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📺 The death of debates
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Photo: Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Nikki Haley's unanswered challenge to debate Trump one-on-one reflects a new political reality.

  • Sixty years after Kennedy vs. Nixon made presidential debates a television sensation, voters can no longer take them for granted, Axios' Erin Doherty reports.

Why it matters: Trump appears set to coast to the nomination without ever debating his Republican opponents, a controversial strategy vindicated by his dominance in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Driving the news: Looking ahead, three general election presidential debates have been scheduled for 2024 — but it's not clear whether they will happen.

  • The RNC has said the eventual GOP nominee can't participate in debates hosted and organized by the independent Commission on Presidential Debates.
  • Biden has not yet committed to participating, even as Trump has said he's eager to debate his likely Democratic opponent.
  • Some Biden campaign staffers are still upset over the 2020 election debates, when the commission allowed the Trump campaign to flout some of its rules over debate protocols and COVID-19 precautions.

The big picture: Trump is not the first presidential candidate to skip a debate.

  • Richard Nixon sat out of the debates in 1968 and 1972, and Jimmy Carter skipped the first of two debates against his GOP challenger Ronald Reagan in 1980.
  • There were no debates from 1960 to 1976, but there have been at least two debates during every cycle since they resumed.

Keep reading

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🚗 UAW backs Biden
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UAW president Shawn Fain joins hands with Biden at today's event in D.C. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

 

The United Auto Workers union endorsed Biden for re-election today, ending its monthslong holdout over concerns about his electric vehicle policies, Axios' Nathan Bomey reports.

Why it matters: With about 1 million members, including active and retired workers, the UAW remains a powerful force in progressive politics.

Driving the news: UAW president Shawn Fain hailed Biden's leadership, praising the president for standing with the union during its strike against the Detroit Three automakers.

  • "This choice is clear," Fain said. "Joe Biden bet on the American worker, while Donald Trump blamed the American worker."
  • "Donald Trump is a scab!" he added to raucous cheers at a UAW political conference in Washington, D.C.

Context: The endorsement came after the UAW scored record contracts from General Motors, Ford and Stellantis following an unprecedented simultaneous strike against all three automakers.

  • During the strike, Fain said the White House was "afraid" of the union's momentum, and he personally challenged Biden to join the picket line.
  • Biden quickly accepted the invitation and appeared alongside Fain on a picket line outside a GM facility in Michigan in September.

Keep reading

phkrause

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🗳️ Tweet du jour: Biden's New Hampshire journey
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Despite not appearing on the New Hampshire ballot, the Biden write-in campaign is currently dominating the Democratic primary with 56% of the vote.

  • 10% of write-in votes had yet to be processed as of the sending of this newsletter.
  • Concerns that Biden would face a strong rebuke from Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) or the organized pro-Palestinian push to write in "ceasefire" ultimately did not bear out.

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Behind the Curtain: Trump's power surge

Something shocking — and telling — has unfolded beyond Donald Trump's onstage, online and courtroom theatrics: He's running a professional, well-managed, disciplined presidential campaign, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write.

  • His 2024 operation is more sophisticated — dare we say traditional — than the slapdash improvisation of his White House and two previous runs.

Why it matters: Trump likely will wrap up the nomination in record time, with almost universal GOP establishment backing.

  • If he were to win — and run the White House like he has his campaign — he could reshape America and its government more quickly, and in more lasting ways, than he did during his first term.

Winning the nomination fast and decisively speaks only to his power with the activist GOP. Exit polling showed lots of New Hampshire Republicans won't vote for him, especially if convicted.

  • But his hand is a helluva lot stronger than most expected a year ago.

🔎 Between the lines: Many top Republicans assumed that, after the Capitol riot, no one sensible would go near him. The campaign would be fringe and cringe. Instead, Trump has rolled up the party even tighter than he did when he was president.

  • Now the GOP's biggest donors and power brokers not only figure he'll quickly become the nominee, they assume he'd beat President Biden if the expected rematch comes to pass.

