In a Sunday interview on “NewsNation Prime," Stein said the U.S. must respect U.N. resolutions and the International Court of Justice's ruling that the situation in Gaza is a "plausible genocide." She accused American political elites of "normalizing the murder and torture of children on an industrial scale."

From coast to coast, U.S. campus protesters put up tents to protest Israel’s military action in Gaza and demand the schools divest from companies they claim “profit from Israeli apartheid.”

Stein, arrested last week at a protest, said she is "healing" but sees the situation "digging in" despite some colleges agreeing to divest from companies linked to the conflicts.

The presidential candidate also touted her long-shot 2024 election bid, saying her campaign is "on track" to appear on ballots nationwide as the "pro-worker, anti-war, anti-genocide, climate emergency choice" that Americans want.

Stein rejected the idea that her candidacy could function as a spoiler, taking votes from Biden. "I think the concept that votes are taken away or that anybody owns your vote is anti-democratic at its face," she said.

In recent weeks, regulatory agencies have been racing against the clock to finalize some of their most consequential policies, such as abortion data privacy, antidiscrimination protections for transgender patients and nursing home minimum staffing. 

At issue is the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a fast-track legislative tool that allows lawmakers to nullify rules even after the executive branch has completed them. The CRA also bars agencies from pursuing “substantially similar” rules going forward, unless Congress orders it. 

Rules can be protected if they are finished before the “look-back” window opens in the last 60 legislative days of the 2024 session. But because of the quirks of the congressional calendar, nobody will likely know when that is until after Congress adjourns for the year. 

According to a review from the George Washington University, that window has often fallen between May and August, most regularly occurring in July.

Most of the major rules that supporters of the administration were concerned about were published in April. Advocacy groups praised the White House for finalizing regulations they said will protect vulnerable populations.

“The administration is advancing important work with respect to health care, affordability, and access,” said Ben Anderson, deputy senior director of health policy at the left-leaning consumer advocacy group Families USA. “If rules aren’t finalized soon enough in the calendar, then everything's sort of at risk of being undone by a future Congress.”

Resolutions of disapproval are not subject to filibuster rules and need only a simple majority of the House and Senate to agree in order to pass. If the president signs the resolution, regulations can be undone in days, rather than the months or years it would take going through the normal notice-and-comment period. 

If former President Trump wins again and ushers in GOP control of Congress in 2025, the CRA could be a powerful tool to undo the agenda of the Biden White House.

"We don't know what's going to happen in November. So I'm not sure that we'd necessarily think about legacy at this point. But what we're seeing are really important advances to protecting access and affordability for health care," Anderson said.

The CRA was passed in 1996, a part of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga.) “Contract with America.” Republicans have used it more than Democrats, though prior to 2017, Congress had only used it once to repeal a final rule. 

“[CRA] wasn't on people's radar the way it is now. We were aware of it, but we weren't thinking about the deadline the way they are now,” said Susan Dudley, former administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under former President George W. Bush.

But during the Trump administration, Congress used the CRA to overturn 16 rules issued toward the end of former President Obama’s term, including one involving family planning grants.

That history has likely led to a scramble among agencies.

Dudley, who is the founder of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, said there were more major rules issued in April than in any other month since 1981.

“I think what we're seeing that's different this year is there's so much more awareness, especially because we know who the nominee is by now, and we know he's used CRA before. And so I think there's just much more acute awareness of this deadline,” Dudley said. 

Among the rules health care advocates had been pushing hard for were ones that would expand protections under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, privacy regulation for people seeking abortions, as well as another to protect LGBTQ patients from discrimination. Both were released last week and could be likely targets of a future Trump administration.

Liz McCaman Taylor, a senior attorney at the National Health Law Program, said she had been most anticipating the abortion privacy rule, which blocks health providers and insurers from disclosing protected health information to state officials to aid in the investigation, prosecution or suing of someone who sought or provided an abortion.

“It really responds to the moment we're in post-Dobbs, where people are traveling for care, but also, technology is such that ... my health care data travels with me,” McCaman Taylor said. “Your data can follow you, but that could also haunt you in a situation where providers are truly very fearful of the consequences.”

The antidiscrimination rule itself reinstated and expanded protections that had been gutted under a rule from the Trump administration. So even if a rule can’t be overturned with the CRA, there are still other pathways. Lawsuits filed in conservative courts can also nullify the rules, especially if a new administration takes over and decides not to defend a policy it disagrees with.

Dania Douglas, a senior attorney at the National Health Law Program, said she had been concerned that the administration wouldn’t be able to finish key rules before the CRA “look-back period,” especially because of the uncertainty about when it would fall. 

But that hasn’t been the case.  

"The Biden administration has been doing a lot of work around health care equity ... in the last two weeks, so many of the rules that provide these really critical protections have been issued,” Douglas said. 

She specifically referenced a rule bolstering antidiscrimination protections in health care for people with disabilities, something that hadn’t been updated in nearly 50 years. 

“I think the Biden-Harris administration was very aware of this CRA deadline and worked very hard to try to get these rules out in April ... at a time when they think it will hopefully be safe from the CRA look-back period,” Douglas said.

A new poll from Decision Desk HQ/News Nation found 46 percent of voters think Trump is the better pick to deal with the border. Roughly a quarter, or 26 percent, think President Biden is the candidate to trust, and another 13 percent weren’t sure. 

Split up by party, support is higher for the Republicans’ candidate on immigration – with 85 percent of GOP voters picking Trump and 61 percent of Democrat voters picking Biden.

Immigration is a key issue in the 2024 race as Biden and Trump both campaign for another four years in the White House. It just topped Gallup’s list of most important problems for Americans for the third straight month, surging above government, inflation and the economy in general. Notably, though, immigration came in behind inflation in the DDHQ poll. 

Republicans have seized on issues at the border as they seek to expand their House majority and flip the senate in November, bashing the Biden administration for its management. 

Trump has leaned into incendiary rhetoric about immigration along the campaign trail, warning about “migrant crime” and suggesting immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country.  

Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign has warned that “we cannot go back” to the Trump administration’s handling of the issue. 

“Here’s what I will not do: I will not demonize immigrants, saying they ‘poison the blood of our country,’ as he said in his own words,” Biden said at the State of the Union this year, with a jab at Trump.

Six in 10 voters in the new DDHQ poll say immigration has had a negative impact on the country. Notably, though, just 47 percent say the matter has had a negative impact on their own community. 

Sixty-three percent of all voters say they’re very or somewhat concerned about immigrants voting illegally, with nearly nine in 10 Republicans expressing that worry. 

Research shows noncitizen voting is extremely rare, despite recent debunked rumors suggesting migrants are registering to vote in swing states. 

Recent analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center found that “any instance of illegally cast ballots by noncitizens has been investigated by the appropriate authorities, and there is no evidence that these votes—or any other instances of voter fraud—have been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome.” 

Decision Desk HQ, at the direction of NewsNation, polled 1,000 registered voters between April 16-17. The margins of error vary across questions due to item non-response and the base rate, but a comparable probability survey would have the margins of error reported as plus or minus 3 percentage points. 

Rafael Bernal contributed. 

Roughly 42% of all respondents said they have a favorable view of Kennedy, but among voters between the ages of 18 to 34, that share jumps to 57%. Nearly half of Republicans surveyed (48%) said the same, compared to 43% of independents and 35% of Democrats.

"He can have an outsized impact on the race even if he can't win," said Scott Tranter, director of data science for Decision Desk HQ.

All that would have to happen is for Kennedy to pull one or two percent from either of his competitors in a swing state like Pennsylvania or Michigan to change the outcome for the White House, Tranter explained.

Political pundits continue to debate whether Kennedy's longshot presidential bid poses a greater threat to President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump.

Younger voters tend to lean Democrat, which suggests Kennedy's popularity with that group is worse for Biden. On the other hand, Republicans' favorable view may be a bad sign for Trump.

Trump has gone after Kennedy recently, calling him a "wasted protest vote" and a "Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden."

In response, Kennedy called on Trump to debate, writing on X, “When frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged.”

As far as actual voting intentions, the NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ poll found Democrats (26%) are more likely than Republicans (23%) to back a third-party candidate now that Biden and Trump are the presumptive nominees.

When asked to describe Kennedy's political views, a plurality of those surveyed (30%) described him as a moderate. However, Democrats (31%) were more likely than others to view him as a conservative.

"The Biden campaign is going to try and paint him as a Republican, and then the Republican campaign is going to try and pay him as a Democrat," said Tranter. "We'll see where it comes out."

The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling average index currently shows Trump (42.3%) with a slight lead over Biden (41%) when Kennedy is factored in. Other surveys, like a recent NBC News poll, suggest Kennedy could hurt Trump more than Biden.

Kennedy, a longtime environmental lawyer, was running for the Democratic nomination before launching a third-party bid in October. Since then, he's been fighting to get on the ballot in states nationwide, recently qualifying in California.

In March, Kennedy announced Nicole Shannan, a tech lawyer and philanthropist, as his running mate.

Trump has yet to announce his VP pick, but several people are said to be in the running, including Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, to name a few.

It was officially an event for about 400 mega-donors, but the VP hopefuls got their chances to pitch themselves. One big name not there: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Among the notables believed to be on Trump’s shortlist is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, whose chances have dimmed since her revelation that she killed a young dog decades ago when living on the family farm.

“It freaks a lot of people out,” said Princeton University politics lecturer Dr. Lauren Wright. “Killing a puppy is not one of those decisions that people see … as part of working farm life,” Wright told “NewsNation Prime.”

“The fact that she wrote it and she thought it would be a positive with the base, I think, was a giant misread.”

Wright also discounts Noem’s chances because she wouldn’t add any notable voting bloc to the ticket. “I don’t think she was a serious contender because I don’t think she brings anyone extra. Anyone who likes Kristi Noem was already going to vote for Trump.”

Noem’s book contains one other notable error: her statement that she had met North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un. Her spokesperson has said the editor is updating the book's reference to that. “No Going Back,” is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.

As for who may become Trump’s running mate: “I just hope that if someone’s going to be supporting of the president … of the agenda … have his back, help us win,” said Florida Rep. Byron Donalds.

Who would help Trump? Former Trump attorney May Mailman likes South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. She believes Scott would be seen by voters as presidential, but not someone who would upstage Trump.

“He ran for president. It wasn’t a successful run, but he didn’t fall on his face," Mail man said.

Trump is not expected to name a running mate anytime soon, which is no problem for Mailman. “Maye the person is not on this list. We’ve still got a while before the RNC … and as long as he’s got the pick in before then, that’s really all that matters.”

The Republican National Convention is scheduled to begin July 15 in Milwaukee.

It’s not yet clear if Kennedy, who has seen scattered polling throughout his candidacy, will even be able to qualify for a televised forum, as the independent candidate has also yet to collect enough signatures for most state ballots.

But discontent with the two parties’ standard-bearers has opened up a potential third choice, especially one with access to considerable money, making a square-off among the three polarizing figures a possibility.

“If Bobby can consistently poll at 15 percent and better from now [until] fall, coupled with increasing ballot access, he has a legit shot at making the debate stage,” a Kennedy ally familiar with the campaign’s messaging strategy told The Hill. 

The first presidential debate on the commission’s calendar is slated for Sept. 16 in Texas, followed by a vice presidential showing on Sept. 25 in Pennsylvania. Two more productions are slated for October in Virginia and Utah. 

Kennedy has made it known that he wants to get in on the debate action. He’s angling to go head-to-head with Biden and Trump, and has called for an open exchange of ideas and critique of existing policy in front of the American public. He wants voters to envision a November election that looks beyond a dismal two-party rematch.

“I should have a spot in those debates,” Kennedy said in an appearance on Fox News this week. “There’s all these really existential issues and neither of them can really deal with them.”

“We are in a more toxic polarization and division than any time since the American Civil War,” he said.

As the drama builds, Biden and Trump have not been enthusiastic about the idea of getting into it with Kennedy, whom they both view as a menace, regardless of the host or timeline of the debate. 

For one, it could simply elevate the third-party contender as Trump and Biden poll neck-and-neck. Kennedy has family name recognition but is not as widely known as the current or former president, who enjoy the benefits of each having held the White House. 

At this point in the race, it’s also unclear whose campaign he could rattle more drastically. Biden and Trump are each vying for support among covered voters who feel frustrated with Washington politics. That includes independents, who famously swing either way and with whom Kennedy has sought to identify this cycle. 

Aaron Kall, who serves as director of debate at the University of Michigan, said Kennedy could also throw another “wild card” onto the stage as Biden and Trump each want to grab the spotlight and avoid miscues amid questions about their age and mental fitness.

For now, Democrats and Republicans still see Kennedy as an unlikely candidate, though they’re each paying closer attention to his campaign than in the past. His media circuit has mostly consisted of podcasts and alternative shows with select cable news appearances. Showing up in front of a national audience as a contrast to his two competitors could showcase him in front of a much wider audience.

Still, there’s a fundamental question of whether Biden and Trump will even debate each other. Though Trump has said he’d debate Biden “anytime, anywhere, any place,” the former president skipped out on all of the Republican primary debates held this cycle, a move decried by many of his ex-competitors and by the Biden campaign. There’s no guarantee he won’t do that again.

Team Biden, meanwhile, has said he’s “happy” to debate Trump, going perhaps further than some of his more hesitant comments on the prospect in recent months. 

Trump, while in New York this week for his hush money trial, claimed he doesn’t “know anything” about Kennedy, the candidate he called in a recent Truth Social post “a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden.” 

“Look, RFK is polling very low. He’s not a serious candidate,” Trump said in Manhattan, when asked whether or not he’d debate the independent.

“They say he hurts Biden – I don’t know who he hurts, he might hurt me, I don’t know. But he has very low numbers, certainly not numbers that he can debate with. And he’s gotta get his numbers up a lot higher before he’s credible,” Trump added. 

Some strategists believe Biden has the edge over his two rivals, given Trump’s ongoing legal strife and questions about Kennedy’s viability.

“I do think that President Biden will come out a clear winner if all three of them get up on that stage,” said Democratic strategist Kristen Hawn, as new polling suggests Kennedy’s bid could do more harm to Trump. 

Hawn also noted that the timeline of Trump’s criminal trials is still up in the air, and legal obligations could complicate plans for a debate – or simply draw more attention to them. 

Some of Kennedy's allies have said that regardless of his troubles with the law, Trump could still want to engage on stage if given the chance. “He’s open to mixing things up,” said the source familiar with Kennedy’s campaign. “He’s more than willing to debate Bobby.” 

Biden’s boosters, including within the Democratic National Committee, however, may be much less willing to advise the incumbent president to debate Kennedy. Democrats have made it clear that they see him as someone who spouts conspiracy theories about vaccines and whose aligned super PAC takes money from Trump donors. 

“The DNC will do everything they can to deny Bobby a podium,” the pro-Kennedy source speculated. 

Kennedy and the Democratic Party apparatus have been at odds much of this year, with Kennedy picking them apart for being biased toward Biden and committee officials criticizing his bid as a way to elevate Trump and building a narrative that he’s a “spoiler.”

“The DNC orchestrated a notably skewed democratic primary, resulting in Biden emerging as their nominee. Now, their stuck with Biden, who can't beat Trump,” Kennedy wrote on X on Friday. “Can someone make this make sense?”

Kennedy convened a press conference on Wednesday in New York City attempting to flip the script on Biden, claiming that the president cannot beat Trump in a three-way contest and that he is, in his own estimation, the true “spoiler” – a point he would likely address in a debate setting.

Democrats were quick to call out Kennedy’s briefing as merely a gimmick to divert the focus away from his own long-shot effort. 

“Nothing but a media stunt meant to distract from the fact that he has no path to getting the 270 electoral college votes needed to win,” said Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist.

“Since he can't win, his candidacy will only serve to take votes away from other candidates. And no stunt will change that,” Gordon said. “Staying in a race you have no path to winning is the definition of a spoiler.”

Kall, the presidential debate scholar, expressed skepticism about Kennedy qualifying through the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the body that’s sponsored all general election presidential debates for decades. One of the CPD requirements, along with a 15 percent threshold in qualified polls, is that a given candidate's name must appear on enough state ballots to have “at least a mathematical chance of securing an Electoral College majority” in 2024. Critics say that could be tough for Kennedy.

The Trump campaign has its own concerns with the process. Frustrated with the CPD’s September start date, it called this week for other networks to go around the system and host debates outside of that schedule. 

“If we go back to the really old setup where it’s just different networks [hosting debates] and they would have the ability to have their own criteria,” Kall said, then Kennedy’s participation might be more likely — though Trump and Biden may have to negotiate. 

Whether or not Kennedy qualifies for the stage, the current and former president have “a lot more to gain from debating” than not, said Tammy Vigil, a Boston University professor of media science with a focus on political campaigns. 

“He’d have to really make a surge in support,” Vigil said of Kennedy. “I don’t think it’s very likely, although it would be really interesting to see that debate.”

Recent polling shows that the economy and inflation are top concerns for Americans going into the election, gaining in importance specifically in states where President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are on the ground campaigning. Seven states — Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina — are expected to sway the election.

An April YouGov survey for CBS News ranked “the economy” and “inflation” as the two top issues in the U.S. today.

The comparatively gentler pricing in key counties and districts could make a difference in which candidate voters choose at the polls, as studies suggest that incumbent presidents tend to win in elections when economic conditions are more favorable.

"Different inflation rates could indeed be significant in swing states. I think the cumulative inflation rate over the past 3-4 years is probably the most important to consumers thinking about their personal situation," Jeremy Horpedahl, an economist at the University of Central Arkansas, told The Hill.

The national annual inflation rate was 3.5 percent as of March. It has remained between 3 and 3.7 percent since last June after dropping fast off a 9-percent high in mid-2022. 

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged a lack of progress toward the Fed’s 2-percent target rate, saying that “so far this year the data have not given us [the] greater confidence” to start cutting interest rates.

