The testimony from attorney Keith Davidson is seen as a vital building block for the prosecution’s case that Trump and his allies schemed to bury unflattering stories in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. He is one of multiple key players expected to be called to the stand in advance of prosecutors’ star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer.

Prosecutors are seeking $1,000 fines for each of four comments by Trump that they say violated a judge’s gag order barring him from attacking witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case. Such a penalty would be on top of a $9,000 fine that Judge Juan M. Merchan imposed on Tuesday related to nine separate gag order violations that he found.

It was not immediately clear when Merchan might rule on the request for fresh sanctions, but the prospect of further punishment underscores the challenges Trump the presidential candidate is facing in adjusting to the role of criminal defendant subject to rigid courtroom protocol that he does not control. It also remains to be seen whether any rebuke from the court will lead Trump to adjust his behavior given the campaign trail benefit he believes he derives from painting the case as politically motivated.

During a one-day break from the trial on Wednesday, Trump kept up his condemnation of the case, though stopped short of comments that might run afoul of the gag order.

“There is no crime,” he told supporters in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “I have a crooked judge, is a totally conflicted judge.”

Donald Trump Apr 30

Judge raises threat of jail as he holds Trump in contempt, fines him $9,000 in hush money trial

The trial, now in its second week of testimony, has exposed the underbelly of tabloid journalism practices and the protections, for a price, afforded to Trump during his successful run for president in 2016.

The case concerns hush money paid to squelch embarrassing stories, including from a porn actor and a former Playboy model, and reimbursements by Trump that prosecutors say were intentionally fraudulent and designed to conceal the true purpose of the payments and to interfere in the election.

The former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, testified last week that he offered to be the “eyes and ears” of the Trump campaign and described in detail his role in purchasing a sordid tale from a New York City doorman that was later determined to not be true as well as accusations of an extramarital affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

The goal was to prevent the stories from getting out, a concern that was especially pointed in the aftermath of the disclosure of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which he was heard describing grabbing women without their permission.

A separate $130,000 payment was made by Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, to porn actor Stormy Daniels, to prevent her claims of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump from surfacing.

Trump’s company then reimbursed Cohen and logged the payments to him as legal expenses, prosecutors have said in charging the former president with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — a charge punishable by up to four years in prison.

Returning to the stand Thursday will be Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented both Daniels and McDougal in their negotiations with the National Enquirer and Cohen.

He testified that he arranged a meeting at his Los Angeles office during the summer of 2016 to see whether the tabloid’s parent company American Media, Inc. was interested in McDougal’s story. At first, they demurred, saying she “lacked documentary evidence of the interaction,” Davidson testified.

But the tabloid at Pecker’s behest eventually bought the rights, and Davidson testified that he understood — and McDougal preferred — it would never be published. One reason for that, he said, is that there was an “unspoken affiliation” between Pecker and Trump and a desire by the company that owned the Enquirer to not publish stories that would hurt Trump.

The morning will begin with another gag order hearing. The four statements at issue were made by Trump before Merchan warned on Tuesday that additional violations could result in jail time.

They include comments to reporters and in interviews assailing Cohen’s integrity.

The man, 33-year-old Jovokhir Attoev, crossed the border into Arizona and was apprehended by Border Patrol in February 2022, the officials said. At the time, neither Customs and Border Protection nor ICE could find any derogatory information on Attoev. He was released inside the U.S. on bond.

Then, in May 2023, Uzbekistan put out an international notice that Attoev was wanted in his home country for his alleged affiliation with ISIS.

But it was not until March 2024, almost a year later, when the U.S. government was reviewing Attoev’s application for asylum, that officials discovered the notice from Uzbekistan and connected it with the man living in Maryland.

After the connection was made, ICE arrested him on April 17 in Baltimore. Attoev is currently in custody in Pennsylvania, according to the ICE website. He’s awaiting trial in immigration court next week in New Jersey, where ICE lawyers will likely argue that they need to keep him detained in order to glean more information about his potential ties to ISIS.

Multiple former Department of Homeland Security officials interviewed by NBC News said the case raises concerns about how quickly and frequently the U.S. can do follow-up vetting on migrants who have already crossed the border.

While no derogatory information existed on Attoev at the time he crossed the border in 2022, the notice from the Uzbek government in 2023 was not initially checked against the list of immigrants living in the U.S. and awaiting court hearings.

Elizabeth Neumann, who served as assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at DHS from 2017 to 2020, said Congress should pass the bipartisan border security legislation that was blocked by Republicans earlier this year and allocate more money for counterterrorism.

“The concern I have is that in the last decade or so our counterterrorism budgets have drastically decreased,” Neumann said. “And that means we have [fewer] analysts doing this work. So it is harder to do things in a really timely manner when you have [fewer] resources.”

She added that counterterrorism budgets decreased after the destruction of the ISIS caliphate in the Middle East. But since then, particularly because of the fall of the Afghan government in 2021, ISIS has reemerged as a threat. A branch of ISIS, Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), claimed responsibility for a deadly gun attack in Moscow in March. 

In February, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a Senate hearing that ISIS “remains a significant counterterrorism concern for us.” 

There is no indication that ISIS has managed to organize a secret network inside the United States, and if a militant managed to cross over the U.S. border, they would be hard-pressed to organize an attack without such a network, according to Colin Clarke, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center, a nonprofit center focused on global security issues.

Multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News that the U.S. has not definitively determined whether Attoev is a part of ISIS or if he ever carried out or planned to carry out an attack. DHS continues to seek information and is questioning him further while he is in detention, the officials said. 

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said, “DHS screens and vets individuals seeking to enter the United States to identify national security or public safety threats and takes appropriate action, to include preventing an individual from entering the country. Screening and vetting evaluates information available to the U.S. Government at that time. If individuals who have entered the country are later found to be associated with information indicating a potential national security or public safety concern, DHS and our federal partners investigate and we detain, remove, or refer them to other federal agencies for further vetting and prosecution as appropriate. In this case, the individual is in U.S. custody and there is no threat to public safety.”

NBC News previously reported that another migrant, an Afghan named Mohammad Kharwin, 48, was on the U.S. terror watchlist but was released by CBP because they did not have enough information to connect him to the watchlist at the time he crossed. He spent nearly a year inside the U.S. before he was arrested in San Antonio. He was released again on bond after a court hearing and then arrested again hours after NBC News published a story on his case.

The national terrorist watchlist, which is maintained by the FBI, includes the names of 1.8 million people considered potential security risks. The database indicates Kharwin is a member of Hezb-e-Islami, or HIG, a political and paramilitary organization that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.

Attoev was not on the watchlist at the time he crossed the border in 2022 or at the time he was arrested in April, according to the U.S. officials.

The percentage of migrants with terror ties crossing the border remains extremely low. An NBC News analysis found that the percentage of migrants on the terrorist watchlist as a proportion of the total number of CBP encounters across U.S. borders was slightly lower during the Biden administration than during the Trump administration. It has averaged 0.02% during the Biden administration, lower than the 0.05% it averaged under Trump.

In fiscal year 2023, which ended in late September and saw a surge in border crossings, CBP had 736 encounters with migrants on the terrorist watchlist at U.S. borders, the most in the past six years. The second highest year was 2019, during the Trump administration, when CBP had 541 encounters with migrants on the watchlist.

It is not known whether any migrants on the watchlist or who were named in international notices as having suspected terror ties were released into the U.S. during the Trump administration.

NBC News’ Didi Martinez and Dan De Luce contributed.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s county executive, and Trone, a businessman-turned-congressman, share similar views when it comes to reproductive rights, a repeal of the federal death penalty, a ceasefire in Gaza and a two-state solution.

But there are undeniable differences when it comes to their backgrounds, how they’re funding their candidacies and historic implications for each in a potential win.

If Alsobrooks earns the nomination, she could become the first Black woman senator in Maryland’s history and break up the state’s all-male congressional delegation.

Trone, meanwhile, is a multimillionaire largely self-funding his U.S. Senate run at a time national Democrats are defending 20 seats. The contest has national implications as Democrats hold a narrow majority in the Senate and Republicans are poised to heavily back former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who is expected to win the GOP nod.

Alsobrooks is aware of the magnitude of her candidacy, but in an interview with News4, she said that’s not why she should be elected.

“I know that race and gender play into people’s kind of considerations, but I think they mostly want a person who understands them, a person who will fight for them, a person who has a record of results. And that is what I offer people,” she said.

A prolific donor to Democratic causes, Trone said he offers experience – noting “this is not a job for someone on training wheels” — as well as the ability to win in Republican territory.

His congressional district stretches from Montgomery County to western Maryland. While the population centers of Montgomery County, Prince George’s County and the Baltimore region are important targets, Trone has said he has the “persona” to carry the rest of the state.

“This race is about beating Larry Hogan pretty soon, and I won in a Republican district by 10 points. That’s tough,” he said.

News4 held separate interviews with the candidates after plans to hold a televised debate fell through. Alsobrooks’ campaign agreed to the debate, but Trone’s camp didn’t commit.

Instead, the candidates touted their bona fides to News4 while taking jabs at each other in an increasingly contentious race.

Trone, for example, also has called Alsobrooks a career politician. Before she was county executive, Alsobrooks was a domestic violence prosecutor and then served as state’s attorney for Prince George’s County.

“All she has ever done has been in politics, just working her way up the ladder from one political job to the next, to the next, to the next,” he said.

Before running for Congress, Trone became a multimillionaire through building the Total Wine alcohol empire – a fortune that’s allowed him to largely self-fund his multiple political campaigns.

“I don’t begrudge people who earn money, even if they do so selling liquor,” Alsobrooks said in response to his attack. “But I think that it is wrong to disparage public service.”

She’s accused Trone of trying to “buy” the Senate seat, saying, “To allow the person with the most money to buy an election, that is a very dangerous precedent, and I don’t think Marylanders are going to allow it.”

Money matters

Money has no doubt emerged as a major difference in this closely watched race.

According to the latest election filings, Trone has loaned his campaign nearly $42 million and raised about $640,000 from individual donors.

Alsobrooks, meanwhile, has raised $7.1 million, with nearly $6 million from individual donors — the majority from Maryland.

Trone said his wealth guarantees he’s not accountable to special interests while accusing Alsobrooks, whose donors include people affiliated with real estate and other lobbying groups, of being beholden to corporate donors.

“When I’m not taking money — like my opponent takes money from Exxon — well, I can go after them about tax rates, about our climate change,” he said, adding, “People love that fact that you’re independent.”

When News4 noted Total Wine is a powerful force in the alcohol lobby, Trone – listed on its website as a co-owner — responded, “First of all, nothing that Total Wine does has anything to do with the federal level. Zero. It’s all state level stuff.”

But Alsobrooks has repeatedly made issue of Total Wine’s donations to Republican governors in states that have curtailed reproductive rights.

“I am the only candidate in this race who has never compromised my values where choice is concerned,” she said. “You think about Mr. Trone, who has contributed to the campaigns … of these Republicans across the country who are working diligently right now to ban abortion.” 

In response, Trone said Total Wine is merely protecting its interests in the states where it operates.

“We support red candidates. Some blue candidates … but none of it’s related to women’s rights,” he said.

Trone points out his foundation helped open an abortion clinic in Cumberland, Maryland, last year, when neighboring state West Virginia all but banned the procedure.

“What we really have done has been phenomenally, 100% supportive of a woman’s right to abortion,” he said.

Eyes toward Hogan?

Trone is leading Alsobrooks in many independent polls, though Alsobrooks said her own polling has them in a statistical tie.

But some of those same polls show Hogan with a clear shot at beating them both.

Alsobrooks downplayed the significance of that polling to News4, pointing out the two-term former governor hasn’t run during a presidential election year when more of Maryland’s Democrats are expected to turn out and vote.

“Maryland’s not purple. It’s blue, you know. And we’re going to see that in this next general election,” she said.

Trone, meanwhile, told supporters at a recent event, “I’m the only guy that can beat Larry Hogan, I tell you that right now.”

Alsobrooks has repeatedly pointed out Trone’s companies have donated to Hogan in the past. According to a 2018 article from The Washington Post, several of Trone’s businesses donated funds to the Maryland GOP following Hogan’s gubernatorial win against now-Attorney General Anthony Brown in the 2014 race.

At the time, a spokesman for Total Wine said the funds were intended to help Hogan retire campaign debt.

In a statement, the Hogan campaign told News4 the former governor is “the underdog in this race,” adding, “Nobody will outwork us. They were expecting a coronation, but what they are going to get is the fight of their lives.”

Endorsements

With few policy differences, Alsbrooks and Trone are blasting the airwaves this week to highlight their key endorsements.

In one, Alsobrooks is flanked by U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Gov. Wes Moore and key members of the state’s congressional delegation like Jamie Raskin and Glenn Ivey.

Former Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate from Maryland, emerged out of retirement this week to throw her support behind Alsobrooks, too.

Sen. Ben Cardin, who is stepping down after three terms in the Senate, has said he will not endorse a candidate in the Democratic race.

Trone, meanwhile, is highlighting the support he’s gotten from leaders in Alsobrooks’ own county, including Attorney General Brown, State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy, state Sen. Joanne Benson and a few council members.

“The people that know that county the best, ironically, all came to us,” he said.

When News4 noted the majority of elected officials in the county are supporting Alsobrooks, Trone countered, “The people in Prince George’s County that stuck with her are the low-level folks, not the top level folks. That’s called the attorney general … it’s called the state’s attorney … it’s called the senior senator. I think they’re the top level folks.”

Asked for her response to such key endorsements going to Trone, Alsobrooks said, “I have so much support, you know, that it would be really shortsighted of me, I think, to focus on who has not chosen to support me.”

With battle lines drawn, the question is who do voters think has the best shot at winning the general election this fall, especially if facing Hogan at the polls.

“We don’t want them voting just against Larry Hogan. I want to offer them something to vote for,” Alsobrooks said.

Trone, for his part, summarized the historic implications of the Democratic contest.

“This race really hinges on who could beat Larry Hogan or we lose the U.S. Senate,” he said.

Reported by Tracee Wilkins, produced by Katie Leslie, and shot and edited by Steve Jones and Jeff Piper.

The proposal, which passed 320-91 with some bipartisan support, would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal anti-discrimination law that bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin. It now goes to the Senate for a vote.

Action on the bill was just the latest reverberation in Congress from the protest movement that has swept university campuses. Republicans in Congress have denounced the protests and demanded action to stop them, thrusting university officials into the center of the charged political debate over Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war was launched in October, after Hamas staged a deadly terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.

If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the bill would broaden the legal definition of antisemitism to include the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” Critics say the move would have a chilling effect on free speech throughout college campuses.

“Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said during a hearing Tuesday. “By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into Title VI’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly.”

Advocates of the proposal say it would provide a much-needed, consistent framework for the Department of Education to police and investigate the rising cases of discrimination and harassment targeted toward Jewish students.