🥊 Reality check: Trump has surrounded himself with pros, but he's still Trump — an incendiary and chaotic messenger. (See Item 5 below!)

Our conversations with Trump officials, allies and alumni reveal the off-the-rails public Trump has a more conventional, buttoned-up operation built around him. His advisers see this as a template for governing if he were to win.

  • Here's how he did it:

1. Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, the top two officials at the Palm Beach-based campaign, run a tight, lean ship.

  • Wiles is a former top political adviser to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who left on bitter terms. LaCivita is a former Marine with decades of brass-knuckle campaign experience. Along with well-connected Trump senior adviser Brian Jack, they put in place a methodical process for Republicans to seek Trump's endorsement for congressional and statewide offices. This machine gave Trump leverage with rising stars throughout the party, along with extensive data about their home-state political operations.
  • Trump campaign staffers get along, stay in their lanes and don't leak like sieves — all dramatic changes from his past operations.

2. The Trump team has methodically wired obscure state Republican delegate rules to his advantage. Operatives worked state by state over the past three years to be sure he benefited from mechanics such as winner-take-all rules.

  • "This team is lean, efficient, experienced, eye on the prize — none of the backstabbing and gossip and drama," Charles Moran, president of the Log Cabin Republicans (the leading group of LGBT conservatives), and a member of the California Republican Party's rules committee, told us. "No divas. It drives [Trump critics] crazy."
  • Here again, Trump was greatly limited by disorganization and bureaucratic naïveté when he was in the White House. The Heritage Foundation and other groups are spending millions to make sure that doesn't happen again if he wins.

3. In Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump built extensive ground operations that helped cement him as a formidable front-runner in both states almost a year before voting began.

4. The establishment opposition melted and proved much more amendable to his ways and plans.

5. Trump, who had flown solo his entire political life, allowed his allies to embrace the Heritage Foundation and other outside groups that are building talent banks and policy blueprints to help him swiftly staff the government to control and shrink what Trumpers call "the deep state."

  • Heritage president Kevin Roberts recently told The New York Times that he sees the think tank's role as "institutionalizing Trumpism."

6. Maybe the biggest shocker: Trump took indictments on 91 felonies in four criminal cases — a death knell for any other candidate — and turned them into a net positive. Even many traditional Republicans see the prosecutions as piling on.

  • "I've been indicted more than Al Capone," Trump crowed at his final New Hampshire rally.

🔮 What's next: Trump will amp up attacks on his prospective general-election opponent — President Biden — while still working to clinch the Republican nomination, likely in March. It's yet another way that Trump 2024 is way ahead of the usual campaign game.

phkrause

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On to November: Trump win in New Hampshire sets up 2024 rematch with Biden

WASHINGTON — Leading Republicans — and the Biden presidential campaign — on Wednesday rushed to identify former President Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee after he won decisively in New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/01/24/on-to-november-trump-win-in-new-hampshire-sets-up-2024-rematch-with-biden/?

ps:They act as if it's all over!!!!!

UAW delivers rousing presidential endorsement for Biden over ‘scab’ Trump

WASHINGTON — The United Auto Workers of America endorsed the re-election of President Joe Biden Wednesday, just months after he became the first sitting U.S. president to walk a picket line with striking autoworkers in Michigan.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/01/24/uaw-delivers-rousing-presidential-endorsement-for-biden-over-scab-trump/?

phkrause

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📖 What we're reading: Trump's cutthroat conquest

The New York Times' Shane Goldmacher, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan are out with a deep dive full of newsy nuggets on how Trump sailed through the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries.

  • One that stands out: Hours after winning 98 of 99 counties in Iowa, Trump was joined on his private jet by about a dozen staffers who helped lay the groundwork for his landslide victory in the Hawkeye State.
  • The regional political director who oversaw Johnson County —which Nikki Haley won by a single vote — was not given a seat on the plane.

