Donald Trump's lone GOP rival for the Republican presidential nomination said Friday the former president is suffering from "memory issues."
Nikki Haley was responding to Trump's latest attack, also on Friday, in which he accused his own former U.N. ambassador of supporting ex-president Barack Obama. Trump also said Haley is a "flunky" for Mitt Romney, a former Republican presidential nominee.
"Nikki Haley is a flunky for Mitt 'Pierre Delecto' Romney who is kryptonite for the Republican Party," Trump wrote in a Friday post on his own social media site, Truth Social. "She was also a Barack Hussein Obama supporter as seen here, and is currently receiving money from his supporters!"
The former Republican president also included a video in which Haley mistakenly said "Obama" wants to strengthen our military, instead of Romney, for whom she was stumping at the time. Romney then corrected her.
Haley responded to the attack later the same day, calling into question Trump's memory and his support of Democratic politicians in the past.
"Donald may be suffering from memory issues," Haley wrote Friday. "Has he forgotten that he donated money to... Kamala Harris...Hillary Clinton...Chuck Schumer......?"
Hur concluded that "no criminal charges are warranted," but his comments on Biden's age have infuriated the 81-year-old president and his supporters. The special counsel described Biden as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Krugman recalls, "As it happens, I had an hour-long off-the-record meeting with Biden in August. I can't talk about the content, but I can assure you that he's perfectly lucid, with a good grasp of events. And outside that personal experience, on several occasions when I thought he was making a serious misjudgment — like his handling of the debt ceiling crisis — he was right and I was wrong. And my God, consider his opponent."
Krugman finds it laughable that Trump's supporters obsess over Biden's age when Trump confused former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley during a recent speech.
"When I listen to Donald Trump's speeches," the liberal Times columnist writes, "I find myself thinking about my father, who died in 2013…. During his last year, my father suffered from sundowning: He was lucid during the day, but would sometimes become incoherent and aggressive after dark. If we're going to be doing amateur psychological diagnoses of elderly politicians, shouldn't we be talking about a candidate who has confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and whose ranting and raving sometimes reminds me of my father on a bad evening?"
Krugman adds, "So to everyone who's piling on Biden right now, stop and look in the mirror. And ask yourself what you are doing."
Read Paul Krugman's full New York Times analysis at this link (subscription required).
In a deep dive into the stranglehold Trump has on the party as they head into a pivotal November election, longtime Republicans are stunned at the extent the former president has solidified his support despite his myriad legal problems.
With Politico's report stating, "Trump’s political steamroll is only gaining momentum," Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist, claimed the dysfunction of GOP lawmakers in Congress combined with turmoil in the Republican National Committee is "terrible.”
“Ronna getting kicked out, the Senate meltdown — how you had the seventh senator come out and say there needs to be leadership change – the whole Mayorkas thing and Nikki Haley being the cherry on top, losing 2-to-1 to ‘none of the above,’” he said. “It’s devastating. It’s the Trump mystique. It’s his grip on everything.”
Former Nevada Republican Party chair Amy Tarkanian, once a fixture on cable TV defending Trump, also expressed dismay and likened it to "brainwashing."
Pointing to the humiliation of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson's failure to get two bills passed earlier in the week despite Trump's backing, Tarkanian told Politico, "He’s got a stronghold. It’s not just on the Republican base, but also in the House. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s completely mind-boggling to me, the type of brainwashing that has been done.”
Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, claimed Republicans are deceiving themselves about Trump's strategies. — including urging House Republicans to tank a border bill.
“For all the stories the MAGAs have loved to write about his chess-playing ability, he can’t play checkers. That’s what this immigration [bill] really shows,” Timmer explained. “The Republicans have really overplayed their hand with this and given Biden and his stakeholder world an opportunity to really turn the tables on him.”
COLUMBIA, S.C. — When former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley was about to take the stage for her Jan. 24 rally in North Charleston, former President Donald Trump’s campaign looked to make a statement about his popularity in the Palmetto State.
About quarter past 7 p.m., a news release rolled out the latest set of South Carolina endorsements for the former president after his 11-point victory in New Hampshire, signaling he was consolidating support for his third presidential campaign.
Now, there’s a legitimate chance Donald Trump could be running for president, or even serving as commander in chief, from behind bars.
Two overriding factors contribute to this bizarre reality.
Firstly, there’s very little — legally speaking — preventing Trump from doing so.
Secondly, Trump himself has offered no indication he’ll step away. To the contrary, he’s as emboldened as ever to run for and win the presidency he lost in 2020.
Thus far, juries have found Trump civilly liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll. He’s been ordered to pay more than $88 million combined in damages.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron also found Trump and associates of his business empire liable for fraudulently inflating the value of the Trump Organization’s assets. Determination of damages in the civil fraud trial are expected this month — and could be well into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
And then there's the felony charges: 91 in total across four cases. If convicted, Trump could face significant prison time — totaling more than 700 years combined.
His trials are scheduled in the midst of the Republican presidential primary.
The indictments:
For the first time in U.S. history, a grand jury on June 8, 2023, federally indicted a former president — Trump — on 37 felony counts related to the alleged willful retention of classified documents and conspiracy to conceal them. District Judge Aileen Cannon set trial to begin May 20, but in February, special counsel questioned whether the FBI missed searching some rooms at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, ABC reported.