“It is long past time that Congress act to protect Jewish Americans from the scourge of antisemitism on campuses around the country,” Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., said Tuesday.

The expanded definition of antisemitism was first adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental group that includes the United States and European Union states, and has been embraced by the State Department under the past three presidential administrations, including Joe Biden’s.

Previous bipartisan efforts to codify it into law have failed. But the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas militants in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza have reignited efforts to target incidents of antisemitism on college campuses.

Separately, Speaker Mike Johnson announced Tuesday that several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support for universities, placing another pressure point on campus administrators who are struggling to manage pro-Palestinian encampments, allegations of discrimination against Jewish students and questions of how they are integrating free speech and campus safety.

The House investigation follows several high-profile hearings that helped precipitate the resignations of presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. And House Republicans promised more scrutiny, saying they were calling on the administrators of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to testify next month.

The House Oversight Committee took it one step further Wednesday, sending a small delegation of Republican members to an encampment at nearby George Washington University in the District of Columbia. GOP lawmakers spent the short visit criticizing the protests and Mayor Muriel Bowser’s refusal to send in the Metropolitan Police Department to disperse the demonstrators.

Bowser on Monday confirmed that the city and the district’s police department had declined the university’s request to intervene. “We did not have any violence to interrupt on the GW campus,” Bowser said, adding that police chief Pamela Smith made the ultimate decision. “This is Washington, D.C., and we are, by design, a place where people come to address the government and their grievances with the government.”

It all comes at a time when college campuses and the federal government are struggling to define exactly where political speech crosses into antisemitism. Dozens of U.S. universities and schools face civil rights investigations by the Education Department over allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Among the questions campus leaders have struggled to answer is whether phrases like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” should be considered under the definition of antisemitism.

The proposed definition faced strong opposition from several Democratic lawmakers, Jewish organizations as well as free speech advocates.

Israel-Hamas War May 1

A look at the protests of the war in Gaza that have emerged at US colleges

Israel-Hamas War May 1

Violence, chaos erupts on campuses as protesters and counter-protesters clash over the war in Gaza

In a letter sent to lawmakers Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union urged members to vote against the legislation, saying federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

“H.R. 6090 is therefore not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism,” the letter stated.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the centrist pro-Israel group J Street, said his organization opposes the bipartisan proposal because he sees it as an “unserious” effort led by Republicans “to continually force votes that divide the Democratic caucus on an issue that shouldn’t be turned into a political football.”

___

Associated Press writers Ashraf Khalil, Collin Binkley and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

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Two Republicans joined with Democrats in the Senate on the 16-14 vote in favor of repealing a Civil War-era ban on abortions that the state’s highest court recently allowed to take effect. The ban on all abortions — which provides no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest, and only allows for procedures done to save a patient’s life — would still be active until the fall.

Hobbs said in a statement that she looks forward to quickly signing the repeal, with a ceremony scheduled for Thursday.

“Arizona women should not have to live in a state where politicians make decisions that should be between a woman and her doctor,” Hobbs said. “While this repeal is essential for protecting women’s lives, it is just the beginning of our fight to protect reproductive healthcare.”

The revival of the 19th century law has put Republicans on the defensive, as it’s one of a handful of battleground states that will decide the next president.

“Across the country, women are living in a state of chaos and cruelty caused by Donald Trump,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement on Wednesday. “While Arizona Democrats have worked to clean up the devastating mess created by Trump and his extremist allies, the state’s existing ban, with no exception for rape or incest, remains in effect.”

If the repeal bill is signed, a 2022 statute banning the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy would become Arizona’s prevailing abortion law. Still, there would likely be a period when nearly all abortions would be outlawed, because the repeal won’t take effect until 90 days after the end of the legislative session, likely in June or July.

Arizona state Attorney General Kris Mayes called the vote “a win for freedom in our state,” but expressed concern that without an emergency clause, Arizonans would still be subject to the near total-abortion ban for some time.

“Rest assured, my office is exploring every option available to prevent this outrageous 160-year-old law from ever taking effect,” she said.

The near-total ban on abortions predates Arizona’s statehood. In a ruling last month, the Arizona Supreme Court suggested doctors could be prosecuted under the 1864 law, which says that anyone who assists in an abortion can be sentenced to two to five years in prison. Then, last week, the repeal bill narrowly cleared the Arizona House.

Voting on the bill stretched more than an hour on Wednesday, amid impassioned speeches about the motivations behind individual votes.

“This is about the Civil War-era ban that criminalizes doctors and makes virtually all abortions illegal, the ban that the people of Arizona overwhelmingly don’t want,” said Democratic state Sen. Eva Burch. “We’re here to repeal a bad law. I don’t want us honoring laws about women written during a time when women were forbidden from voting because their voices were considered inferior to men.”

Burch made public on the Senate floor in March that she had a non-viable pregnancy and was going to have an abortion. She warned supporters of reproductive rights on Wednesday that they could not yet rest easy, even after the repeal is signed.

“They are going to use every tool in the toolbox to try to do whatever it is they can to interfere with the repeal of this ban,” she said.

There were numerous disruptions from people in Senate gallery Wednesday, as Republican state Sen. Shawnna Bolick explained her vote in favor of repeal, joining with Democrats.

GOP state Sen. Jake Hoffman denounced Republican colleagues for joining with Democratic colleagues, calling it an affront to his party’s principles.

“It is disgusting that this is the state of the Republican Party today,” Hoffman said.

Advocates on both sides of the abortion issue arrived outside the Arizona Senate on Wednesday to emphasize their views. They included people affiliated with Planned Parenthood and faith-based groups opposed to abortion.

A school-age girl kneeled in prayer in front of a table holding a large statute of the Virgin Mary, while a man with a megaphone shouted at passersby to repent.

Outside Phoenix in the satellite town of Gilbert, 26-year-old Anna Kupitz, a middle-school math teacher, expressed disappointment in the Senate vote to overturn a near-total abortion ban.

“It is outrageous that we believe so little in women’s ability to value the life of their child and also value their careers,” she said. “As a country, we believe that human life deserves to be protected.”

Former President Donald Trump, who has warned that the issue could lead to Republican losses, has avoided endorsing a national abortion ban but said he’s proud to have appointed the Supreme Court justices who allowed states to outlaw it.

The law had been blocked since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion nationwide.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022 though, then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, persuaded a state judge that the 1864 ban could again be enforced. Still, the law hasn’t actually been enforced while the case was making its way through the courts. Mayes, who succeeded Brnovich, urged the state’s high court against reviving the law.

Planned Parenthood officials have vowed to continue providing abortions for the short time they are still legal and said they will reinforce networks that help patients travel out of state to places like New Mexico and California to access abortion.

Advocates are collecting signatures for a ballot measure allowing abortions until a fetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks, with exceptions — to save the parent’s life, or to protect her physical or mental health.

Republican lawmakers, in turn, are considering putting one or more competing abortion proposals on the November ballot.

A leaked planning document outlined the approaches being considered by House Republicans, such as codifying existing abortion regulations, proposing a 14-week ban that would be “disguised as a 15-week law” because it would allow abortions until the beginning of the 15th week, and a measure that would prohibit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they’re pregnant.

House Republicans have not yet publicly released any such proposed ballot measures.

abortion Apr 24

Arizona state House passes bill to repeal 1864 abortion ban

Arizona Apr 9

Arizona Supreme Court upholds near-total ban on abortions

The survey of more than 925 local election officials in February and March also found 62% are concerned about political leaders’ attempting to interfere with how election officials do their jobs.

Thirteen percent of the local officials who responded said they are “concerned about facing pressure to certify results in favor of a specific candidate or party.”

“Election officials are adjusting to ensure workers and voters are safe. The numbers around threats, harassment and interference remain unacceptably high, but election officials aren’t being passive in the face of this hostile environment. They are investing in security trainings, increasing physical and cybersecurity measures, and building stronger networks with emergency management services,” said Lawrence Norden, senior director of elections and government at the Brennan Center, part of the New York University School of Law.

NBC News has reported on growing security threats facing election workers as the November presidential election approaches. Many local jurisdictions have said they need more money for more security and more training about what to do should a threat to the safety of election workers arise.

Hanging over the election workers are false claims spread after the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and his supporters, who insist the election was “stolen” from Trump because of election workers who manipulated the results. 

Trump has recently told supporters at his rallies that votes go missing or end up thrown on the floor in areas like Philadelphia.

Omar Sabir, chair of the city commission that runs Philadelphia’s elections, received a threatening voicemail and email. “We have insiders that will be snitching this time around and violators will be sent to federal prison,” the email said.

Sabir and others have said federal government should do more to keep local officials safe.

Four out of 5 respondents in the Brennan Center survey said their budgets need to grow to keep up with their administration and security needs.

Turnover is another top concern for officials, as many are fighting to find new hires amid high dropout rates due to retirement and security concerns.

One in 5 are unlikely to continue to serve in the 2026 midterms, and 27% know of colleagues who have left their jobs because of concerns about safety.

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Prosecutors had alleged 10 violations, but New York Judge Juan M. Merchan found there were nine. Trump stared down at the table in front of him as the judge read the ruling, frowning slightly.

It was a stinging rebuke of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s insistence that he was exercising his free speech rights and a reminder that he’s a criminal defendant subject to the harsh realities of trial procedure. And the judge’s remarkable threat to jail a former president signaled that Trump’s already precarious legal standing could further spiral depending on his behavior during the remainder of the trial.

Merchan wrote that he is “keenly aware of, and protective of,” Trump’s First Amendment rights, “particularly given his candidacy for the office of President of the United States.”

“It is critically important that defendant’s legitimate free speech rights not be curtailed, that he be able to fully campaign for the office which he seeks and that he be able to respond and defend himself against political attacks,” Merchan wrote.

Still, he warned that the court would not tolerate “willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment.”

With that statement, the judge drew nearer the specter of Trump becoming the first former president of the United States behind bars.

“This gag order is totally unconstitutional,” Trump said as court adjourned after a day that included testimony from a Hollywood lawyer who negotiated two of the hush money deals at issue in the case. “I’m the Republican candidate for president of the United States … and I’m sitting in a courthouse all day long listening to this stuff.”

Donald Trump Apr 26

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Donald Trump Apr 25

Ex-National Enquirer publisher testifies he scooped up possibly damaging tales to shield Trump

Trump is used to having constant access to his social media bullhorn to slam opponents and speak his mind. After he was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters, Trump launched his own platform, where his posts wouldn’t be blocked or restricted. He has long tried to distance himself from controversial messages he’s amplified to his millions of followers by insisting they’re “only retweets.”

But he does have experience with gag orders, which were also imposed in other legal matters. After he was found to have violated orders in his civil fraud trial, he paid more than $15,000 in fines.

Trump also is subject to a gag order in his federal criminal election interference case in Washington. That order limits what he can say about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses in the case and about court staff and other lawyers, though an appeals court freed him to speak about special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the case.

Tuesday’s ruling in New York came at the start of the second week of testimony in the historic case, which involves allegations that Trump and his associates took part in an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by purchasing and then burying seamy stories. The payouts went to a doorman with a torrid yarn; ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, who had accusations of an affair; and to porn performer Stormy Daniels, who alleged a sexual encounter with Trump. He has pleaded not guilty and says the stories are all fake.

Trump deleted, as ordered, the offending posts from his Truth Social account and campaign website and has until Friday to pay the fine. The judge was also weighing other alleged gag-order violations by Trump and will hear arguments Thursday. He also announced that he will halt the trial on May 17 to allow Trump to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation.

Of the 10 posts, the one Merchan ruled was not a violation came on April 10, a post referring to witnesses Michael Cohen and Daniels as “sleaze bags.” Merchan said Trump’s contention that he was responding to previous posts by Cohen “is sufficient to give” him pause on whether the post was a violation.

Merchan cautioned that the gag order “not be used as a sword instead of a shield by potential witnesses” and that if people who are protected by the order, like Cohen, continue to attack Trump “it becomes apparent” they don’t need the gag order’s protection.

Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, has said he will refrain from commenting about Trump until after he testifies. On Tuesday, he said in a text message to The Associated Press: “Judge Merchan’s decision elucidates that this behavior will not be tolerated and that no one is above the law.”

In other developments, testimony resumed Tuesday with a banker who helped Cohen open accounts, including one used to buy Daniels’ silence. Trump’s attorneys have suggested that the payments were aimed at protecting his name and his family — not influencing the outcome of the presidential election.

Jurors also began hearing from Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented McDougal and Daniels in their negotiations with the National Enquirer and Cohen. He testified that he arranged a meeting at his Los Angeles office during the summer of 2016 to see whether the tabloid’s parent company American Media, Inc. was interested in McDougal’s story. At first they demurred, saying she “lacked documentary evidence of the interaction,” Davidson testified.

“One explanation I was given is they were trying to build Karen into a brand and didn’t want to diminish her brand,” he said. “And the second was an unspoken understanding that there was an affiliation between David Pecker and Donald Trump and that AMI wouldn’t run this story, any story related to Karen, because it would hurt Donald Trump.”

As for Daniels, the October 2016 leak of Trump’s 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape — in which Trump bragged about grabbing women sexually without asking permission — had “tremendous influence” on the marketability of her story. Before the video was made public, “there was very little if any interest” in her claims, Davidson told jurors.

A deal was reached with the tabloid for Daniels story, but the Enquirer backed out. Though Pecker testified that he had agreed to serve as the Trump campaign’s “eyes and ears” by helping to squelch unflattering rumors and claims about Trump and women, he drew the line with Daniels after paying out $180,000 to scoop up and sit on stories. Davidson began negotiating with Cohen directly, hiked up the price to $130,000, and reached a deal.

But Daniels and Davidson grew frustrated as weeks passed and instead of the money, she got excuses from Cohen about broken computers, Secret Service “firewalls” and the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

“I thought he was trying to kick the can down the road until after the election,” Davidson said.

While Cohen never explicitly said he was negotiating the deal on Trump’s behalf, Davidson felt the implication was clear.

“Every single time I talked to Michael Cohen, he leaned on his close affiliation with Donald Trump,” Davidson said. Plus, he figured that Trump “was the beneficiary of this contract.”

The GOP presidential hopeful is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments. The detailed evidence on business transactions and bank accounts is setting the stage for testimony from Cohen, who went to federal prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and other crimes.

The trial — the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to come before a jury — is expected to last for another month or more.

Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

The letter, dated April 23, puts the Fox News Channel and Fox News Digital on notice for litigation claims arising from the network’s alleged “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light, the unlicensed commercial exploitation of his image, name, and likeness, and the unlawful publication of hacked intimate images of him.” 