The big picture: Trump and his team have deployed a ruthless ethos in their quest for the nomination. The "win-or-else" approach fits "the requirements of a candidate who faces the threat of imprisonment" if the race and trials don't go his way, the Times trio write.

Go deeper

phkrause

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1 big thing — Scoop: Biden’s fear

President Biden — increasingly nervous about Gaza's impact on his re-election chances — pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week to quickly scale down military operations, Axios' Barak Ravid scoops.

  • Why it matters: Biden's comments during the two leaders' call last Friday reflect growing U.S. concern about the continuation of the war and the president's desire to see it end well before the November elections.

Biden stressed in his call with Netanyahu that he's not in it for a year of war, two U.S. officials told Axios.

  • A Biden adviser told Axios that the White House is very concerned about losing young voters, who are increasingly opposed to the president's policies on the Gaza war.
  • A source close to the White House said Biden can't have the war — and the growing death toll — continue to dominate the news cycle as the election gets closer.

🔎 Behind the scenes: At least a third of Biden's 40-minute call with Netanyahu focused on the Israeli timetable for moving to low-intensity operations across the Gaza Strip and Israel's war strategy as a whole, one U.S. official said.

  • Netanyahu had said a day earlier that the war would continue for "many more months." Speaking to the Israeli leader about that comment, Biden urged Netanyahu to move faster.

🔎 Between the lines: Biden has become increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu in recent weeks.

  • The call a week ago between the two leaders was their first in nearly a month. During their previous call on Dec. 23, a frustrated Biden ended the call by saying the "conversation is over" and hanging up the phone.
  • In the first two months of the war, the two leaders had talked almost every other day.

🔮 What's next: CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet with the Qatari prime minister and the spy chiefs of Israel and Egypt in the coming days in an attempt to reach a breakthrough in talks to release all hostages held by Hamas.

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Nikki Haley pushes for win in SC, says Trump feels threatened by her

NORTH CHARLESTON — Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley told supporters Wednesday she can still win her home state’s GOP contest Feb. 24 and vowed to keep going beyond that, never mind what the polls and pundits are saying.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/01/25/nikki-haley-pushes-for-win-in-sc-says-trump-feels-threatened-by-her/?

phkrause

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🗳️ The immigration election
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A migrant family talks to National Guard soldiers after crossing the Rio Grande this month in Eagle Pass, Texas, as seen from Piedras Negras, Mexico. Photo: Go Nakamura/Reuters

One policy issue will dominate this presidential election like no other: policing the border with Mexico.

  • Both President Biden and former President Trump are pouncing on the topic in the unofficial start to the 2024 general election.

Why it matters: Their internal polls show what public ones shout — that immigration is the policy topic animating voters most viscerally.

The issue has made both candidates say and do extraordinary things in the past few days.

  • Trump opposes a bipartisan border security bill that would give Biden emergency border-security funding. "I'll fight it all the way," Trump said yesterday in Las Vegas, in what aides considered his first speech of the general election. "Please blame it on me. Please."
  • Biden is all-in on border restrictions he would have ridiculed a few short years ago, saying yesterday in Columbia, S.C., that the bill would give him "the emergency authority to shut down the border until it could get back under control. If that bill were the law today, I'd shut down the border right now and fix it quickly."

💣 Truth bomb: Republicans know immigration alone could sink Biden. So Trump and House Republicans will kill anything, even if it meets or exceeds their wishes. Biden knows immigration alone could sink him. So he's willing to accept what he once considered unacceptable — to save himself.

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N.H. Primary Biden Deepfake Robocall Traced to AI Startup

Last week, a call went out to a number of New Hampshire voters urging them to not vote in the state’s presidential primary. The call, which sounded as though it was from President Biden, was in fact a deepfake created using tools made by ElevenLabs.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ai-powered-deepfake-biden-robocall-traced-back-to-elevenlabs?

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Trump's Nevada lock
Illustration of the state of Nevada forming a profile of Donald Trump's face.
 

Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios

 

Nevada's Republican delegates are all but locked up for former President Trump, even though the contest isn't for another week and a half, Axios' Erin Doherty reports.