Then it happened again on Aug. 1 when Trump was indicted on four separate federal counts related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He was set to be tried starting March 4, but U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan delayed the trial's start as Trump — unsuccessfully, so far — petitioned a federal appeals court to rule that he enjoys presidential immunity from such prosecution.
Trump also faces a criminal trial in Georgia related to election interference in the state, with trial requested for Aug. 5. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis admitted in February to having a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor overseeing the case but denied any tainting of the case, Raw Story reported.
Separately, Trump is charged in New York with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to payments the Trump Organization made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. His trial is slated for March 25.
Such a laundry list of legal woes would seemingly sabotage any politician’s campaign efforts. But the cases haven’t slowed Trump down in his pursuit of a second term as president or slashed his chances — now as good as ever — of winning the 2024 Republican nomination.
Trump, who has handily won in the Republican primaries thus far, is almost certain to become the Republican nominee — and has made it clear he has no intention of dropping out of the race no matter how severe his legal battles become.
“I see no case in which I would do that,” Trump said in June during an appearance on a radio show hosted by political strategist Roger Stone, a longtime confidant. “I just wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. I had opportunities in 2016 to do it, and I didn't do it.”
But Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, said campaigning for president and defending himself against criminal charges are two very different endeavors.
“He thinks he can win this case in the court of public opinion, but the truth is, Trump can huff, and Trump can puff, but he can't blow the courthouse down,” Lichtman said. “It’s a very, very different game once you enter a federal courthouse or a state courthouse. You can't just bluster. Anything that you present has to be proven, and you're subject to perjury.”
Still, Trump can continue to run his campaign while facing these charges — and he could even do so from prison in the event he were to be tried, convicted and sentenced before the 2024 election.
“Trump’s legal problems shouldn’t affect his campaign. Many of his supporters believe that he is being treated unfairly, and there is no prohibition against a defendant under indictment or even a convicted felon from serving as president,” said Neama Rahmani, a former assistant U.S. attorney and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers. “Theoretically, Trump could even be president while in prison.”
Indeed, the U.S. Constitution stipulates only that a presidential candidate be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least 35 years old and a U.S. resident for 14 years. Trump easily checks all those boxes. And congressional Democrats’ strongest efforts to potentially disqualify Trump from ever again seeking the presidency — convicting him following impeachment trials — failed.
So, what would it take for Trump to run a presidential campaign — or govern the nation — from prison?
Raw Story interviewed historians, legal experts, political operatives and former government leaders who pieced together a playbook for how he could do it — and the peril that he’d face along the way as he stands to secure the GOP nomination ahead of a general election rematch with President Joe Biden in November.
Campaigning from a cell
Each of the charges Trump faces in the classified documents federal indictment carries maximum prison sentences between five and 20 years. Across all four indictments, potential prison time could span hundreds of years.
Being behind bars would, of course, prevent Trump from campaigning in his signature fashion: at big, rowdy MAGA rallies.
But Amani Wells-Onyioha, operations director at Democratic political firm Sole Strategies, envisions Trump still figuring out ways to communicate with potential voters.
“There's no doubt in my mind that he would have some recorded press from the little prison phone. There's no doubt in my mind that he would set up press opportunities whenever he's out on the yard getting his recreational use in, that there would be cameras there,” Wells-Onyioha said. “He would be using every opportunity to campaign. I don't see him stopping at all, and I only see him using this as fuel to make him go harder.”
Keeping up his Truth Social posts from prison might not be such a challenge for Trump, Wells-Onyioha said, as some jails and prisons might allow internet access.
“I do see him using the internet because that's all that he has, and he's great at that already,” Wells-Onyioha said. “He's a huge internet, TV personality type of guy, so it really would just force him to be in a position to do something that he's the best at, which is unfortunate for the country, but as far as he's concerned, I think he thinks that this is political gold for himself.”
Plus, Trump isn’t building a campaign from scratch. His 2024 presidential campaign is flush with staffers. He enjoys the support of super PACs, which may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on his behalf to promote the former president and attack his opponents.
He also has a roster of high-profile MAGA acolytes — from Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — who gladly serve as Trump surrogates.
And save for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who remains in the race despite losses in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, with dim prospects going forward, Trump has already vanquished his other main GOP challengers, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
Meanwhile, few politicians are as good as Trump at presenting himself as a victim — he’s single-handedly vaulted the terms “witch hunt,” “deep state,” “hoax” and “fake news” into the contemporary political lexicon. As an inmate, Trump could become a martyr to the MAGA cause.
“You’re obviously handicapped to campaign, but in this electronic age, you can certainly campaign virtually, plus Trump's pretty well known. It’s not like he has to introduce himself to the American people,” Lichtman said.
If not prison, maybe jail
Former President Donald Trump arrives for his arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 04 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Although it seems unlikely Trump will be serving an active prison sentence before the November election, it’s conceivable he could wind up in pretrial confinement of some sort while campaigning.
This, several legal experts said, will depend on Trump himself.
“He has to behave himself during a trial, and that's not beyond the realm of possibility that he'll act up, thinking that somehow he can win over the jury, but that would be a mistake,” said Kevin O’Brien, a former assistant U.S. attorney and partner at Ford O’Brien Landy LLP who specializes in white-collar criminal defense.