Economists say the lower swing state inflation could be related to housing prices, which are directly propelled by interest rate increases and are now the primary driver of overall inflation.

Different regions of the country, with different zoning and permitting rules, may have been able to process housing cost pressure more effectively, and they may be converging in 2024 battleground states.

"We know that across the country housing affordability differs. To meet the extra demand that we had during the pandemic, you needed to build more and some parts of the country are better at building more," Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist now with New Century Advisors, told The Hill. "Those were the areas that were able to meet the demand."

"It's the kitchen table stuff that at the end of the day ought to affect how people vote," she said.

Some economists see small differences in inflation as a trivial matter for election outcomes.
“Small differences in inflation across states will not be a big deal,” economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, a left-leaning think tank, told The Hill, conditioning that perceptible changes in housing costs could have electoral consequences.

“We know that the rents of marketed units have stopped rising rapidly and may even be falling somewhat. This will be a big help where people see that. Also, if we see any fall in mortgage rates before the election, that will likely help Biden,” he said.

Arizona

In Maricopa County, Arizona, which Biden took from Trump in 2020 as only the second Democrat to win there since Harry Truman, consumer prices advanced just 2.2 percent on an annual basis in February of this year, the last time data was reported for the Phoenix area by the Labor Department.

Grocery prices in Phoenix have deflated 0.4 percent since Feb. 2023, with meat prices down more than 3 percent and dairy prices down more than 5 percent. Housing costs are still elevated just as they are nationally, with shelter up 2.7 percent and primary rent up 4.1 percent.

Maricopa County’s 2.2-percent inflation rate is also notable because it fell from a 2022 high of 13 percent — a full 4 percentage points higher than the national peak of 9 percent reached in that year. That’s a drop in price expansion of more than 10 percent in under two years, nearly double the 5.5-percent drop experienced nationally.

Unemployment in Phoenix is at 2.6 percent, which is also significantly better than the national number at 3.8 percent. A recent analysis by USA Today that compared income levels to the cost of essential expenses determined Arizona to be the third most affordable state to live in.

Michigan

Michigan, where Trump visited Saginaw County Wednesday just six weeks after Biden’s own trip there, is another battleground state where inflation is well below the national average at 2.8 percent in the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn area.

That metropolitan district has also experienced a larger drop in inflation than the U.S. as a whole, falling from a high of 9.7 percent in June 2022. 

Shelter costs are more expensive in the Detroit area, while certain foods are cheaper, including meat and dairy products. Unemployment in Saginaw County stood at 5.2 percent in March of this year, higher than the national level.

In the battleground Kent County, unemployment stood at 3.1 percent in February. Grand Rapids-area unemployment also beat national levels at 3.2 percent that month, though weekly wages were $217 shy of the U.S. average.

Georgia

The economy around Atlanta, Georgia, which has a number of pivotal counties for the election and has seen dynamic changes in voting patterns in recent years, tells a stronger story, with inflation falling to 3.3 percent in February off a 2022 high of 11.5 percent.

Unemployment in the Atlanta region was 3.0 percent in January compared to 3.9 percent nationally while average weekly wages came in $37 above national levels. In contested Cobb County, Georgia, which has pulled back from the GOP in recent years, unemployment was a low 2.7 percent.

While headline inflation in Atlanta is 0.2 percentage points lower than the national CPI, both food and energy inflation are considerably higher there, at a 3.9 percent annual increase in February for food and a 3.6 percent increase for energy costs. That’s compared to a 1.9-percent deflation in energy costs as measured on the national level.

Wisconsin

Regional inflation data for Wisconsin is listed under neighboring Minnesota by the Labor Department but provides a similar picture of lower-than-average price increases in the northern midwest at 2.7 percent.

Grocery prices are deflating by 2.1 percent on the year, with fruits and vegetables 6.7 percent cheaper than they were in 2023. Deflation in some energy categories and motor vehicle prices is being offset by predictably high inflation in housing.

Wisconsin’s two highly contested “boomerang counties,” which voted for former President Obama, then Trump and most recently Biden, are Door County and Sauk County. 

Data from Kewaunee County, which abuts Door County, has unemployment beating the national average by nearly a full percentage point at 2.9 percent, which is true of nearby Brown County, as well. Unemployment in Madison, which is close to Sauk County, is at a very low 2.3 percent.

Pennsylvania

Economic conditions in metropolitan areas of Pennsylvania more closely map the national story than some of the other swing states, with inflation falling from a high of 8.8 percent in 2022 to 3.4 percent in February in the Philadelphia region.

Food and shelter cost pressures are both weighing on pocketbooks while energy deflation is offering a bit of price slack, with household energy costs down by more than 3 percent on the year.

The economic situation in boomerang Erie County is less favorable, with unemployment at 4 percent and weekly wages trailing the national average by a substantial $357.

Nevada and North Carolina

The Labor Department doesn’t track price data in metropolitan areas in either Nevada or North Carolina, so only broader regional-level data is available for those states. 

Inflation is higher than average in the West at 3.6 percent and in the South at 3.8 percent annually.

However, economists in North Carolina have touted the state’s affordability due to its relatively homogenous rural dispersion.

“Data from the federal government for 2022 — the latest available — show the cost of the same products and services bought by a typical household was 5.8 percent lower in North Carolina compared to the nation,” North Carolina State University agricultural economist Mike Walden wrote in a January brief.

“The cost of housing … is 18 percent lower than the national cost. A big reason is that the percentage of North Carolinians living in rural regions of the state is more than twice as high as in the nation,” he noted.

Unemployment is higher than the national average in Carson City, Las Vegas and Reno, with the Nevada average at 5.1 percent in March. Unemployment in North Carolina in March is in sync with the national average at 3.5 percent.

His pick may be at Mar-a-Lago sometime within the next 48 hours.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee is hosting a fundraising event this weekend and nearly every person rumored to be on his short-list for vice president is attending.

NewsNation has confirmed that although the event is scheduled at the Four Seasons, nearly all guests will privately meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home.

Names on the guest list include:

• South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem
• Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance
• New York Rep. Elise Stefanik
• Florida Sen. Marco Rubio
• Florida Rep. Byron Donalds
• South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott

Each has their advantages and disadvantages.

Other big names who aren’t necessarily in the running for the vice presidential slot plan to attend Trump's weekend fundraiser.

NewsNation confirmed that RNC Chairman Michael Whatley and Co-Chair Lara Trump are expected to attend this weekend. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is also on the guest list, along with a handful of lawmakers in Congress, governors and Senate candidates.

It’s unclear when Trump may announce a running mate, but he’s been teasing it for quite some time.

He was in court standing trial in New York Friday afternoon but is expected to fly back for the fundraiser.

Brian Hughes, senior advisor to the Trump Campaign has provided this statement heading into this weekend's retreat:

“It is certainly an opportunity for a collection of the most dynamic leaders of our common sense movement to demonstrate the winning messages we have to end Biden’s weak and dangerously dishonest presidency. Those who financially support President Trump and the America First agenda will see that they are helping save our nation with victory in November.”

While they have soured on Biden on a range of issues from cost of living to climate issues, the rash of protests at college campuses around the country has been the latest point of contention with the president.

“He will lose the election if he decides to roll the dice and assumes that Gaza isn't at the top of minds right now,” said Elise Joshi, the executive director of Gen-Z for Change —which was once run under the name TikTok for Biden.

Joshi added that the last six months have seen “an increasing pace of concern” about the president.

The crisis in Gaza has been a tipping point for many young voters, and some polls have shown support dissolving for Biden.

Last month, a Harvard Youth Poll showed Biden's support from voters ages 18-29 had slipped from about 60 percent in 2020 down to 45 percent.

A CNN poll last weekend also revealed that Biden was 11 percentage points behind Trump in a head-to-head match-up among young voters.

Some say Biden isn’t addressing some of the issues that matter most to young voters. 

“I don’t think the president is currently meeting young voters enough,” said Kidus Girma, campaign director at the Sunrise Movement, a political action organization that advocates for action on climate change. “We’re paying attention.” 

Girma said it’s “in the interest of the president to run on a progressive mandate” to speak to those voters. 

On the issue of Gaza, he said, it will come down to Biden’s approach in the coming months. 

“It’s critical that President Biden recognize the voices of young people calling for peace in Gaza,” Girma said. “The Americans are calling for the end of unconditional military aid and a permanent cease-fire. The quickest way to end the unrest on college campuses is to listen to the majority of Americans and young students fighting for what is right.” 

Biden was critical of the recent protests on college campuses Thursday, condemning vandalism and trespassing, adding that protesters at Columbia University and other campuses had the right to demonstrate peacefully.

“In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points,” the president said in a speech at the White House. “But this isn’t a moment for politics. It’s a moment for clarity. So let me be clear … violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is.” 

“Destroying property is not a peaceful protest; it’s against the law,” Biden added. “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation, none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people. 

“Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder,” he added. 

Joshi blasted Biden’s comments, calling them “shameful.”

“To paint us as violent when police are the ones tear-gassing, shooting, and beating students, especially knowing he was elected in large part due to Black Lives Matter, is utterly shameful,” Joshi said.

An aide who worked on Biden's 2020 campaign said the president's remarks reflect the public's overwhelming view on the protests.

Biden campaign aides say they have a “robust” operation to engage young voters and lure them to their column. Campaign aides say they have launched a youth outreach effort earlier than in previous cycles.

Since launching the campaign, they have also run digital ads targeting younger voters, including a current $30 million ad campaign.

The campaign has also leaned on surrogates including social media influencers to continue to highlight the administration’s policy wins, and separately in March it launched “Students for Biden-Harris,” a national organizing program that will help reach students across campuses.

Santiago Mayer, the executive director of Voters of Tomorrow, said the Biden administration actively engaged with the demographic.

“This is the first administration that has not only invited young people to the White House but has actively listened to us,” said Mayer, who has met with administration officials a number of times to discuss issues including gun violence prevention and climate issues. “They’re looking at young people as governing partners.”

Speaking of the protests at colleges, he said they’re directed not so much at the administration but at the leadership of their universities.

Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, who also served as a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said the Biden administration has been “the most progressive administration of my lifetime,” bolstering issues that are important to young voters including student debt relief.

Still, he said of the administration’s handling of the crisis in Gaza, “I don’t want to say it cancels it out, but it resonates in a serious way that does tend to overshadow in some young people’s minds — and some older people’s minds — all the good things he’s done.”

Given the choice between Biden and former President Trump, Duss predicted that many of the young voters who are protesting the administration’s inaction in Gaza will come home to Biden during the election.

But he cautioned that Biden's handling of the situation in Gaza "is going to be a drag” on the reelection bid.

“It’s impossible to say how big of a drag, but it’s going to be a close election that even something that hurts him at the margins could make a difference,” Duss said.

(NewsNation) — While South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem never really had a shot at being Donald Trump’s 2024 vice presidential pick, Senator Tim Scott did.

But alas (for Scott), with another week comes another favorite.

At the beginning of April when Scott was the flavor of the month, my source said: “(With Scott as the VP) the Republican party will be able to play the ‘Biden in Chains’ clip over and over and over and further weaken Biden’s popularity with the African American community.”

In 2012, while he was vice president and campaigning for President Barack Obama in Virginia, Biden told a diverse crowd of 800 that the Republican challenger Mitt Romney wanted to repeal financial regulations and added: “He’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules — unchain Wall Street! They’re going to put you all back in chains!” While Biden was referring to Republican economic policies, our insider said, “It’s not a good look for him right now. Telling African Americans they will be back in chains, with the slavery reference… and especially since the community feels forgotten by the Biden administration as the migrant crisis gets worse.”

But Scott has since faded into the background as another candidate with even better qualifications has come forth.

This week, Virginia Lieutenant Governor, Winsome Earle-Sears is the one to watch.

“Republicans want someone in law enforcement,” my source said. “With all this (redacted) going on on college campuses right now, the Republicans want to double down and show they are all about the law. Right now, the Democrats are showing they can not and will not govern. (Sears) is a former Marine and is tough on crime. It doesn’t hurt that she’s an African American woman either.”

Sears served as an electrician in the Marines from 1983 to 1986 and did not re-enlist.

A hurdle (or not) is that she was born in Jamaica and thus, could never serve as the President of the United States — something my source says Trump sees as a benefit as she would never seek to oust him. But, it is unclear if she would be able to perform the duties of the President should Trump become ill, hospitalized, or die in office due to the country of her birth.

Another person who fits the law enforcement, African American mold is Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, who switched sides in September 2023 from a Democrat to a Republican.

While other major cities saw crime spikes in the last year, Dallas bucked the trend — earning Johnson national recognition when the Washington Post wrote a blazing op-ed on June 14, 2023, titled: “America’s cities have seen a crime surge. Not Dallas — thanks to it’s mayor.” Three months later, Johnson dumped the Democrats and announced he was siding with the Republicans.

With either Sears or Johnson, the “chains” tactic will likely still be used — but bolstered by the law-and-order theme some Republicans are banking on.

“This election is about freedom, America and democracy. That's why I badly need you. You know, one of the reasons why our economy is growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants,” the president said.

“The reason — look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they're xenophobic. They don't want immigrants. Immigrants are what makes us strong. Not a joke; that's not hyperbole. Because we have an influx of workers who want to be here and want to contribute,” he added, according to a pool report.

When asked if the president would want to apologize to Japan for the comment, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was trying to make a broader point.

“The broader case that he was trying to make, which I think most leaders and allies across the globe understands, he was saying that… we are a nation of immigrants, that is in our DNA,” she said.

She added, “as it relates to our relationship with our allies, that continues. Obviously we have a strong relationship with India, with Japan.”

Biden has been hit relentlessly by Republicans over immigration, which is among a host of issues key to the 2024 election.

Biden has previously hit China for its lack of immigration as a reason for its economic troubles but hasn’t criticized Japan, which is a key ally in Asia. He's also had choice words for Russia, particularly during its war with Ukraine.

In including India and Japan alongside with China and Russia, Biden lumped in two counties considered key allies, particularly when it comes to combating China.

Biden has hosted leaders of both countries at the White House in the last year. He hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June 2023 and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last month. Both were also treated to state dinners.

Updated 1:12 p.m.

The Brennan Center for Justice survey of 928 elections workers also found that 62% of them worry about their elected bosses trying to interfere with how election workers do their jobs.

And, while it’s a small percentage, it’s the biggest fear in the elections business: 13% say they’re concerned about pressure to certify an election in favor of a specific candidate or party.

The solution for most appears to be upgrading security.

“They are investing in security trainings, increasing physical and cybersecurity measures," said Lawrence Norden, senior director of elections and government at the Brennan Center. That includes strengthening ties with emergency management services.

Among the survey’s key takeaways:

• 92% have increased security for voters, election workers and the “election infrastructure”
• 38% report experiencing threats, harassment or abuse
• 28% say they worry about threats to their families
• 76% have shared election details with law enforcement
• 83% say their departments’ budgets must grow to meet security needs

Security issues in local election departments come at time when turnover is also a big concern. A recent study by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that at least 36% of local election offices have changed leadership since 2020, and 39% of jurisdictions had new leadership from four years earlier. Both numbers are the highest four-year turnover rates in 20 years.

(NewsNation) — South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem not only blew up her (slim) shot at being Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick when she bragged about shooting a rambunctious puppy in her soon-to-be-released book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.” She also blew up any chance she had of being picked to serve on Trump’s cabinet or in another prestigious post, my insiders say.

“She’s done. Out,” a major Republican donor told me. “Trump doesn’t exactly like dogs, but he knows people love them and isn’t going to be associated with this. This is a dumber move than Mitt Romney’s dog story.”

In 2012, while running for President, Romney’s infamous story about a dog he tied to a car roof in a carrier while driving to Canada for 13 hours, came back to bite him.

(According to Business Insider: “Back in 1983, Mitt Romney traveled 12 hours to Canada with his Irish Setter, Seamus, strapped to the roof of the car in a kennel… Romney’s son noticed a brown liquid dripping down the back window. Romney hosed the dog off and stuffed the hound back into the crate. The dog allegedly ran away when the Romney family finally reached its vacation destination.”)

An advance copy of Noem’s book was obtained by The Guardian, and in it, Noem — in an attempt to show she was a woman who could make “difficult, messy and ugly” decisions if they needed to be done — wrote: “Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old.” Noem claimed the dog was “aggressive” and had to be trained for pheasant hunting — but instead attacked chickens.

According the Guardian: “I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

Noem shot the dog in a gravel pit — and then later shot a “nasty, mean” (and smelly!) goat in the same pit.

Noem’s admissions, which have caused a national uproar, also showed a lack of judgment.

“I’m not sure which thing she did was stupider: The fact that she murdered the dog, or the fact that she was stupid enough to publish it in a book,” Joan Payton, of the German Wirehaired Pointer Club of America told the Associated Press. The club itself described the breed as “high-energy,” and said Noem was too impatient and her use of a shock collar for training was botched.

TikTok and Instagram influencer TheTruthfulG, who has over 227,000 followers on TikTok, railed on Noem, saying: “As someone with two wonderful German Wirehaired pointers just like poor Cricket I hope that breeder sues the shit out of her… Anyone who would shoot a puppy because it hasn't figured out hunting yet shouldn't be allowed to own a dog ever again, and certainly should never hold public office.” The influencer also pointed out that most reputable breeders have a clause in their contract where if, for any reason, the dog doesn’t work out, they would be returned to the breeder. Not shot.

Either way, Noem is out of a job come 2026 — when her term ends and, due to term limits, she can’t run again in her home state.

He secured the nomination of the American Independent Party, which is a conservative party.

However, he secretary of state’s office won’t certify candidates until late August, placing him on the ballot with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in the race for the state’s 54 electoral votes — the most of any state. 

That includes Wednesday’s announcement that Kennedy would be on the ballot in four states.