Why it matters: Trump allies in Nevada's Republican Party gave him a runway to sweep the state's 26 delegates when they proceeded with a caucus system despite a state-sanctioned primary taking place two days earlier.

  • "This was clearly a move to basically set up where Trump really had no competition" in the caucuses, Mike Noble, an independent pollster who specializes in the Southwest region, told Axios.

Driving the news: Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley is participating in the Feb. 6 state-run primary, which will not award any delegates.

  • A 2021 Nevada law said a state-run primary must take place if more than one candidate files for president.
  • The state GOP proceeded with holding its caucuses, which are scheduled for Feb. 8 — and said that candidates can't participate in both contests.
  • "The best way to describe it is the fix is in for the Don in Nevada," Noble said.

Zoom in: Caucuses often reward candidates with a strong voter base, said Daniel Lee, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

  • "Caucus voters are going to be your more enthusiastic, fervent supporters of the candidate ... precisely the type of supporters that Trump has," Lee said.
  • Trump dominated the 2016 Nevada Republican caucuses, beating second-place Sen. Marco Rubio by 22 percentage points.
  • "It gives each candidate the opportunity to perform. It's about getting their people out," Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald, a fake elector for Trump in 2020, said last year.

Zoom out: Trump advisers have been working behind the scenes with party activists to revise delegate selection rules in the former president's favor.

  • In California, which has the most delegates of any state, a new rule allows a candidate to win all of the state's 169 delegates if they receive a majority of the primary.
  • Delegates in California previously had been awarded in proportion to results in congressional districts.
  • Other states such as Idaho, Louisiana and Michigan have made changes to their selection rules.

The bottom line: "Trump will get the delegates and Haley won't get any credit for a quote unquote, 'win' in the primaries," Noble said.

phkrause

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💰 Scoop: Haley's coast-to-coast money swing

She'll have the money:

  • Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has 10+ fundraisers scheduled over the next two weeks, including stops in California, Florida, New York, and Texas, Axios' Dan Primack and Sophia Cai report.

Why it matters: After coming in third in Iowa and losing by double digits to Donald Trump in New Hampshire, Haley is in a deep delegate hole. But she asserted yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press": "I'm not going anywhere."

👀 The intrigue: Tomorrow evening, she'll be in Manhattan for a reception with minimum contributions of $3,300 to $16,600 per person, according to an invitation obtained by Axios.

  • The host committee includes Ken Langone, the Home Depot co-founder who previously said he was waiting for Haley's New Hampshire results because he "did not want to throw money down a rat hole."
  • Other hosts include private equity titan Henry Kravis, hedge fund manager Cliff Asness, Campbell Brown, Stan Druckenmiller, Ken Mehlman, former Sen. Pat Toomey and Spencer Zwick.

A week from tomorrow, Haley will be in the Bay Area for a $3,300-a-plate luncheon in San Francisco ($13,300 for VIP photo reception), followed by an evening reception in wealthy Atherton, Calif. ($6,600 per individual, or $16,600 to be a co-host).

🧮 By the numbers: Haley has raised $4 million in online grassroots donations since New Hampshire — including $1 million after Donald Trump threatened her donors five days ago with being "permanently barred from the MAGA camp" if they give top Haley.

phkrause

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Nikki Haley’s dilemma in South Carolina: winning over voters who like her, but love Trump

CONWAY, S.C. (AP) — For South Carolina’s conservatives, deciding whether Nikki Haley ’s record warrants a promotion to the Oval Office seems less about her experience and abilities and more about the man standing in her way: Donald Trump.

https://apnews.com/article/haley-trump-2024-republican-south-carolina-e5cf13a535b2746c757c63e34f611dfa?

phkrause

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👀 Biden embraces T-word
Illustration of a microphone wearing a big red tie
 

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

 

President Biden deliberately avoided the word for nearly three years, using euphemisms like "the other guy" and "my predecessor," Axios' Alex Thompson writes.