His social media antics stand to put him in potential violation of pretrial instructions and release terms, raising the question of whether a judge would dare throw the former president in jail. So far, he’s been fined thousands for violating gag orders.
Brazenly defying a judge’s order or attempting to intimidate witnesses are among the more common ways a defendant can get himself thrown in jail or home confinement before or during his trial.
This isn’t merely conceptual, said Mike Lawlor, a criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven and former member of the Connecticut House of Representatives, who helped lead impeachment hearings against then-Gov. John Rowland, who ultimately pleaded guilty in federal court to political corruption.
Knowing Trump’s penchant for cutting outbursts, Lawlor can envision a judge sanctioning Trump for defying directives. Trump not only has one judge with whom to contend, but several, given the multiple legal actions against him.
“The opportunity to engage in contempt of court or witness tampering or obstruction of justice is fraught at this point. I’m not sure he has the self-control to keep himself from doing something that would get him confined pre-trial,” Lawlor said.
The U.S. House Jan. 6 select committee accused Trump of potential witness tampering, and Lawlor says he’s monitoring similar allegations here, especially because so many of the witnesses are GOP staffers of the former president.
“It’s so easy to imagine a situation where someone could be contacted and intimidated,” Lawlor said. “I think the temptation to do that for a guy like Trump is probably irresistible. I’m not sure his attorneys or the advisors he listens to can stop him from doing so. I don’t rule it out. As I said, it’s unlikely, but I can definitely see it happening.”
Using legal danger to fuel fundraising
The Trump campaign wasted no time in exploiting the indictments to raise money, leaning into a familiar claim that the candidate is a victim of a Democratic witch hunt.
Only one day after news broke about Trump’s first federal indictment, a fundraising appeal built around the charges appeared on the campaign website prominently displayed in a column on the left-hand side of the page, suggesting contribution amounts ranging from $24 to $3,300. The message lays out a bill of particulars with the former president at the center of the persecution narrative, beginning with the apocalyptic opener: “We are watching our Republic DIE before our very eyes.”
Trump Save America, the beneficiary, is a joint fundraising committee for Donald J. Trump for President 2024 and the Save America PAC, which supports Trump.
The fundraising appeal contends that a “witch hunt began when the FBI RAIDED my home and then staged it to look like a made-for-TV crime scene with police sirens and flashing red and blue lights.”
Alluding to his previous indictment in New York state, the appeals continued: “So, after a state prosecutor failed to break us, the Deep State sharpened their attacks and unleashed a FEDERAL prosecutor to TRY and take us down.”
Notwithstanding Trump’s claim, the charges in New York state remain pending, and Jack Smith, the special prosecutor appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, was investigating Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents four months before a grand jury in New Manhattan returned an indictment on the state charges related to the Stormy Daniels affair.
Minutes after the Aug. 1 indictment dropped, Trump started fundraising again, selling "I Stand With Trump" T-shirts featuring the indictment date, and Trump's mugshot from his booking at the Fulton County Jail helped him bring in more than $7 million after the Georgia indictment as he quickly took to selling mugs, shirts and other merchandise with the photo.
At least one prominent surrogate helped retail the fundraising push.
Kari Lake, a fellow election denier who lost her race for governor of Arizona in 2022, joined a Twitter Spaces co-hosted by Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence on the night news broke about Trump’s indictment on charges of mishandling classified documents.
Stockton and Lawrence helped organize the rally that provided the springboard for the Jan. 6 insurrection. During her appearance on Stockton and Lawrence’s Twitter Space, Lake, who is now running for U.S. Senate, told more than 1,300 listeners she had just gotten off the phone with Trump shortly after news broke about the indictment on June 8. Lake said it wasn’t enough for Republican voters to just say they stand with Trump or condemn the indictment.
“And if we really stand with him, we need to go to DonaldTrump.com and make a donation tonight,” said Lake, who is herselfpreparing a 2024 U.S. Senate run in Arizona. “Everybody, whether it’s $5, $10, $500 — whatever you can afford. Because if we’re gonna stand with him, we need to put our money where our mouth is tonight.”
The political monetization of Trump’s legal woes grows deeper by the month. Go to Trump’s campaign website and you’ll find several items on sale — a black-and-white ceramic coffee mug is $24 — featuring a fake mugshot of Trump above the words “NOT GUILTY”. Of late, Trump hassuggested that he would “end” his campaign in a deceptive bid to squeeze money from supporters.
The Federal Election Commission, which enforces federal campaign finance laws, would have no grounds to intervene in Trump’s fundraising efforts while facing criminal charges or even time in jail or prison, said Ann Ravel, who served as an FEC commissioner from 2013 to 2017, including one year as the commission’s chairwoman.
Trump's campaign is selling these black-and-white ceramic coffee mugs for $24. (Screen grab)
Trump’s campaign could easily continue sending supporters incessant fundraising emails and text messages in Trump’s name.
“The only problems for him would be if there's failure to disclose, or if people are giving more than the limits, all of the things that are traditional FEC issues, but they don't have the authority to do anything with regard to a person who's been indicted and is still fundraising,” Ravel said. “That in and of itself is not sufficient for the FEC to take any action.”
Lessons of Eugene Debs, incarcerated presidential candidate
Trump wouldn’t be the first candidate to run for president from prison if he were convicted.
