Evelyn Reynolds

Donald Trump formally appealed a decision by Maine’s top election official to remove him from the ballot on Tuesday, asking a superior court to reverse the decision.Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, removed Trump from the ballot on 28 December, saying the former president had violated section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bars officials from holding office if they engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.The filing in the superior court for Kennebec county, which includes the state capitol of Augusta, accuses Bellows of bias, says that Trump did not have an adequate opportunity to present a defense, and claims Bellows did not have the authority to exclude him from the ballot.“The secretary’s ruling was the product of a process infected by bias and pervasive lack of due process; is arbitrary, capricious, and characterized by abuse of discretion; affected by error of law; ultra vires, and unsupported by substantial evidence on the record,” the filing says. “The secretary had no statutory authority to consider the challenges raised under section three of the 14th amendment.”Trump’s lawyers ask the court to vacate Bellows’ ruling and immediately place Trump on the ballot.Bellows has said her personal views played no role in her decision to remove Trump from the ballot. She reached her decision after holding an hours-long hearing on 15 December on the issue, during which Trump’s attorneys, as well as those challenging Trump’s eligibility, made their case before her.Trump is also expected to appeal a separate decision from the Colorado supreme court blocking him from the ballot for similar reasons. Both the Colorado Republican party and the voters who brought the case have asked the US supreme court to hear it.Section three of the 14th amendment, which was passed after the civil war to bar confederates from holding office, has never been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. The US supreme court is widely expected to ultimately decide the novel legal issue.Maine has four votes in the electoral college. Unlike nearly every other state, it does not award all of them to the winner of the statewide vote. Instead, the statewide winner gets two electoral votes, and the other two are allocated based on which candidate wins in each of the state’s two congressional districts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden earned three of Maine’s electoral votes in 2020 and Trump earned one. More

Bob Menendez, already the subject of sensational charges concerning the acceptance of illicit cash, gold bars and a Mercedes Benz car, faces new corruption allegations, outlined in a superseding indictment made public on Tuesday.The New Jersey Democratic senator has already pleaded not guilty on charges involving interests linked to Egypt. He is now accused of corruption involving Qatar, although he does not face new charges.Prosecutors have previously described how in 2022, when Menendez’s home was raided, federal agents found a haul including almost $500,000 in cash, 13 gold bars and a Mercedez-Benz convertible.According to the new indictment, Menendez’s work for Qatari interests produced more gifts of cash and gold as well as offers of gifts including tickets to motor racing events and luxury wristwatches.The superseding indictment in Manhattan federal court did not identify a member of the Qatari royal family involved in the case, but said the individual was a principal of the Qatari Investment Co.According to the indictment, Menendez sought to induce the Qatari Investment Co to invest with Fred Daibes, a businessman, including by taking actions favorable to the government of Qatar.The indictment said the unnamed Qatari investor considered and negotiated a multimillion-dollar investment in a real estate project planned by Daibes.While the Qatari Investment Co was considering its investment, the indictment said, Menendez made multiple public statements supporting the government of Qatar and provided them to Daibes so he could share them with the investor and a Qatari government official.Daibes is now one of three businessmen charged in the indictment along with the senator and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez. All have pleaded not guilty.On Tuesday, Menendez, his spokesperson and his lawyers did not immediately comment. Contacted by the Associated Press, Tim Donohue, a lawyer for Daibes, said he had no immediate comment.The allegations involving Qatar occurred from 2021 through 2023, the indictment said.Last year, in charges that prompted his resignation as chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, Menendez was accused of acting as an unregistered agent for a foreign government, in relation to Egypt.Denying wrongdoing, Menendez has refused to step down or commit to not running for re-election this year.Menendez has beaten a corruption investigation before, after a jury deadlocked in 2017, in a case involving links between the senator and a Florida eye doctor.Menendez’s next trial is set to begin in May. Last week, Judge Sidney H Stein refused to delay the trial, after defense lawyers requested more time to prepare for a trial they said already included over 6.7m documents.Also last month, Menendez found himself linked to another controversial Washington figure, the former Republican congressman George Santos, who became only the sixth House member ever expelled after a damning ethics committee report.John Fetterman, a Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, paid Santos to record a supportive message for Menendez via the Cameo app.“Hey Bobby!” Santos said. “I don’t think I need to tell you, but these people who want to make you get in trouble and want to kick you out and make you run away, you make them put up or shut up. You stand your ground, sir, and don’t get bogged down by all the haters out there.”Menendez told NBC News he did not think Fetterman’s donors “would appreciate him enriching George Santos”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