Biden has hired attorney Mark Geragos and his firm to represent him in the Fox litigation efforts. The letter is the second outreach to Fox this month. An earlier letter was hand-delivered to Fox’s counsel two weeks ago, and the network asked for more time to respond, according to a source familiar with Biden’s legal efforts. The network has not yet responded to the letter sent April 23, which included a Friday evening, April 26, deadline to respond, according to Geragos. The letter is signed by Tina Glandian, a partner at Geragos & Geragos working on the case.

Fox News did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The new threat of litigation comes almost a year after Fox News agreed to pay almost $800 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle defamation claims related to Fox’s airing of election fraud claims in the 2020 election. Fox News also agreed to a $12 million settlement with a former employee who alleged she was pressured to provide misleading information as part of the Dominion case. 

Fox is currently facing a $2.7 billion lawsuit brought by Smartmatic, another voting system company that was the focus of Fox News coverage, as well as suits brought by shareholders against directors of the company for allowing the channel to air the allegations during its 2020 election coverage. Fox said in its latest financial disclosures that it will contest the lawsuits, but acknowledges that there could be a “material” adverse impact on the company’s business and financial position. 

The plan for Hunter Biden to pursue legal action against Fox News has been in the works for over a year, according to sources familiar with Biden’s legal efforts, and was inspired in part by the success of the Dominion lawsuit and the ongoing Smartmatic lawsuit. The effort took on new importance with the revelations that the bribery allegations cited on air originated from the FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who was indicted by special counsel David Weiss in February.

In a statement, Geragos said: “For the last five years, Fox News has relentlessly attacked Hunter Biden and made him a caricature in order to boost ratings and for its financial gain. The recent indictment of FBI informant Smirnov has exposed the conspiracy of disinformation that has been fueled by Fox, enabled by their paid agents and monetized by the Fox enterprise. We plan on holding them accountable.”

Hunter Biden has been a focus of Fox News coverage for the last several years. A review of network transcripts by the group Media Matters cites at least 13,440 mentions of Hunter Biden since January 2023. Biden’s legal team believes the number of mentions over many years makes the potential case as significant if not more so than the Dominion case, according to sources familiar with the legal strategy.

The Biden letter specifically cites Fox’s advancement of bribery allegations by Smirnov, who was indicted in February on charges of making false statements about the Bidens to the FBI. “Smirnov and the post indictment revelations basically closed the loop on the conspiracy,” Geragos told NBC News.

The letter alleges that Fox News knew that the bribery allegations were unverified at the time but continued to report that the source was “highly credible,” and demands corrections and retractions — including on-air statements by television hosts “including Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, and Maria Bartiromo, to inform their viewers on air that they have been sharing a debunked allegation from a source who has been federally indicted.”

The letter also alleges that Fox’s airing of “intimate images” belonging to Hunter Biden that his lawyers claim were “hacked, stolen, and/or manipulated” violates Biden’s civil rights as well as copyright law. Much of the letter is focused on a six-part “mock trial” titled “The Trial of Hunter Biden” that aired in October 2021, described by Fox as what a trial might look like if Biden was charged with Foreign Agents Registration Act or bribery charges — neither of which Biden has been charged with. “While using certain true information, the series intentionally manipulates the facts, distorts the truth, narrates happenings out of context, and invents dialogue intended to entertain. Thus, the viewer of the series cannot decipher what is fact and what is fiction,” the letter says. The letter demands that the series be removed from all streaming services. 

This new litigation push comes as Biden prepares for a summer of criminal trials. His trial on gun charges in Delaware starts June 3, and his tax case is expected to go to trial in August.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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When is Maryland’s 2024 primary?

The official primary day in Maryland is Tuesday, May 14, although early voting and mail-in voting are also options for voters. (More on that below.)

Do I need to be registered in a political party to vote in the 2024 primary in Maryland?

While you are not required to choose a political party on your voter registration application, you generally wouldn’t be able to vote in party primary elections. However, you would be able to vote in any nonpartisan primary elections in your jurisdiction.

According to Maryland elections officials: “Generally, you must be registered with either the Democratic or Republican Party to vote in the primary election. If there are non-partisan offices that are elected in a primary election (i.e., school board), any voter can vote for these offices.”

What if I want to change my political party in Maryland?

To change your party affiliation, you can:

• submit a request for the change online here
• or submit a new voter registration application
• or send a signed written request to your local board of elections

The deadline to change your party affiliation ahead of the presidential primary was Tuesday, April 23.

The Democratic, Republican and Libertarian parties are recognized in Maryland.

Maryland voter registration info:

How can I register to vote in Maryland?

First, make sure you’re eligible to register to vote in Maryland (check on that here).

If you are, then you can either register in advance, register during early voting, or register to vote on election day.

To register to vote in Maryland in advance:

• you can register online here
• or submit your voter registration application to your local board of elections 
• or submit your registration application to Maryland’s State Board of Elections

To register to vote in Maryland during early voting:

• During the early voting period (Thursday, May 2 through Thursday, May 9), go to an early voting center in the county where you live
• Bring a document that proves where you live: your MVA-issued license, ID card or change of address card, or a paycheck stub, bank statement, utility bill or other government document showing your name and address

To register to vote in Maryland on primary day:

• Go to your assigned election day polling place on primary day (Tuesday, May 14)
• Bring a document that proves where you live: your MVA-issued license, ID card or change of address card, or a paycheck stub, bank statement, utility bill, or other government document showing your name and address

Maryland voter registration: How can I update my name or address?

You can either update your information ahead of time, during early voting, or in person on election day. Follow the same steps above.

If you plan to update your information on primary day itself, go to the polling place assigned to your new address. You’ll vote there using a provisional ballot and will provide your new address on the application. Your provisional ballot will be counted as long as you sign the application, election officials say.

Maryland voter registration: I think I’m already registered, but how can I check?

You can check to see if you’re registered to vote in Maryland online here.

However, Maryland officials say that if you submitted your information online or at the MVA only recently, it may take up to three weeks to appear on that site.

Immigration Mar 9

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See It: A bald eagle got stuck in a car's front grill in Maryland. It was rescued and released back into the wild.

Now that you’ve got those voter registration questions answered, find out some other key details and dates below:

Maryland early voting info:

Does Maryland have early voting in 2024?

Yes.

When is early voting for Maryland’s 2024 primary?

Early voting will be available from Thursday, May 2 through Thursday, May 9, including over that weekend, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

You may vote early at any early voting center at the county you live in (see a PDF list of early voting centers here). Montgomery County has 14 early voting centers, Prince George’s County has 11, and Frederick County has four.

Maryland mail-in voting info:

Does Maryland have mail-in voting in 2024?

Yes.

How can I get a mail-in ballot for Maryland in 2024?

You can request a mail-in ballot from Maryland’s State Board of Elections or from your local board of elections (find yours here).

Note that Maryland lists the deadlines for requesting a mail-in ballot by the date your request must be received by, not when it is sent/mailed.

What’s the deadline for requesting a mail-in ballot for Maryland’s 2024 primary?

If you want to receive your ballot by mail or fax:

• Your request must be received by Tuesday, May 7

If you want to receive your ballot online:

• Your request must be received by Friday, May 10 at 5 p.m. for a request sent in the mail, or by that day at 11:59 p.m. for a request sent by fax or submitted online

Where are the drop boxes for mail-in ballots for Maryland’s 2024 primary?

You can find a PDF list of designated ballot drop box online here for the entire state, including dozens of locations for Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, and 10 locations for Frederick County.

Ballot boxes will be open from late March through Tuesday, May 14 at 8 p.m., state election officials said.

What’s the deadline for casting a mail-in ballot for Maryland in 2024?

If you want to use a drop box:

• You can place your mail-in ballot in a ballot drop box up until Tuesday, May 14 at 8 p.m.

If you want to mail your ballot:

• Your ballot must be postmarked on or before Tuesday, May 14
• Note that putting your ballot in a mailbox on Election Day doesn’t necessarily mean it would be postmarked that day, and Maryland elections officials say you should send it as soon as possible due to the chance for delays
• Your ballot will come with a postage-paid return envelope, so mailing your ballot back is free

Maryland primary day 2024 info:

When can I vote in-person in Maryland’s 2024 primary?

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, May 14. Anyone in line by 8 p.m. will be able to cast their ballots.

To vote in person on primary day, find your polling place here.

Does Maryland have same-day voter registration in 2024?

Yes, you may register in person during early voting or on primary day in Maryland.

To register to vote on primary day, go to your assigned election day polling place, and bring a document that proves where you live (such as your MVA-issued license, ID card or change of address card, or a paycheck stub, bank statement, utility bill, or other government document showing your name and address).

Who’s on the ballot for the Maryland 2024 primary?

Go to this page on Maryland’s elections website and scroll to “2024 Primary Election Proofing Ballots.” Then select your county from the list to see which candidates and offices will be on your ballot.

Voters will see presidential nominee candidates, as well as candidates for statewide offices, such as U.S. Senator and congressional representative. You can also see candidates for local offices, such as Board of Election members.

The meeting was described as “nice” and “friendly” by one of the sources, who added that DeSantis plans to help raise money for Trump. A separate source said the meeting was mutually agreed upon and arranged by Steven Witkoff, the chairman of a real estate company, who is a mutual contact of the two men.

However, a Trump campaign official told NBC News that DeSantis reached out to Trump’s team through Witkoff two weeks ago to set up a meeting to “bury the hatchet” and discuss fundraising.

The meeting, which was first reported by The Washington Post, took place in Florida. DeSantis was golfing at Shell Bay Club, a golf club near Miami, where Trump joined him for breakfast.

DeSantis told donors and supporters during a private retreat in April that he planned to help raise money for Trump’s campaign, NBC News first reported.

Just months ago, DeSantis slammed Trump during the bitter Republican primary contest, referring to him as a candidate running on personal issues.

“If he’s running for personal retribution, that is not going to lead to what we need as a country,” DeSantis in December in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“You got to be running for the American people and their issues, not about your own personal issues, and that is a distinction between us,” he continued.

Separately, DeSantis has said that “the swamp was not drained” during Trump’s term. He has also criticized Trump over his stance on abortion, telling a radio show that “all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out.”

After he suspended his campaign just days before the New Hampshire primary, DeSantis endorsed Trump, arguing that “we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.”

Trump has not yet selected a running mate, but DeSantis has long said he would not seek the vice presidency.

“I don’t want to be VP. I don’t want to be in the Cabinet. I don’t want a TV show,” DeSantis said in January, before he dropped out. “I’m in it to win it.”

He put the message in starker terms the previous month, saying, “I can tell you under any circumstance, I will not accept” the vice presidential nomination.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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Biden cracked jokes at his political rival’s expense and tackled age head-on, saying that he was “a grown man running against a six-year-old.”

The president said later that age was the only thing he and Trump had in common, adding, “My vice president actually endorses me,” a reference to former Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to say he’ll back his former running mate in 2024.

But Biden’s speech took a serious turn when he discussed the stakes of November’s presidential election, echoing themes of his campaign speeches as he highlighted what he called Trump’s “attack on our democracy.”

The president urged the press to “rise up to the seriousness of the moment.”

“Move past the horse race numbers and the ‘gotcha’ moments and the distractions and the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics, and focus on what’s actually at stake,” Biden said. “I think in your hearts, you know what’s at stake.”

Biden also highlighted the detention of The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia for more than a year on espionage charges that he and his employer deny. His case has been classified as a wrongful detention by the U.S.

The president called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release Gershkovich immediately, adding that the White House was also doing everything it could to bring home freelance journalist Austin Tice and businessman Paul Whelan.

Gershkovich’s parents and Tice’s mother were among the approximately 2,600 guests at the dinner, an estimate provided by NBC News political correspondent Steve Kornacki in a video that played at the event.

“I give you my word as a Biden: We’re not going to give up until we get them home,” Biden said. “All of them.”

Biden also highlighted the wrongful detention of Americans abroad, including Gershkovich, at last year’s dinner. The president emphasized during last year’s remarks that “journalism is not a crime,” noting that a free press is a “pillar” of a “free society.”

Celebrities who went to Saturday’s event included Scarlett Johansson, who is married to Jost; Rachel Brosnahan and Quavo. High-profile politicians and administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn, attended as well.

First lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff also attended the event, which took place at the Washington Hilton.

NBC News Senior White House Correspondent Kelly O’Donnell is serving as the White House Correspondents Association’s 2023-24 president and presided over the dinner.

“Saturday Night Live” cast member Colin Jost was the dinner’s featured entertainer. He co-anchors the NBC show’s “Weekend Update” segment.

Like Biden, Jost cracked several jokes at the former president’s expense, including Trump’s criminal trial, starting his remarks by saying “how refreshing it is to see a president of the United States at an event that doesn’t begin with a bailiff saying, ‘All rise.'”

Jost also targeted Biden at times, comparing the economy with the president ascending Air Force One’s steps: “It feels like it’s stumbling, but there’s somehow upward progress.” The comedian also told the president that his now-deceased grandfather voted for Biden in the last election because he thought Biden was “a decent man.”

While the dinner, a tradition dating back 100 years, played out inside the ballroom, hundreds of protesters mobilized outside the venue to call for a cease-fire and criticize Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The protesters chanted, “Shame on you!” as attendees passed them to enter the hotel. They also yelled criticism of the media and a large sign read, “Stop media complicity in genocide.”

“Every time the media lies, journalists in Gaza die,” the crowd echoed the leader’s bullhorn chants.

Later, protesters called for the fall of Western media, chanting, “Brick by brick, wall by wall, Western media will fall.”

U.S. Secret Service Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement that “attendees can expect layered security and screening at the dinner,” adding that there would be “intermittent” road closures near the venue.

“In reference to the publicized demonstration, we are working closely with the Metropolitan Washington Police Department to protect individuals’ rights to assemble but we will remain intolerant to unlawful behavior,” Guglielmi added.

After the dinner concluded, two protesters holding a sign saying “Stop Israel’s genocide” entered the hotel’s red carpet area as guests were departing. They heckled attendees and were removed by security.

The president has had to contend with protesters demonstrating outside of his official events, with protesters sometimes interrupting his speeches. In response, Biden’s team has worked to make the president’s events smaller and withheld their exact locations longer than usual in the hope of cutting back on potential interruptions.

Earlier this month, Palestinian journalists wrote an open letter calling on others to boycott the White House correspondents’ dinner “as an act of solidarity with us — your fellow journalists — as well as with the millions of Palestinians currently being starved in Gaza,” pointing to the Biden administration’s support for Israel.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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An evening normally devoted to presidents, journalists and comedians taking outrageous pokes at political scandals and each other often seemed this year to illustrate the difficulty of putting aside the coming presidential election and the troubles in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Biden opened his roast with a direct but joking focus on Trump, calling him “sleepy Don,” in reference to a nickname Trump had given the president previously.

Despite being similar in age, Biden said, the two presidential hopefuls have little else in common. “My vice president actually endorses me,” Biden said. Former Trump Vice President Mike Pence has refused to endorse Trump’s reelection bid.