In the weeks before the 1920 election, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate for president of the United States and an inmate in federal prison, touched on the significance of the moment.
“Has there ever been anything like it in American history before?” Debs said, as reported by the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason. “Will there ever be anything like it in American history again? We must impress it upon the people that this scene is symbolic of what has befallen this country.”
There has been one other. Lyndon LaRouche, whom The New Republiccalled “The Godfather of Political Paranoia,” ran from prison in 1992 after being convicted of tax evasion and mail fraud.
His vice presidential running mate, the Rev. James Bevel, did most of the campaigning. This suggests that a jailed Trump could lean heavily on the presence of a charismatic vice presidential candidate — be it someone such as Lake of Arizona, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia or even banished Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
LaRouche received .02% of the popular vote — 26,334.
Debs, who was serving a 10-year sentence for decrying the United States’ involvement in World War I, received 3.4% of the popular vote — 919,799.
He received 6% of the vote as a candidate eight years earlier, in 1912.
While emphasizing that she’s speaking as an individual, Allison Duerk, director of the Eugene V. Debs Museum, located in Debs’ home in Terre Haute, Ind., said she cringes at comparisons between Debs and Trump. In material ways, the two men are polar opposites.
“I bristle at recent casual references to the 1920 campaign — not because they are inaccurate on the surface, but because these two men and their respective projects are diametrically opposed,” she told Raw Story.
Duerk does believe Debs predicted the emergence of American political leaders such as Trump.
Illustration of Eugene Debs while running for president in prison. Indiana State University archives
“Take this quote from the speech that got him locked up,” she said, quoting Debs: “‘In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.’"
In an Appeal to Reason article, Debs said he believed in change “but by perfectly peaceful and orderly means.” He added, “Never in my life have I broken a law or advised others to do so.”
Unlike Trump, who nurses grievances daily, the article said of Debs, “Nothing embitters him. Injustice, oppression, persecution, savagery do not embitter him. It is a stirring, an uplifting thing to find a man who has suffered so much and remains so ardent and so pure.”
The U.S. government and the prison warden made small accommodations to Debs’ candidacy. He was, for one, allowed a single written message per week to voters.
“Where Debs had once stormed the country in a verbal torrent,” wrote Ernest Freeberg, author of Democracy’s Prisoner, “he would now have five hundred words a week.”
Debs still had some of the trappings of a political campaign, including a button that had his photo from prison with the words, “For President - Convict No. 9653.” He had printed material that said, “From Atlanta to the White House, 1920,” a reference to his residency inside the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
On election night, Debs received the results in the warden’s office and soon conceded the election to President-elect Warren Harding.
In his book Walls and Bars, Debs wrote that the question came up in the room about his potential ability to pardon himself as president — an action over which Trump has reportedly mused.
“We all found some mirth in debating it,” Debs wrote.
Serving as president from prison
If Trump ran a successful campaign from jail or prison, is there anything stopping him from assuming the Oval Office if he were elected president?
“There is nothing in our traditions or the Constitution that prevents someone who is indicted or convicted or, in fact, serving in jail, from also serving as the president,” said Harold Krent, law professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, who formerly worked for the Department of Justice. “Does it make any sense? No. But there is no Constitutional disablement from that happening. So, you could think of a scenario in which the case goes to trial, maybe after the primary and results in a prison time with President Trump and then he is inaugurated, and he gets to serve as president from some prison farm somewhere.”
Lichtman said “of course” Trump would just pardon himself of any federal crimes were he reelected president. There’s also the possibility of Trump attempting to preemptively pardon himself, with then-President Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon serving as an imperfect template.
But if Trump is convicted on any state-level charges, where federal pardons do not apply, that’s a different story.
“That's unprecedented, but the pardon power is pretty absolute,” Lichtman. “He can’t pardon himself for the New York case because that’s a state case. If he's convicted in New York, he's stuck. If ... he's convicted in Georgia, he can’t pardon himself from that either, because that's also a state case.”
Trump’s ability to pardon himself is widely debated in the academic community, Krent said.Federal document listing indictment counts against former President Donald Trump. U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida
“There's no law on the books that says you can't. You just have to reason from the idea of separation of powers and the Constitution or to think that it doesn't make any sense to have one person aggregate or accumulate so much power,” Krent said. “As a constitutional matter, I think that that would be too much of a conflict of interest to be able to pardon yourself.”
Interestingly, the classified documents federal indictment didn’t include counts related to 18 U.S.Code 2071, which deals with the concealment, removal or destruction of government documents. This would disqualify anyone found in violation of the code from running for office, Rahmani said.
“That particular provision was passed after Nixon as a disqualification provision that prevents anyone convicted of it from holding public office,” Rahmani said. “Trump's lawyers would have said that it's unconstitutional because only the Constitution can place limits on who could be president. You can be a felon. You can be in prison and still theoretically be president of the United States.”
The Constitution could be interpreted — ostensibly by the U.S. Supreme Court — that an imprisoned president wouldn’t qualify as capable of carrying out his duties, preventing him from taking the office, Ravel said.
“There's nothing to stop him from becoming president either because the provisions in the Constitution about the presidency and the requirements for presidency don't reflect any concern if a president has been indicted or is in jail,” Ravel said. “Although if he goes to jail, it would create a problem for him because the Constitution does have concerns about the inability to carry out the obligations of the office, which he certainly wouldn't be able to do in jail.”