  • Now his speeches are peppered with it: Trump!

Why it matters: Biden's shift in rhetoric shows his team is in general-election mode — and wants to frame the race as a choice between Biden and Donald Trump, more than as a referendum on Biden's presidency.

  • Biden began making a point of mentioning the former president by name in late November. The mentions have become more frequent since then, according to a review of his speech transcripts.
  • In a speech Saturday in Columbia, S.C., Biden went all out, saying "Trump" 22 times — calling him a "loser" twice and "Donald 'Herbert Hoover' Trump."

👂 What we're hearing: Biden had decided early in 2021 that he didn't want to say Trump's name publicly because of his personal disdain for the 45th president — and as a strategy to try to lower the nation's temperature, former aides say.

phkrause

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💰 2024's historic money gusher
Illustration of stacks of money with a strap that travels upward and forms an upward pointing arrow
 

Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios

 

The main super PAC supporting President Biden's re-election campaign is planning a mind-boggling $250 million in ad reservations across key battleground states beginning in August, the New York Times reports.

Why it matters: Future Forward says the coming purchase — which will include $140 million for TV and $110 million for digital and streaming platforms — represents the largest single political ad buy from a super PAC in U.S. history.

The big picture: It's only January, but the massive stakes of November's election are already being reflected in historic fundraising hauls and spending.

  • House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who's in his first term as successor to fundraising powerhouse Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), announced he raised more than $113 million to support House Democrats last year.
  • Two outside groups aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) raised nearly $95 million to help Republicans take back the upper chamber, according to Fox News.
  • The Democratic Governors Association raised a record $71.5 million last year — a 66% increase from 2019, the last comparable cycle, Axios' Stef Kight scooped.

The intrigue: With a staggering sum of cash flowing through the political ecosystem, Trump spent roughly $50 million of donor money last year on legal and investigation-related expenses, the Times reports.

phkrause

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🙏 Haley's Hail Mary
Photo illustration of Nikki Haley against three squares in the background
 

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

 

Nikki Haley is seeking a complex — and unlikely — path to the GOP presidential nomination by relying on independent and Democratic voters in 13 states with primaries open to non-Republicans, Axios' Sophia Cai writes.

  • Why it matters: It's a long shot. But Haley's Hail Mary strategy might help her chip away at GOP front-runner Donald Trump as he faces legal challenges that could complicate his campaign.

Haley's team is pinning its hopes on the primary formats in South Carolina, Michigan and 11 of the 16 Super Tuesday states whose March 5 primaries aren't limited to registered Republicans.

  • The former UN ambassador is also bashing Trump in a flurry of media appearances, daring him to debate her and embarking on a fundraising frenzy this week.

It's a tough sell: The GOP's base continues to rally around Trump.

phkrause

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📊 Poll: Biden losing border blame game
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President Biden looks increasingly vulnerable on immigration — the issue that has been the focus of former President Trump's entire political career, Axios' Alex Thompson and Erin Doherty write.

  • Why it matters: The issue resonates far from the border. In six of seven swing states in a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll out this morning, a majority of voters say they've seen more immigrants over the last few years. (Michigan was the exception.)

🔢 By the numbers: 61% of swing-state voters say Biden is at least somewhat responsible for the wave of migration on the U.S.-Mexico border.

  • On the same question, 30% blamed the Trump administration and 38% blamed congressional Republicans.

Voters in all seven swing states — Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — say they trust Trump over Biden on immigration, 52% to 30%.

  • That 22-point margin is up five points since the same poll in December.

Explore the data ...

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What’s going on with No Labels and its nonprofit status in FL and elsewhere?

The political action committee End Citizens United is urging the IRS and the state of Florida to investigate the nonprofit status of No Labels, a newly formed political party.

https://floridaphoenix.com/blog/whats-going-on-with-no-labels-and-its-nonprofit-status-in-fl-and-elsewhere/?