But the president quickly segued to a grim speech about what he believes is at stake this election, saying that another Trump administration would be even more harmful to America than his first term.

“We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk’ but not after January 6,” Biden told the audience, referring to the supporters of Trump who stormed the Capitol after Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.

Trump did not attend Saturday’s dinner and never attended the annual banquet as president. In 2011, he sat in the audience, and glowered through a roasting by then-President Barack Obama of Trump’s reality-television celebrity status. Obama’s sarcasm then was so scalding that many political watchers linked it to Trump’s subsequent decision to run for president in 2016.

Biden’s speech, which lasted around 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

One of the few mentions came from Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, who briefly noted some 100 journalists killed in Israel’s 6-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza. In an evening dedicated in large part to journalism, O’Donnell cited journalists who have been detained across the world, including Americans Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Austin Tice, who is believed to be held in Syria. Families of both men were in attendance as they have been at previous dinners.

To get inside Saturday’s dinner, some guests had to hurry through hundreds of protesters outraged over the mounting humanitarian disaster for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They condemned Biden for his support of Israel’s military campaign and Western news outlets for what they said was undercoverage and misrepresentation of the conflict.

“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.

“Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.

Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.

Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.

Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments and withstanding police sweeps in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.

Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.

Saturday’s event drew nearly 3,000 people. Celebrities included Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Chris Pine.

Both the president and comedian Colin Jost, who spoke after Biden, made jabs at the age of both the candidates for president. “I’m not saying both candidates are old. But you know Jimmy Carter is out there thinking, ‘maybe I can win this thing,’” Jost said. “He’s only 99.”

Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”

Protest organizers said they aimed to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.

More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.

“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter stated. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”

One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.

According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.

“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives — to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.

Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”

In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.

“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”

The Guardian obtained a copy of Noem’s soon-to-be released book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.” In it, she tells the story of the ill-fated Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she was training for pheasant hunting.

She writes, according to the Guardian, that the tale was included to show her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it has to be done. But backlash was swift against the Republican governor, who just a month ago drew attention and criticism for posting an infomercial-like video about cosmetic dental surgery she received out-of-state.

In her book, Noem writes that she took Cricket on a hunting trip with older dogs in hopes of calming down the wild puppy. Instead, Cricket chased the pheasants while “having the time of her life.”

On the way home from the hunting trip, Noem writes that she stopped to talk to a family. Cricket got out of Noem’s truck and attacked and killed some of the family’s chickens, then bit the governor.

Noem apologized profusely, wrote the distraught family a check for the deceased chickens, and helped them dispose of the carcasses, she writes. Cricket “was the picture of joy” as all that unfolded.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, deeming her “untrainable.”

“At that moment,” Noem writes, “I realized I had to put her down.” She led Cricket to a gravel pit and killed her.

That wasn’t all. Noem writes that her family also owned a “nasty and mean” male goat that smelled bad and liked to chase her kids. She decided to go ahead and kill the goat, too. She writes that the goat survived the first shot, so she went back to the truck, got another shell, then shot him again, killing him.

Soon thereafter, a school bus dropped off Noem’s children. Her daughter asked, “Hey, where’s Cricket?” Noem writes.

The excerpts drew immediate criticism on social media platforms, where many posted photos of their own pets. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign surfaced the story on social media alongside a photo of Noem with Trump.

The Lincoln Project, a conservative group that opposes Trump, posted a video that it called a “public service announcement,” showing badly behaved dogs and explaining that “shooting your dog in the face is not an option.”

“You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit,” Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project wrote on X. “Unsporting and deliberately cruel … but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Noem took to social media to defend herself.

“We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she said on X. “Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

She urged readers to preorder her book if they want “more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping.”

Republican strategist Alice Stewart said that while some Republican voters might appreciate the story “as a testament to her grit,” it ultimately creates a distraction for Noem.

“It’s never a good look when people think you’re mistreating animals,” Stewart said. “I have a dog I love like a child and I can’t imagine thinking about doing that, I can’t imagine doing that, and I can’t imagine writing about it in a book and telling all the world.”

It’s not the first time Noem has grabbed national attention.

In 2019, she stood behind the state’s anti-meth campaign even as it became the subject of some mockery for the tagline “Meth. We’re on it.” Noem said the campaign got people talking about the methamphetamine epidemic and helped lead some to treatment.

Last month, Noem posted a nearly five-minute video on X lavishing praise on a team of cosmetic dentists in Texas for giving her a smile she said she can be proud of. “I love my new family at Smile Texas!” she wrote.

South Dakota law bans gifts of over $100 from lobbyists to public officials and their immediate family. A violation is a misdemeanor punishable up to a year in jail and/or a $2,000 fine. The state attorney general’s office has declined to answer questions about whether the gift ban applies to people who are not registered lobbyists.

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Just ask a hardy band of mostly amateur Wall Street investors who have collectively made tens of millions of dollars over the past month by betting that the stock price of his social media business — Truth Social — will keep dropping despite massive buying by Trump loyalists and wild swings that often mirror the candidate’s latest polls, court trials and outbursts on Truth Social itself.

Several of these investors interviewed by The Associated Press say their bearish gambles using “put” options and other trading tools are driven less by their personal feelings about the former president (most don’t like him) than their faith in the woeful underlying financials of a company that made less money last year than the average Wendy’s hamburger franchise.

“This company makes no money. … It makes no sense,” said Boise, Idaho, ad executive Elle Stange, who estimates she’s made $1,300 betting against Trump Media & Technology stock. “He’s not as great a businessman as he thinks. A lot of his businesses go belly up, quickly.”

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Says Seattle IT security specialist Jeff Cheung, “This is guaranteed to go to zero.”

As of Friday’s close, a month since Trump Media’s initial public offering sent its stock to $66.22, it has dropped to $41.54. An AP analysis of data from research firms FactSet and S3 Partners shows that investors using puts and “short selling” have paper profits so far of at least $200 million, not including the costs of puts, which vary from trade to trade.

Still, amateur traders, mostly risking no more than a few thousand dollars each, say the stock is too volatile to declare victory yet. So they are cashing in a bit now, letting other bets ride and stealing a glance at the latest stock movements in the office cubicle, at the kitchen table or even on the toilet.

There have been plenty of scary moments, including last week when DJT, the ex-president’s initials and stock ticker, jumped nearly 40% in two days.

“I don’t know which direction the stock is going,” says Schenectady, N.Y., day trader Richard Persaud while checking his iPhone amid the surge. “It’s so unbelievably overvalued.”

Many who spoke to the AP say knowing their bets have helped slash the value of Trump’s 65% stake in half is an added political benefit. If some of their predictions are right, they may able to someday push it to zero, making it impossible for him to tap it to pay his hefty legal bills or finance his GOP presidential campaign.

They have a long way to go. Trump’s stake is still worth $4 billion.

Normally, investors betting a stock will fall, especially a gutsy breed of hedge fund traders called “short sellers,” will do plenty of homework. They’ll pore over financial statements, develop expertise in an industry, talk to competitors, and even turn to “forensic accountants” to find hidden weaknesses in the books.

No need in Trump Media’s case. It’s all there in the Sarasota, Florida-based company’s 100-page financial report: A firehose of losses, $58 million last year, on minuscule revenue of $4 million from advertising and other sources.

The losses are so big, as Trump Media’s auditor wrote in the report, they “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

A short seller’s dream? Or is it a nightmare?

Amateur trader Manny Marotta has two computer screens at home, one for work, the other showing DJT stock’s movements where he can gauge how much he’s up or down.

It wasn’t looking so good earlier this week.

The legal writer from suburban Cleveland had been up about $4,000 on “put” options purchased over the past few weeks. But the screen that morning was showing investors, presumably rich ones, buying large volumes of DJT shares, pushing up the stock once again.

“My options are worth less with every passing minute,” says Marotta, adding about DJT: “It’s being manipulated. It’s insane.”

Waiting for the stock to drop is especially painful to “short sellers,” who pay a fee to borrow shares owned by others. The idea is to quickly sell them on a hunch they will be able to buy the same number of them later for much cheaper before having to return them to the lender. That allows short sellers to pocket the difference, minus the fee, which is usually nominal.

In DJT’s case, the fee is anything but nominal.

It was costing 565% a year at one point earlier this month, meaning short sellers had only two months before any possible profits would be eaten up in fees, even if the stock went to zero. It’s a rate so off the charts, that only three other stocks in recent memory have exceeded it, according to data from Boston University’s Karl Diether and Wharton’s Itamar Drechsler, who have studied short selling back two decades.

Add in massive buying by Trump supporters who see it as a way to support their candidate, and losses could multiply fast.

“It’s scary,” says Drechsler, who likens buyers of Trump’s stock to unwavering sports fans. “It is everything that you hope that the stock market is not.”

Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine said the company is in a “strong financial position” with $200 million in cash and no debt, and said the AP was “selecting admitted Trump antagonists.”

Another danger to the stock is a “short squeeze.” If the price rises sharply, it could set off a rush by short sellers who fear they’ve bet wrongly to return their borrowed shares right away and limit their losses. And so they start buying shares to replace the ones they borrowed and sold, and that very buying tends to work against them, sending the price higher, which in turn scares other short sellers, who then also buy, setting off a vicious cycle of price hikes.

“If DJT starts rallying, you’re going to see the mother of all squeezes,” says S3 Partners short-selling expert Ihor Dusaniwsky, who spent three decades at Morgan Stanley helping investors borrow shares. “This is not for the faint of heart.”

And if that wasn’t enough, there is a final oddball feature of DJT stock that could trigger an explosion in prices, up or down.

“Lock up” agreements prohibit Trump and other DJT executives from selling their shares until September. That leaves the float, or the number of shares that can be traded each day by others, at a dangerously tiny 29% of total shares that will someday flood the market. That means a big purchase or sale on any day that would barely move a typical stock can send DJT flying or crashing.

The float is smaller than that of most other notoriously volatile stocks. At their smallest levels, AMC, GameStop and Shake Shack each had more than double the float.

Seattle trader Cheung sees DJT’s freak characteristics as a reason to bet against the stock, not shy away. When the lock-up period ends, he predicts, the ex-president will indeed sell his shares, spooking the market and sending the price down sharply. And even if he doesn’t, other insiders whose lock-ups expire will fear he will do so and will move fast to get a good price before it falls.

“The first one to sell out is going make to most, ” Cheung says. “Everyone is going to sell.”

Still, he doesn’t want to lose money in the interim, so Cheung is offsetting some of his “put” bets with the purchase of “calls.” The latter are also derivatives, but they do the opposite, paying off when the stock rises. Cheung hopes that whichever makes money, the puts or the calls, he will make enough with one to more than make up for the loss of the other.

If all of this seems too complicated, there is a far simpler way to make money betting against Trump.

Offshore, casino-style betting sites are taking wagers on the 2024 election, and some have even made President Joe Biden the favorite.

___

Returning to the witness stand for a fourth day, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker was grilled about his memory and past statements as the defense tried to poke holes in potentially crucial testimony for prosecutors in the first criminal trial of a former American president.

Two other witnesses followed Pecker as prosecutors built the foundation of their case involving a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, who alleged a sexual encounter with Trump. Trump’s longtime executive assistant told jurors she recalled seeing Daniels in a reception area of Trump Tower, though the date of the visit wasn’t clear.

Pecker’s testimony provided jurors with a stunning inside look at the supermarket tabloid’s “catch-and-kill” practice of purchasing the rights to stories so they never see the light of day. He’s believed to be a key witness to bolster prosecutors’ theory that Trump sought to illegally influence the 2016 race by suppressing negative stories about his personal life.

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Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, slammed the prosecution as he left the courthouse Friday after spending most of the week in his role as criminal defendant instead of political candidate. Trump seized on President Joe Biden’s remarks Friday that he’s willing to debate Trump. Trump told reporters he’s up for it anytime, anywhere.

Under cross examination, Trump’s lawyers appeared to be laying the groundwork to make the argument that any dealings Trump had with Pecker were intended to protect Trump, his reputation and his family — not his campaign. The defense also sought to show that the National Enquirer was publishing negative stories about Trump’s 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, long before an August 2015 meeting that is central to the case.

During that meeting, Pecker said he told Trump and then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen he would be the “eyes and ears” of the campaign, and would notify Cohen if he heard negative stories about Trump so they could be killed.

Under questioning by Trump lawyer Emil Bove, Pecker acknowledged there was no mention at that meeting of the term “catch-and-kill.” Nor was there discussion at the meeting of any “financial dimension,” such as the National Enquirer paying people on Trump’s behalf for the rights to their stories, Pecker said.

Bove also confronted Pecker with statements he made to federal prosecutors in 2018 that the defense lawyer said were “inconsistent” with the former publisher’s testimony.

Pecker told jurors that Trump thanked him during a White House visit in 2017 for his help burying two stories. But according to notes Bove read in court, Pecker told federal authorities that Trump did not express any gratitude to him during the meeting.

“Was that another mistake?” Bove asked Pecker.

Pecker stuck to the account that he gave in court, adding: “I know what the truth is.”

Prosecutors challenged the defense’s contention that Trump’s arrangement with the National Enquirer wasn’t unusual. Under questioning from a prosecutor, Pecker acknowledged he had not previously sought out stories and worked the company’s sources on behalf of a presidential candidate or allowed political fixers close access to internal decision-making.

“It’s the only one,” Pecker said.

The second witness called to the stand was Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime executive assistant. Graff, who started working for Trump in 1987 and left the Trump Organization in April 2021, has been described as his gatekeeper and right hand.

Graff testified that she believed she was the one who added contact information for Daniels and Karen McDougal to the Trump Organization’s computer system. The women’s listings were shown in court, with Daniels named in the system simply as “Stormy.” Graff later noted that Trump never used computers.

The two women were paid to prevent them from coming forward during Trump’s 2016 campaign with claims of sexual encounters with Trump. He says those claims were lies.

Trump spoke briefly to Graff as she left the witness stand. He appeared to reach out to her with his hand as an officer guided her away from the witness stand past the defense table. Trump’s lawyers were at the bench, talking with Judge Juan Merchan, when Trump stood up and engaged with Graff.

The case will resume Tuesday with the third prosecution witness, Gary Farro, a banker. Farro testified Friday about helping Cohen form a bank account for the limited liability company he used to facilitate the Daniels payment. Farro said Cohen led him to believe the firm, Essential Consultants LLC, would be involved in real estate consulting.

Friday’s testimony caps a consequential week in the criminal cases the former president faces as he vies to reclaim the White House in November.

At the same time jurors listened to testimony in Manhattan, the Supreme Court on Thursday signaled it was likely to reject Trump’s sweeping claims that he is immune from prosecution in his 2020 election interference case in Washington. But the conservative-majority high court seemed inclined to limit when former presidents could be prosecuted — a ruling that could benefit Trump by delaying that trial, potentially until after the November election.