He’ll appear on Utah’s ballot as an Independent. Two weeks ago, he gained access to the ballot in Michigan — a crucial battleground state —through another minor party.

He’ll also appear on Hawaii’s ballot through a newly formed political party set up for his nomination.

The campaign says it has enough signatures to reach the ballot in six other states including North Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada.

He’s also working to get on the ballot in New York.

Recently, Trump has been stepping up his attacks on Kennedy, calling him a Democratic plant and saying any votes for Kennedy would be wasted protest votes.

The DNC is paying for ads likening Kennedy to Trump because they have shared donors.

Kennedy, however, says he is a threat to both campaigns because he can beat both.

“I'm leading President Trump and President Biden in terms of favorability,” Kennedy said. "When it's a head-to-head just me against President Biden, I beat him in a landslide. Just me against President Trump head to head, I beat him.. .and President Biden can't beat him.”

Kennedy is eyeing another state to get on the ballot — Texas.

With 40 electoral votes, it’s the second-largest state next to California in terms of electoral votes.

In the interview, Trump repeated several falsehoods that have become a staple of his campaign pitch, including overstated rates of criminality among immigrants and numbers of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“Trump repeating troubling and dangerous rhetoric goes against the very fabric of who we are as a nation. He isn’t just committing to reimplement the cruel, systematic policies of ripping away mothers from their children from his time in office — he’s pledging to go further by using the military and law enforcement to enact his cruel, anti-American, and ineffective immigration policies,” said Escobar in a statement obtained exclusively by The Hill.

Escobar was reacting to Trump’s pledge to use local law enforcement and the National Guard to strictly enforce immigration laws, at one point praising former President Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback,” though not by name.

“Dwight Eisenhower was very big on illegal immigration not coming into our country. And he did a massive deportation of people. He was doing it for a long time. He got very proficient at it,” Trump told the magazine.

Trump escalated his threat to use the military, telling Time magazine that undocumented immigrants “aren’t civilians,” and repeating rhetoric of an “invasion” and using a dog whistle referring to migrants as males of “fighting age.”

That descriptor, also sometimes phrased as “military age,” is commonplace in right-wing media and among GOP immigration hard-liners, and is meant to suggest migrants are potentially undercover members of foreign adversarial military groups, a claim for which there is no evidence.

Escobar excoriated Trump for that sort of rhetoric, highlighting the 2019 El Paso shooting, where a gunman who expressed anti-Mexican sentiment as his primary motivation killed 23 people and injured another 22.

"I saw the dire consequences of his language and policies firsthand during my first term in Congress: my community was the victim of his continued and consistent xenophobic rhetoric when a white supremacist — who published a screed online using Trump's own words — slaughtered Latinos in El Paso on August 3rd, 2019. We cannot go back,” said Escobar.

Trump also downplayed the need for new detention camps to house immigrants slated for deportation — though he explicitly did not rule out the possibility — saying “there wouldn't be that much of a need for [camps], because of the fact that we're going to be moving them out. We're going to bring them back from where they came.”

Repatriations of foreign nationals are limited by a number of factors, including limited resources to conduct deportation flights and uncertainty about whether other countries will accept those flights.

Venezuela, for instance, does not currently accept removal flights from the United States, and is a major country of origin for people on the move.

Along with the interview, Time published a lengthy fact check of Trump’s statements, rebuffing his claims on the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States and the definition of “civilian,” among others.

"The American people will not stand for Trump’s attacks on immigrants; on mothers; and on children. They want solutions at our border, not more sick political stunts that come at the expense of the most vulnerable and with an embrace of authoritarianism. Today’s reporting from TIME only highlights the stakes of this election: we must work to reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris," Escobar said.

Biden's team also sharply criticized Trump's comments on abortion in the Time interview, denouncing his claim that states should decide whether or not to monitor women's pregnancies or prosecute them for having an abortion.

“I think they might do that. Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states,” Trump said.

“When we have a candidate on the ballot who will not uphold the Constitution, then I feel like I have to put policy aside" Matthews said on MSNBC's "Inside with Jen Psaki. "And I wanna support the person who is best suited to defeat Donald Trump."

Her remarks stand in contrast with other former advisers to Trump. Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who became a frequent critic of the former president after leaving office, said earlier this month that he will vote for the “Republican ticket” in November.

“I think it’s my duty to pick the person I think would do the least harm to the country,” Barr said on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.” “And in my mind, that’s — I will vote the Republican ticket.”

Matthews said she has talked with a lot of Republicans, including high-up elected officials, who "bash" Trump privately. But, she added, "many of them will not even say it publicly.” 

“And a lot of times, what they often say, is that they're supporting him because of the policies, that they want the conservative agenda, and where I get really frustrated, is that they're treating this like it's a normal election, a normal Republican candidate and a normal Democratic candidate,” Matthews continued. “Well, this couldn't be anything further from the case.”

In the wake of his decision to support the GOP ticket, no matter the candidate, Trump mocked Barr on social media.

“Wow! Former A.G. Bill Barr, who let a lot of great people down by not investigating Voter Fraud in our Country, has just Endorsed me for President despite the fact that I called him ‘Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy’ (New York Post!),” Trump posted on Truth Social last week. “Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted Endorsement, I am removing the word ‘Lethargic’ from my statement. Thank you Bill.”

Another Republican leader who has bumped heads with the former president also put his support behind Trump last month. Senate Minority Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., endorsed Trump after his last remaining rival, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States," the senator said at the time. "It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support."

He will appear at rallies in Freeland, Michigan and Waukesha, Wisconsin. Trump was scheduled to hold an outdoor event on Sat. April 20 in Wilmington, North Carolina but had to cancel it because of severe weather.

Trump has repeatedly denounced his prosecutors for keeping him off the campaign trail.

"I should be right now in Pennsylvania, Florida, in many other states, North Carolina, Georgia campaigning," he said as he entered the court on April 16 ahead of another day of jury selection.

"They want to keep me off the campaign trail," he said later that day while campaigning at a New York convenience store. "We are going to go all over. We will be all over," Trump vowed during that stop. "Weekends we are doing rallies over the place."

Since the trial kicked off on April 15 with jury selection, Trump has made two retail campaign stops in parts of New York City on court days, including stopping at a construction site.

A campaign official told NewsNation that Trump will ramp up those retail stops in the coming days, including one expected this week.

The former president has not campaigned during some of the trial's down times. The schedule shows the trial was in half session two days last week, and there was no court this past Monday.

When pressed about why Trump has not campaigned more in some of the available time, a campaign official said, "We have been unsure of the ebb and flow" of the court calendar at times and other difficulties in scheduling the events."

"We will continue to take full advantage of Wednesdays and weekends," the campaign official told NewsNation.

The presumptive Republican nominee is scheduled to hold a campaign event on Saturday, May 11 in Wildwood, New Jersey, located two and a half hours south of New York City, the official said.

Because of the financial disadvantage Trump and Republicans are facing, fundraising is also a priority. He is "spending a significant amount of time raising money," the campaign official said.

The campaign official added in the past two weeks he has taken a lot of private political and fundraising meetings.

Fundraising will be his major focus this weekend he headlines a "2024 Spring Retreat" in Palm Beach for donors. It will also feature many of those considered running mate contenders: Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Tim Scott, R-S.C., J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, Gov. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.

The trial has also helped him in the fundraising effort. He has sent out several pitches about it and how he has been disadvantaged. 

Campaign officials said there are a lot of political activities Trump participates in during the time he is not in court and not seen by the public.

"President Trump is constantly working," campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. "Meeting with foreign leaders, meeting with donors, flying around the country... the president will continue to work to earn the votes of voters across the country." 

In that time Trump hosted Polish President Andrzej Duda and former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso for dinners.

Winning back the Sunshine State will be an uphill battle, but Biden’s campaign thinks the issue of abortion, which will be on the ballot thanks to a restrictive new state law, can give the president and other Democrats a boost.

They also note that Democrats won Florida as recently as the 2012 presidential race, when President Obama — with Biden on his ticket — defeated Republican Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah).

Winning Florida will be an uphill battle, but the campaign isn’t taking any state for granted in an election that currently looks like a dead heat nationally.

“Writing Florida off as a long shot is a big mistake,” Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins said. “Those who underestimate the resilience and determination of Floridians do so at their own peril. Our campaign is deeply rooted in the communities across this state, and we are witnessing an unprecedented groundswell of support.”

Abortion has been an effective issue for Democrats ever since the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022, and it will be a major issue in Florida.

When Florida’s state Supreme Court ruled a six-week abortion ban approved by the state Legislature could take effect this month, it also allowed for a ballot measure to go to voters in the fall. That measure will allow voters to weigh in on whether to protect access to abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The Biden campaign and Democrats are hoping that measure will be a major force driving pro-Biden voters to the polls in the fall, and that it will put Florida’s 30 electoral votes in play.

Biden’s campaign released a memo announcing it would invest more in Trump’s home state as a state to flip, and Vice President Harris will travel to Jacksonville to campaign Wednesday, the same day the six-week abortion ban takes effect.

Her visit comes a week after Biden visited Tampa for a campaign event that also focused on abortion rights. Florida’s new law will reduce the cutoff of legal access to abortion from 15 weeks to six.

Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg says there’s plenty of reason for Biden’s campaign to think the issue could make a huge difference in Florida.

“In Florida, the Republicans are going to be running on a six-week ban, and it polls in the low 20s,” he said. “Usually parties don’t support issues that poll so terribly.”

A recent Emerson College poll found that 57 percent of surveyed Floridians think the six-week abortion ban is “too strict,” and 42 percent said they will vote in favor of a ballot amendment to enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution.

Trump defeated Biden in Florida by more than 3 percentage points in the 2020 election.

But even before the new abortion law, Biden hadn’t given up on the state, where the campaign spent money in 2023 and this year.

Trump easily won the GOP primary in Florida, and he’s been a power in the state. Ron DeSantis was elected Florida’s governor in 2018 while running as a strong Trump ally. DeSantis was strong enough to be seen as a potential Trump rival in the GOP primary after an easy 2022 reelection, though that challenge ruffled Trump’s feathers, never gained traction and ended after the Iowa caucuses.

Trump and DeSantis met over the weekend, reportedly to discuss potential joint fundraising efforts and DeSantis’s commitment to helping Trump.

Biden is behind Trump in public opinion polls in Florida. Trump was ahead by 9 points in a recent FAU/Mainstreet Research poll, 13 points ahead in an Emerson College poll and 6 points ahead in a survey from St. Pete Polls for WMNF Radio.

Ford O'Connell, a Florida-based GOP strategist, called Democrats’ strategy in the Sunshine State “basically throwing the kitchen sink at the wall to see what sticks.”

“I think that there’s a bad taste in a lot of Democrats’ mouths, national Democrats, in terms of how far Florida has slipped away from them,” he said.

Some Democrats are less optimistic about a return to glory in Florida.

“Florida frequently feels like Charlie Brown and Lucy and the football for Democrats. It’s a place where we get our hopes up, but boy, it's hard to win in a state like that; we haven’t won in a long time,” said David Thomas, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Vice President Al Gore.

John LaBombard, a former communications director for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), agreed that winning Florida will be a challenge.

“Even with the ballot initiatives at play in Florida, I would say that we as Democrats especially sometimes get a little too excited about this reverse coattail effect where we think that because of policy issues being put to voters where voters are very likely to agree with our preference on that policy, that does not always translate to increased support for the Democratic candidates elsewhere on that ballot,” he said. “We’ve seen that time and time again.”

Still, in a close election, Thomas argued it was important for Democrats to not rule out Florida.

“I think it’s important for Democrats to be expanding the playing field as much as they can at this stage in the game, because we know it’s going to be a close election,” he said. “You don't want to totally write off big important states with big, huge numbers of voters and electoral votes.”

Julia Manchester contributed.

Trump sat for an interview earlier this month with Time Magazine about his plans for a possible second term. When asked about various abortion policies and how he would handle them if he is elected in November, Trump repeatedly said it should be left up to individual states to decide.

"I think they might do that. Again, you'll have to speak to the individual states,” Trump told Time of states monitoring women's pregnancies.

When asked whether he would be comfortable with "states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit," Trump told the outlet, "It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.

"And by the way, Texas is going to be different than Ohio. And Ohio is going to be different than Michigan. I see what's happening."

The outlet reported Trump refused to commit to vetoing any federal abortion ban if it reached his desk.

"I don't have to do anything about vetoes because we now have it back in the states," Trump told Time.

Abortion is a major issue heading into the 2024 election and a significant vulnerability for Trump. The former president has repeatedly taken credit for the Supreme Court's decision in June 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade because he appointed three conservative justices.

Trump, in an effort to get around the issue, has taken the position that abortion policy should be left up to the states through legislation or ballot referendums as GOP-led states enact restrictive policies. But that, too, has prompted attacks, including from some on the right who expressed disappointment the former president was not embracing a federal minimum standard for abortion.

Meanwhile, abortion has driven turnout for Democrats in the elections since the 2022 decision, helping the party win the Kentucky governor's mansion, the Virginia Legislature and other key races.

President Biden and his campaign have sounded the alarm constantly that a second Trump term would lead to nationwide restrictions on abortion access, something Biden has vowed to protect if he is reelected.

“Donald Trump’s latest comments leave little doubt: if elected he’ll sign a national abortion ban, allow women who have an abortion to be prosecuted and punished, allow the government to invade women’s privacy to monitor their pregnancies, and put IVF and contraception in jeopardy nationwide," Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a Tuesday statement responding to Trump's comments.

“Simply put: November’s election will determine whether women in the United States have reproductive freedom, or whether Trump’s new government will continue its assault to control women’s health care decisions," she added. "With the voters on their side this November, President Biden and Vice President Harris will put an end to this chaos and ensure Americans' fundamental freedoms are protected.”

Updated at 9:31 a.m. EDT

To this point, conventional wisdom and most polling results have pointed to dire outcomes for Trump if convicted, but new polling from Emerson College and The Hill suggests a more complex picture in the battleground states that will be key to winning the Electoral College.

Emerson surveyed 1,000 registered voters from each of the states most likely to swing the election. Voters from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were weighted by gender, age, race/ethnicity, education and voter turnout data to create a sampling of the expected electorate.

From those samples, the largest group of voters in each state said a conviction in his New York hush money trial would have no impact on the likelihood of supporting Mr. Trump for president in 2024, with a majority of Republicans saying it would make them more likely to vote for him. Fifteen percent of Republican voters in Pennsylvania said a guilty ruling would make them less likely to support Trump, followed by 13% in Arizona, 11% in Wisconsin, 10% in Michigan and 9% in Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

Results among independent voters were less consistent. The poll found a conviction would be potentially damaging among independents in four of seven key swing states:

• Georgia: 26% more likely, 32% less likely, 42% no impact
• Michigan: 26% more likely, 30% less likely, 45% no impact
• Nevada: 25% more likely, 32% less likely, 43% no impact
• Wisconsin: 24% more likely, 30% less likely, 47% no impact

But independents in three other toss-up states responded differently, with nearly a third of independent voters in each state saying they would be more likely to send the former president back to the White House if convicted in New York.

• Pennsylvania: 31% more likely, 24% less likely, 45% no impact
• Arizona: 32% more likely, 25% less likely, 43% no impact
• North Carolina: 32% more likely, 25% less likely, 43% no impact

"The conventional wisdom would be, hey if a president or a person is convicted, that would hurt them, but [in] Trump's case, the polls suggest it might help him. He might get a boost out of that," Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, told Nexstar. "Which suggests that either way this trial goes, Trump might find a victory in there. If he's found innocent then the witch hunt argument is made. If he is found guilty, it looks like some of these voters are going to rally around the former president."

Overall, voters favored the leading Republican candidate over Biden in Arizona (48% to 44%), Georgia (47% to 44%), Michigan (45% to 44%), Nevada (45% to 44%), North Carolina (47% to 42%), Pennsylvania (47% to 45%) and Wisconsin (47% to 45%).

The poll, which has a margin of error of +/- 3%, did, however, find that Biden gained ground among some undecided voters since previous polling samples were done earlier this year.

The poll also asked swing state voters of their opinion on his NYC criminal trial — specifically, whether it was appropriate to hold the former president accountable, or if it felt like more of a "witch hunt," as Trump has called it.

In every swing state, more polled voters found the trial to be appropriate, with margins of 4% in Arizona, 7% in Georgia, 7% in Michigan, 11% in Nevada, 1% in North Carolina, 7% in Pennsylvania and 6% in Wisconsin.

The Cornhusker State’s unique system awards an electoral vote in presidential elections to the winner of each of its three congressional districts, in addition to the winner of the statewide result. Unlike the rest of the ruby-red state, the 2nd Congressional District, which includes the Omaha area, has been a swing district in recent elections and could very well be the tipping point for whoever wins in November.

Strategists said both President Biden and former President Trump will likely keep an eye on the district and may invest time there as the election approaches in order to give themselves a seemingly small but crucial advantage in the race to 270.

“You get a lot of attention from the candidates who are running for top office in America because this one is up for grabs,” said Ryan Horn, an Omaha-based Republican media strategist.

Nebraska has distributed its electoral votes through this system since 1992, but it has only been electorally relevant in the past few presidential election years. The first time Nebraska’s electoral votes were split came in 2008, when then-candidate Barack Obama (D) narrowly defeated the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2nd District by little more than 1 point.

Before then, all of Nebraska’s electoral votes had gone to Republican candidates for decades. The district comfortably voted for Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) in 2012 and was in play in 2016, but Trump held on to narrowly win the district over Hillary Clinton.

It then flipped back to blue in 2020 to comfortably vote for Biden by more than 6 points.

Observers expect the 2024 race will likely come down to just about a half-dozen states that are the most closely divided. And a race as close as this one could end up hanging on the 2nd District.