Specifically, Section 4 of the Constitution’s 25th Amendment potentially empowers Congress to determine — via a two-thirds vote of both chambers — that a president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and thereby transfer presidential powers to the vice president.
But if Trump is elected in November, and trials end up taking place after the general election, some of his legal peril could subside — at least at the federal level.
“There's clear Department of Justice memos and policies. It's pretty clear that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted,” Rahmani said.
If Trump won and was convicted but on appeal, he would “probably” still be able to get inaugurated, Krent said.
“The question is whether they would stop the appeal and let him serve out the presidency before it would continue,” Krent said. “Uncharted waters in terms of how this would go. It's gonna affect the primary. It would affect the general election, and it certainly would affect his ability to conduct a presidency.”
Editor’s note: A version of this article was originally published on June 13, 2023, and has been updated to reflect numerous legal and political developments involving Trump.
Six Supreme Court justices will be contorting their arguments like Olympic gymnasts when they convene on Thursday, The Nation's legal correspondent Elie Mystal predicted this week during an appearance on CNN's "Newsnight" with Abby Phillip.
"What we'll see tomorrow... is a level of intellectual gymnastics from the Conservatives that I swear, Simone Biles will copy in Paris this summer," he explained. 'That's how much twisting and turning they're going to have to do to keep Trump on the ballot."
Tomorrow's special session will have the Supreme Court hear oral arguments in order to determine if former President Donald Trump should be disqualified to appear on the GOP presidential primary ballot.
The case against Trump is based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that bars officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from pursuing elected office.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump should be booted from the GOP primary ballot, where he remains the frontrunner ahead of former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, because of his efforts to flip his 2020 election loss to then candidate Joe Biden and fomenting a massive crowd of supporters descending in D.C. on
Jan. 6, 2021, to attend the "Stop the Steal" rally that exploded into an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Mystal believes that the Court should be true to the "original meaning" of the 14th Amendment "when it was written". And he believes if they do, then Trump is deemed an insurrectionist and "ineligible for the ballot."
"If the Republicans were honest with their own philosophy, they will kick Trump off the ballot," he said.
Instead, Mystal suspects while there may be some circus legal knots that are displayed, nobody will likely break from their respective political tribes.
"What I think will happen, what I think should happen, are two different things," he explained. "What I think will happen is the Republican justices, all six of them, will defend their boy and keep Trump on the ballot. But that's going to require them to abandon their own principles."
A prominent Moms for Liberty chapter in Pennsylvania that once numbered 200 members has collapsed due to a lack of interest after having dwindled down to just three participants.
According to a report from the Daily Beast's Michael Daly, the last three members of the Lehigh County chapter recently met at a local diner and decided to call it quits when none of the three volunteered to take charge and keep the right-wing moms' group alive.
In an interview, local chapter founder Janine Vicalvi admitted it took too much time and there was too little interest to make it worthwhile, explaining, "Between homeschooling and working two jobs, it’s just a lot. And I guess there wasn’t as much willingness to do the work that’s required to propel the movement forward.”
Following the recent diner get-together, she posted a message on her chapter's Facebook page, stating, "So we had our meeting this evening and are going to dissolve our chapter.”
The dissolution of the Pennsylvania chapter is yet another blow to the national organization that has been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "a far-right organization that engages in anti-student inclusion activities and self-identifies as part of the modern parental rights movement."
According to a recent New York Times report, a recent school board meeting in Florida where the banning of another book was to be discussed — a central mission of the organization that has made school board meetings a living hell — drew only one Moms for Liberty member.
In analyzing the group's demise Pennsylvania's Vicalvi said that "I think that most successful political movements are one-issue movements. And unfortunately, parental rights is kind of amorphous. Everyone has a different idea of what parental rights looks like."
Not everyone took the news as unfortunate, however.
Brevard County, Florida school board member Jennifer Jenkins — a frequent target of Moms for Liberty — celebrated the group's demise on Facebook by posting, "Another one bites the dust."
Donald Trump's team has railed against diversity measures championed by progressives, but is using that same logic to pick his potential vice president, a former Republican lawmaker said on Wednesday.
Former GOP representative Adam Kinzinger said that, by his count, there are approximately 15 individuals actively considered in the running to be Trump's right hand.
"By my reckoning, the one thing they have in common is their love for Trump, who has a lock on the party’s presidential nomination. One, Tim Scott, even declared, 'I just love you' as he gazed at the former president during a public event," the ex-lawmaker wrote. "It’s hard to imagine that anyone would exceed Scott’s a-s-kissing (please forgive the term) but J.D Vance gave it a try over the weekend. He said that Trump should ignore Supreme Court rulings he deems 'illegitimate.'"
That being said, Kinzinger drew attention to how Trump's team is making its choice.
"As he offered his love and put Trump above himself in speaking to Fox, the groveling Scott, made himself a top contender in the eyes of the prominent former Trump advisor, Kellyanne Conway. And as Conway noted, he fits nicely into her profile for the perfect Veep, which calls for Trump to name 'a person of color' as his running mate," he continued Wednesday. "This narrows her field down to Scott and -- surprise! -- former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley who is the last challenger standing among those who challenged Trump in the primaries."