More than a third of US adults believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president in 2020, according to a new poll.According to the Washington Post and the University of Maryland, 62% of American adults say they believe Biden’s win was legitimate – down from 69% in the same poll in December 2021.Thirty-six per cent say they do not accept Biden’s win.This week brings the third anniversary of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, which Donald Trump incited in his attempt to overturn his conclusive defeat by Biden the year before.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand people have been charged and hundreds convicted in relation to the riot, some with seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal.Colorado and Maine have moved to bar Trump from the ballot under section three of the 14th amendment to the US constitution, a post-civil war measure meant to prevent insurrectionists running for state or national office. Trump is expected to appeal.Maintaining his lie that Biden’s win was the result of electoral fraud, and using four federal and 13 state criminal election subversion charges (alongside 74 other criminal counts and assorted civil threats) to motivate supporters, Trump dominates polling for the Republican nomination this year.Reporting its poll, the Post said that among Republicans, only 31% now say Biden’s win was legitimate – down from 39% in 2021.The poll also showed Republicans becoming more sympathetic to the January 6 rioters and more likely to absolve Trump of responsibility for the attack, the Post said.Analysing the poll, Aaron Blake, a senior political reporter for the Post, said it mostly showed that Trump’s message over the 2020 election and January 6 had resonated with voters already disposed to believe it.Nonetheless, Michael J Hanmer, director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland, told the paper: “From a historical perspective, these results would be chilling to many analysts.” More

The grim statistics around mass shootings underscore a haunting reality for the US: despite recent legislative efforts at the state and federal levels, gun violence remains alarmingly common across the country.But gun safety groups say they remain undaunted in 2024, when they plan to push for more change through state legislatures and executive actions. And as voters turn their attention to a crucial election year, gun safety groups are also prepared to press candidates on their plans to curb gun violence.The simple statistics demonstrate what a weighty task it is. In December, a gunman carried out a shooting spree across two communities in central Texas, killing six people. The attack was the 39th mass shooting in the US last year, marking a new single-year record for the country. The previous record of 36 mass shootings had been set just one year prior.Gun reform groups will still face steep hurdles as they attempt to reduce the carnage.Republicans, who now control the House of Representatives, have shown little appetite for passing another federal gun safety bill, following the enactment of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022. The supreme court’s conservative majority has similarly embraced a rather expansive definition of second amendment rights, jeopardizing gun safety laws passed at the state and federal level.For gun safety groups, the first significant test of 2024 will come in June, when the supreme court is expected to decide its next major second amendment case.United States v RahimiThe case centers on Zackey Rahimi, who was placed under a domestic violence restraining order after allegedly assaulting his then girlfriend and firing a gun in front of bystanders in 2019. Per federal law, those under such restraining orders are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms, but Rahimi is now challenging that statute based on another supreme court decision.In 2022, the supreme court overturned New York’s century-old regulation requiring that anyone seeking to carry a handgun in public must show “proper cause” to do so. The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, established a new test to determine the constitutionality of gun regulations. The conservative justices ruled that any gun regulation must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”.The ruling has sparked a flurry of challenges to firearm regulations and forced gun safety advocates to search the historical record for analogous laws from the nation’s founding to defend their proposals. In the case of Rahimi, the conservative-leaning US court of appeals for the fifth circuit agreed with his argument that the law blocking those under domestic violence restraining orders from accessing firearms is inconsistent with historical gun laws and is thus unconstitutional.That ruling has now been appealed to the supreme court, which held oral arguments in the case in November. The justices’ decision could have far-reaching implications for the future of gun rights as well as the safety of survivors of domestic violence. According to a 2023 study, more than half of domestic violence homicides involve firearms.