Horn noted that both Trump and now-first lady Jill Biden visited the district late in the election season in 2020, underscoring the importance of a district with an estimated population of about 650,000.

Only one scenario in the Electoral College likely exists where the result of the district could directly decide the winner of the election. If Biden wins Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, while Trump wins Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, Biden would be just one vote short of victory at 269.

Maine is the only other state other than Nebraska that distributes electoral votes by congressional district. Maine is mostly a blue state, but its 2nd Congressional District voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

If that district votes for Trump again, then Nebraska’s 2nd District would be key. If it votes for Biden, then he wins; but if it votes for Trump, the candidates would be tied at 269-269, and the House would decide the election.

Even though that situation is unlikely, experts said the vote is one both candidates want in their column.

“It’s not important enough to spend a whole bunch of time worrying about it and campaigning for it, but it is important enough that you can’t ignore it,” said Paul Landow, a former executive director of the Nebraska Democratic Party.

But the district could be skipped entirely in presidential politics if some Nebraska Republicans are successful in their effort to convert the state to a winner-take-all system, which most other states use. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) endorsed a bill to change the system earlier this month, and Trump quickly praised him for backing the legislation.

Proponents of the bill initially expressed optimism at being able to change the system ahead of November, but the bill failed a key procedural vote last month before the legislative session ended, and its prospects are uncertain.

Vince Powers, a former Democratic state party chair, said he expects the district to vote for Biden again this year. He pointed to a rift within the GOP in the district, with the Republican Party of Douglas County, where Omaha is located, endorsing a right-wing primary opponent to Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a more moderate Republican representing the district in the House, and censuring Bacon last week without approval from the party chair.

Powers said Biden will be the favorite to take it again and that Republican infighting will only hurt the GOP.

“I just can’t see that big of a lead suddenly changing when you have a divided Republican Party,” he said, referring to Biden’s win in the district in 2020.

He added that he expects a “concentrated” effort from the Biden campaign to win the district again.

Horn said he does not think the effort to change the voting system will be successful but called it “shortsighted” for what is best for Nebraska.

“It’s good that we have attention from both parties once every four years at the top race in the country,” Horn said.

Landow said he doesn’t expect Biden or Trump to spend much time in the district but expects both men to travel there at least once before Election Day. He said splitting off a congressional district from the rest of the state is relatively rare historically in presidential races, but taking the vote is still appealing.

He added that Republicans have tried to change the state’s voting system in the past and will likely continue trying until they are successful or run out of time.

“That’s just kind of a way of life around here,” Landow said. “There’s a fight over the blue dot every so often.”

Voters favored the leading Republican candidate – who is currently balancing court and rally appearances – over Biden in Arizona (48% to 44%), Georgia (47% to 44%), Michigan (45% to 44%), Nevada (45% to 44%), North Carolina (47% to 42%), Pennsylvania (47% to 45%) and Wisconsin (47% to 45%).

The poll, which has a margin of error of +/- 3%, did, however, find that Biden gained ground among some undecided voters.

“The state of the presidential election in swing states has remained relatively consistent since Emerson and The Hill started tracking them last November,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling said in a news release, noting, “The share of undecided voters has reduced and Biden gained ground in Georgia and Nevada, narrowing the gap, while Trump has maintained a slight edge on Biden in the swing states.”

Kimball added that independent voters break for Biden over Trump in Georgia (42% to 38%) and Wisconsin (55% to 44%), while Trump holds an advantage in Arizona (48% to 38%), Michigan (44% to 35%), Nevada (43% to 37%), Pennsylvania (49% to 33%) and North Carolina (41% to 38%).

The poll also found that the addition of a third-party candidate would hurt Biden more than Trump, with the Scranton native losing a larger share of votes in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while the two candidates take similar hits in Arizona and Michigan.

What about Trump's criminal trial?

With Trump on trial in New York City over allegations of hush money payoffs, the poll asked swing state voters which came closer to their opinion of the case – was the trial appropriate to hold the former president accountable, or a "witch hunt"?

In every swing state, more polled voters found the trial to be appropriate, with margins of 4% in Arizona, 7% in Georgia, 7% in Michigan, 11% in Nevada, 1% in North Carolina, 7% in Pennsylvania and 6% in Wisconsin.

If Trump should be convicted, in all swing states the largest group of voters said it would have no impact on the likelihood of supporting him for president in 2024, with a majority of Republicans saying it would make them more likely to vote for him. Fifteen percent of Republican voters in Pennsylvania said a guilty ruling would make them less likely to support Trump, followed by 13% in Arizona, 11% in Wisconsin, 10% in Michigan and 9% in Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

Among independent voters this is how a guilty verdict would affect their likelihood of supporting Trump, the poll found:

• AZ: 32% more likely, 25% less likely, 43% no impact
• GA: 26% more likely, 32% less likely, 42% no impact
• MI: 26% more likely, 30% less likely, 45% no impact
• NC: 32% more likely, 25% less likely, 43% no impact
• NV: 25% more likely, 32% less likely, 43% no impact
• PA: 31% more likely, 24% less likely, 45% no impact
• WI: 24% more likely, 30% less likely, 47% no impact

Swing states and the Senate

While the approval rating for President Biden didn't reach 42% in any of the swing states – Pennsylvania saw the highest at 41%, with North Carolina voters delivering the lowest at 37% – the Democratic Party edged out Republicans in five U.S. Senate races, the poll found.

One closely watched race will play out in Arizona to see who succeeds Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who declined to run for a second term. While the poll finds Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego ahead with 45% of the hypothetical vote, Republican front-runner Kari Lake has gained 4 percentage points over the last three months and now trails by 2%.

In Pennsylvania, David McCormick hopes to unseat the incumbent, Democratic Sen. Bob Casey. The latest poll numbers show a 4% lead for Casey (46% to 42%) with 12% undecided.

In Wisconsin, a banker and businessman with ties to Southern California, Eric Hovde, hopes to steal the seat from Democratic incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin but currently trails 46% to 43% in the polls.

Eyes will also be on the race in Michigan, where polled voters favor Dem. Elissa Slotkin (42%) over GOP challenger Mike Rogers (40%).

In Nevada, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) has a sizable lead among polled voters whether she faces Rep. Sam Brown (45% to 37%) or Jeff Gunter (47% to 33%).

The Democrats are currently clinging to a 51-49 majority in the Senate and the GOP has good reasons to be optimistic.

With West Virginia most likely flipping to red in the wake of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's retirement – Republicans will only need to flip one other state to control the Senate if their candidate is re-elected to The White House.

Stefanik, the House GOP conference chair and a close Trump ally, filed the complaint with the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, arguing Smith is trying to “rush” Trump’s federal election subversion case.

“It’s obvious to any reasonable observer that Jack Smith is trying to interfere with the 2024 election and stop the American people from electing Donald Trump,” Stefanik said in a statement. “At every turn, he has sought to accelerate his illegal prosecution of President Trump for the clear (if unstated) purpose of trying him before the November election.”

Smith should be censured for violating the Justice Department’s manual, she argues, citing a section that says attorneys may “never select the timing of any action … for the purpose of affecting any election.”

“Smith’s conduct has brought disrepute to the Department of Justice and the entire federal government, and the ... Office of Professional Responsibility should impose the discipline that such conduct warrants,” Stefanik said in her statement.

The New York Republican points to Smith’s actions in court to support her claims of political animus, including asking the Supreme Court to weigh Trump’s immunity claims before they had yet been weighed by an appeals court.

The complaint is unlikely to prompt any action from the Justice Department, however, as Smith’s case kicked off with an August 2023 indictment, some 15 months ahead of the presidential election.

Smith's office declined to comment on Stefanik's letter.

Though an unwritten policy, the Justice Department encourages prosecutors to follow the “60-day rule” — avoiding any action that might influence an election in the 60 days prior to it.

A prosecutor on Smith’s team handling Trump’s documents case in Florida recently made clear they see the "60-day rule" as applying to investigative steps or filing a case that could influence an election, as opposed to continuing efforts in an ongoing case.

Jay Bratt, the prosecutor, told the judge in that case that Smith’s team had consulted the department’s Public Integrity Section on the portion of the manual cited by Stefanik.

“That provision does not apply to cases that have already been charged, that are being litigated. It doesn't apply to setting a trial date. We are fully in compliance,” Bratt told the court.

Trump is of course the first presidential candidate to test the limits of that rule by facing an ongoing prosecution while again running for office.

Stefanik’s complaint otherwise echoes a series of arguments already made in court by Trump’s own attorneys, saying they are being overwhelmed by the extent of evidence they must review in the case.

She also picks apart Smith’s filings to the Supreme Court. Smith at one point urged the court to leapfrog the appeals court by taking up Trump’s argument he is immune from prosecution as a former president, an unusual move that if successful would have sped resolution of the issue. 

“Aside from the upcoming election, what ‘compelling interest’ does the public have in the prompt resolution of this case?” Stefanik wrote.

She also criticized Smith for making a filing in the case after District Judge Tanya Chutkan had paused proceedings on it. While the deadlines in the case were lifted, her order did not prohibit new filings. Still, after complaints from Trump, Chutkan ordered Smith’s team to first seek permission before making any new filings.

Tuesday’s ethics complaint is the latest example of Stefanik, who is considered a potential Trump running mate, publicly demonstrating her loyalty to the former president.

In November, Stefanik filed an ethics complaint against Judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw the former president’s civil fraud trial, accusing him of “inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance.” She called on him to resign.

Then, in December, Stefanik asked for an ethics investigation into U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, a federal judge who oversaw cases connected to Trump and Jan. 6 rioters.

Stefanik has kept the door open to serving as Trump’s running mate, telling NBC News in a January interview “I, of course, would be honored to serve in any capacity in a Trump administration,” when asked if she would serve as his vice president.

Rebecca Beitsch contributed.

Updated at 9:19 a.m. EDT

In a race between the three candidates, 44 percent of surveyed voters said they backed Trump, while 38 percent said they would vote for Biden. Another 12 percent said they supported Kennedy, and 5 percent said they did not know or were unsure of whom they were going to support. 

The former president also led Biden in a two-way race, with 48 percent of respondents saying they would back Trump and 43 percent saying the same about Biden. Another 9 percent said they did not know or were unsure. 

“Trump has a clear lead now in the presidential race and it’s based on the simplest of reasons — America thinks Donald Trump did a better job as president and so are willing to vote him back into office. Biden has a hill to climb at this point, though he has done it in the past,” said Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll. 

Penn added that the polling shows a gender divide between Trump and Biden, with more men throwing their support behind Trump and more women backing Biden. 

The polling comes as Republicans and Democrats express concern about how Kennedy could impact the race as a third-party candidate. The Democratic National Committee has established its own team to counter the influence of third-party candidates like Kennedy. And despite polls showing him fairing well with Kennedy in the race, Trump has lashed out against him. 

In a Truth Social post last week, Trump accused Kennedy of being put in the race in an effort to help Biden and said his running mate Nicole Shanahan is not a serious pick. Kennedy fired back on the social platform X, calling Trump “unhinged.”

“President Trump’s rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims that should best be resolved in the American tradition of presidential debate,” Kennedy said. 

The survey was conducted April 24-25 among 1,961 registered voters by the Harris Poll and Harris X. 

Results are weighted based on a variety of a respondents' characteristics to align with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online. The margin of error for the total sample is plus or minus 2 percent. 

While the polls show Trump leading all the independent candidates by large margins, his attacks against RFK Jr. have gotten sharper, calling him a "wasted protest vote" and a "democratic plant."

In response, RFK Jr. invited Trump to debate him on stage, saying, "When frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged."

"President Trump's rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims that should best be resolved in the American tradition of presidential debate," RFK Jr. posted on X.

Trump's attacks on RFK Jr. over the weekend come as recent polling shows the former president with a narrow lead over Biden. Depending on the poll, Trump is just one to four points ahead of Biden nationwide, including in most battleground states.

However, with RFK Jr. thrown into the mix, Trump loses his lead, and Biden comes out in front with a two-point lead. This is because more likely-Trump voters have switched over to RFK Jr. than likely-Biden voters.

Both the Trump and Biden campaigns now have their eyes on RFK Jr., with the Biden team hiring full-time staffers for the sole purpose of highlighting the contrast between the president and RFK Jr.

So while the long-shot candidate doesn't appear to have the kind of support needed to win the presidential election, he could draw enough support to be a spoiler for either of the front-runners.

Kennedy's path forward now relies on a more detailed state-by-state approach that ballot experts say is difficult but can be achieved with enough time and money. RFK Jr. says he is currently on the ballot in nine states and is working on New York next.

Trump challenges Biden to debate

Trump's challenge came after Biden told Howard Stern during a Sirius XM interview Friday that he would debate the former president if he controlled his behavior.

While the president hasn't offered many comments about a matchup between him and Trump, he said he'd be open to the challenge.

"I don't know when but I'm happy to debate him," Biden told Stern.

Trump fired back at the president's comment. He said he was ready, though he questioned Bidens’s willingness.

"I've invited him to the courthouse that he has us tied up in, his administration. This is all being done through Washington. It's all a well-coordinated attack on a political opponent. But I'm here. I'm ready, willing and able. And if he wants, I'll do it on Monday night, Tuesday night or Wednesday night. We'll be in Michigan," Trump said.

Biden open to Trump matchup

Until now, Biden’s reelection campaign had declined to commit to participating in the debates, a hallmark of every general election presidential campaign since 1976.

Biden himself had also been vague, saying in March that whether he debated Trump “depends on his behavior.” The two men debated twice during the 2020 general election — a campaign year constrained significantly by COVID-19 restrictions — and Biden was notably irritated by Trump’s antics in the chaotic first debate that year.

Trump campaign officials have said for some time that the former president is prepared to debate Biden anytime. Chris LaCivita, Trump campaign senior adviser, quickly responded to Biden’s remarks on the social media site X: “OK let’s set it up!”

Later Friday, Trump reacted to Biden’s new public willingness to debate by saying, “Everyone knows he doesn’t really mean it.” The former president suggested evenings because he is otherwise attending proceedings for his hush money criminal trial in New York.

Trump is required to be in court every day but Wednesdays. In a statement on his social media platform, Trump also challenged Biden to debate at the Manhattan courthouse on Friday night, since both men were in New York at the same time. Biden has since returned to Washington.

Trump did not participate in any of the Republican primary debates this cycle.

RFK Jr. wants a piece of the action

Meanwhile, Trump faces a debate challenge from third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The two went back and forth on social media after RFK Jr. criticized Trump for not living up to campaign promises in 2016.

Trump accused RFK Jr. of helping Biden's campaign.

It was then that RFK Jr. proposed a challenge for the two of them to debate instead of putting out jabs over social media.

NewsNation was among multiple national news outlets that signed a letter, urging both Trump and Biden to debate in the fall.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has already announced the dates and locations for the three general election debates between the presidential candidates: Sept. 16 in San Marcos, Texas; Oct. 1 in Petersburg, Virginia; and Oct. 9 in Salt Lake City. The lone vice presidential debate is slated for Sept. 25 in Easton, Pennsylvania.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Like a comic honing his routine, the Democratic president has been testing and expanding his jokes over the past few weeks. It started with jabs about his Republican opponent's financial problems, and now Biden regularly pokes fun at Trump's coiffed hair, his pampered upbringing and his attempt to make a few extra bucks by selling a special edition of the Bible.

The jokes are the latest attempt to crack the code on how to clap back at Trump, whose own insult comedy schtick has redrawn the boundaries of what is acceptable in modern politics. Few have had much luck, whether they try to take the high road or get down and dirty with Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

“This is a constant challenge,” said Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama. Trump is “not someone who plays by the rules. So it’s up to Biden to figure out how to adapt and play by new rules of engagement.”

So far, Biden has been trying to thread a delicate needle to boost his chances of a second term. He uses humor to paint Trump as a buffoon unworthy of the Oval Office, but the president stops short of turning the election into a laughing matter.

Sometimes he finds that a few jokes can energize an audience even more than a major policy victory and draw precious attention away from an opponent who otherwise commands the spotlight even while stuck in a New York courtroom for his first criminal trial.

The latest example came at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday night. After years of Trump constantly needling Biden as “sleepy” and mocking his age (Biden is 81, Trump is 77), Biden lobbed the insult back after Trump appeared to doze off in court. Trump's campaign disputed that he was asleep, and with no video camera in place and trained on him there’s no way of knowing for sure.

Still, Biden nicknamed his rival “Sleepy Don,” adding, “I kind of like that. I may use it again.”

”Of course the 2024 election’s in full swing and, yes, age is an issue," he said. "I’m a grown man running against a 6-year-old.”

Trump didn't seem to appreciate the ribbing, posting on his social media platform that the dinner was “really bad” and Biden was “an absolute disaster.”

But jokes at the annual black-tie affair, which also features a professional comedian (this year it was Colin Jost of NBC's “Saturday Night Live”), are nothing new. The real meat of Biden's routine comes during campaign speeches in which he devotes a few moments to taking digs at Trump in between recitations of policy proposals and legislative accomplishments.

“Remember when he was trying to deal with COVID? He suggested: Inject a little bleach in your vein,” Biden said Wednesday to a labor union, describing Trump's guidance from the White House during the pandemic. “He missed. It all went to his hair.”

In Tampa, Florida, the day before, he assailed Trump for the Supreme Court's ruling that overturned abortion protections — with three justices nominated by Trump voting in the majority of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — and then pivoted to the former president's hawking of a $60 “God Bless the USA” Bible.

“He described the Dobbs decision as a ‘miracle,’” Biden said of Trump. “Maybe it’s coming from that Bible he’s trying to sell. Whoa. I almost wanted to buy one just to see what the hell is in it.”

Biden rarely references Trump's court cases, but jokes about financial problems that began soon after the former president was ordered to pay $454 million in a civil case in New York.

