie later added. “He said he was going to build a wall across the entire border of the United States and Mexico, he built 52 miles of new wall in four years. He said he was going to balance the budget, he added $7.8 trillion in debt. In the same way he said he was going to bring peace to the Middle East, he did not do that, because he didn't finish the job.”

“Look, if he couldn't do it in the first term with good people around him, imagine what he would do in a second term with the clowns and rogues gallery he would have around him in his second Trump term, because that’s the only people that would actually work with him,” Christie said. “We need to keep focused on one thing: Donald Trump is not going to be able to beat Joe Biden from a courtroom in Washington, D.C., while he's fighting his indictment on the January 6th case. And let me tell you, that indictment got much tougher for him to beat when his own chief of staff has now accepted immunity and will testify against him about the lies he has told in the aftermath of January 6th, and what he was told by his own people about the fact that he had lost the election.”

“This is going to be a big problem for our party and we need to cut it off at the pass,” Christie said. “Get rid of Donald Trump and move on to honest, strong leadership that will tell the truth.”