Kinzinger suggests that Haley is less likely to be chosen as a Veep considering her negative words against the former president, and then called into doubt the process itself.
"Conway’s opinion matters. She helped Trump pick his 2016 running mate, then-Indiana Governor Mike Pence. It was Pence’s appeal to the Christian Right that most likely gave him a win in 2016. This time around Trump has strong backing from conservative Christians so Scott would allow him a new option – namely appealing to Black Americans who have voted for Democrats longer than I have been alive," he wrote. "Oddly enough, as she leaned toward 'a person of color' Conway used a liberal rationale for favoring minorities called DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion.)"
He added, "DEI has been a bugbear for Republicans who consider it a kind of 'reverse racism' that penalizes one group. Nevertheless, person trumps policy in today’s Republican Party. Thus, on the basis of race, Scott meets the criteria for the old political saw, which calls on candidates to broaden their appeal by any means necessary."
After she finished second to "None of These Candidates" in Nevada's primary -- where Donald Trump was not listed on the ballot -- Nikki Haley slammed her own party as chaotic.
“Republicans keep doing the same thing and getting the same result: chaos. That’s the definition of insanity,” she wrote, saying that the “RNC imploded,” the “GOP House can’t pass ANYTHING” and “Trump lost another court case & threw another temper tantrum.”
According to the New York Times' Jazmine Ulloa, Haley's rant is the "latest break between Ms. Haley and her party" as she looks to take a more adversarial stance towards Donald Trump.
Despite her poor performance in Nevada, Haley will be named winner of the contest anyway since “only votes cast for the named candidates shall be counted.” But according to Ulloa, the result denied her a much needed symbolic victory.
"Ms. Haley has continued to project confidence, saying that she will stay in the race until Super Tuesday, on March 5. But she remains far behind Mr. Trump in most state and national polls," Ulloa writes. "In South Carolina, where she was governor and which will hold its primary on Feb. 24, she trails him by roughly 30 percentage points. In California, a Super Tuesday state, and where she is set to appear for a rally on Wednesday evening, she is down by more than 50."
Top officials at the Republican National Committee are hoping Nikki Haley drops her bid for the 2024 presidential nomination so they can strengthen Donald Trump's financial position -- but not too soon, according to sources.
RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who is reportedly close to getting pushed out herself, has publicly stated that she doesn't see a path for Haley to win the nomination, and other party officials would like to launch a joint fundraising committee with Trump so wealthy donors could start writing checks for more than $800,000, sources told The Guardian.
The RNC doesn't need Haley to drop out to enter joint fundraising agreements, but her exit would allow the party to collect money from large-dollar donors who want to support the GOP but not Trump himself, and in the event she remains in the race the RNC has already created the “Presidential Republican Nominee Fund 2024” to collect and store funds until the primary race is decided.
However, some Trump allies are cautious about working with the RNC so early in the campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter, because the MAGA base has been conditioned to view the party organization as the “Washington swamp," and coordinating too closely could open him up to attacks from the far right.
The super PACs backing former President Donald Trump's political rivals for the 2024 nomination were "money pits" that did next to nothing to challenge the former president's dominance, former GOP strategist Tim Miller wrote in a scorching analysis for The Bulwark.
This comes after extensive reporting about Never Back Down, the super PAC of failed Trump rival and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who himself called out how inept their efforts had been.
"Much can be said about about the incompetence, self-dealing, and cowardice of the Republicans who were charged with challenging Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign. Marc Caputo covered it colorfully and thoroughly earlier this week," wrote Miller. "But after you have cut through all the tweets and trivia and backbiting and biorhythmic disruption that spilled out of the DeSantis 'campaign' — if you can even call it that — there is one strategic choice that stands out."
Namely, wrote Miller, records show that the major super PACs representing the non-Trump Republican candidates -- like DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, which raised a combined $225 million -- spent just 2 percent of their revenue targeting Trump, versus supporting their candidates and attacking the non-Trump rivals.
And when these super PACs did target Trump, contended Miller, they only released "limp-wristed" efforts.
"With these resources, Trump’s opponents availed themselves of the best Republican consultants money could buy," wrote Miller. "Those political strategists in turn had titans of industry — millionaires and billionaires — at their disposal. These wealthy individuals were willing to offer their private-sector expertise and burn ungodly sums of their personal fortune to advance the interests of Tim, or Nikki, or Ron. DeSantis even had the world’s richest man giving him free rein and free PR in his personal global town-square on the campaign’s announcement day."
A similar pattern happened in 2016, noted Miller. But "at least in 2016, those choices were defensible. We had never seen a candidate like Trump before, and there was reason to believe that in the end, Republican voters would come to their senses — as they had in every other nominating contest in living memory. We didn’t know what we didn’t know."
"There was no excuse to make the same mistakes this time," he concluded.
The rules around campaign funds — and the levels of threat faced by elected women of color — are in the spotlight as the Justice Department investigates spending by Rep. Cori Bush.
Threats targeting members of Congress — especially women of color — have grown over the past few years, and so has some members’ spending on security. This spending, and the rules surrounding it, are in the spotlight in the wake of news that the Justice Department is investigating spending by Rep. Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat.
Bush said she used campaign funds to pay for security services provided by her husband but that she did so in compliance with regulations and in response to “relentless” threats. She has denied wrongdoing.