“The stakes are incredibly high in Rahimi because it would be the first time the supreme court strikes down a federal law on gun safety in decades. And of course, it’s a particularly important federal law,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice-president of law and policy for the gun safety group Everytown.The Rahimi ruling may also help clarify lower courts’ apparent confusion over applying the Bruen test. Thus far, courts have reached conflicting decisions over how to interpret the “historical tradition” of gun laws, said Jacob Charles, a professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and a constitutional scholar focusing on the second amendment.“I certainly think that confusion is only growing,” Charles said. “We see circuit courts even disagree with one another and are kind of all over the place, the same way that the district courts have been. So I don’t think we’re having any more guidance until the [supreme] court weighs in more.”During the oral arguments, some of the court’s conservative justices appeared skeptical of the fifth circuit’s decision, seemingly hesitant to stretch gun rights to the point of protecting alleged domestic abusers. Even if the supreme court rules against Rahimi, the decision will probably not mark a sea change in conservative justices’ overall approach to the second amendment. Charles, who filed an amicus brief in the Rahimi case, suggested the justices may issue a narrow ruling that upholds the law regarding domestic violence protection orders but leaves the Bruen test intact.“That will still leave lots of other cases, like assault weapons bans, outside the scope of this new kind of revisionary guidance,” Charles said.That dynamic could complicate gun safety groups’ efforts to strengthen the nation’s gun laws, including their campaign to re-enact a federal assault weapons ban.‘A political issue that doesn’t need to be’The country’s worst mass shooting of 2023 unfolded in October in Lewiston, Maine, where a gunman killed 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar. The devastating attack prompted a change of heart for congressman Jared Golden, the conservative Democrat who represents Lewiston in the House of Representatives. Reversing his previous position, Golden announced he would now support reinstating the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war,” Golden said. “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles.”Gun safety groups praised Golden’s announcement, while noting that his new position brings him closer in line with voters’ stance on an assault weapons ban. According to a Fox News poll conducted in April, 61% of voters support banning assault weapons. Other proposed gun regulations, such as enacting universal background checks and mandating safe storage of firearms, enjoy even more widespread support among voters.“We’re hopeful that [Golden’s announcement] will spur others to be able to take some of that political courage and step out there,” said Vanessa Gonzalez, vice-president of government and political affairs for the gun safety group Giffords. “It’s a political issue that doesn’t need to be. We just need more folks to have the courage to say that and to step out on those issues.”The 2024 elections will provide gun safety groups with many opportunities to push sitting lawmakers and first-time candidates on enacting more firearm regulations.“We are continuing to look for younger elected officials or candidates who are not afraid to say gun violence in America has to stop and then actually see it through,” Gonzalez said. “And then on the flip side, what does it look like once [they are] elected to really hold them accountable for what they said they were going to do?”Suplina predicted that gun safety will play a prominent role in campaign ads and messaging in 2024, partly because the issue might help Democrats sway the independent voters who will be crucial in determining the outcomes of close races. An AP/Norc poll conducted over the summer found that 61% of independents believe gun laws should be made more strict.“If you want to win the middle of the American electorate, you have to be strong on gun safety,” Suplina said. “And being strong on gun safety means recognizing that assault weapons should not be in the hands of your average citizens.”So far, efforts to reinstate an assault weapons ban have met consistent resistance from Republicans in Congress. The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, most recently reintroduced the assault weapons ban bill in December, but Republicans blocked the legislation from advancing. Even if Senate Democrats could get the bill passed, it would almost certainly fail in the Republican-controlled House.Despite the obstacles presented by a divided Congress, gun safety groups have found recent success at the state level, and they hope to build upon those wins in 2024. According to Everytown, state legislatures passed a record-breaking 130 gun safety bills in 2023 while blocking 95% of the gun lobby’s agenda.Gun safety groups are also exploring options beyond Congress as it pushes for change at the federal level. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has proposed a new rule aimed at closing the so-called “gun show loophole”, which allows some private gun sellers to perform transactions without completing background checks on prospective buyers. Hundreds of thousands of gun safety proponents have already submitted comments in support of the proposed rule, according to Everytown.That campaign reflects gun safety groups’ overall goal to put more pressure on sellers and manufacturers of firearms in the year ahead. Such efforts may face resistance from conservative courts, but gun safety advocates fervently believe that the political momentum is on their side heading into 2024.“The state of the gun violence prevention movement in our country is strong and stronger than it’s ever been,” Suplina said. “Courts or no courts, Congress or no Congress, we’re going to really do a lot to animate the public to understand who it is that’s flooding the streets with guns and making money off of it while the rest of us suffer.” More

The far-right Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert has blamed “Hollywood elites” including singer Barbra Streisand and actor Ryan Reynolds for her decision to switch districts ahead of her 2024 re-election campaign.In an interview on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast over the weekend, Boebert alluded to how her Democratic opponent Adam Frisch’s campaign had received a $1,000 donation from Streisand in April and a $500 contribution from Reynolds in March.Those sums combine for approximately 0.03% of the $7.7m Frisch’s campaign has raised – compared with his Republican opponent’s $2.4m – since he narrowly lost against Boebert during the 2022 midterm election.Nonetheless, as she has done before, Boebert singled out the donations from Welcome to Wrexham’s Reynolds and Streisand – an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner – as evidence that “Hollywood is trying to buy their way into Congress” at her expense.Boebert said her 27 December announcement that she intended to relocate from Colorado’s third congressional district to the fourth and seek election there was meant to “defend and advance conservative principles”.“We need a strong voice there, and we have to shut down the Hollywood elites who are trying to buy my current seat,” Boebert said to Bannon, the former Donald Trump White House adviser who is appealing a prison sentence given to him for his refusal to cooperate with the US House committee that investigated the January 6 US Capitol attack.“It’s coming from Hollywood when you have Barbra Streisand coming in and donating to the Democrat, when you have Ryan Reynolds coming in and donating to the Democrat.”The Cook Political Report categorized the fourth district where Boebert is headed as “solidly Republican”. Its current representative is Ken Buck, who has been a member of the US House since 2015. But Buck said in November that he would not be seeking re-election, blaming his fellow Republicans’ insistence on lying about how the 2020 election was stolen from Trump in favor of Joe Biden.Meanwhile, the third district that Boebert – a vocal 2020 election denier – has represented since 2021 was categorized as a toss-up in a Cook Political Report rating from December. The Cook Political Report changed its Colorado third district rating to “lean Republican” after Boebert announced her switch.Boebert, 37, won a second term in Congress after defeating Frisch by just 546 votes. The 56-year-old former banker announced in February that he would challenge her efforts to win a third term in Congress during the 2024 election cycle.When she first revealed her plans to pursue election in Colorado’s fourth congressional district rather than grant Frisch a rematch, Boebert said a “pretty difficult year” for her and her family personally had also factored into her reasoning. She filed for divorce in May from her husband, with whom she has four sons.About four months later, Boebert landed in scandal after she and a man with whom she was on a date were kicked out of a performance of the stage production Beetlejuice in Denver for inappropriate behavior, including vaping, recording and groping each other. She later issued a statement of apology, saying: “I simply fell short of my values.”Among those to criticize Boebert for switching congressional districts was the Republican Colorado state representative Richard Holtorf, who is also running to succeed Buck in the US House.“Seat shopping isn’t something the voters look kindly upon,” Holtorf said. “If you can’t win in your home, you can’t win here.” More

This week not only marks the start of a new year, but also a terrifyingly high-stakes ride for America – with slightly over 10 months to the presidential election of 2024.By a slim margin, according to polls, more Americans support Donald Trump than Joe Biden. More disapprove than approve of Biden’s efforts to improve the nation’s infrastructure, and more believe that Trump “has a vision for the future” than believe Biden does.Polls this long before an election have little predictive value. But clearly, Biden and his administration must get across a clear message of Biden’s vision and accomplishments.What can the rest of us do between now and the election to help save American democracy? Ten suggestions:1. Become a political activist to ensure Trump is not elected. For some of us, this will mean taking more time out of our normal lives, up to