In New York — the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments.

The charges center on $130,000 that Trump’s company paid to Cohen on Trump’s behalf to keep Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the encounter ever happened.

Over several days on the witness stand, Pecker described how the tabloid parlayed rumor-mongering into splashy stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged his connections to suppress seamy stories about Trump.

Trump’s attorney zeroed in on a nonprosecution agreement in 2018 between the federal government and American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer.

The company admitted to engaging in the “catch-and-kill” practice to help Trump’s campaign, and prosecutors agreed to not prosecute the company for paying $150,000 to McDougal for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump.

Trump’s attorney repeatedly suggested that Pecker may have felt pressured to accept an agreement in order to finalize a deal to sell his company to the newsstand operator Hudson News Group for a proposed $100 million.

“To consummate that deal, you knew you had to clear up the investigations,” Bove said.

After pausing for several seconds, Pecker replied in the affirmative. But Pecker also said he felt “no pressure” to finalize the nonprosecution agreement to complete the transaction.

In the end, the deal didn’t go through.

“What’s important to me is that we give districts tools and the option to use a tool that will keep their children safe in their schools,” Lee said at a news conference Thursday after he shared his plans to sign the legislation.

Under state law, Lee, a Republican, has the option to sign the bill, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature.

The Republican-controlled state House passed the measure Tuesday largely along party lines roughly a year after a shooter opened fire and killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville. The state Senate, which is also controlled by the GOP, passed the measure this month.

Lee on Thursday highlighted the legislation’s requirements that faculty and staff members wishing to carry concealed handguns on school grounds complete a minimum of 40 hours of approved training specific to school policing every year. They also must obtain written authorization from law enforcement, he noted.

“There are folks across the state who disagree on the way forward,” Lee said Thursday, adding that he thought the legislation would allow school districts the opportunity to decide “at the local level what is best for the schools and the children in that district.”

But the measure drew criticism from Democrats like state Rep. Bo Mitchell, who referred to the Covenant shooting in remarks on the House floor.

“This is what we’re going to do. This is our reaction to teachers and children being murdered in a school. Our reaction is to throw more guns at it. What’s wrong with us?” Mitchell said.

Tennessee isn’t the only state to have approved legislation allowing teachers to carry guns. At least 26 states have laws permitting teachers or other school employees to possess guns on school grounds, with some exceptions, according to the Giffords Law Center, a gun violence prevention group.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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But when it came to the seamy claims by porn performer Stormy Daniels, David Pecker, the tabloid’s longtime publisher, said he put his foot down.

“I am not paying for this story,” he told jurors Thursday at Trump’s hush money trial, recounting his version of a conversation with Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen about the catch-and-kill scheme that prosecutors alleged amounted to interference in the race. Pecker was already $180,000 in the hole on other Trump-related stories by the time Daniels came along. “I didn’t want to be involved in this from the beginning.”

Pecker’s testimony was a critical building block for the prosecution’s theory that their partnership was a way to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors are seeking to elevate the gravity of the history-making first trial of a former American president and the first of four criminal cases against Trump to reach a jury.

Trump’s lawyers also began their cross-examination of Pecker, using the time to question his memory of years-old events and to suggest his account had evolved over time.

But the hush money trial was just one of the consequential legal matters facing the Republican presidential candidate on Thursday.

The U.S. Supreme Court also heard arguments over whether Trump should be immune from prosecution in a federal case over his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. The high court justices appeared likely to reject his immunity claim.

Trump’s many legal problems were colliding this week. The hush money case includes a looming decision on whether he violated a gag order and should be held in contempt. His former lawyers and associates were indicted in a 2020 election-related scheme in Arizona. And a New York judge rejected a request for a new trial in a defamation case that found Trump liable for $83.3 million in damages.

But Trump has a long history of emerging unscathed from sticky situations — if not becoming even more popular. The high court arguments made it seem possible that he could benefit from a lengthy trial delay, possibly beyond November’s election.

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The high court’s decision will have lasting implications for future presidents, because the justices were seeking to answer the never-before-asked question of whether and to what extent does a former president enjoy immunity from prosecution for conduct during his time in office.

Trump had asked to skip his New York criminal proceedings for the day so he could sit in on the Supreme Court’s special session, but that request was denied by Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s trial on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments, which involved buying the rights to someone’s story but never publishing it.

“I think the Supreme Court has a very important argument before it today,” Trump said outside the courtroom. “I should be there.”

Instead, he sat at the defense table in a Manhattan courtroom with his lawyers, listening intently to Pecker testify how he and his publication parlayed rumor-mongering into splashy stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged his connections to suppress unflattering coverage.

Trump has maintained he is not guilty of any of the charges, and says the stories that were bought and squelched were false.

“There is no case here. This is just a political witch hunt,” he said before court in brief comments to reporters.

As Pecker testified in a calm, cooperative tone about risque tales and secret dealings, the atmosphere in the utilitarian 1940s courtroom was one of quiet attentiveness. Two Secret Service agents were stationed in the first row of the courtroom gallery directly behind Trump. Ten court officers stood around the room. Jurors intently listened, and some took notes.

Pecker recalled that the publication bought a sordid tale from a New York City doorman and purchased accusations of an extramarital affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal to prevent the claims from getting out. There was some talk of reimbursement from Trump’s orbit, but Pecker was ultimately never paid.

The breaking point came with Daniels, who was eventually paid by Cohen to keep quiet over her claim of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. The ex-president denies it happened.

Pecker recalled to the jury that he was dining with his wife the night after the public learned of the infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump discussed grabbing women sexually without permission, when then-editor Dylan Howard called with an urgent matter.

Howard said he heard from Daniels’ representatives that she was trying to sell her story and that the tabloid could acquire it for $120,000, Pecker told jurors. Pecker was tapped out; he told Cohen as much.

At the same time, Pecker advised that someone — just not him — should do something to prevent the story from going public.

“I said to Michael, ‘My suggestion to you is that you should buy the story, and you should take it off the market because if you don’t and it gets out, I believe the boss will be very angry with you.’”

Cohen followed his advice.

Pecker testified that Trump later invited him to a White House dinner in July 2017 to thank him for helping the campaign. The ex-publisher said Trump encouraged him to bring anyone he wanted, recounting that the then-president told him, “It’s your dinner.”

Pecker said that he and Howard, as well as some of his other business associates, posed for photos with Trump in the Oval Office. Pecker said others at the dinner included Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and press adviser Sean Spicer.

At one point during the evening, Pecker said Trump asked him for an update on Karen McDougal.

“How’s Karen doing?” he recalled Trump saying as they walked past the Rose Garden from the Oval Office to the dining room.

“I said she’s doing well, she’s quiet, everything’s going good,” Pecker testified.

But months later, in March 2018, the president became furious when McDougal gave an interview to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Pecker testified.

“I thought you had and we had an agreement with Karen McDougal that she can’t give any interviews or be on any TV channels,” Trump told Pecker by phone, the former National Enquirer publisher said.

He said he explained to the then-president that the agreement had been changed to allow her to speak to the press after a November 2016 Wall Street Journal article about the tabloid’s $150,000 payout to McDougal.

“Mr. Trump got very aggravated when he heard that I amended it, and he couldn’t understand why,” Pecker told jurors.

Later, Trump defense attorney Emil Bove opened his cross-examination by grilling Pecker on his recollection of specific dates and meanings. He appeared to be laying further groundwork for the defense’s argument that any dealings Trump had with the National Enquirer publisher were intended to protect himself, his reputation and his family — not his campaign.

In other developments, prosecutors argued Trump again violated a gag order, all while waiting to hear whether he would be held in contempt on other suspected violations. Merchan has barred the GOP leader from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and others connected to the case. He set a hearing for next Thursday on the new claims.

Trump was dismissive about the looming decision. When asked by reporters if he would pay fines if ordered, he replied, “Oh, I have no idea.” He then said, “They’ve taken my constitutional right away with a gag order.”

A conviction by the jury would not preclude Trump from becoming president again, but because it is a state case, he would not be able to pardon himself if found guilty. The charge is punishable by up to four years in prison — though it’s not clear if the judge would seek to put him behind bars.

___

Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

After a dizzying course of votes throughout the afternoon, three state House Republicans joined Democrats in approving a repeal of the Civil War-era law that made abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs one or helps a woman obtain one.

Members of the state Senate, where Republicans also hold a narrow majority, voted last week in favor of a motion to introduce a bill that would repeal the abortion ban. Two Republicans joined every Democrat in the chamber on that vote.

The state Senate could vote on the repeal as early as next Wednesday, after the bill comes on the floor for a “third reading,” as is required under chamber rules.

The state Senate is likely to pass a repeal of the law, a source in Arizona familiar with the situation told NBC News. Once that happens, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is certain to sign the repeal quickly.

Abortion rights supporters and Democrats — all the way up to the White House — praised Arizona lawmakers for their passage of the repeal.

“That’s a good thing,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of the vote. “We’re moving forward in the right direction.”

The Biden campaign blamed Donald Trump for the turmoil, saying that the former president “is responsible for Arizona’s abortion ban” after appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.

“If he retakes power, the chaos and cruelty he has created will only get worse in all 50 states,” Biden 2024 campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

The state House’s vote to repeal came on the chamber’s third attempt since the state Supreme Court ruled earlier this month to uphold the 160-year-old near-total ban.

Following that ruling, Republicans across the U.S. — including Trump, who has said he wants to let states make their own decisions on abortion policies — called on legislators in the state to repeal the ban amid a broader political blowback against the GOP on the issue of reproductive rights in the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

But Republicans in the Arizona state House, where the party holds a narrow majority, had remained steadfast in not allowing a repeal bill to advance.

But on Wednesday, amid mounting pressure, Republicans in the chamber appeared to finally relent, with three GOP lawmakers — state Reps. Matt Gress, Tim Dunn and Justin Wilmeth — joining the 29 Democrats in the chamber to pass the repeal.

Republican opponents of the repeal pleaded with their colleagues to reject the bill for a third time during remarks they were allowed to make while voting.

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“We should not have rushed this bill through the legislative process,” Republican state House Speaker Ben Toma said. “Instead today we are rushing to judgment.”

“It breaks my heart that you’re here to witness this,” said House Speaker Pro Tempore Travis Grantham, before casting a “no” vote. “I’m proud of my Republican caucus that has fought this off as long as it has,” added Grantham, who accused Democrats of having used the issue as a political cudgel.

“To see how this has been turned against one party and used as a weaponization of the issue is disgusting,” he said. At the end of Wednesday’s hearing, Grantham said the vote was an “awful, disgusting situation” and stripped Gress, as well as Democratic Assistant Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos, of their committee assignments.

Just last week, during the state House’s prior session, Democrats in the chamber introduced a bill to repeal the 160-year-old abortion ban and filed a motion to Republican House leaders requesting an immediate vote. The vote failed, prompting Democrats to move again to force a vote, which also fell short.

Republicans were more easily able to kill that vote because it came under a procedural vote to suspend state House rules. Under Arizona House rules, a majority of the chamber that includes the speaker is required to vote to suspend the rules to hold an immediate vote. Such obstacles didn’t exist on Wednesday because the vote came amid normal House order.

Wednesday’s proceedings marked the latest chapter in the fight over abortion rights in the crucial battleground following the Arizona Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling earlier this month.

The law the conservative-leaning court ruled was enforceable makes abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs one or helps a woman obtain one. The law was codified in 1901 — and again in 1913, after Arizona gained statehood — and outlaws abortion from the moment of conception but includes an exception to save the woman’s life.

The law is set to go into effect as early as June 8, though Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes has said her office is working to find ways to delay that date. The ban is likely to go into effect for a short period of time — even if the Senate passes it next week and Hobbs signs it shortly thereafter — because under Arizona law, repeals don’t go into effect until 90 days after a legislative session concludes. Last year’s session ended in late July.

“We may still be looking at a period of time when the 1864 [ban] could potentially take effect,” Mayes said in a statement.

A successful repeal of the 1864 ban would likely result in state policy reverting to a 15-week ban on abortions that makes exceptions for medical emergencies but not for rape or incest. 

Some prominent anti-abortion groups called on Republicans to unite behind that law, which was enacted in 2022, following Wednesday’s vote.

“After months of confusion, the people of Arizona will soon have clarity on the state’s abortion laws: a 15-week protection for the unborn,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. “Kari Lake and all GOP candidates and elected officials must bring clarity to Arizona voters by campaigning vigorously in support of Arizona’s 15-week protection with exceptions.”

Despite the continued repeal efforts, voters are likely to have the power this November to decide on the future of abortion rights in the state themselves.

Organizers in the state are likely to succeed in placing a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would create a “fundamental right” to receive abortion care up until fetal viability, or about the 24th week of pregnancy. If voters approve the ballot measure, it would effectively undo the 1864 ban, which now remains law in the state.

It would also bar the state from restricting abortion care in situations in which the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk after the point of viability, according to the treating health care professional.

But the state Supreme Court decision prompted Republicans to also discuss a series of possible contingencies to upend that effort, including pushing alternative ballot measures to compete with the pro-abortion rights proposed amendment, according to a leaked strategy document circulated among Arizona Republicans.

During a brief state House Rules committee hearing Wednesday, Republicans voted to advance three resolutions — without explaining what they were — that Democrats and abortion rights supporters said were likely the GOP-backed ballot measures.

“I can’t tell you what the subject matter will be,” Grantham, the House Speaker Pro Tempore who led the hearing, said.

Chris Love, a spokesperson for Arizona for Abortion Access, called the resolutions “three dishonest placeholder bills” that served as “the first step toward referring up to three anti-abortion measures to the November ballot aimed at confusing and deceiving voters in hopes of pulling votes from the Arizona Abortion Access Act.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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The indictment released Wednesday names 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Trump won Arizona in 2020. They include the former state party chair, a 2022 U.S. Senate candidate and two sitting state lawmakers, who are charged with nine counts each of conspiracy, fraud and forgery.

The identities of seven other defendants, including Giuliani and Meadows, were not immediately released because they had not yet been served with the documents. They were readily identifiable based on descriptions of the defendants, however.

Trump himself was not charged but was referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator.

With the indictments, Arizona becomes the fourth state where allies of the former president have been charged with using false or unproven claims about voter fraud related to the election. Heading into a likely November rematch with Biden, Trump continues to spread lies about the last election that are echoed by many of his supporters.

“I will not allow American democracy to be undermined,” Democratic state Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a video released by her office. “It’s too important.”

The indictment alludes to Giuliani as an attorney “who was often identified as the Mayor” and spread false allegations of election fraud. Another defendant is referred to as Trump’s “ chief of staff in 2020,” which describes Meadows.

Descriptions of other unnamed defendants point to Mike Roman, who was Trump’s director of Election Day operations; John Eastman, a lawyer who devised a strategy to try to persuade Congress not to certify the election; and Christina Bobb, a lawyer who worked with Giuliani.