The House Committee on Ethics and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) are also reviewing Bush’s campaign spending. The Office of Congressional Ethics also conducted an investigation and found no wrongdoing, according to Bush.
Here’s what we know about Congress, campaigns and security spending.
What rules are there around campaign spending on security?
The FEC prohibits campaign spending on personal use — that is, anything that an officeholder would have even if they weren’t in office. These things include rent or mortgage payments, food, household supplies, clothing and tuition.
Any expense that an officeholder incurs as a result of their position — such as security following excessive threats — does not count as personal use. Candidates can pay family members to work on their campaign if they are providing a service to the campaign — such as security — but their family members are not allowed to work in their congressional offices. Additionally, the cost for the campaign services they provide must be within fair market value.
What security services are provided by Congress?
The Capitol complex, where members work in Washington, D.C., has security staffing. But not all members are guaranteed security when they’re outside of the complex.
Rank-and-file members, or those who do not have leadership positions, such as Bush, don’t get extra security. Only leaders, such as the speaker of the House and the Senate and House majority and minority leaders and whips are eligible for full-time protective services from the U.S. Capitol Police.
How much are Congress members spending for security?
An analysis from CQ Roll Call found that congressional campaign spending on security recently jumped, increasing from $385,000 in the entire 2019-2020 campaign cycle to nearly $3 million in 2021 alone. Bush, along with fellow Squad member New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, were the only women among the top 10 security spenders in 2021. Bush, the top spender among women, spent $170,000 that year; Ocasio-Cortez $73,000; and Cheney $59,000.
Once in office, candidates can hire security personnel to accompany them during member-hosted events, events and to be stationed in district offices during business hours, according to the Committee on House Administration.
U.S. Capitol Police are seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
How often have women in politics experienced threats in recent years?
The Capitol Police said they investigated 8,008 threats last year. They do not provide details about who received the most threats, but other studies show that elected officials who are women or people of color are more likely to face threats and acts of violence than men and White politicians.
In a poll of former Congress members by the University of Massachusetts Amherst last year, women, African-American and Latinx officials were more likely to say they and their families received threats often.
The same trends hold in other offices. A recent report on intimidation of state and local officeholders from the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, found that women officials experience gender-targeted abuse three to four times more than their men counterparts, and officials of color were more likely to experience race-based abuse than White officials. Over 40 percent of state legislators faced threats or attacks over the past three years.
The year started with a spate of threats of violence against elected officials, many of them women. A number of those have come in the form of swatting, or when false reports are filed that result in police dispatching to someone’s home, and happened to officials including Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley; Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; Boston Mayor Michelle Wu; and Judge Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge who is overseeing former President Donald Trump’s election case. In the Brennan Center’s report, more Republican local and state officeholders said they experienced abuse than Democrats.
“The big takeaway is there’s no level of government, and there’s no type of candidate that’s immune from this problem, so really everybody should care about it,” said Gowri Ramachandran, the deputy director of elections and government at the Brennan Center’s Democracy program and author of the report on abuse.
What is the impact of these threats?
Threats discourage people, especially women of color, from pursuing political offices. Forty-four percent of the former Congress members surveyed by the University of Massachusetts Amherst said they are very concerned about election-related violence this year. In the Brennan Center’s report, half of the local officeholders who were women were less likely to run for reelection or a higher office due to abuse.
“It has been very difficult to recruit candidates for this upcoming election cycle. I’ve noticed it more this year than any other year that I’ve been involved in trying to get women and people of color to run for office,” Oklahoma state House Minority Leader Cydni Munson, the first Asian- American woman elected to the Oklahoma legislature, told the Brennan Center.
Beyond even their potential reelection, some expressed hesitancy to speak out on issues such as reproductive rights and gun safety for fear of threats.
“That’s really unfortunate because we need more women in the legislature. We need more mothers in the legislature. Those are real-life stories she could be bringing to the state Capitol,” Munson told the Brennan Center.
Though typically the idiom “second to none” is a compliment, for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, it means her third defeat in the Republican presidential nomination process. And a humiliating one.
With nearly half the statewide vote counted Tuesday night, Haley was trailing “none of these candidates” in the Nevada presidential preference primary. Haley had 33% of the vote, to 60% for “none,” and The Associated Press called the race for “none.”
Haley was the only active candidate on the Republican primary ballot – Donald Trump deliberately didn’t file and is instead participating in Thursday’s
state-run caucus. But there had been a quasi-campaign on the part of Trump forces urging people to vote for “none of these candidates” in the primary. Gov. Joe Lombardo, who has endorsed Trump, has said he would vote for “none” in the primary and then caucus for Trump Thursday night.
Trump himself had not been willing to publicly back the “none” campaign, and in his recent Las Vegas rally
told supporters not to “waste time” on the Republican primary. Introducing Trump at rallies in both Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada Republican Party chairman Michael McDonald similarly told the crowds to ignore the primary.
But Nevada Republican Committeewoman Sigal Chattah, an ardent Trump backer,
told Mother Jones “We’re telling people to vote ‘none of the above,’” in the hope of landing another blow to Haley’s continued presence in the Republican race.
Haley initially was joined on the primary ballot by former Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, though both candidates suspended their campaigns in the fall of 2023.