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DeSantis, super PAC spent $158.5 million during presidential run in 2023

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ failed presidential campaign and its affiliated super PAC, Never Back Down, spent a combined $158.5 million in 2023, an eye-popping sum for a candidate who didn’t win a single county in the lone state he competed in.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2024/02/01/desantis-super-pac-spent-158-5-million-during-presidential-run-in-2023/?

ps:What a waste of money!!!!!!!!!!

phkrause

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Trump campaign donors footed the bill for more than $50M in legal fees last year

Former President Trump's political fundraising apparatus spent more than $50 million on legal costs last year as he faced a barrage of lawsuits and criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions.

https://www.axios.com/2024/02/01/trump-legal-fees-campaign-donations-2023?

ps:I was under the impression that campaign funds went to the campaign??

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Biden meets with friendly autoworkers in Michigan, but avoids angry Gaza protesters

WARREN, Michigan (AP) — President Joe Biden chatted with a friendly union crowd inside a United Auto Workers hall in Michigan on Thursday as pro-Palestinian demonstrators held back by police with riot shields voiced their anger nearby at the president’s full-throated support for Israel in its war with Hamas.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-campaign-israel-gaza-michigan-arab-voters-29451a90f2c6407f9c4d3ec984951389?

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Biden's Michigan collision

Hours before traveling to Michigan, a key epicenter of Arab American outrage over the war in Gaza, President Biden signed an unprecedented executive order targeting Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians.

Why it matters: The timing may have been coincidental, but the Biden administration is eager to present deliverables to Arab and Muslim American voters who have threatened to sit out or actively work to defeat the president over his support for Israel.

  • Those communities — not to mention the younger generations alienated by Biden's policies toward Gaza — typically vote Democratic by wide margins.
  • A major defection would imperil Biden's 2020 coalition: In Michigan, for example, Biden won by 154,000 votes. Census estimates put the state's Arab American population around at least 278,00o.

Driving the news: Biden did not meet with any Muslim or Arab community leaders in his visit to the Detroit area, where he delivered a campaign speech to UAW workers a week after receiving the union's endorsement.

  • Pro-Palestinian protests were held Wednesday night in Dearborn, Michigan — home to the country's largest Muslim population per capita — but Biden's event was not disrupted.

Zoom in: The raw anger many of these communities have expressed toward Biden's policies — including his refusal to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war — cannot be overstated.

  • Activists have organized an "Abandon Biden" campaign that plans to endorse a third-party candidate, even at the risk of boosting former President Trump — who is likely to be more hostile to the Palestinians.
  • Some Palestinian American community leaders declined an invitation to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken today, saying they "cannot imagine" what he could have to say after "nearly four unbearable months."
  • Last week, some Arab American elected officials refused to meet with Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez in Michigan — calling it "dehumanizing" to discuss electoral politics while the war is ongoing.

The big picture: Biden has been losing patience with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for weeks now, pressing him to scale down operations in Gaza and stressing that the U.S. is not in it for another year of war.

  • As Axios first reported yesterday, the State Department has begun conducting a review of possible policy options for U.S. and international recognition of a Palestinian state after the war.
  • Today's executive order represents the most significant step any U.S. administration has ever taken in response to violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank.

What to watch: Biden does not face a serious challenger in Michigan's Democratic primary on Feb. 27, but the turnout and margin of victory could offer a key test of the hurdles ahead.

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🔥 Timeline: Haley finally unleashes on Trump

South Carolina's Feb. 24 GOP primary.

Why it matters: Haley is the lone survivor of the primary taking on Trump. Facing a massive gap in the polls, the former UN ambassador can no longer afford to tiptoe around Trump's vulnerabilities.

Timeline

Jan. 24: "We got out there, we did our thing and we said what we had to say, and then Donald Trump got out there and just threw a temper tantrum," Haley said in South Carolina after the New Hampshire primary.

Jan. 26: Haley called Trump "totally unhinged" and attacked him for threatening to blacklist anyone who donates to her.