A lawyer for Eastman, Charles Burnham, said his client is innocent. Bobb did not respond to a text message seeking comment, nor did a lawyer who is representing Roman in a case in Georgia.

George Terwilliger, a lawyer representing Meadows, said he had not yet seen the indictment but if Meadows is named, “it is a blatantly political and politicized accusation and will be contested and defeated.” Giuliani’s political adviser, Ted Goodman, decried what he called “the continued weaponization of our justice system.”

The 11 people who had been nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claiming that Trump carried the state. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.

Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes. Of the eight lawsuits that unsuccessfully challenged Biden’s victory in the state, one was filed by the 11 Republicans who would later sign the certificate declaring Trump as the winner.

Their lawsuit asked a judge to de-certify the results that gave Biden his victory in Arizona and block the state from sending them to the Electoral College. In dismissing the case, U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa said the Republicans lacked legal standing, waited too long to bring their case and “failed to provide the court with factual support for their extraordinary claims.”

Days after that lawsuit was dismissed, the 11 Republicans participated in the certificate signing.

The Arizona charges come after a string of indictments against fake electors in other states.

In December, a Nevada grand jury indicted six Republicans on felony charges of offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument in connection with false election certificates. They have pleaded not guilty.

Michigan’s Attorney General in July filed felony charges that included forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery against 16 Republican fake electors. One had charges dropped after reaching a cooperation deal, and the 15 remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty.

Three fake electors also have been charged in Georgia alongside Trump and others in a sweeping indictment accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally overturn the results. They have pleaded not guilty.

In Wisconsin, 10 Republicans who posed as electors settled a civil lawsuit, admitting their actions were part of an effort to overturn Biden’s victory. There is no known criminal investigation in Wisconsin.

Trump also was indicted in August in federal court over the fake electors scheme. The indictment states that when Trump was unable to persuade state officials to illegally swing the election, he and his Republican allies began recruiting a slate of fake electors in battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — to sign certificates falsely stating he, not Biden, had won their states.

In early January, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said that state’s five Republican electors cannot be prosecuted under the current law. In New Mexico and Pennsylvania, fake electors added a caveat saying the election certificate was submitted in case they were later recognized as duly elected, qualified electors. No charges have been filed in Pennsylvania.

In Arizona, Mayes’ predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich, conducted an investigation of the 2020 election, but the fake elector allegations were not part of that examination, according to Mayes’ office.

In another election-related case brought by Mayes’ office, two Republican officials in a rural Arizona county who delayed canvassing the 2022 general election results face felony charges. A grand jury indicted Cochise County Supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby in November on one count each of conspiracy and interference with an election officer. Both pleaded not guilty.

The Republicans facing charges are Kelli Ward, the state GOP’s chair from 2019 until early 2023; state Sen. Jake Hoffman; Tyler Bowyer, an executive of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA who serves on the Republican National Committee; state Sen. Anthony Kern, who was photographed in restricted areas outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack and is now a candidate in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District; Greg Safsten, a former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party; energy industry executive James Lamon, who lost a 2022 Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat; Robert Montgomery, chairman of the Cochise County Republican Committee in 2020; Samuel Moorhead, a Republican precinct committee member in Gila County; Nancy Cottle, who in 2020 was the first vice president of the Arizona Federation of Republican Women; Loraine Pellegrino, past president of the Ahwatukee Republican Women; and Michael Ward, an osteopathic physician who is married to Kelli Ward.

In a statement, Hoffman accused Mayes of weaponizing the attorney general’s office in bringing the case but didn’t directly comment on the indictment’s allegations.

“Let me be unequivocal, I am innocent of any crime, I will vigorously defend myself, and I look forward to the day when I am vindicated of this naked political persecution by the judicial process,” Hoffman said.

None of the others responded to either phone, email or social media messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.

___

Associated Press writers Gabe Stern and Scott Sonner in Las Vegas, Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

After years of attempts to ban the Chinese-owned app, including by former President Donald Trump, a measure to outlaw the popular video-sharing app has won congressional approval and been signed by President Biden. The measure gives Beijing-based parent company ByteDance nine months to sell the company, with a possible additional three months if a sale is in progress. If it doesn’t, TikTok will be banned.

So what does this mean for you, a TikTok user, or perhaps the parent of a TikTok user? Here are some key questions and answers.

When does the ban go into effect?

The original proposal gave ByteDance just six months to divest from its U.S. subsidiary, negotiations lengthened it to nine. Then, if the sale is already in progress, the company will get another three months to complete it.

So it would be at least a year before a ban goes into effect — but with likely court challenges, this could stretch even longer, perhaps years. TikTok has seen some success with court challenges in the past, but it has never sought to prevent federal legislation from going into effect.

What if I already downloaded it?

TikTok, which is used by more than 170 million Americans, most likely won’t disappear from your phone even if an eventual ban does take effect. But it would disappear from Apple and Google’s app stores, which means users won’t be able to download it. This would also mean that TikTok wouldn’t be able to send updates, security patches and bug fixes, and over time the app would likely become unusable — not to mention a security risk.

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But surely there are workarounds?

Teenagers are known for circumventing parental controls and bans when it comes to social media, so dodging the U.S. government’s ban is certainly not outside the realm of possibilities. For instance, users could try to mask their location using a VPN, or virtual private network, use alternative app stores or even install a foreign SIM card into their phone.

But some tech savvy is required, and it’s not clear what will and won’t work. More likely, users will migrate to another platform — such as Instagram, which has a TikTok-like feature called Reels, or YouTube, which has incorporated vertical short videos in its feed to try to compete with TikTok. Often, such videos are taken directly from TikTok itself. And popular creators are likely to be found on other platforms as well, so you’ll probably be able to see the same stuff.

“The TikTok bill relies heavily on the control that Apple and Google maintain over their smartphone platforms because the bill’s primary mechanism is to direct Apple and Google to stop allowing the TikTok app on their respective app stores,” said Dean Ball, a research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. “Such a mechanism might be much less effective in the world envisioned by many advocates of antitrust and aggressive regulation against the large tech firms.”

Should I be worried about using TikTok?

Lawmakers from both parties — as well as law enforcement and intelligence officials — have long expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over data on the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. The worry stems from a set of Chinese national security laws that compel organizations to assist with intelligence gathering – which ByteDance would likely be subject to – and other far-reaching ways the country’s authoritarian government exercises control.

Data privacy experts say, though, that the Chinese government could easily get information on Americans in other ways, including through commercial data brokers that sell or rent personal information.

Lawmakers and some administration officials have also expressed concerns that China could – potentially – direct or influence ByteDance to suppress or boost TikTok content that are favorable to its interests. TikTok, for its part, has denied assertions that it could be used as a tool of the Chinese government. The company has also said it has never shared U.S. user data with Chinese authorities and won’t do so if it’s asked.

The announcement marks an end to the long, painful battle with Republicans in Congress over urgently needed assistance for Ukraine.

“We rose to the moment, we came together, and we got it done,” Biden said at White House event to announce the signing. “Now we need to move fast, and we are.”

But significant damage has been done to the Biden administration’s effort to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion during the funding impasse that dates back to August, when the Democratic president made his first emergency spending request for Ukraine aid. Even with a burst of new weapons and ammunition, it’s unlikely Ukraine will immediately recover after months of setbacks.

Biden approved immediately sending Ukraine $1 billion in military assistance and said the shipment would begin arriving in the “next few hours” — the first tranche from about $61 billion allocated for Ukraine. The package includes air defense capabilities, artillery rounds, armored vehicles and other weapons to shore up Ukrainian forces who have seen morale sink as Russian President Vladimir Putin has racked up win after win.

But longer term, it remains uncertain if Ukraine — after months of losses in Eastern Ukraine and sustaining massive damage to its infrastructure — can make enough progress to sustain American political support before burning through the latest influx of money.

“It’s not going in the Ukrainians’ favor in the Donbas, certainly not elsewhere in the country,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby, referring to the eastern industrial heartland where Ukraine has suffered setbacks. “Mr. Putin thinks he can play for time. So we’ve got to try to make up some of that time.”

Tucked into the measure is a provision that gives TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, nine months to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States. The president can grant a one-time extension of 90 days, bringing the timeline to sell to one year, if he certifies that there’s a path to divestiture and “significant progress” toward executing it.

The administration and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have called the social media site a growing national security concern.

TikTok said it will wage a legal challenge against what it called an “unconstitutional” effort by Congress.

“We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail,” the company said in a statement.

The bill also includes about $26 billion in aid for Israel and a surge of about $1 billion in humanitarian relief for Palestinians in Gaza suffering as the Israel-Hamas war continues. Biden said Israel must ensure the humanitarian aid for Palestinians in bill reaches Gaza “without delay.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed a vote on the supplemental aid package for months as members of his party’s far right wing, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, threatened to move to oust him if he allowed a vote to send more assistance to Ukraine. Those threats persist.

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 presidential GOP nominee, has complained that European allies have not done enough for Ukraine. While he stopped short of endorsing the supplemental funding package, his tone has shifted in recent days, acknowledging that Ukraine’s survival is important to the United States.

Indeed, many European leaders have long been nervous that a second Trump presidency would mean decreased U.S. support for Ukraine and for the NATO military alliance. The European anxiety was heightened in February when Trump in a campaign speech warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that don’t meet defense spending goals if he returns to the White House.

It was a key moment in the debate over Ukraine spending. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg quickly called out Trump for putting “American and European soldiers at increased risk.” Biden days later called Trump’s comments “dangerous” and “un-American” and accused Trump of playing into Putin’s hands.

But in reality, the White House maneuvering to win additional funding for Ukraine started months earlier.

Biden, the day after returning from a whirlwind trip to Tel Aviv following Hamas militants’ stunning Oct. 7 attack on Israel, used a rare prime time address to make his pitch for the supplemental funding.

At the time, the House was in chaos because the Republican majority had been unable to select a speaker to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who had been ousted more than two weeks earlier. McCarthy’s reckoning with the GOP’s far right came after he agreed earlier in the year to allow federal spending levels that many in his right flank disagreed with and wanted undone.

Far-right Republicans have also adamantly opposed sending more money for Ukraine, with the war appearing to have no end in sight. Biden in August requested more than $20 billion to keep aid flowing into Ukraine, but the money was stripped out of a must-pass spending bill even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Washington to make a personal plea for continued U.S. backing.

By late October, Republicans finally settled on Johnson, a low-profile Louisiana Republican whose thinking on Ukraine was opaque, to serve as the next speaker. Biden during his congratulatory call with Johnson urged him to quickly pass Ukraine aid and began a months-long, largely behind-the-scenes effort to bring the matter to a vote.

In private conversations with Johnson, Biden and White House officials leaned into the stakes for Europe if Ukraine were to fall to Russia. Five days after Johnson was formally elected speaker, national security adviser Jake Sullivan outlined to him the administration’s strategy on Ukraine and assured him that accountability measures were in place in Ukraine to track where the aid was going — an effort to address a common complaint from conservatives.

On explicit orders from Biden, White House officials also avoided directly attacking Johnson over the stalled aid.

Johnson came off to White House officials as direct and an honest actor throughout the negotiations, according to a senior administration official. Biden had success finding common ground with Republicans earlier in his term to win the passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure deal, legislation to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry, and an expansion of federal health care services for veterans exposed to toxic smoke from burn pits. And he knew there was plenty of Republican support for further Ukraine funding.

Biden praised Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying in the end they “stepped up and did the right thing.”

“History will remember this moment,” Biden said. “For all the talk about how dysfunctional things are in Washington, when you look over the past three years, we’ve seen it time and again on the critical issues. We’ve actually come together.”

At frustrating moments during the negotiations, Biden urged his aides to “just keep talking, keep working,” according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

So they did. In a daily meeting convened by White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, the president’s top aides — seated around a big oval table in Zients’ office — would brainstorm possible ways to better make the case about Ukraine’s dire situation in the absence of aid.

Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, and legislative affairs director Shuwanza Goff were in regular contact with Johnson. Goff and Johnson’s senior staff also spoke frequently as a deal came into focus.

The White House also sought to accommodate Johnson and his various asks. For instance, administration officials at the speaker’s request briefed Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Ralph Norman, R-S.C., two conservatives who were persistent antagonists of Johnson.

All the while, senior Biden officials frequently updated McConnell as well as key Republican committee leaders, including Reps. Michael McCaul and Mike Turner.

In public, the administration deployed a strategy of downgrading intelligence that demonstrated Russia’s efforts to tighten its ties with U.S. adversaries China, North Korea and Iran to fortify Moscow’s defense industrial complex and get around U.S. and European sanctions.

The $61 billion can help triage Ukrainian forces, but Kyiv will need much more for a fight that could last years, military experts say.

Realistic goals for the months ahead for Ukraine — and its allies — include avoiding the loss of major cities, slowing Russia’s momentum and getting additional weaponry to Kyiv that could help them go on the offensive in 2025, said Bradley Bowman, a defense strategy and policy analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington.

“In our microwave culture, we tend to want immediate results,” Bowman said. “And sometimes things are just hard and you can’t get immediate results. I think Ukrainian success is not guaranteed, but Russian success is if we stop supporting Ukraine.”

Biden lamented that the package did not include money to bolster U.S. border security. The White House had proposed including in the package provisions that it said would have helped stem the tide of migrants and asylum seekers coming to the U.S.

Republicans, however, rejected the proposal at the urging of Trump, who did not want to give Biden the win on an issue that’s been an albatross for the Democratic administration.

“It should have been included in this bill,” Biden said. “I’m determined to get it done for the American people.”

___

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Haleluya Hadero, Mary Clare Jalonick and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

Payne was 65.

“Tammy and I are deeply saddened by the tragic passing of our friend, and a steadfast champion for the people of New Jersey, Congressman Donald Payne, Jr. Our heartfelt prayers are with his family during this difficult time,” Murphy said in an X post.

“With his signature bowtie, big heart, and tenacious spirit, Donald embodied the very best of public service,” Murphy said. “As a former union worker and toll collector, he deeply understood the struggles our working families face, and he fought valiantly to serve their needs, every single day.”

On April 17, Payne’s office said that the congressman had been hospitalized earlier in the month after suffering a “cardiac episode based on complications from his diabetes.” Prior to that, his staff had said he had a “good” prognosis and the expectation of a “full recovery.”

Further information was not immediately available.

Payne represented the heavily Democratic and majority district which covers portions of Essex, Hudson, and Union counties. A Newark native, Payne was elected to represent the 10th District in 2012, filling the seat his father, Donald Milford Payne, had held for more than two decades. Payne drew strong marks from liberal organizations for his voting record.

The Congressional Black Caucus said Payne would be remembered for his kindness and generosity and called him an advocate for progressive causes including making college tuition free, expanding voting rights and fighting climate change.