"Just the other day," Biden said at a fundraiser in Dallas last month, “a defeated-looking guy came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, I need your help. I’m being crushed with debt. I’m completely wiped out.’ I had to say, 'Donald, I can’t help you.'”

Even when Biden tries his hand at humor, he rarely strays far from talking about policies. He likes to note that he signed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law — after his opponent failed to do so despite repeatedly holding White House events to drum up support for an idea that never materialized.

“He promised ‘Infrastructure Week’ every week for four years and never built a damn thing,” Biden said this month to a group of laughing union members.

The dilemma is that Trump, who tells voters the whole American political system is hopelessly corrupt, can get away with name-calling that would backfire on other candidates. During his rallies, Trump imitates Biden as a feeble old man who cannot find the stairs after giving a brief speech, and he calls the president “crooked” and “a demented tyrant.”

The Republican's campaign said the insults will only intensify as Biden tries to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said Biden is “shuffling his feet like a short-circuited Roomba,” referring to the robot vacuum, while failing to address the “out-of-control border” and “runaway inflation.”

Rick Tyler, who worked on the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in 2016, said voters have a double standard because expectations are different for Trump, who first became famous as a real estate developer and the star of the reality TV show “The Apprentice.”

“Celebrities don’t really have standards, and Trump is in that lane,“ Tyler said. For a politician going up against Trump, "it’s like trying to play a sport with the wrong equipment.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., found that out the hard way in the Republican primary in 2016. After Rubio joked about Trump having “small hands” — suggesting that another part of him was small, too — Trump swung back by saying, “I guarantee you there’s no problem.”

“Nobody has ever beaten Trump by getting in the ring with him,” said Alex Conant, communications director for Rubio's campaign.

Karen Finney, who advised Democrat Hillary Clinton in her 2016 White House run, said Trump can bait opponents into "communicating on his terms, not your terms.”

“It’s the kind of thing where you have to have a balance," she said. "You could spend all day just responding.”

But if Trump's humor is blunt, Biden sometimes tries to get the most mileage by staying subtle. During a Pittsburgh stop earlier this month, Biden spoke elliptically about Trump's trial, betting his audience was already in on the joke.

Trump, he said, is “a little busy right now.”

"Today I have really sore ribs, I'm going to the emergency room to see whether I have a rib fracture because they were using their bikes as a weapon," Stein said during a Sunday interview on "NewsNation Prime." "Basically ramming the handles of the bike into our chests and into my ribcage and trying to flip us over."

Stein, 73, who was arrested Saturday, spent six hours in police custody and is facing charges of assaulting a police officer. "I wiggled out of that assault, and was told by the officer that I was assaulting him, which is absolutely ludicrous," Stein said.

More than 100 people — including 23 students and four university employees — were arrested at the protest that called for the university to divest from Boeing and boycott Israeli academic institutions, in addition to other demands.

Stein said she was participating in a peaceful demonstration against U.S. policy in Gaza when police arrested protesters for trespassing and resisting arrest. She condemned the tactics as "the militarization of our police" trained alongside "Israeli military forces" in "anti-humane and abusive tactics."

The three-time Green Party presidential candidate said she felt "enormous solidarity" with the student protesters, who she praised for risking their futures at the university to demand divestment from weapons companies supplying arms used against Palestinians.

Stein urged President Joe Biden to intervene and "end the genocide in Gaza and the occupation," saying he needs to "assert the authority of his office" rather than enabling further violence approved by the Israeli government.

Stein's campaign manager, Jason Call, and deputy campaign manager Kelly Merrill-Cayer, were also arrested according to Stein's X account.

Stein had attempted to de-escalate the situation between protestors and police but the police were not responsive and began arrests shortly afterward, according to Stein's X account.

Stein, who is Jewish, in a video said, “we’re going to stand here in line with the students who are standing up for democracy, standing up for human rights, standing up to end genocide."

Protests are roiling college campuses nationwide as administrators with graduation ceremonies next month face demands that schools cut financial ties to Israel against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war.

Photos showed uniformed police attempting to remove masked protesters as others, also wearing masks, linked arms to thwart the efforts.

Megan Green, president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, said in a social media post that she was present and the protest remained calm “until the police came in like an ambush.”

The university’s statement defended the action and said protesters “did not have good intentions on our campus and that this demonstration had the potential to get out of control and become dangerous.”

Some arrested also face charges of resisting arrest and assault, including injuries to three police officers, the statement said. Those injuries include a severe concussion, a broken finger and a groin injury.

The Missouri chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the arrests as “heavy-handed.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Biden already became the presumptive Democratic nominee last month after attaining enough delegates to mathematically clinch the nomination. His win in the territory on Sunday will add at least most of its 55 pledged delegates up for grabs to his total.

He faced nominal opposition in the primary from Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who dropped out of the race, and author Marianne Williamson.

Biden took about 98 percent of the vote in early results, according to DDHQ.

As a territory and not a state, Puerto Rico will not be able to vote in the general election in November, but it does weigh in on the presidential primaries and send delegates to the Democratic and Republican parties’ national conventions in the summer. The Puerto Rico GOP presidential primary was held last Sunday.

Biden was the only active candidate remaining in the Democratic race for the nomination in 2020 when the territory held its primary in July of that year.

Former President Trump won the GOP Puerto Rico primary unopposed last week.

Nick Robertson contributed.

The president has a prime opportunity to peel off some of those voters, which would boost his reelection chances and expand his coalition.

Their numbers are significant: Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) snagged 16 percent of GOP voters in last week’s Pennsylvania primary despite dropping her bid against Trump almost two months ago.

“It requires work, but I think it’s doable,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told reporters Friday, noting that a large swath of the 35 percent Haley won in his home state say they will not support Trump in November.

Kaine also said that simply keeping them out of Trump’s column would be a victory in itself.

“You don’t have to win them over if they don’t vote for Trump, that’s a vote out of Trump’s category. Now, I think we are going to win some of them over,” Kaine said, adding that he is actively courting them as part of his reelection campaign in the Old Dominion. “We are focusing on those folks, and we think we have a chance to get a lot of them and I think President Biden can too.” 

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), whose own run in the GOP presidential primary attracted moderate-leaning Republicans, made headlines last week when he said it was “pretty stupid” that Biden hadn’t reached out to ask directly for his support.

Christie has made clear that he would not vote for Trump and said in a conversation Tuesday night hosted at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics that Biden should ask him for his vote and support.

The Biden campaign didn’t provide a response to why he hasn’t reached out to Christie.

The decision, though, speaks to the uphill battle Biden faces to appeal to those types of Republicans.

“It’s unfortunate that I think the president is starting from a little bit of a deficit because of the first two years of his administration not really being one that was working on a game of addition, in terms of the electorate. But rather, it seemed in those first couple of years that this White House was much more willing to listen to the professional progressive class,” said John LaBombard, former communications director to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).

“It is easy to forget that voters don’t have to pick a choice if they're dissatisfied with their choices. So disenchanted Republican voters who don't want to support Donald Trump could very easily just leave the presidential line with their ballot blank,” he added.

Still, the Biden campaign is working to court Haley voters, an effort it launched as soon as Haley dropped out of the GOP primary.

The campaign launched a new ad Thursday, aiming to target Haley voters and underscore Trump’s insults toward her and her supporters to target disaffected Republicans.

The campaign previously released an ad that featured clips of Trump criticizing Haley during the GOP primary, with the warning, “If you voted for Nikki Haley, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote.” Biden’s team has also released a statement arguing that Trump has been clear that voters who aren’t part of MAGA aren’t welcome in his camp.

“I think it is a worthy investment. I think the president has an opening here with moderate, sort of common sense Republican voters, who while they may be conservative, are rightly disenchanted with the chaos around former President Trump and what that might mean for the country under a second Trump term,” LaBombard said. 

Haley had strong showings in other GOP primaries, like in her home state of South Carolina. The former United Nations ambassador also took home primary wins in Vermont and the District of Columbia in March.

But it’s the Pennsylvania numbers that are giving Democrats fresh optimism and causing heartburn for some Republicans given the narrow results that helped hand Trump the presidency in 2016 and took it away four years later. The heart of the 157,000 votes she pulled came in the suburban Philadelphia counties where she won nearly 42,000 votes and hit a high-water mark of 25 percent. 

“In a closed state, that is not an insignificant number,” said one Republican strategist, noting that Trump won the state by only 44,000 votes in 2016 before Biden eked it out by 80,000 in 2020. “157,000 in a meaningless primary where everyone knew she had dropped out. You’re talking about razor thin margins in a competitive primary. … You do not have a huge margin for error if even half of those voters become Biden voters.” 

As of last month, Trump had yet to reach out to Haley in an attempt to reconcile after the bruising primary battle — something that has not changed nearly two months after she ended her campaign. Haley has also declined to offer an endorsement for the ex-president.

All of this came after he declared that he “TROUNCED” her on Super Tuesday in a TruthSocial post before calling on Haley supporters to “join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.” 

​​Meanwhile, the Biden campaign has made sure to highlight times Trump has pushed away Haley voters, like the various times he called her “birdbrain” and “not presidential material.” They’ve also shared a quote from former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who said on his podcast recently, “Screw Nikki Haley — we don’t need her endorsement.” 

David Thomas, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Vice President Al Gore, noted that Biden has an opening because Trump doesn’t seem to be working hard to appeal to moderates.

“I think that the president is trying to reach out to the moderate middle, moderate Republicans and particularly independents,” he said. “That's the coalition he's going to need to win if it's going to be this close selection, which we all know it is. It’s something that yes, he's doing here, and it's something that President Trump decidedly will not do.”

Critics, including some who have worked closely with Trump, have expressed concerns that a second Trump administration would have fewer officials willing to act as guardrails and would enable the former president to act more impulsively, in part because of his lame duck status. 

“That is one of my biggest concerns about a second Trump administration, is there would be no guardrails,” said Sarah Matthews, a former Trump spokesperson who has become a critic of the ex-president. “I think there were a lot of people in the first Trump administration who were very skeptical of him but believed it was their duty to serve, so they went to go work for him to try and, I think, guide him and put him on a better path.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020 before running a primary campaign against Trump in the 2024 race, told The Washington Post the prospect of a “vendetta tour” was his greatest fear about a possible second Trump term.

“There’ll be no one around to put guardrails up, and he will be on the vendetta tour against all enemies that he perceives,” Christie said. “And that’s a scary thing for the country.”

Trump’s first administration was stocked with more traditional Republicans who were seen as a bulwark against the then-president’s impulses and more controversial ideas. 

Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis navigated Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks on torture, key alliances and global conflicts. Former chief of staff John Kelly sought to control the flow of information to Trump. Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley pushed back on Trump’s calls for military crackdowns on protesters during civil unrest in 2020. And former Vice President Mike Pence refused Trump’s pressure campaign to reject the 2020 election results.

Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration staffer, in 2018 wrote an infamous and initially anonymous op-ed in The New York Times describing coordinated efforts from staff to “thwart” Trump’s worst instincts.

But with Trump fully in control of the Republican Party, the former president and his team appear poised to fill a possible second administration with more loyalists who have fully bought into Trumpism.

Conservative groups in Washington, D.C., are already working to identify potential staff for a second Trump administration, as seen most prominently in the Heritage Foundation’s "Project 2025" initiative, which is being led by former Trump White House officials Paul Dans and Spencer Chretien.

But the Trump campaign has sought to maintain its distance from outside groups putting forward policy or personnel proposals during the campaign, instead insisting Trump himself would make the final decision on senior leadership and other decisions when the time comes.

"There has been no discussion of who will serve in a second Trump administration. President Trump will choose the best people for his Cabinet to undo all the damage Crooked Joe Biden has done to our country,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Hill.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, is expected to take a more active role in vetting potential staffers for a second administration, though a source familiar with the matter said Trump Jr. would not be running a potential transition or handling day-to-day staffing efforts.

Trump Jr. told the New York Post in a March interview that John Ratcliffe, former director of national intelligence, and former Trump White House aide Cliff Sims were among the people he envisioned leading a transition.

“There are so many great people to choose from now with the first four years of the administration, you have a good understanding of who would be great and loyal and implement the America First policies,” Trump Jr. said.

Some former aides have expressed a willingness to return to a potential second administration.

John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office who oversaw a brief effort at the tail end of the Trump administration to undermine the civil service system, is among those working on Project 2025.

McEntee was tapped to lead the project's bid to collect resumes for the next administration, a process in which the organization is embracing the motto “personnel is policy.”

Meanwhile, Trump has said he would once again try to roll out the “Schedule F” order overseen by McEntee that would subject more civil service positions to swift firing, saying he would “wield that power very aggressively.” Trump could also allow more of his top officials to serve in an acting capacity — sidestepping Senate confirmation in a legally dubious move.

Stephen Miller, the architect of many of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, has been active in laying out a vision for a second term, outlining even more restrictionist approaches the former president could take if reelected.

Miller told The New York Times last year that Trump would rely on his executive authorities to “implement the most spectacular migration crackdown” and pledged that they would “blitz” immigration attorneys.

Tom Homan, Trump’s former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief, also said he was willing to come back for a second Trump administration to help "organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

Jeffrey Clark — a former Justice Department attorney who is facing charges in Georgia after he was prepared to launch a baseless investigation of the state’s vote totals on Trump’s behalf — is also involved in Project 2025.

A collection of Trump’s comments from the campaign trail and reports on GOP organizing, assembled by Just Security, details other plans for a reelected Trump to more robustly use his power.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr in a December Fox News interview similarly predicted the lack of potential electoral consequences could make Trump less likely to be swayed by advisers.

“During his first term, the main way that could be done is by pointing out to him how this would hurt his prospects for a second term,” he said. “Once he wins a second term, I don’t know, you know, what considerations can be used to push back against bad ideas.”

Barr this week said he would support the Republican ticket in November’s election.

Both candidates have made several stops in the key battleground states already and will be a regular presence there for the next 6 1/2 months. Even as tens of millions of people will vote in the general election across the country, just about a half-dozen states will likely determine the race.

The Electoral College requires the candidates to pay attention to the math of what combination of states will clinch their victory. This interactive map from Decision Desk HQ and The Hill shows all of the possible paths the candidates could take to win enough votes.

Here are Trump and Biden’s most likely paths to victory in the Electoral College:

Biden’s path

Biden sweeps all 2020 states

Biden has seen some reasons for being more hopeful lately when it comes to the polls. Biden and Trump are basically tied in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ national polling average, and several recent polls have shown Biden leading by a few points nationwide. 

The polls that have not been as bright are those in the battleground states that Biden will need to have a path to reelection. He has been trailing in several of the states he would need — including some he won in 2020 — by a few points for months. 

But he has improved recently in a few states that will be crucial to his path, and he still has numerous paths to win the election, like Trump. 

The most obvious path for Biden to win in November is to recreate the electoral strategy that swept him into the White House in 2020. That would entail winning the key battleground states he won four years ago: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If he were to win those states, Trump could still win North Carolina and Biden would be reelected.

Winning the 2020 coalition of states would garner Biden 303 electoral votes to 235 for Trump. Because of the redistricting process that took place after the election, that would be three electoral votes fewer than the 306 he had four years ago. 

But from a historical perspective, that seems unlikely. Throughout U.S. history, there has never been two consecutive presidential elections where every state votes for the same party, though it is of course possible. 

Biden wins ‘blue wall’ states

Polls shows reasons for Biden to be worried in several of those states, such as Georgia, where Trump has been consistently leading. But should Trump ultimately win Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, Biden could still eke out a win so long as he holds on to a trio of “blue wall” states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll from last month showed Biden still down but narrowing Trump’s lead, especially in those three. 

If he took all three of those states, Biden would stand at 269 electoral votes, needing just one more from some other state of the battlegrounds to put him over the top. 

Nebraska and Maine both distribute their electoral votes in part by which candidate wins in each of their congressional districts, instead of the winner-take-all system of the other states. Maine’s 2nd Congressional District has voted comfortably for Trump the past two elections, but Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District narrowly voted for Trump in 2016 before flipping to Biden in 2020. 

If Biden can hold on to just that congressional district along with the blue wall, he would not need any other state to be reelected, reaching the 270 threshold. 

Trump’s path

Trump wins all major battlegrounds

The former president appears to have the polling advantage in the key states necessary for a winning coalition, and he has expressed confidence, at least based on where the numbers have been recently. 

Based on the polling average from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ, Trump is leading Biden by a few points in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina, five of the seven battleground states that likely will determine the election and enough to put him above the 270 electoral votes he needs. 

Trump narrowly leads Biden by less than a percentage point in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the two other main swing states. 

If the election were held now and the polling with Trump ahead is correct in all seven states, Trump would defeat Biden comfortably in the Electoral College, 312 electoral votes to 226. That would include all five key states that Biden flipped in 2020 to put him over — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — flipping back to the Republican column this year. 

Trump wins mix of Sun Belt, industrial states

If Trump were to fall short in the two states where he and Biden are essentially neck and neck — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — but take the others, he would still win, though more narrowly, with 283 electoral votes to Biden’s 255. 

Of course, in the Electoral College not all states carry equal weight, and some states are more valuable prizes based on their populations. Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes; Georgia, with its 16 electoral votes; and Michigan, with its 15 electoral votes, may be more likely to get a candidate’s total up quicker, but Nevada’s six votes could be critical in a particularly tight race. 

Of all the battleground states that Trump is eying, he may be most able to count on North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes. It was the only state of these seven Biden did not carry four years ago. 

The state also has narrowly voted for the Republican presidential candidate in each election since 2012, despite strong Democratic efforts to win the state. If Trump holds onto the Tar Heel State again, he would need to win three or four of the remaining battleground states to clinch a win. 

That would still be the case for Biden as well, but losing North Carolina would make it more important for Biden than Trump that he carry at least two of the three remaining largest battleground states — Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan. 

If Trump wins North Carolina and the state where he currently has the largest lead in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ polling average, Georgia, he would need to win just two of Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden would need at least three in that scenario. 