and including getting out the votes in critical swing states. For others, it means phone banking, making political contributions, writing letters to editors, and calling friends and relations in key states.2. Do not succumb to the tempting anesthesia of complacency or cynicism. The stakes are too high. Even if you cannot take much time out of your normal life for direct politics, you will need to organize, mobilize and energize your friends, colleagues and neighbors.3. Counter lies with truth. When you hear someone repeating a Trump Republican lie, correct it. This will require that you prepare yourself with facts, logic, analysis and sources.4. Do not tolerate bigotry and hate. Call it out. Stand up to it. Denounce it. Demand that others denounce it, too.5. Do not resort to name-calling, bullying, intimidation, violence or any of the other tactics that Trump followers may be using. We cannot save democracy through anti-democratic means.6. Be compassionate toward hardcore followers of Trump, but be firm in your opposition. Understand why someone may decide to support Trump, but don’t waste your time and energy trying to convert them. Use your time and energy on those who still have open minds.7. Don’t waste your time and energy commiserating with people who already agree with you. Don’t gripe, whine, wring your hands and kvetch with other progressives about how awful Trump and his Republican enablers are. Don’t snivel over or criticize Biden and the Democrats for failing to communicate more effectively how bad Trump and his Republican enablers are. None of this will get you anything except an upset stomach or worse.8. Don’t decide to sit this election out or to vote for a third-party candidate, because you don’t especially like Biden and you’re tired of voting for the “lesser of two evils”. Biden may not be perfect, but he’s not the lesser of two evils. Trump is truly evil.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion9. Demonstrate, but don’t mistake demonstrating for political action. You may find it gratifying to stand on a corner in Berkeley or Cambridge or any other liberal precinct with a sign asking drivers to “honk if you hate fascism” and elicit lots of honks. But this is as politically effective as taking a warm shower. Organize people who don’t normally vote to vote for Biden. Mobilize get-out-the-vote efforts in your community. Get young people involved.10. Don’t get distracted by the latest sensationalist post or story by or about Trump. Don’t let the media’s short attention span divert your eyes from the prize – the survival of American democracy during one of the greatest stress tests it has had to endure, organized by one of the worst demagogues in American history.It cannot be overstated how critical the outcome of the next 10 months will be to everything we believe in. And the importance of your active participation.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

At least three members of Congress reported “swatting” incidents over the past week, with the New York Republican Brandon Williams being the latest to reveal that he was subject to an act of criminal harassment that generally involves prank-calling 911 to get a heavily armed Swat team to show up at the target’s home.Williams, who has represented central New York since 2023, said police from Auburn, New York, had come to his home on Christmas Day after receiving a call claiming there was a crisis at his home.Williams said the police, recognizing his address, called in advance to alert him but only after the swatting incident had disrupted his family holiday. Williams said he suspected his pro-Israel positions were behind the prank since pro-Hamas signs had been left at his home.The congressman later told CBS News that he told his family to assemble in the kitchen and to keep their hands visible when police arrived. He said he suspects public officials are being increasingly targeted, including by agitators seek to disrupt the lives of elected officials.“There are so many things going on in our society that are disrupting our systems,” Williams told the outlet. “Swatters are disrupting police, getting them out on these fake calls. This could be targeted at judges, state officials and law enforcement too.”“Swatting” became a holiday feature for several politicians from both parties at the end of 2023.The Florida Republican senator Rick Scott said on Thursday that he had also been the target of a hoax call.“Last night, while at dinner with my wife, cowards ‘swatted’ my home in Naples. These criminals wasted the time & resources of our law enforcement in a sick attempt to terrorize my family,” Scott said in a social media post.A spokesman for the Naples police department told CBS News that the person who made the call told dispatchers that a man had “shot his wife with an AR-15 three times while she was sleeping.”Police said that within 15 minutes they had confirmed the report was false.“This is very much an active and ongoing investigation,” the department added.In a third incident, the Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she, too, had been swatted. In a social media post on Christmas Day, Greene said: “I was just swatted. This is like the 8th time. On Christmas with my family here.”She later claimed that both of her daughters’ homes were targeted.“Both my [daughters’] houses just got swatted today. Big thanks to the police who responded! We appreciate you and support you! Whoever is doing this, you are going to get caught and it won’t be funny to you anymore,” she wrote on X, tagging the FBI.