Other members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation remembered Payne on Wednesday.

“New Jersey has lost a truly great public servant far too soon. Congressman Donald Payne, Jr. was more than a Member of New Jersey’s Congressional delegation – he was a part of our family,” said Rep. Frank Pallone. “His fight to raise awareness for diabetes and colorectal cancer prevention as well as his advocacy for replacing lead pipes in Newark epitomized the very definition of public service.”

“The advice, encouragement, and support Donald offered me when I first entered politics sticks with me to this day,” said Rep. Mikie Sherrill. “Donald was someone who went out of his way to make others feel welcomed and heard. He was one of a kind. I will miss him dearly. It was an honor, for many years, to call him my congressman.”

“When I was first elected, Donald was there for me, showing me the ropes and sharing his wisdom — not to mention a good Jersey ribbing. Don had a great sense of humor to go with his meaningful experience,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, describing Payne as “a tireless champion for real people.”

As a member of the Committee on Homeland Security, Payne made school security a priority, helping to establish a School Safety Task Force at the Department of Homeland Security and pressing for federal agencies to take extra precautions for children and schools during emergencies, said fellow Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi.

Payne, who lived in Newark, began his public service journey by founding the Newark South Ward Junior Democrats, becoming its first president. He also served as an adviser to the YMCA Youth in Government program.

Payne had previously served as City Council president in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, and on the Essex County Board of Commissioners.

Murphy’s office declined to comment Wednesday on the governor’s plans to order a special election to fill the rest of Payne’s current term, which ends Jan. 3, 2025.

Payne already filed paperwork by the March deadline to run for reelection and is to appear uncontested on the June 4 primary ballot. Should he remain on the primary ballot and win the nomination, Democratic Party committee members in his district could choose a replacement candidate to run in the November general election.

The district is likely to remain in Democratic hands, with registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans there more than 6 to 1.

Payne’s survivors include his wife, Beatrice, and their three children, Murphy said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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A former member of ex-Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration and a two-term mayor of the capital city, Stoney said he had wrestled with the decision since he and his wife welcomed their first child in March. While his campaign had sought to make the case in a memo just weeks ago that a Stoney-Spanberger primary would be competitive, he said Tuesday that “while there was a path to victory it was a narrow path.”

“After careful consideration with my family, I believe that the best way to ensure that all Virginia families do get the change they deserve is for our party to come together, avoid a costly and damaging primary and, for me to run instead for Lieutenant Governor,” Stoney said in a statement.

With the gubernatorial primary still more than a year away, there’s still time for another Democratic candidate to emerge. But Spanberger, a former CIA officer who launched her campaign in November, is seen by Democrats and Republicans alike as a formidable candidate, with strong name recognition, a record of winning tough races and a centrist identity in a state that’s tended to reward moderate candidates. Her bid could also be a history-making one: Virginia has never had a female governor.

Spanberger, who was first elected to Congress in 2018 as part of a wave of female candidates who helped Democrats retake the U.S. House that year, recently secured the nomination of Clean Virginia. The big-spending advocacy group founded by a wealthy investor to counter the influence of Dominion Energy at the state Capitol has given enormous sums to candidates it has backed in recent years and pledged an initial contribution of $250,000.

Her campaign said in a statement that Virginians were uniting behind her candidacy “because they know she has the experience to bring people together, get things done, and lead the Commonwealth forward.”

All three of Virginia’s statewide state government offices — governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general — are currently held by Republicans and will be on the ballot next year. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, like all Virginia governors, is prohibited from seeking a second consecutive term.

While no Republicans have formally announced statewide campaigns yet, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears are seen as likely contenders in the gubernatorial race.

Rich Anderson, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, suggested Democrats were “prematurely” jumping into the 2025 races amid the current federal election cycle due to concerns about what he said would eventually be a strong GOP ticket.

Virginia Republicans ”look forward to building on our groundbreaking wins of 2021,” he said in a statement.

Stoney will join what’s shaping up to be a crowded race for lieutenant governor, a role that involves presiding over the state Senate and is often a stepping-stone to higher office.

Shortly after Stoney announced his decision in an early morning news release, Democratic state Sen. Aaron Rouse formally announced his own candidacy for lieutenant governor. Rouse, a retired NFL player and former Virginia Beach councilman, said he had secured the support of more than two dozen elected officials around the state, including the state Senate budget committee chairwoman, Sen. L. Louise Lucas, and Sen. Mamie Locke, the Senate Democratic caucus chair.

“I’ve built my career on winning in tough spots when it matters — whether it be under the glare of NFL lights or flipping the State Senate seat needed to ensure we blocked Republicans’ assaults on reproductive freedom and voting rights,” said Rouse, who had a hand in some of this year’s highest-profile legislation.

Dr. Babur Lateef, an eye physician and surgeon who serves as chairman of the Prince William County School Board, entered the race last month and other candidates from both parties are still expected to join.

Stoney, who launched his gubernatorial campaign in a video that highlighted his modest upbringing and the struggles he overcame to become the first in his family to graduate from high school and college, said he would use the lieutenant governor post to ensure every Virginia family gets the same “fair shot at success.”

They include a bitterly fought Democratic primary around Pittsburgh and a primary in eastern Pennsylvania that features a moderate Republican seeking to fend off a right-wing challenger. 

What’s more, activists upset with President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war are urging Democrats to write “uncommitted” on the state’s primary ballot. And in the GOP primary, Republicans looking to cast protest votes against former President Donald Trump can still find former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who ended her campaign last month, on their ballots. 

Pennsylvania is one of the most evenly divided states in the country, so both parties will be searching for any clues the primary may offer about the November election.

With polls closing at 8 p.m. ET., here’s what to watch for Tuesday.

A House district where the war in Gaza is front and center

In the 12th Congressional District, Democratic Rep. Summer Lee faces a challenge from Edgewood Borough Council member Bhavini Patel in a race that has put the Israel-Hamas war front and center.

Lee, a member of the progressive “squad” in Congress and one of the first lawmakers to call for a cease-fire, has accused the Israeli government of committing “war crimes” and called for an end to unconditional military aid to the country, and on Saturday she joined 36 Democrats and 21 Republicans in voting against an aid package to the country, which passed overwhelmingly. She and Republican Rep. Scott Perry were the only Pennsylvania members to vote against it.

Patel, who launched her campaign days before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has sought to cut into Lee’s support by saying her refusal to distance herself from groups and activists calling for an “uncommitted” primary vote will hurt Biden this fall.

Lee, who won her first primary race in 2022 after she overcame a raft of spending from groups aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is looking stronger this time around. She’s well-defined in the district and has framed her bid around taking on Trump-aligned Republicans and bringing federal dollars to the district. The same AIPAC-aligned groups that fought her last time aren’t spending on the race this time around.

The district includes Squirrel Hill, one of the country’s most prominent historically Jewish neighborhoods and site of the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where a white supremacist killed 11 worshippers in 2018. It was the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

Lee has called on Hamas to release hostages it still holds and has repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism.

“We have communities that are hurting. The Jewish community is one of them. And there are people who are … not going to agree 100% on everything that you say,” Lee said in an interview, adding she has been “very clear and very upfront” about her cease-fire position. “I have condemned Hamas. We’ve worked with the families of hostages; we’ve done everything that I think is necessary to do that. And at the end of the day, we disagree.”

The race will be an early test of whether sentiment about the war in Gaza will play a significant role in races this year.

Setting up a critical Senate race

Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick are poised to cruise to victories Tuesday, setting up a key contest in the fight for control of the Senate.

McCormick, who lost the GOP primary in 2022 to Trump-backed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, managed to clear the field ahead of this bid and rallied a Pennsylvania Republican establishment behind him that was tired of the infighting that contributed to defeats up and down the ballot in the midterms. It’s a dynamic that has allowed him to focus on the general election battle against Casey from the get-go.

The two will soon be fighting in what will be one of the most expensive Senate races of the cycle. Casey, a three-term senator whose father was governor of Pennsylvania, regularly out-polls Biden in the state, where Democrats have enjoyed victory after victory since Trump’s stunning upset over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The race could determine which party holds the majority in the Senate, where Democrats hold a 51-49 advantage. 

A moderate Republican on defense

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick has built a brand as a moderate Republican, so he has often attracted primary challengers from the right. This year, Fitzpatrick isn’t taking any chances in his primary race against anti-abortion-rights activist Mark Houck.

Fitzpatrick’s campaign has spent nearly $2 million so far, according to recent campaign finance reports, far outspending Houck, who has dropped $145,000 and had just $11,000 left in his account as of April 3. Fitzpatrick’s campaign had nearly $3.7 million on hand. 

Houck grabbed headlines for his arrest after an altercation with a Planned Parenthood volunteer, and he was acquitted last year. Fitzpatrick’s campaign has launched multiple negative TV ads against Houck, as well as spots bolstering his own conservative credentials. In one ad, Fitzpatrick says, “The far left is attacking the very ideals that brought so many to our shores, indoctrinating our kids with anti-American hate and leaving our borders wide open.” 

The primary race has drawn attention from outside groups, with two super PACs spending in the race to bolster Fitzpatrick: the Defending America PAC and the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is aligned with House GOP leadership. A group tied to Democrats has also meddled in the primary, Politico reported.

Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent, has been an elusive target for Democrats looking to flip the competitive 1st District in the Philadelphia suburbs. If he wins the primary, Fitzpatrick will once again face Democrat Ashley Ehasz, an Army veteran whom he defeated by 10 points in 2022 even after Biden won the district by 5 points two years previously, according to calculations from Daily Kos Elections. The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates the 1st District race as likely Republican. 

Setting up battleground House matchups  

Tuesday’s primaries will also solidify the matchups in four other competitive House districts. Two of them are already set, with businessman Rob Bresnahan the only Republican in the race to take on Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright in the 8th District and state Rep. Rob Mercuri the only Republican taking on Democratic Rep. Chris Deluzio in the 17th District. 

But there are competitive primaries to take on two other Pennsylvania lawmakers in battleground districts: Democratic Rep. Susan Wild and GOP Rep. Scott Perry. 

In Wild’s 7th District north of Philadelphia, the top Republicans include state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie and Kevin Dellicker, who owns a technology company. Mackenzie has support from the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity Action, while Dellicker has slightly outspent Mackenzie in the primary.

Wild won a third term in 2022 by just 2 points, and Biden won her district by less than 1 point in 2020. The Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up.

In the 10th District, which includes Harrisburg, six Democrats are competing to take on Perry, the former chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. The top contenders include Marine veteran Mike O’Brien, who was a TOPGUN pilot, and former local TV news anchor Janelle Stelson, who has support from EMILY’s List, a group that backs female candidates who support abortion rights. 

While Democrats believe Perry is vulnerable, especially given his clashes with the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Democrats would face an uphill climb in a district Trump won by 4 points in 2020. The Cook Political Report rates the race as lean Republican. 

Biden protest vote

Biden is his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, but activists opposed to the war in Gaza are once again calling on Democrats to cast votes to protest the administration’s support for Israel. 

A coalition of groups called “Uncommitted PA” is urging voters to write in “uncommitted” in the Democratic presidential primary, following similar efforts in other primary states. The group is looking for 40,000 write-in votes, about half of Biden’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania in 2020. Only registered Democrats can participate in Tuesday’s primary.

CORRECTION (April 23, 2024, 1:30 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the first name of Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s Republican primary challenger. He is Mark Houck, not Matt.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Biden administration tightens rules for obtaining medical records related to abortion
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The bill passed the Senate on an overwhelming 79-18 vote late Tuesday after the House had approved the package Saturday. Biden, who worked with congressional leaders to win support, said in a statement immediately after passage that he will sign it Wednesday and start the process of sending weapons to Ukraine, which has been struggling to hold its front lines against Russia.

“Tonight, a bipartisan majority in the Senate joined the House to answer history’s call at this critical inflection point,” Biden said.

The legislation would also send $26 billion in wartime assistance to Israel and humanitarian relief to citizens of Gaza, and $8 billion to counter Chinese threats in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific. U.S. officials said about $1 billion of the aid could be on its way shortly, with the bulk following in coming weeks.

In an interview with The Associated Press shortly before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that if Congress hadn’t passed the aid, “America would have paid a price economically, politically, militarily.”

“Very few things we have done have risen to this level of historic importance,” he said.

On the Senate floor, Schumer said the Senate was sending a message to U.S. allies: “We will stand with you.”

Schumer and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made passage of the legislation a top priority, agreeing to tie the Ukraine and Israel aid to help ensure passage and arguing there could be dire consequences for the United States and many of its global allies if Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression is left unchecked. They worked with House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, to overcome seemingly intractable Republican opposition to the Ukraine aid, in particular — eventually winning large majorities in both chambers.

McConnell said in a separate interview before the vote that it “is one of the biggest days in the time that I’ve been here.”

“At least on this episode, I think we turned the tables on the isolationists,” McConnell said.

The House approved the package in a series of four votes on Saturday, with the Ukraine portion passing 311-112.

The $61 billion for Ukraine comes as the war-torn country desperately needs new firepower and as Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his attacks. Ukrainian soldiers have struggled as Russia has seized the momentum on the battlefield and gained significant territory.

Bidentold Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday the U.S. will send badly needed air defense weaponry as soon as the legislation is passed.

“The President has assured me that the package will be approved quickly and that it will be powerful, strengthening our air defense as well as long-range and artillery capabilities,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Monday.

In an effort to gain more votes, Republicans in the House majority also added a bill to the foreign aid package that could ban the social media app TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owners do not sell their stake within a year. That legislation had wide bipartisan support in both chambers.

The TikTok bill was one of several tweaks Johnson to the package the Senate passed in February as he tried to move the bill through the House despite significant opposition within his conference. Other additions include a stipulation that $9 billion of the economic assistance to Ukraine is in the form of “forgivable loans”; provisions that allow the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine; and bills to impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a longtime hawk who voted against the foreign aid package in February because it wasn’t paired with legislation to stem migration at the border, was one of the Republicans who switched their votes. “If we don’t help Ukraine now, this war will spread, and Americans who are not involved will be involved,” Graham said.

The package has had broad congressional support since Biden first requested the money last summer. But congressional leaders had to navigate strong opposition from a growing number of conservatives who question U.S. involvement in foreign wars and argue that Congress should be focused instead on the surge of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican who is a close ally to Donald Trump, said that despite the strong showing of support for funding Ukraine’s defense, opposition is growing among Republicans.

“The United States is spread too thin,” Vance said, “And that that argument I think, is winning the American people and it’s slowly winning the Senate, but it’s not going to happen overnight.”

The growing fault line in the GOP between those conservatives who are skeptical of the aid and the more traditional, “Reagan Republicans” who strongly support it may prove to be career-defining for the two top Republican leaders.