One unlikely but possible scenario is a 269-269 Electoral College tie between Biden and Trump. That would happen if Biden keeps the blue wall with Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, but Trump wins the other battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, plus Maine and Nebraska’s 2nd congressional districts. 

If that happens, the election would be decided by the House, with each state receiving one vote decided by a majority of its delegation. Under the current makeup of the House, Republicans have a majority of the House delegations in 26 states, while Democrats have a majority in 22 states and two state are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. 

This likely means that Biden would have to win the Electoral College outright, because Trump would be better positioned to win in a tiebreaker decided by the House.

“Illegal immigration … gas prices, grocery prices, inflation … the push for EV vehicles, solar power. I mean, you name it,” said Bobby Bartels, Steamfitters Local 638 business manager, about why many of his members are backing Trump.

“They are pretty much disgusted” with the status quo, he told NewsNation’s “On Balance” on Friday. “My members are sending me a pretty clear message … that they want change.”

Bartles says his union’s endorsement isn’t quite a renewal of the “hippies vs. hardhats” conflict of the late 1960s and ‘70s.

“When the hippies in the 70s protested, they were protesting against a war that they didn’t believe in,” he said. “These protesters are protesting against America. (They’re) looking for the death of a certain heritage.”

Steamfitters Local 638 has about 10,000 active and retired members throughout New York City and Long Island.

While Trump met with union officials in New York on Wednesday, Biden was receiving a loud, warm reception in Washington at a conference of the North America's Building Trades Unions.

"Donald Trump is incapable of running anything," NABTU President Sean McGarvey said in a video played at the conference. The union also announced its endorsement of Biden.

One of the biggest unions in the country, the Teamsters, abstained from the NABTU endorsement vote. Both Biden and Trump are seeking the Teamsters’ endorsement.

Nearly all the major labor unions have endorsed Biden. The board of the AFL-CIO was one of the first, doing so in June of last year. The organization represents 60 unions and has more than 12 million members.

In an interview with The Guardian released Friday, American University professor Allan Lichtman pointed to his method to predict presidential elections using 13 “keys” including whether “the incumbent party candidate is the sitting president” and “there is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.” Lichtman noted that President Biden is the incumbent and defeated others in the Democratic Party handily in the primary.

“That’s two keys off the top,” Lichtman said, according to The Guardian. “That means six more keys would have to fall to predict his defeat. A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose.”

Biden has been gaining on former President Trump in recent polls, tying him in a recent Quinnipiac poll.

They are tied at 41.3 percent in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s national polling average in a three-way race with the two presidents and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Lichtman has a history of correctly picking the winner of presidential elections since the mid-'80s. He predicted Biden would win the 2020 election over Trump, and said in the Guardian interview that the COVID-19 pandemic “is what did him in.”

“The message of the keys is, it’s governance not campaigning that counts and instead of dealing substantively with the pandemic, as we know, he thought he could talk his way out of it and that sank him,” Lichtman said, per The Guardian.

With Trump's small dollar donations slowing and some major Republican benefactors snubbing him, a clutch of prominent wealthy Americans have become crucial to bankrolling his candidacy.

Here are five of the top donors, including one couple, that are backing Trump, based on a Reuters analysis of campaign finance disclosures to the Federal Election Commission:

TIMOTHY MELLON

Timothy Mellon, an 81-year-old heir of the Pittsburgh-based Mellon banking family, has given the pro-Trump super PAC known as MAGA Inc at least $16.5 million since 2022. He also gave at least $20 million to a pro-Trump super PAC called America First Action Inc during the 2020 presidential election.

The hyper-private Mellon, who lives in Wyoming and is rarely photographed, is an amateur pilot who has invested in and led transport-related companies. Forbes estimates that the Mellon family is worth some $14.1 billion.

Mellon is also the biggest donor supporting independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., giving the pro-Kennedy super PAC American Values at least $20 million. Polls have shown Kennedy's presence on the ticket could siphon votes from both Biden and Trump in their Nov. 5 match-up.

Mellon has also donated to a raft of anti-immigration measures, and was a major contributor to a Texas-led fund to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico.

Efforts by Reuters to contact Mellon through a publisher and a family foundation he was previously affiliated with were unsuccessful.

ISAAC AND LAURA PERLMUTTER

Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter, the former chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and his wife Laura Perlmutter have donated more than $10 million in this election cycle to a new pro-Trump fundraising super PAC called Right for America. Perlmutter has been a regular at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and has been a longtime contributor to Trump's campaigns. The Perlmutters gave at least $21 million to America First Action Inc in 2020.

Last year, Walt Disney Co. laid off Perlmutter as chairman of Marvel Entertainment, a small division within the company responsible for comic book publishing and some consumer products, as part of a cost-cutting campaign.

Israeli-born Perlmutter, who Forbes says is 81 years old and worth around $4.4 billion, is known for being very private and is rarely photographed.

His wife Laura, who also has a low profile, is a director at the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Foundation, which says it focuses on health care and community initiatives.

Reached by phone, Isaac Perlmutter's lawyer John Turitzin said he did not want to speak to the media and hung up.

LINDA MCMAHON

Former professional wrestling entrepreneur, Linda McMahon, a longtime Trump donor who headed the Small Business Administration during the Trump administration, has donated more than $10 million to MAGA Inc in this cycle. McMahon gave more than $15 million in 2019 and 2020 to America First Action Inc, which she chaired ahead of the 2020 election.

Until 2009, she ran World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband Vince McMahon, who bought the company from his father in the 1980s. Earlier this year, Vince McMahon resigned from wrestling giant TKO Group TKO.N and the subsidiary WWE that he founded following a lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault and trafficking, which he denies. Forbes puts his net worth at around $2.7 billion.

Linda McMahon, 75, ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut twice. She is now the chair of the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute think tank in Washington D.C., which says it advocates for "free enterprise, national greatness, American military superiority ... and the primacy of American workers, families, and communities."

AFPI did not respond to requests for comment from McMahon.

ROBERT BIGELOW

Nevada budget hotel tycoon Robert Bigelow, 79, has given MAGA Inc over $9 million in this cycle. Bigelow told Reuters in January he had pledged to give the pro-Trump group a total of $20 million.

Bigelow, who has a fascination with UFOs and space and funds various research efforts, has dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Bigelow says he donated $1 million for Trump's legal funds.

In 2011, Forbes estimated Bigelow's real estate holdings were worth around $700 million.

PATRICIA DUGGAN

Patricia Duggan, a major donor to the Church of Scientology, has given MAGA Inc more than $5 million this election cycle.

Her ex-husband Robert Duggan is an investor and entrepreneur whose fortunes were boosted by the 2015 sale of cancer drug maker Pharmacyclics to AbbVie ABBV.N for $21 billion. Forbes puts his net worth at about $3.3 billion.

The Duggans, who met at the University of California at Santa Barbara and have eight children, divorced in 2017. They each gave America First Action Inc at least $4 million in 2020.

Patricia Duggan's personal website describes her as an artist passionate about glass art. She lives in Clearwater, Florida.

Duggan did not respond to a request for information.

"I am, somewhere. I don't know when, but I am happy to debate him," Biden told Howard Stern on his radio show when asked about the prospect.

Just after Biden's remarks on Stern were publicized, Chris LaCivita of the Trump campaign wrote on the social platform X, "Ok let's set it up !"

Stern suggested to Biden that if he were standing on a stage next to Trump, he would say to the audience, “Find me 11,000 votes so I can win the election,” a reference to a phone call Trump made to Georgia's secretary of state after losing the 2020 election.

“What are we debating?” Stern asked rhetorically, adding that he was astonished so many Americans still supported the former president.

Biden joined Stern, the nationally recognized shock jock, for a live interview Friday in his New York City studio.

Biden and his campaign have largely avoided directly addressing the prospect of debates with Trump, even as the former president has insisted he will debate Biden as many times as possible before November's election.

There are three presidential debates scheduled for the 2024 cycle, beginning in September, as well as one vice presidential debate scheduled.

Trump has for weeks pledged to debate Biden “any time, any place,” despite his refusal to participate in the GOP primary debates and his past hostility toward the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The former president has frequently railed against the commission, pointing to a technical issue with his microphone during a 2016 debate, complaining about moderators and blasting a decision to cancel a debate with Biden in 2020 after Trump tested positive for COVID-19 and refused to participate virtually.

Trump's campaign earlier this month urged the commission to move up the timeline for planned debates to increase the number of faceoffs the two candidates have before Election Day, citing the start of early voting in many states.

For months, stories have surfaced about various groups loyal to former President Donald Trump preparing for his return to the White House. Many have talked about how Trump plans to replace thousands of federal civil service employees with people loyal to him.

A handful of outside groups, including The Heritage Foundation, have claimed they’re leading the way in vetting people. But Axios reports that the final say about someone’s ideology and loyalty will lie with Trump’s two eldest sons.

Axios says the goal, according to a person close to Don Jr., "is to keep the John Boltons of the world outside a second Trump administration," referring to his father’s former national security adviser who wrote a bestselling book lambasting the former president.

News of the Heritage Foundation’s efforts to pre-screen potential applicants broke late last year, but were blunted by two top Trump aides, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.

They issued a statement in November that said "any personnel lists, policy agendas, or government plans published anywhere are merely suggestions. Policy recommendations from external allies are just that — recommendations."

Earlier this month, the federal government’s chief human resources agency issued a new rule making it harder to fire thousands of federal employees, hoping to head off Trump’s promises to radically remake the workforce along ideological lines.

The Office of Personnel Management regulations will bar career civil servants from being reclassified as political appointees or as other at-will workers, who are more easily dismissed from their jobs.

The Trump sons’ involvement contrasts with Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who’ve kept their distance from the 2024 campaign. Last month, People magazine cited people close to Ivanka who say she’s sticking with her decision to stay out of politics this time around.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Thursday it had finalized a suite of rules that aim to cut the plants’ pollution. 

One such rule, which regulates greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal and new gas plants, will require them to install technology that prevents 90 percent of their carbon emissions. 

It also finalized rules that aim to reduce coal plants’ releases of toxic substances like mercury into the air and pollution discharges into wastewater. 

A fourth agency rule issued Thursday tightens restrictions on the disposal of toxic coal waste, also known as coal ash, to prevent leaks that can contaminate groundwater. 

Alongside the EPA rules, the Energy Department announced that it will create a fast-track for environmental reviews for upgrading power lines and set a two-year timeline to speed approvals for new power lines. 

“Today, EPA is proud to make good on the Biden-Harris Administration’s vision to tackle climate change and to protect all communities from pollution in our air, water, and in our neighborhoods,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a written statement. 

He said that with the new rules, the agency is “cutting pollution while ensuring that power companies can make smart investments and continue to deliver reliable electricity for all Americans.”

The greenhouse gas emission rule

The most high-profile rule issued Thursday is the greenhouse gas restriction, which applies to both existing coal plants and newly constructed natural gas plants. 

Under the rule, these power plants are expected to have to capture 90 percent of their carbon dioxide emissions to prevent them from going into the atmosphere and heating the planet — or come up with another way to reach equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. 

When it proposed the rule last year, the administration also planned to make it apply to some existing natural gas power plants.

But it said in February that it will not be regulating existing gas-fired power plants at this time — and will instead regulate them through a separate rule at a later date. Gas plants produce fewer emissions than coal plants but are still significant contributors to climate change.

The Biden administration said that this rule alone is expected to prevent 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon emissions through 2047, the equivalent of taking 328 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year.

Combined with investments in climate-friendly power sources from the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, the rule could help bring the power sector’s carbon dioxide emissions down by 62 percent below where they were in 2022 by 2035. 

The costs of compliance are expected to average about 1 percent of the total projected costs to produce electricity from 2024 through 2047. 

The rule gives coal plants more time to comply with the rules than the proposal, as they now have until 2032 to install the technology instead of 2030. However, the rule moves up the timeline for new gas plants, saying they have to be installed by 2032 instead of 2035. 

The rule comes after the Supreme Court in 2022 restricted how the EPA can regulate power plants, saying the EPA cannot explicitly mandate a shift from a more polluting energy source to a power source with fewer emissions. 

But it did not bar the EPA from requiring improvements at the power plant sites. 

In addition to climate benefits, the rule is also expected to improve public health, resulting in pollution reductions that prevent up to 1,200 premature deaths in 2035 alone. 

The power sector is currently responsible for a quarter of the U.S.’s planet-warming emissions. Electric power’s demand in the years ahead may grow as more of the nation shifts toward electric cars and building appliances, making emissions cuts from the sector even more impactful. 

The mercury and air toxics rule

The EPA is also finalizing a rule that requires coal and oil-fired power plants to reduce their releases of mercury and pollutants including nickel, arsenic, and lead.

For all coal plants, it will lower limits for toxic metal emissions by 67 percent, reducing exposure to substances that can cause 

Exposure to these substances raises the risk of developmental delays in children, as well as heart attacks and cancer. 

Some power plants will also see their mercury limits become 70 percent more stringent. This change applies to plants that use a type of coal known as lignite, which have been operating under looser limits than other coal plants. Lignite plants are located primarily in North Dakota and Texas. Exposure to mercury is linked to heart disease and brain damage in babies. 

The wastewater rule

The third rule finalized by the EPA tightens restrictions on the number of toxic metals that can be discharged from power plants into wastewater. 

It is expected to prevent 660 million pounds of pollution per year, the administration said. People can be exposed to pollutants in coal plant discharges by consuming fish from these polluted waters, and such exposure can cause cancer and damage to the nervous system and kidneys. 

The coal ash rule

The last rule issued by the EPA on Thursday adds new requirements for ponds where coal waste has been dumped to prevent that waste from leaking out and contaminating nearby groundwater. 

Specifically, it applies standards that already exist to previously exempt “legacy” plants that closed before October 19, 2015. 

Coal ash ponds can contain dangerous substances including mercury and arsenic and, without proper closure they can leak, contaminating nearby water. 

Republicans, industry and advocates respond

The rules met significant pushback from Republicans and various industries. 

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said she would introduce legislation to repeal the greenhouse gas emission rule. 

“The administration has chosen to press ahead with its unrealistic climate agenda that threatens access to affordable, reliable energy for households and employers across the country,” said Capito, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, in a written statement. 

“I will be introducing a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval to overturn the EPA’s job-killing regulations announced today,” she added. 

Meanwhile, Dan Brouillette, president and CEO of the Edison Electric Institute electric power lobbying, also criticized the rule. 

Brouillette, who was the Energy Secretary during the Trump administration, said that carbon capture “is not yet ready for full-scale, economy-wide deployment, nor is there sufficient time to permit, finance, and build the CCS infrastructure needed for compliance by 2032” in a written statement. 

However, the Biden administration's moves were cheered by climate and environmental advocates. 

“The Biden administration this week is really taking substantial action on the climate crisis to address power plant pollution,” Charles Harper, power sector senior policy lead at Evergreen, told The Hill, adding that they are “a real win for everyone concerned about climate change.”

A Wednesday update to the aggregate polling kept by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ also saw Biden move into a tie with Trump when independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is factored into the race, a significant change from earlier data.

It’s all led Biden allies to feel as if the wind has been put behind their sails, particularly as Trump’s legal woes mount.

“You wouldn't know it from what you read and hear, but, you know, we're in pretty good shape in the polls,” Biden told organizers in Florida on Tuesday.

The president cited a Marist poll released Monday that showed him leading Trump by 3 percentage points nationally, and by 6 points when looking specifically at those who said they definitely plan to vote in November.

“The point I'm making is, people are beginning to listen,” Biden said. “This is a time people begin to focus and listen. They have generic impressions up to now, but now they're listening.”

While Biden still trails Trump in the polls in several key battleground states, he has closed the gap or pulled ahead in a handful of national polls released this month.

A New York Times/Siena College poll published April 13 found Biden trailing Trump by 1 percentage point nationally, a marked improvement from a February poll that showed Trump leading by 5 percentage points.

An NBC News national poll published Monday similarly found Biden had trimmed Trump’s lead from 5 percentage points in January to 2 percentage points this month.

A Marist/PBS NewsHour poll published Monday found Biden leading Trump with 51 percent support among registered voters, compared to his predecessor's 48 percent, a slight uptick from a poll published earlier this month that showed Biden leading 50 percent to 48 percent. The poll found Biden’s lead grows to 6 points, with 53 percent support, when only counting those who said they definitely plan to vote in November’s election.

A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday also brought good news for the incumbent, as it showed his job approval had jumped up 8 percentage points since December, from 34 percent to 42 percent, though 55 percent of respondents still said they disapproved of his performance.

The Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday found Trump and Biden deadlocked, even when factoring in third-party and independent candidates.

The Biden campaign had routinely brushed off polling earlier in the year that showed Trump well ahead of the sitting president, arguing a significant number of voters had not yet fully realized that Trump was going to be the GOP nominee and that Biden’s numbers would stabilize as more Americans began paying attention to the election.

Jim Kessler, co-founder of the left-leaning think tank Third Way, pointed to the president’s strong and vigorous State of the Union address in early March as a turning point for Biden at a moment when many average voters finally started to tune into election season.

“There’s nothing in these polls that should make Democrats feel complacent in any way, that the natural order is going to take hold,” Kessler cautioned. “I think if Democrats run at 90 percent of their ability to win this race, they could fall short. This is going to be a 100-percent effort.”

Cornell Belcher, a Democratic strategist, said on NBC News that it’s to be expected that polls will tighten as the election closes in. He suggested Trump had hit his ceiling for support, while Biden has likely been closer to his floor in recent months.

“The other part about this is the enthusiasm — which I think is really the headline — is that if these young voters aren't enthusiastic and they don't show up and break for Biden big, that's how Trump wins,” Belcher said.

Though Biden has made gains in the national polls, battleground state polls have shown a less rosy picture for him.