Nevada’s confusing condition
Featuring both Tuesday’s primary and Thursday’s caucus, Nevada’s third spot on the Republican nominating calendar has led to confusion – and that was not an accident.
The Nevada Legislature attempted to move the state away from party-run caucuses by passing a bill in 2021 mandating state-run presidential primaries be held. Tuesday’s was Nevada’s first primary under the new law.
The Nevada Republican Party led by McDonald, a recently indicted fake elector who has been accused of forging documents in an effort to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results, objected to the state primary, and chose to run a caucus.
State law allows parties to determine how delegates will be awarded in the presidential nominating process, and the Nevada Republican Party declared that only those competing in the caucus could win any of Nevada’s 26 delegates to the Republican National Convention this summer.
Leading up to the election, the secretary of state’s office said “the top issue we get called about” was Trump not appearing on the primary ballot.
Bethany Drysdale, a spokeswoman for Washoe County, said voters on Tuesday were still confused about Trump’s name not being featured, but said the county was referring people to the Republican Party “to learn more about the caucus.”
“There has been some additional confusion from voters who are nonpartisan and did not realize they couldn’t vote in this election,” she said. There hadn’t been any reports of election workers getting harassed, she added.
But confusion – and anger – could be found at the polls.
Nahabedian, a 58 year old voter who did not provide his last name, walked out of the Desert Breeze Community Center in Las Vegas without casting a vote after seeing that Trump was not on his ballot.
“I came out to vote for the primary thinking that the primary was going to include the Republican Party nominees. And the one Republican Party nominee that’s excluded from the state of Nevada is Donald Trump,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve ever been denied the right to vote.”
Haley skipped the state
Trump has won the first two states of the 2024 nominating process: the Iowa Caucus Jan. 15 and the New Hampshire primary Jan. 23.
Trump received 51% of the vote in Iowa. Haley came in a distant third place at 19%, narrowly trailing Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 21%. DeSantis dropped out of the campaign days later prior to the New Hampshire primary.
Haley then received 43% of the vote in New Hampshire while Trump won the state with 54%.
Though Nevada is the third state on the Republican presidential nomination calendar, Haley has skipped efforts to compete and has turned her attention to her home state of South Carolina, for decades considered a decisive contest in Republican presidential nomination fights.
“In terms of Nevada, we have not spent a dime nor an ounce of energy on Nevada,” said Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney,
The Hill reported on Monday.
It wasn’t the first time Haley’s campaign referred to the caucus as “rigged.”
When asked why after finishing second in the New Hamphsire primary, Haley responded, “Talk to the people in Nevada: They will tell you the caucuses have been sealed up, bought and paid for a long time. That’s the Trump train rolling through that. But we’re going to focus on
the states that are fair.”
Haley was scheduled to campaign in California Wednesday, one of the delegate-rich Super Tuesday states holding primaries March 4.
A low turnout affair
The lack of a Trump-Haley head-to-head matchup, the inevitability of Biden’s nomination, and a widely held lack of enthusiasm for a Biden-Trump rematch all combined for slow voting primary voting day in the state.
According to the Nevada Secretary of State’s office, there are 560,000 registered active Republican voters in Nevada. As of Saturday morning, after the week of early voting, less than 58,000 of them had voted. The Democrats performed a little better. Out of 596,000 registered voters, about 94,000 voted during early voting week. In both parties, the early voting week tallies were predominantly people who voted by mail.
Drysdale, the Washoe County election officials, said only 1,000 people had shown up in person ot vote in the county by noon.
Outside the Desert Breeze Community Center in Las Vegas, a slow trickle of voters braved the rain and cold to vote in the primary.
The lack of voter enthusiasm revealed in the week leading up to the primary continued throughout the day Tuesday. Empty voting booths lined the community center with none of the long lines characteristic of the popular voting location. Poll workers, with no one to direct, waited for in-person voters to arrive.
Steady rain Tuesday didn’t help the turnout.
The scene lacked the fervor and enthusiasm typical of prior presidential preference elections in Nevada, including four years ago when Biden came in second place in the Democratic caucus, behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Voters who spoke to the
Nevada Current echoed that lack of enthusiasm.
Becky Ulrey, 74, said she came out to vote Tuesday because she always votes and hasn’t missed an election in decades.
“I decided to stick to my regular routine,” Ulrey said.
The registered Democrat explained that she voted for Biden “because there was no one else on the ballot that I was really excited about.”
“I think he is our best bet,” she said.
David Launay, a 64 year old registered Republican, was equally disillusioned. He voted “none of these candidates.” While he plans to participate in the Republican run caucus Thursday to make his vote count, he hopes Republican front runner Donald Trump gets serious competition.
“I’m not enthused at all as far as some of the things Trump’s done,” Launay said. “I’m actually looking at Robert Kennedy now.”
“If (Trump) does win the caucuses, then I will probably end up voting for him. Yet-to-be-determined right now. This is the first year that I’ve been on the fence,” Launay continued.
April Corbin Girnus and Hugh Jackson contributed to this story.
Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on Facebook and Twitter.
Former President Donald Trump arrives for his arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 04 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Trump's campaign is selling these black-and-white ceramic coffee mugs for $24. (Screen grab)
Illustration of Eugene Debs while running for president in prison. Indiana State University archives
Federal document listing indictment counts against former President Donald Trump. U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida
U.S. Capitol Police are seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)