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Maine secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, who last week ruled that Donald Trump was ineligible to appear on the state’s 2024 primary ballot after his allegedly insurrectionist actions of 6 January 2021, was the target of a “swatting call” on Friday night, according to state police.Police said they had received a call at 8.15pm from an unknown male, saying that he had broken into her home in Manchester, Maine. Police responded but found no one inside the home, according to WMTV.Bellows later posted on Facebook that she and her husband were not home “when threats escalated, and our home address was posted online”.“This behavior is unacceptable,” she added. “The non-stop threatening communications the people who work for me endured all day yesterday is unacceptable. It’s designed to scare not only me but also others into silence, to send a message.”In an FBI alert about swatting in 2022, the agency warned that “individuals who engage in this activity use technology, such as caller ID spoofing, social engineering, TTY and prank calls to make it appear that the emergency call is coming from the victim’s phone.”The law enforcement agency added that patterns of swatting had evolved.“Traditionally, law enforcement has seen swatters directing their actions toward individuals and residences. Increasingly, the FBI sees swatters targeting public places such as airports, schools and businesses. Another recent trend is so-called celebrity swatting, where the targeted victims are well-known personalities.” More

The likely candidates in the 2024 presidential match-up issued two starkly different new year messages to voters, with Joe Biden striking a note of cheerful optimism as his almost certain challenger Donald Trump, and Trump lashing out in a social media post laden with lies and conspiracy theories.The president and first lady Jill Biden, vacationing in St Croix in the US Virgin Islands, offered a New Year’s message touting US job gains and the performance of the US economy during his administration – a message that voters have so far refused to accept.In an interview with American Idol host Ryan Seacrest about his hopes for 2024, Biden said “[the American people] understand that we’re in a better position than any country in the world to lead the world”.“We’re coming back, and it’s about time,” Biden said.Asked about his memories of the previous year, Biden – whom Republicans in Congress have derisively called “Beachfront Biden” – said “people are in a position to be able to making a living now, and they’ve created a lot of jobs for over 14 million”.In comments to reporters, Biden said his new year’s resolution was “to come back next year”.“That’s the biggest one right there,” he said.Trump, however, issued a simple: “Happy New Year. It will be a historic one. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” on his Truth Social platform.Trump and former first lady Melania Trump welcomed 2024 with a concert by 90s rap star Vanilla Ice, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle “rock-out”, featuring Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo, at his Mar-a-Lago home and private club, according to the Palm Beach Post.Trump, the outlet reported, could be seen in videos toward the back of the room away from the dance floor as people danced to Vanilla Ice, whose real name is Rob Van Winkle, as he played his hit Ice Ice Baby.A day earlier, Trump issued a more typically acidic message, predicting rival Joe Biden won’t “make it to the gate” in November. He repeated his unproven claims that the 2020 election was rigged and transposed the “crooked” moniker he used on Hillary Clinton to Biden.“As the New Year fast approaches, I would like to wish an early New Year’s salutation to crooked Joe Biden and his group of radical left misfits and thugs on their never-ending attempt to destroy our nation through lawfare, invasion and rigging elections,” Trump said in the post.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They are now scrambling to sign up as many of those millions of people they are illegally allowing into sour [sic] country, in order that they will be ready to vote in the presidential election of 2024,” Trump added.The twin new year’s greeting arrived as the 2024 election shifts into high gear. Polling averages compiled by FiveThirtyEight show that 39% of Americans approve of Biden’s performance, with 55% disapproving – a gap that has doubled in 12 months.But that comes as Trump faces a series of criminal complaints that, if any are heard and concluded with convictions before the election, may damage his standing among voters. With the White House gambling that Trump is the Republican candidate it can beat, there are few opportunities for slip-ups.A survey released on Monday showed that Trump leads Biden among Hispanic and young voters – a key demographic that helped him win the presidency four years ago.The USA Today and Suffolk University survey, condensed by the Guardian, found that Biden had 34% support among Hispanic voters surveyed, down from 65% in 2020, compared to Trump’s 39%. Biden’s support among Black voters had also declined, from 87% to 63%.Among younger votes under 35, Trump leads Biden 37% to 33%, a spread that four years ago was 24 points in Biden’s favor. More