A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of battleground state voters published Wednesday found Trump leading Biden 49 percent support to 43 percent across seven swing states. Biden led Trump by 2 points in Michigan, but he trailed in Pennsylvania by 1 point, in Wisconsin by 4 points, and in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina by at least 6 points.

Trump campaign aides widely shared the Bloomberg poll results Wednesday and highlighted the survey’s findings that a majority of registered voters in battleground states are worried about worsening economic conditions in the coming months. The former president shared the poll results on Truth Social, but only from states where he is leading.

Biden has in recent days capitalized on the split screen of hitting the road to campaign in places such as Pennsylvania and Florida while Trump appears in a New York City courthouse for his trial on an alleged hush money scheme.

Some Democrats believe Trump’s near-constant presence in court and the resulting media coverage will remind voters of the chaos of the Trump years and why they voted for change in 2020. But others cautioned that Trump’s legal troubles alone won’t determine the outcome in  November.

“This is going to be a very tight election,” Kessler said. “It’s going to be decided by a small number of voters in a handful of states no matter what the polls say right now. Joe Biden needs to be a in a better place with these voters on the border, on crime, on gas prices. And if he is, he’ll win.” 

Net worth is the value of the assets a person owns minus the liabilities they owe. Here's a closer look at Biden and Trump's current net worth, and their worth before and after their time in the White House: 

Donald Trump's net worth 

Trump is worth over $6.4 billion, making him among the world's richest 500 people. Trump's riches can be attributed to his Truth Social parent company, real estate, clubs and resorts, and other assets.

Truth Social's parent company rakes in $4.6 billion for Trump. He recently met the requirement to receive up to 36 million additional shares of Trump Media, worth $1.17 billion. Trump's real estate assets, including Trump Tower, three Florida homes and Trump International Hotel Las Vegas equate to $1.1 billion. His clubs and resorts, including Mar-a-Lago, 10 golf courses across six states, his Miami resort and three European golf properties, have a value of $810 million.

According to Forbes estimates, Trump has $410 million in cash/liquid assets and $100 million in other assets. In a Truth Social post in March, Trump told his supporters he has nearly $500 million in cash.

However, Trump's legal liabilities put a dent in his net worth with Forbes saying Trump's legal liabilities come out at -$540 million. In February, a judge ordered Trump to pay a $454 million judgment in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling Trump inflated the value of his assets. Trump's lawyers are appealing the ruling.

Trump's net worth before the presidency

Trump said he got his start in business when his father, a prominent real-estate developer, gave him an alleged $1 million loan.

“My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars,” he told NBC during a 2015 town hall. “A million dollars isn’t very much compared to what I built.”

With the help from his father, Trump became a luxury real estate developer and investor. He also started building his personal brand in the 1980s, publishing books like "The Art of the Deal" and hosting "The Apprentice" on TV before the 2016 presidential election.

Trump dropped off the Forbes 400 List from 1990 to 1995. According to Forbes research, in the 10 years prior to Trump becoming president, he averaged a net worth of $3.13 billion annually. His highest net worth before the 2016 election came in at $4.5 billion in 2015. In that ten-year window, $2 billion marked the lowest annual net worth for Trump.

Trump's net worth during the presidency

Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States on Nov. 8, 2016. On Jan. 20, 2017, Trump was inaugurated. On Jan. 20, 2021, Trump officially left office. 

Bloomberg reports the presidency cost Trump $700 million, pointing to a fallout with brokers and lenders over the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and the impacts of the pandemic on office buildings.

From 2017 to 2021, Trump averaged a net worth of $2.86 billion each year. His highest annual net worth during the presidency was $3.1 billion in 2017, 2018 and 2019. His lowest annual net worth was $2.5 billion in both 2020 and 2021. 

Joe Biden's net worth

The president and first lady earned $620,000 before taxes last year, according to their 2023 tax return released by the White House. As Forbes puts it, the Bidens' annual income is "about how much the Girl Scouts of Greater New York pay Trump in annual rent for their office" on Wall Street.

While 2023 marked a good financial year for the Bidens, it didn't make much of a dent in their net worth. Joe and Jill Biden's fortune now stands at about $10 million.

Biden's net worth before presidency

Biden served as former President Barack Obama's vice president from 2009 to 2017. While the current annual salary for vice president is $230,700, Biden was paid about $225,000. Before his time on Pennsylvania Avenue, Biden worked as an attorney who became Delaware's longest-serving senator.

He graduated from Syracuse University Law School in 1968 and initially took a job with a corporate law firm but soon became a public defender. Biden got his first taste of the political world in 1970 when he won a seat on the New Castle County Council.

At age 29, Biden was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, making him one of the youngest people ever elected to the Senate. Biden referred to himself as “one of the poorest members” of Congress. In the years leading up to being vice president, Biden earned around $155,000 each year as a senator and another $20,000 for teaching at Widener University.

When he left public office in 2017, his estimated worth was $2.5 million, with the majority of his net worth coming from his Delaware home and his federal pension, which reportedly guaranteed him an annual income of around $160,000 for life. As the former vice president, Biden worked as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and started writing books and booking speaking engagements. 

In late 2017 and 2018, Biden earned more than $4 million from delivering dozens of speeches. Also in 2017, Biden and his wife signed a book deal valued at a reported $8 million.

Biden's net worth during the presidency

The president was reportedly worth $8 million when he landed in the Oval following the 2020 election. His wealth has grown by roughly 25% since his 2021 inauguration, thanks to his presidential salary, real estate and the stock market increasing the value of some of his investments. 

According to the Biden's 2023 tax return, Joe Biden made $400,000 for being president and Jill Biden made $86,000 as a professor at Northern Virginia Community College.

Most of the Bidens' net worth, an estimated $7 million of their $10 million, comes from their two Delaware homes. The couple's 4,800-square-foot summer home in Rehoboth Beach is worth an estimated $4.5 million. They bought it in 2017 for $2.7 million. Their colonial-style home in Wilmington is worth around $2.5 million. Forbes says the rest of the Bidens' wealth is split between pensions and holdings like Biden's 1967 Corvette Stingray that's worth $100,000.

How Trump and Biden's net worth stack up to past presidents

While Trump is worth more than $6.4 billion and Biden has a $10 million fortune, how do they compare to past commanders-in-chief? A 2023 report featured on Yahoo! Finance places Trump at the top of the list with Biden trailing near the middle. 

Other presidents reportedly raked in the following net worth – Mostly due to millions of dollars from public speaking engagements and lucrative book deals, much like Biden: 

• Bill Clinton: $120 million
• Barack Obama: $70 million
• George W. Bush: $50 million
• George H.W. Bush: $25 million
• Ronald Reagan: $13 million
• Gerald Ford: $7 million

In terms of 2024 candidates' net worth, both Trump and Biden ranked in the top five. Trump led the way followed by entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr, Biden then former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

The most recent election returns, from just after 9 a.m. EDT Wednesday, show Haley with nearly 157,000 votes, enough for 16.6 percent of the total, with 90 percent of votes cast counted.

Former President Trump still easily won the primary, with more than 80 percent of the vote as of the latest count, and he will win all of Pennsylvania’s delegates in the winner-take-all primary. But Haley’s total is still a significant amount for a candidate who has not been in the race since early last month.

The former United Nations ambassador emerged as the last remaining rival to Trump in the Republican primaries after a much larger field narrowed down to two candidates by January. But Haley was ultimately unable to overcome Trump’s lead, and she dropped out following Super Tuesday in March. 

Still, Haley appears to have reached or came close to 20 percent in several counties Tuesday. Her showing may not have significantly impacted Trump taking the state on his way to officially becoming the Republican nominee, especially as he became the presumptive nominee last month after clinching enough delegates.

But it could indicate a reason for concern in the general election, in which Pennsylvania is one of the key battleground states that could determine the winner of the Oval Office. The polling average of the state from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill has Trump ahead of President Biden in the state by just 0.4 percent, meaning every vote may have added importance there compared to many other states.

Haley has seen continued support over recent weeks in other states. She received more than 77,000 votes in the Georgia primary in March in March a few days after she dropped out, more than 150,000 votes, or almost 20 percent, in the Washington primary and more than 110,000 votes in the Arizona primary.

Biden has spoken to crowds of union workers twice in the past week, using each occasion to bash Trump about his upbringing in working to appeal to the critical voting bloc on a personal level.

“Folks, we all know people like Trump who look down on us. Don’t we? We all know somebody we grew up with like that,” Biden said at the North America’s Building Trade Union (NABTU) National Legislative Conference on Wednesday. “It’s either Scranton values or Mar-a-Lago values.”

Biden painted Trump as a bully to working class Americans while using words like “us” to include himself in the labor movement.

“A defeated former president who sees the world from Mar-a-Lago and bows down to billionaires, who looks down on American union workers. It’s not that he’s not supportive, he looks down on us,” he said.

“Think about the guys you grew up with who you’d like to get into the corner and just give them a straight lift. I’m not suggesting we hit the president,” he added to laughter. “But we all know those guys growing up.”

Last week, he told a conference for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), “my opponent learned the best way to get rich is [to] inherit it.”

The NABTU endorsed Biden on Wednesday, and IBEW had already endorsed him ahead of its conference.

It’s part of Biden’s efforts to rebuild the coalition that won him the White House in 2020, with a particular eye on union workers recently. He often says he’s the most pro-union president in history. He became the first commander in chief last year to join a picket line to strike with autoworkers.

Biden on Wednesday argued to union workers that Trump inherited wealth. Trump notably started his business ventures with a $1 million loan from his father, Fred Trump, and he reportedly received at least $413 million from his father over time.

“People like Donald Trump learned a different lesson. He learned the best way to get rich is inherited. He learned that paying taxes is something working people did, not him. That telling people you’re fired is something to laugh about. Not in my household, not in my neighborhood,” he said. “If you grew up where we grew up, nobody handed you anything.

Biden was referencing Trump’s popular reality show “The Apprentice,” where he would fire contestants with his signature style in a boardroom.

Meanwhile, Biden painted himself as “Middle Class Joe,” a title he has referred to himself as throughout his decades in politics.

“The guy has never worked a day in a working man’s boots,” Biden said, referring to Trump. “By the way, you gave me a pair of boots … I know how to put them on. I still sometimes cut the yard. The Secret Service doesn’t let me do it anymore.”

But 2016 saw a significant shift in union support toward Republicans. That year, union households started to shift from blue to red, helping lead to Trump’s victory in states like Michigan. Biden won that state in 2020, but faces a fresh set of obstacles there in 2024 with protests votes centered on his policy on Israel.

The Biden campaign this cycle has invested heavily in battleground states with a large union presence, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

But, recent polling shows Trump ahead of him in these swing states. Trump holds a 6-point lead over Biden in six of seven states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll on Wednesday. He was ahead of Trump by 2 points in Michigan.

Biden has been endorsed by several of the top union groups, including the United Auto Workers and the United Steelworkers, as well as the major union group, AFL-CIO.

The president on Wednesday thanked the NABTU for endorsing him. The group’s president Sean McGarvey said Wednesday that his union will not “waste a lot of time” with supporters of Trump.

The president also praised unions for their work, noting that labor workers are helping to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge after the deadly collapse. He often praises union workers for their contribution to the U.S., as well as for being a group that “brung him to the dance,” referencing their support for him in 2020 and during his time as a senator.

“That’s America, that’s the union movement,” he said.

He added another bash at Trump before closing: “Folks, the choice is clear. Donald Trump’s vision of America is one of revenge and retribution.”

Though President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have already secured their respective party's nominations and won their Pennsylvania primaries by decent margins, they are still facing sizable protest votes in the key battleground state.

There are 19 electoral votes up for grabs in Pennsylvania come November. The key state delivered Biden the 2020 win, but his small margin of victory is putting a bright spotlight on the state.

Biden is facing increased pushback for his continued support of Israel in its war against Hamas and the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Unlike in Michigan, the Pennsylvania ballot does not have an "uncommitted" option, so organizers urged voters to write it in. As a result, the total number of write-in ballots could take weeks to tally.

Currently, the state has counted nearly 58,000 Democratic write-in votes for "uncommitted," three times the number of write-in results from 2020. The biggest portion of "uncommitted" write-in results came out of Philadelphia, an area that was crucial to Biden's 2020 win.

Meanwhile, Trump is also facing a protest vote as he spends important campaigning time in the courtroom for his New York hush money trial.

Haley, who suspended her presidential campaign in early March, received nearly 157,000 votes Tuesday with over 90% of the vote counted. Though Trump won the state's primary by a large margin, Biden won the state by just 80,500 votes in 2020.

The Pennsylvania primary came as the election enters a new phase for Trump. He is primarily campaigning from court, where he faces 34 felony counts in a trial anticipated to unfold over the next several weeks.

President Biden and former President Trump glided to victory in their respective contests, as expected, though both men faced protest votes. The Keystone State is one of the seven major battlegrounds that will decide who wins the Oval Office on Nov. 5.

Pennsylvania will also be the site of one of the most closely watched Senate races in the fall, as Republican David McCormick, who scored Trump’s backing despite their past friction with each other, looks to unseat Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.)

Meanwhile, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), a staunch progressive who has been critical of Israel’s war against Hamas, managed to fend off a primary challenge from the center in an important victory for the left.

Here are five major takeaways from Tuesday night’s primaries.

It’s game on for Biden and Trump in the Keystone State

Biden and Trump were all but ensured to win their respective primaries Tuesday night. Still, their victories serve as a starting gun of sorts in what will be a critical state for both men as they look to win the White House.

Trump currently leads Biden in Pennsylvania by a sliver, at 47 percent to 46 percent, according to an aggregate of polls from Decision Desk HQ and The Hill.  

In a sign of how important the Keystone State is in the presidential race, Biden took part in a three-city tour there just a week ago, visiting his birthplace of Scranton, where he pitched his tax plan to blue-collar workers, before stopping in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Trump, meanwhile, held a rally in Schnecksville, Pa., earlier this month, just two days before he was set to go on trial in a case involving alleged hush money payments to a porn actress.

Their dueling visits underscore the significance of Pennsylvania, which went for Biden in 2020 by roughly 1 percentage point.

If the polls are any indication, the race this year will be another squeaker.

A sleepy start to a crucial Senate race

McCormick’s expected victory in the Republican Senate primary solidifies his matchup with Casey, the Democratic incumbent, in a race that could determine who controls the upper chamber next year.

The GOP lost out on a potential pickup in the Keystone State last cycle when Sen. John Fetterman (D) defeated Trump-backed Mehmet Oz, who had won out over McCormick in the primary.

Now, Republicans are hoping the more establishment-aligned McCormick will give them a boost in a state that has so far slipped through their fingers when it has come to major races. In a sign of the party’s readiness to coalesce around a candidate, Trump himself backed McCormick just a couple of weeks ago, despite some bad blood between the two men.

Casey currently leads McCormick 46 percent to 37 percent, according to an aggregate of polls from Decision Desk HQ and The Hill.

Republicans acknowledge the uphill climb their candidate faces but remain optimistic that he can prevail despite Casey’s name recognition — the Democrat’s father, Bob Casey Sr., was a two-term governor of the Keystone State.

Progressives have staying power

The left wing has faced persistent questions about its near-term future after many Democrats took issue with progressives’ stance toward the Israel-Hamas war. 

Lee, who on Tuesday easily defended her seat against Bhavini Patel, a moderate councilmember from Edgewood, in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, rebuked the theory that progressive officeholders are among the most vulnerable this cycle. 

Her primary victory was, in fact, stronger than her first congressional race, when she barely won against a wave of attacks from special interest groups who spent millions to defeat her. Unlike in that race, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and aligned organizations did not significantly wade into Tuesday’s contest. 

Lee brought in thousands of small dollar donations and ultimately amassed $2.5 million, the campaign reported on primary day. 

Her win was a success for the grassroots model of campaigning that progressives have popularized within the House, sending unlikely candidates to office and protecting liberal incumbents who Democrats insisted were on shaky standing.

It also gave a much-needed energy jolt to the left flank of the party, which has pushed back against centrists who say they have been unhelpful — or downright harmful — to Biden’s first-term agenda and his position around the Middle East.

Protest votes underscore dissatisfaction with Biden, Trump 

In a cycle where voters don’t love what’s in front of them, observers were watching closely to see how many protest votes were cast against both Biden and Trump.

Because vote-counting Tuesday did not include the number of “uncommitted” votes, it might be some time before the number of protest ballots cast in the Democratic primary becomes clear. A relatively small number of votes were also cast for Biden’s former primary challenger, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.).

What was more evident were signs of apparent discontent on the GOP side. Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the Republican primary earlier this year and has yet to endorse Trump, had garnered a vote share in the double digits as of Tuesday night.

While that number didn’t impact Trump’s victory Tuesday, it could indicate some potential problems for the former president in November.

Pennsylvania is one of the top swing states this cycle, with both Biden and Trump factoring it into their calculations as part of their paths to 270. And in a state where Biden beat his rival in 2020 by roughly a percentage point, every vote counts — suggesting Trump’s allies might have reason to worry that Haley supporters could vote against him or sit out the election entirely.

Biden fared much better than Trump in his respective primary Tuesday, earning the vast majority — 94.8 percent — of support over Phillips, a fellow moderate. But Phillips’s 5.2 percent should not go unnoticed. The slim number represents a broader problem for Biden — that a chunk of his own Democratic base, including centrists, do not want to see him reelected. 

While the breakdown of the uncommitted faction is still being determined, the fact that Pennsylvania voters are willing to put forward protest votes in each major party could spell trouble for both presumptive nominees angling for the White House with little fanfare.

Incumbents have a good night

There was some speculation heading into Tuesday that incumbents in both parties could get the boot.

That didn’t happen.

The most high-profile example was the progressive Lee, who easily fended off a challenge from the center of her party.

But Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick also faced a notable primary challenger, in this case from a hard-liner in his party.