Jan. 28: "The last thing he needs to do is tell them to wait to pass a border deal until the election," Haley said of Trump's efforts to kill the Senate's bipartisan border deal. "We can't wait one more day."

Jan. 30: "Another reason Donald Trump won't debate me … his PAC spent 50 MILLION in campaign dollars on his legal fees," Haley wrote on X.

Jan. 31: Haley said in an interview on "The Breakfast Club" that Trump is "just toxic" and doesn't know "the difference between right or wrong."

Feb. 1: "It is unconscionable to me a candidate would spend $50 million in legal fees. It explains why he is not doing many rallies, he doesn't have the money to do it," Haley told CNN today.

What to watch: Haley's campaign this week launched a series, "Grumpy Old Men," hitting Trump, 77, and President Biden, 81, over their mental competency for office.

Keep reading

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Behind the Curtain: Trump's conviction scenario
Illustration of Donald Trump's silhouette within a spotlight flanked by two empty spotlights.
 

Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios

 

Former President Trump is breezing to the GOP nomination — but, in private, is bracing for the genuine possibility that he'll be the first convicted felon in U.S. history to represent a major party, sources tell Axios' Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei.

Why it matters: Trump believes he'd likely be convicted if the Jan. 6 case comes to trial later this spring in Washington. If that's delayed, he could face a guilty verdict in the Manhattan hush-money case.

  • Trump thinks he could still win the White House — partly by making daily, theatrical appearances whenever courts are hearing his four cases, totaling 91 felony charges. But his advisers worry independents will be turned off by a conviction in a jury trial.

⚖️ State of play: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the Jan. 6 case, has been tough on Capitol rioters tried in her court, and has signaled she'll cut Trump no breaks. Jurors will be drawn from D.C., which is overwhelmingly Democratic.

  • Trump lawyers once saw it as highly likely that the case would come to trial before the Republican convention in Milwaukee in July. But with all their maneuvering, including claiming that the former president is immune from prosecution, a delay is looking more likely by the day.
  • The case was to begin March 4. But the trial has now been dropped from a public court calendar, The Washington Post reported yesterday. Appeals could push the trial into late spring or summer. And the closer a trial date gets to Election Day, the less likely it is to occur.
  • What's now more likely: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has accused Trump of buying the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels, may fill the vacuum by beginning his trial as soon as March 25. Bragg has begun trying to add urgency and heft to his case by rebranding it as election interference, The New York Times reported last week.

🔎 Between the lines: Those two cases, in D.C. and Manhattan, are the two likely to have the juries most hostile to Trump. The other two are in Georgia and Florida.

Courtroom drama plan: We're told Trump plans to attend his trials in person most days, as has been his recent practice for recent court proceedings. That by itself would mean a massive change in the rhythms of a presidential campaign: Nominees typically spend their days trying to sway voters, not jurors.

  • He'll rail against the judge, the charges and the timing. Part of this would be true anger, according to people who talk to him. But a big part of the courtroom theatrics would be political.

Trump feels certain the more voters think this is a political pile-on, the better he'll do. So look for Trump to continue to groan, moan and bemoan — then hit the TV cameras parked outside.

  • One ally explained that by spending so much time in court, Trump is making a virtue of necessity. "You can't be defensive or never talk about it, because that just makes you look guilty," the ally said. "Your only option is to play it up."

Reality check: Despite Trump's bluster, there's real trepidation among his advisers about what a conviction would mean. The Trump team comforts itself that independent-minded voters won't like the idea of a Democratic administration prosecuting the Republican nominee.

  • A source close to Trump's team said: "When things shift to the general-election dynamic, with razor-thin margins, and you're trying to convince people who are unhappy with President Biden but are deeply skeptical of Trump personally — a conviction doesn't help persuade those people."

In private, Trump lashes out at the prosecutors — raging that, once again, the system is rigged against him. And his team has tried every possible legal maneuver to delay the trials. "If he really thought it was a good thing, he wouldn't be so unhinged," the source said.

phkrause

Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
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