Anti-abortion activist Matt Houck was looking to unseat the moderate incumbent, a former FBI agent who represents a suburban county outside Philadelphia.

Ultimately, it wasn’t even really a contest: Fitzpatrick glided to victory in a district that would have become far more competitive in November had Houck won. The Cook Political Report currently has Fitzpatrick’s seat as “likely Republican,” meaning Democrats face a steep climb in flipping it come November.

When the Arizona Supreme Court ruled to ban nearly all abortions in the state, it did so by upholding an 1864 law — passed before Arizona was made a state — that made performing abortions a felony. 

There are at least five other states that have similar so-called "zombie laws" on the books, which could be used to restrict or ban abortions entirely. 

Anti-abortion groups have made the Comstock Act of 1873 a central part of their push to ban mifepristone, a drug used for medical abortions, being sent through the mail. 

These long-dormant laws were revived by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned a constitutional right to abortion that had stood for almost 50 years.  

That ruling was the fruit of a decades-long conservative push to overturn Roe v. Wade and was made possible after former President Donald Trump appointed three new justices to the court.  

However, the zombie laws have become a political liability for Republicans, who are backing away from hardline abortion positions that are widely unpopular with voters.  

According to the Guttmacher Institute, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and West Virginia all have total or near-total abortion bans that were passed several generations ago. Four of these bans were passed in the 1800s, with Texas’ ban passed in 1925. 

All five of these states have banned all abortions with limited exceptions since the Dobbs decision.   

Common timing no coincidence 

The various zombie laws stem from roughly the same few decades. That’s no coincidence, according to Maya Manian, faculty director of the health law and policy program at American University Washington College of Law.  

The hardline abortion laws sprang up in the 19th century during a push to gain control over women’s reproductive health, she said.  

“There were different forces at play in the period of time and some of it was actually physicians’ groups, organized medicine [who] were trying to professionalize themselves to wrest control of reproductive health care away from lay midwives,” said Manian. 

Outside of medicine, conservative activists like Anthony Comstock, who drafted the Comstock Act, sought to restrict abortion on moral grounds.  

According to Manian, this led to “different groups sort of working together to criminalize actions that were not criminalized, actually, earlier in American history.”   

“Prior to that mid-19th century period, abortion before a quickening was lawful, and women accessed abortion care, you know, through midwives all the time,” she added. 

According to Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow in the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, the age of a statute has no bearing on whether it can be still considered law, even if it’s long been dormant. 

“A court is not going to say, ‘This statute is old, so we think it's invalid or something.’ There's no basis for any courts to do that,” he said. 

Passed during a ‘democratic deficit’ 

These laws were also largely passed when only men could vote, a point frequently raised by their opponents. 

“Zombie laws are restrictions, in this case, on access to abortion that were enacted many generations ago, and often before women actually had a vote or an opportunity to speak about whether they should be enacted or what their terms should be,” Reva Siegel, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School, told The Hill. 

“Often, they were enacted for reasons that we would no longer consider constitutionally respect worthy,” she added. 

In an academic article Siegel co-authored following the Dobbs decision, she argued these laws came from efforts to enforce women’s roles as wives and mothers first and foremost. 

Jipping of the Heritage Foundation also pushed back against the relevance of the makeup of the electorate at the time a law was passed.

“The fact that, you know, the electorate was differently comprised at a certain time ... that’s not relevant at all,” said Jipping. “The law that was passed at the time, either it was legitimately passed or it wasn’t. If it was, it’s on the books. Whether it should stay that way is always up to the legislature.” 

Democrats in the Arizona legislature sought to repeal the 1864 law last week but Republican lawmakers blocked the attempt. 

The U.S. upholds many laws that were enacted several generations ago, but experts like Manian say shifts in the legal and political landscape make these abortion laws particularly antiquated.  

“It's completely backwards-looking, with not taking into account how our own Constitution has changed over time. We then eventually enacted a 14th Amendment to protect equal protection and a 19th Amendment to grant the women's right to vote,” said Manian.  

“But it's sort of freezing our rights back in a time where the people most impacted by these decisions had no say in the making of the law,” she added. 

“You're just reinforcing a democratic deficit.” 

Will zombie laws finally die?  

Generally speaking, laws are assumed to be enforceable if they are duly enacted regardless of age. This is considered true unless there is a constitutional objection to the enforcement of the law. 

Roe barred these state-level abortion bans from being enforced for nearly half a century. According to Siegel, there hasn’t yet been “many sustained judicial discussions” among legal circles on whether these sorts of laws can simply go back into effect immediately after almost 50 years of dormancy. 

Jipping said that question should go to state legislatures after the Supreme Court decided the federal Constitution doesn't confer a right to abortion.

“At the end of the day, legislatures are responsible for determining abortion policy in their state. And whether that means sorting out multiple laws, whether it means deciding to once again enforce a law that has been dormant for a while, at the end of the day that's what legislatures are for.” 

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) has vowed to not enforce the ban even after the state supreme court’s decision last month. 

When it comes to Comstock, however, Siegel notes features of the law that make it distinctive from the 1800s state-level abortion bans. 

“Most laws that are on the books are the subject of public conversation if they're enforced in ways that offend the public. But this one has this distinctive history of the government using the criminal law to prevent public criticism of the law. It’s different than the Arizona law for example,” she said.  

According to Siegel, Comstock’s enforcement is “flatly unconstitutional under the First Amendment's protections of free speech today.” Comstock bars the mailing of “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile" things. 

The legally accepted definition of “obscene, lewd, lascivious” has also changed over time. When it was first enacted, this definition could apply to medical textbooks depicting the human body, letters that detailed dating among unmarried people or text that acknowledged the existence of abortions. 

In Pennsylvania, there are 19 electoral votes up for grabs in November, and it is one of three states — along with Michigan and Wisconsin — that went narrowly for Trump in 2016.

Biden was able to win voters back during the 2020 election, but his small margin of victory is putting a spotlight on his home state this time around.

War in Israel's impact on election

The sitting president’s handling of the war in Israel is expected to be a big focus leading up to the November election.

Pennsylvania has more than 300,000 Jewish voters — the largest Jewish population out of any swing state — and they are expected to have a big voice in the battleground state.

Both candidates have spent time in the Keystone State.

"Today, we face another inflection point in history. The 2024 election is about two fundamentally different visions for America. Donald Trump’s vision is one of anger, hate, revenge, and retribution," Biden said in Philadelphia during a recent stop there.

"We have to debate. We have to explain to the American people what the hell is going on because they, they're looking at the border and they're looking at inflation and they're looking at the economy, which is terrible," Trump said during a recent rally in Schnecksville.

Biden's 'risking a lot' supporting Israel

The Democratic Socialists of America launched an initiative urging Pennsylvania residents to write in "uncommitted" on the ballot in protest of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

It’s similar to efforts in Michigan’s Democratic primary election last month, where 13% of voters selected "uncommitted" instead of Biden.

NewsNation spoke with Ron Joseph, one of the initiative's leaders who says the group already has five endorsements from organizations statewide and has contacted more than 100,000 voters.

“He is risking a lot going into this November by continuing to support Israel, especially in this manner. A lot of Pennsylvanians will demonstrate to the Biden administration that it must act now to end the seizure in Gaza and achieve a cease-fire in Palestine. Or go into November having alienated millions of constituents and go with an unmotivated voter base,” Joseph said.

The group’s goal is to convince more than 40,000 Pennsylvania voters to write in "uncommitted" during Tuesday's primary.

US Senate race: Casey vs. McCormick

Tuesday's Pennsylvania primaries will also cement the lineup for a high-stakes U.S. Senate race between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger David McCormick, a contest that is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and could help decide control of the Senate next year.

Casey, seeking his fourth term, is perhaps Pennsylvania's best-known politician and a stalwart of the presidential swing state's Democratic Party — the son of a former two-term governor and Pennsylvania’s longest-ever serving Democrat in the Senate.

McCormick is a two-time Senate challenger, a former hedge fund CEO and Pennsylvania native who spent $14 million of his own money only to lose narrowly to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in 2022's seven-way GOP primary. Oz then lost to Democratic Sen. John Fetterman in a pivotal Senate contest.

This time around, McCormick has consolidated the party around his candidacy and is backed by a super PAC that's already reported raising more than $20 million, much of it from securities-trading billionaires.

McCormick's candidacy is shaping up as the strongest challenge to Casey in his three reelection bids. McCormick, intent on shoring up support in the GOP base, told an audience of conservatives in suburban Harrisburg earlier this month that he tells people “you're going to agree with about 80% of what I say ... but we disagree 90% of the time with the crazy progressive left that's destroying our country.”

Battle for control over Washington

Casey is one of Biden’s strongest allies in Congress.

The two men share a hometown of Scranton, and their political stories are intertwined. Biden — who represented neighboring Delaware in the Senate and roots for Philadelphia sports teams — has effectively made Pennsylvania his political home as a presidential candidate. Long before that, Biden was nicknamed “Pennsylvania's third senator” by Democrats because he campaigned there so often.

McCormick and Trump have endorsed each other but are an awkward duo atop the GOP's ticket. Trump savaged McCormick in 2022's primary in a successful bid to lift Oz to his primary win. And McCormick, for his part, has told of a private meeting in which he refused Trump's urging to say that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, a disproven claim the former president has never abandoned.

Democrats currently hold a one-seat majority in the Senate but face a difficult 2024 map that requires them to defend incumbents in the red states of Montana and Ohio and fight for open seats with new candidates in Michigan and West Virginia.

A Casey loss could give Republicans control of the Senate.

Voters have until 8 p.m. local time to cast their ballots.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) announced Monday that it was backing state Sen. John McGuire (R) in the GOP congressional primary for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, citing Good’s vote Saturday against a foreign aid package that included money for Ukraine, Israel and humanitarian aid for Gaza. 

“This past week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed emergency aid funding for our key security partners, including urgently needed military assistance for our beleaguered ally Israel. Congressman Bob Good (VA-05) shamefully voted against this critical support for the Jewish state, abandoning Israel as it continues to fight for its very survival after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks said in a statemet. 

“This vote showed who Israel’s true friends are, and exposed those like Congressman Bob Good who are not,” he added. 

The House voted Saturday to send a foreign aid package to the Senate for consideration, which gives about $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and $8 billion in the Indo-Pacific. Within the $26 billion allocated for Israel, close to $9.2 billion has been reserved for Gaza humanitarian assistance.  

Good said in a statement Saturday that he would not be supporting the legislation because aid for Israel “was included in $95 billion of additional, unpaid for, spending" but argued his support for Israel's right to defend itself was "unshakeable."

“In addition to $60 billion for Ukraine, this foreign aid spending includes $9 billion for Gaza that will inevitably fund Hamas terrorists,” Good claimed.  

“Rather than saddling American taxpayers with the bill, the Senate should have taken up the $14.2 billion paid-for Israel bill five months ago to help our ally,” he added, noting America's debt.

The RJC is not the only high-profile Republican group to oppose Good. Republican Main Street Partnership is also looking to oust the Virginia Republican.  

Good’s district went for former President Trump by more than 8 points in 2020. The primary for Good’s seat is June 18.

AIPAC, the most influential pro-Israel group, has said it plans to spend $100 million to target progressive candidates, while the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) PAC and the Jewish Democratic Council of America have set their sights on progressive Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.). 

The effort underscores the degree to which the Israel-Hamas war will factor into Democratic primaries and help shape the party's next wave of incoming lawmakers.

“We’re not interested in defeating people who are progressive,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster and president and CEO of DMFI. “We’re not interested in defeating people who are pro-Palestinian, we’re interested in defeating people who are anti-Israel and I think it’s fair to say that Bowman, Bush, and some of these other members are decidedly anti-Israel.” 

In New York’s 16th Congressional District’s Democratic primary, Bowman is working to fight off a challenge from Westchester County Executive George Latimer, while in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, Bush faces a challenge from St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell. 

Publicly available polling from the primary races paints a potentially troubling scenario for Bowman and Bush. One survey, conducted in early February by the Republican firm Remington Research, showed Bush trailing Bell by 22 points. Another survey, conducted by Mellman earlier this month, showed Latimer leading Bowman 56 percent to 35 percent. Bowman’s campaign called the poll “junk” in a comment to the New York Post. 

“It’s clear to us based on the polling that we’ve done that people like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman are out of sync with the voters in their district,” Mellman said. “We found that Democratic primary voters in these districts approve of the job that President Biden is doing handling this war. We found that they overwhelmingly want to support Israel and not Hamas in this conflict.”

Mellman did note that defeating Bush and Bowman would not be easy due to their status as incumbent lawmakers. 

“I think they can be [defeated]. Will they be? That’s a different story. It will be difficult to unseat them, there’s no question about it,” he said. 

In addition to facing a pro-Israel primary challenger, Bowman also lost the endorsement of the progressive Jewish group J Street earlier this year. The group noted in January that it was “pleased” to work with Bowman for four years, but it said recent months “highlighted significant differences between us in framing and approach.” 

However, J Street, which has been critical of Israel’s wartime conduct, has warned that the involvement of groups like AIPAC in Democratic primaries threatens to divide the party ahead of November. 

“It’s really disappointing to see groups like United Democracy Project funneling millions and millions of Republican billionaire dollars into Democratic primaries,” said Tali deGroot, J Street’s national political director, referring to the independent expenditure arm of AIPAC. 

“They’re doing the same thing that Republicans are doing in the House, which is using the war as a political football and dividing the Democratic Party over it at a moment when the future of our democracy is on the line,” she continued. 

DeGroot pointed to California state Sen. Dave Min’s (D), who is running for Rep. Katie Porter’s (D-Calif.) seat in the 47th Congressional District. While Min advanced to the general election, he was on the receiving end of $4.5 million worth of attacks from AIPAC during the primary. Min had been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but did not call for a permanent cease-fire. 

“No matter who won that primary, they were going to be in a much weaker position heading into the general because of how much mudslinging happened in the primary, and that’s a critical seat for Democrats,” deGroot said.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the seat as “lean Democratic.” 

The United Democracy Project has also leaned into the Democratic primary in Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District, where former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn is running. The group is supporting Dunn’s primary opponent, Democratic state Sen. Sarah Elfreth, with a $600,000 ad buy but has said it is not concerned about Dunn’s stance on the Israel-Gaza war. 

“They’re trying to knock off Harry Dunn,” said Len Foxwell, a Maryland-based Democratic strategist. “The bigger question that people are wondering is how will this affect Senator Elfreth, who is the beneficiary of the AIPAC dark money that’s coming to the 3rd District.” 

AIPAC has pushed back on the accusation that it is trying to sow discord among Democrats by inserting itself into primaries, telling The Hill it is “the largest PAC contributor to Democratic candidates.”

“Our political action committee supports the Democratic leadership and nearly half of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Black Caucus and Hispanic Caucus,” the group said in a statement. “In addition, our affiliated super Pac supported a number of Democratic progressive candidates in the last election cycle, who defeated anti-Israel candidates in their primary, won their general election, and are currently serving in Congress. We believe that it is entirely consistent with progressive values to stand with the Jewish state.” 

Pro-Palestinian progressives claim that pro-Israel groups like AIPAC are working to silence any criticism against Israel within the Democratic Party with the threat of primary challengers. 

“As long as you are even lightly critical of the Israeli government or the Israeli military, you are a target,” said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Dems who is also a leading member of the Reject AIPAC coalition, which was launched last month by a partnership of progressive groups to push back on AIPAC’s political influence. 

“We’ve heard that from members of Congress. Member-to-member conversations often, I’ve heard, have been, 'We want to speak out against the atrocities that are happening but we’re scared of an AIPAC primary,'” he said.

“This is not a war between progressives and the far-right Israel lobby,” Andrabi added. “This is a battle for our democracy and for the whole of the Democratic Party.”

Despite the obvious internal disagreements over Israel between many Democrats, House Democratic leadership put on a show of unity last month in endorsing Bowman. The endorsement illustrated the fine line Democrats are walking as the world continues to watch the war in Gaza. 

“Jamaal Bowman was endorsed by the House leadership for reelection for a reason,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based Democratic strategist. “They can’t afford to be in a position where they single out a member and allow it to appear that any interest group of any kind is influencing their decisions. And Biden faces a similar set of circumstances.”

A Marist/PBS NewsHour poll published Monday found Biden leading Trump 51 percent to 48 percent among registered voters, a slight uptick from a poll published earlier this month that showed Biden leading 50 percent to 48 percent.

The poll found Biden's lead grows to 53 percent to 47 percent when only counting those who said they definitely plan to vote in November’s election.

Among independent voters, the two men are tied at 49 percent, with 2 percent saying they were undecided.

Biden maintains his lead in the poll even when the survey was expanded to include independent and third party candidates, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein.

When those three candidates were included, Biden still leads Trump 43-38 among registered voters, with Kennedy pulling 14 percent support. Kennedy drew support from 8 percent of Democrats surveyed and 10 percent of Republicans, as well as 27 percent of independents.

The poll surveyed 1,192 adults, including 1,047 registered voters, from April 16-18, meaning it took place during the opening week of Trump's hush money trial in New York City. The poll has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

Biden has made gains in national polls in recent weeks, pulling even with Trump in a Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of national polls. The close polls are a sign of what strategists have long said will likely be a close election between Biden and Trump, a rematch of the 2020 race that Biden won.

Battleground state polling has been more favorable to Trump, however. Decision Desk HQ averages show Trump leading in Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, while Biden fares better in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Running unopposed, Trump — already the party’s presumptive nominee — easily won the primary. He will officially be named the nominee at the party’s convention in Milwaukee in July.

Trump has 1,915 delegates in the GOP primary as the only candidate remaining in the race.

Puerto Rico's Democratic primary will be held on April 28.

The general election match-up with President Biden remains neck and neck, with Trump holding a lead of just 0.9 percentage points in the Decision Desk HQ average of polls.