McConnell, who has made the Ukraine aid a top priority, said last month that he would step down from leadership after becoming increasingly distanced from many in his conference on the Ukraine aid and other issues. Johnson, who said he put the bills on the floor after praying for guidance, faces threats of an ouster after a majority of Republicans voted against the aid to Ukraine.

Johnson said after House passage that “we did our work here, and I think history will judge it well.”

Opponents in the Senate, like the House, included some left-wing senators who are opposed to aiding Israel as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has bombarded Gaza and killed thousands of civilians. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, voted against the package.

“We must end our complicity in this terrible war,” Sanders said.

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The testimony from David Pecker was designed to bolster prosecutors’ assertions of a decades-long friendship between Trump and the former publisher of the National Enquirer that culminated in an agreement to give the candidate’s lawyer a heads-up on negative tips and stories so they could be quashed.

Pecker is the first witness in Trump’s history-making hush money trial in Manhattan, where he faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with payments meant to prevent harmful stories from surfacing during the final days of the 2016 campaign.

The effort to suppress unflattering information was designed to illegally influence the election, prosecutors have alleged in seeking to elevate the gravity of the first trial of a former American president and the first of four criminal cases against Trump to reach a jury.

With Trump sitting just feet away in the courtroom, Pecker detailed his intimate, behind-the-scenes involvement in Trump’s rise from political novice to the Republican nomination and then the White House. He explained how he and the National Enquirer parlayed rumor-mongering into splashy tabloid stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged his connections to suppress seamy stories about Trump, including a porn actor’s claim of an extramarital sexual encounter a decade earlier.

Pecker traced the origins of their relationship to a 1980s meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and said the friendship bloomed alongside the success of the real estate developer’s TV show “The Apprentice” and the program’s subsequent celebrity version.

Their ties were solidified during a pivotal August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower involving Trump, his lawyer and personal fixer Michael Cohen, and another aide, Hope Hicks, in which Pecker was asked what he and the magazines he led could do for the campaign.

Pecker said he volunteered to publish positive stories about Trump and negative stories about his opponents. But that wasn’t all, he said, telling jurors how he told Trump: “I will be your eyes and ears.”

“I said that anything I hear in the marketplace, if I hear anything negative about yourself, or if I hear about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen,” so that the rights could be purchased and the stories could be killed.

“So they would not get published?” asked prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked.

“So they would not get published,” Pecker replied.

To illustrate their point, prosecutors displayed for the court a screenshot of various flattering headlines the National Enquirer published about Trump, including: “Donald Dominates!’ and “World Exclusive: The Donald Trump Nobody Knows.” The jury was also shown disparaging and outlandish stories about Trump’s opponents in the race, including the surgeon Ben Carson and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.

Pecker painted Cohen as a shadow editor of the National Enquirer’s pro-Trump coverage, directing the tabloid to go after whichever Republican candidates was gaining in momentum.

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“I would receive a call from Michael Cohen, and he would direct me and direct Dylan Howard which candidate and which direction we should go,” Pecker said, referring to the tabloid’s then-editor.

Pecker said he underscored to Howard that the agreement he struck with the Trump operation was “highly, highly confidential.” He said he wanted the tabloid’s bureau chiefs to be on the lookout for any stories involving Trump and said he wanted them to verify the stories before alerting Cohen.

“I did not want anyone else to know this agreement I had and what I wanted to do,” the ex-publisher added.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges related to his role in the hush money payments. He was once a confidant of Trump’s, but their relationship has deteriorated in spectacular fashion. Cohen is expected to be a star government witness, and he routinely posts profane broadsides against Trump on social media.

Trump’s lawyers are expected to make attacks on Cohen’s credibility a foundation of their defense, but in opening with Pecker, prosecutors hope to focus attention on a witness with a far less volatile backstory.

Pecker’s resumption of testimony Tuesday followed a hearing earlier in the day in which prosecutors urged Judge Juan Merchan to hold Trump in contempt and fine him $1,000 for each of 10 social media posts that they say violated an earlier gag order barring attacks on witnesses, jurors and others involved in the case.

Merchan did not immediately rule, but he seemed skeptical of a defense lawyer’s arguments that Trump was merely responding in his posts to others’ attacks and had been trying to comply with the order.

Pecker’s testimony began Monday after opening statements that offered the 12-person jury — and, just as important, the voting public — radically divergent roadmaps for a case that will unfold against the backdrop of a closely contested White House race in which Trump is not only the presumptive Republican nominee but also a criminal defendant facing the prospect of a felony conviction and prison.

Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to illegally influence the 2016 race through a practice known in the tabloid industry as “catch-and-kill” — catching a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then killing it through agreements that prevent the paid person from telling the story to anyone else.

In this case, that included a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to silence her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter that Trump denies.

Defense lawyers have said Trump is innocent and that Cohen cannot be trusted.

Prosecutors also described other arrangements, including one that paid a former Playboy model $150,000 to suppress claims of a nearly yearlong affair with the married Trump, which Trump also denies.

In another instance, Pecker recounted a $30,000 payment from the National Enquirer to a doorman for the rights to a rumor that Trump had fathered a child with an employee at Trump World Tower. The tabloid concluded the story was not true, and the woman and Trump have denied the allegations.

As Pecker described receiving the tip in court, Trump shook his head.

Pecker said upon hearing the rumor, he immediately called Cohen, who said it was “absolutely not true” but that he would look into whether the people involved had indeed worked for Trump’s company.

“I made the decision to purchase the story because of the potential embarrassment it had to the campaign and to Mr. Trump,” Pecker said.

In response to the prosecutor’s question about who he understood the boss to be, Pecker replied: “Donald Trump.”

Explaining why he decided to have the National Enquirer foot the bill, Pecker testified: “This was going to be a very big story. I believe it was important that this story be removed from the marketplace.”

If he published the story, Pecker said it would be “probably the biggest sale of the National Enquirer since the death of Elvis Presley.”

Trump’ s 34 felony counts of falsifying business records arise from reimbursements that prosecutors say Trump’s company made to Cohen over the hush money payments.

The charges punishable by up to four years in prison — though it’s unclear if Merchan would seek to put him behind bars. A conviction would not preclude Trump from becoming president again, but because it is a state case, he would not be able to pardon himself if found guilty. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

___

“This week, I received an inquiry from concerned faculty about rumors they were hearing about President Biden’s selection as the 2024 Commencement speaker,” Kendrick Brown, Morehouse College’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, wrote in the email to faculty members Friday.

Brown said he would convene a virtual meeting Thursday “to extend an opportunity for faculty with different perspectives on the selection of our Commencement speaker to ask questions and make comments.” He said students would also engage with college President David Thomas.

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Brown did not respond to a request for further comment, and a spokesperson for Morehouse declined to offer more details.

A Morehouse faculty member told NBC News administrators are believed to be concerned that faculty members will join students in protest of Biden during the ceremony.

The pushback against leadership’s decision comes amid increasing protests on college campuses over Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The protests since the war began in October have already forced Biden, and other top administration officials, to dramatically scale back appearances at college campuses.

Commencement season is typically a time when presidents reach young audiences, and it offers them opportunities to deliver keynote addresses highlighting their accomplishments and the future. In an election year, commencement speeches can carry particular significance.

But Biden’s addresses this year are poised to be fraught, largely because of growing protests over his refusal to call for a permanent, immediate cease-fire in Gaza without conditions. Biden is struggling with younger voters, and recent polling also indicates many Black voters are not enthusiastic about supporting his candidacy.

Speaking at a historically Black college would provide an “opportunity” for Biden, according to the person familiar with the controversy.

The White House declined to comment.

Brown wrote in his email that Morehouse first extended its invitation to Biden in September and that the college would announce him as its speaker early this week.

And, he wrote, “the College does not plan to rescind its accepted invitation to President Biden.” The meeting Thursday “is a forum for discussion and to respond to questions about the invitation that was extended and accepted,” he wrote.

Morehouse, like other colleges, has faced students speaking out about the war in Gaza. In February, the Maroon Tiger — Morehouse’s student publication — reported that a student pulled an Israeli flag down from the chapel and was detained by campus police.

“Students are not in favor of the way in which the United States has handled this situation, and are surely not in favor of the trauma and the pain and the genocide that the Palestinian people are going through — but also that innocent civilians and Israel are going through as well,” Calvin Bell, a Morehouse College student said in February, after the flag incident.

A source familiar with the commencement planning told NBC News: “It’s not been a secret nationwide, if not globally, that there are a lot of concerns … about how the war has been handled and how America and the presidency has been in the war. We’ve heard conversations like that. There’s also plenty of people who are excited to have a sitting president as their commencement speaker.”

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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At issue: a requirement by the District’s chief financial officer for D.C.’s budget to allocate more than $200 million to be set aside for emergencies.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson is threatening to ignore the CFO, which could jeopardize the District’s finances.

The background info: Bowser’s budget included cuts she said were partly due to a last-minute requirement from DC’s CFO

When D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser presented next year’s budget to the D.C. Council, she included $500 million in cuts to services, as well as some tax increases. Bowser said part of the reason she was making such deep cuts to programs such as the Early Childhood Education Pay Equity Fund was a last-minute requirement from the District’s CFO, Glenn Lee, for the District to replenish its reserve funds, a cost of $217 million.

Both Bowser and Mendelson said the CFO had exceeded his authority, although Bowser reluctantly agreed to restore the money to the reserve fund.

But when Mendelson released his weekly newsletter Friday night, he said he plans to ignore the CFO’s request and instead use the $217 million to keep the early childhood education fund and other services that were cut in Bowser’s budget. Mendelson wrote in part: “The budget I present will restore most if not all of the pay equity fund and do so by rejecting the chief financial officer’s insistence that $217 million needs to be added to the District’s already robust reserve funds. The CFO exceeded his authority when he told the mayor and me that the reserves need to be topped off now.”

So what happens next?

Bowser was noncommittal Monday when asked if she would join Mendelson in submitting a budget to Congress that was not certified as balanced by the CFO, a move that’s never been done.

“I can’t answer that question because there’s a lot of … we’re going to be right in the law, and I’m going to have some consideration with my team before I make that decision,” Bowser said.

D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie was a bit more definitive in his answer.

“In this instance, there happens to be a disagreement between the chairman and the CFO, and I tend to agree with the chairman on this point,” he said.

If the CFO does not change his requirement and Mendelson follows through with his threat to send the budget to Congress for approval without the CFO’s certification, it could open the door for the Republican-led House to reject the District’s budget in much the same way that Congress blocked the District’s crime bill from taking effect.

“Mayor Bowser and Chairman Mendelson do not have to replenish $217 million in D.C. reserve funds by Fiscal Year 2025,” the CFO’s office said in a statement. It went on to say, “A full replenishment of reserves must occur before Fiscal Year 2028.”

News4 reached out to the District’s attorney general for comment but was declined.

Lawyers presented dueling narratives as jurors got their first glimpse into the prosecution accusing Trump of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to squelch negative stories about him during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Still to come are weeks of what’s likely to be dramatic and embarrassing testimony about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s personal life as he simultaneously campaigns to return to the White House in November.

Here’s a look at some key takeaways from opening statements:

Election fraud vs. ‘bookkeeping’ case

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal Trump Organization business records. But prosecutors made clear they do not want jurors to view this as a routine paper case. Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said the heart of the case is a scheme to “corrupt” the 2016 election by silencing people who were about to come forward with embarrassing stories Trump feared would hurt his campaign.

“No politician wants bad press,” Colangelo said. “But the evidence at trial will show that this was not spin or communication strategy. This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior.” He added: “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

The business records charges stem from things like invoices and checks that were deemed legal expenses in Trump Organization records when prosecutors say they were really reimbursements to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels. Daniels was threatening to go public with claims she had an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump. He says it never happened.

Prosecutors’ characterizations appear designed to combat suggestions by some pundits that the case — perhaps the only one that will go to trial before the November election — isn’t as serious as the other three prosecutions he’s facing. Those cases accuse Trump of trying to overturn the 2020 election he lost to President Joe Biden and illegally retaining classified documents after he left the White House.

Trump, meanwhile, sought to downplay the accusations while leaving the courtroom on Monday, calling it all a “bookkeeping” case and “a very minor thing.” But he, too, has said it’s all about an election — the one this November. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the case is part of a sweeping Democratic attempt to harm his chances at reclaiming the presidency.

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Trump’s defense comes into view

Trump’s attorney used his opening statement to attack the case as baseless, saying the former president did nothing illegal.

The attorney, Todd Blanche, challenged prosecutors’ claim that Trump agreed to pay Daniels to aid his campaign, saying Trump was trying to “protect his family, his reputation and his brand.”

Blanche indicated the defense will argue that after all the very point of a presidential campaign is to try to influence an election.

“It’s called democracy,” Blanche told jurors. “They put something sinister on this idea, as if it was a crime. You’ll learn it’s not.”

Blanche also portrayed the ledger entries at issue in the case as pro forma actions performed by a Trump Organization employee. Trump “had nothing to do with” the allegedly false business records, “except that he signed the checks, in the White House, while he was running the country,” Blanche said. And he argued that the records’ references to legal expenses weren’t false, since Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer at the time.

Prosecutors aim to put Trump at the center

The 34 counts in the indictment are related to the payment to Daniels. But prosecutors plan to introduce evidence about a payoff to another woman — former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who claimed a sexual encounter with Trump, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about Trump having a child out of wedlock. Trump says they were all lies.

Prosecutors said they will show Trump was at the center of the scheme to silence the women, telling jurors they will hear Trump in his voice talking about the plan to pay McDougal. Cohen arranged for the publisher of the National Enquirer supermarket tabloid to pay McDougal $150,000 but not print the story in a practice known as “catch-and-kill.”

Colangelo told jurors that prosecutors will play for them a recording Cohen secretly made during a meeting with Trump weeks before the 2016 election. In the recording, which first became public in 2018, Trump is heard saying: “What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”

Trump “desperately did not want this information about Karen McDougal to become public because he was worried about its effect on the election,” Colangelo said.

Cohen’s credibility in the spotlight

The defense’s opening statement previewed what will be a key strategy of the defense: trying to discredit Cohen, a Trump loyalist turned critic and expected star witness for the prosecution. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments in 2018 and and served prison time.

Whether jurors believe Cohen, who says he arranged the payments to the women at Trump’s direction, could make or break the case for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.

Trump’s lawyer highlighted Cohen’s criminal record, describing him as a serial liar who turned against Trump after he was not given a job in the administration and found himself in legal trouble. Blanche said Cohen’s “entire financial livelihood depends on President Trump’s destruction,” noting he hosts podcasts and has written books bashing his ex-boss.

“He has a goal and an obsession with getting Trump,” Blanche said. “I submit to you that he cannot be trusted.”

Anticipating the defense attacks on Cohen, the prosecution promised to be upfront about the “mistakes” the former Trump attorney has made. But Colangelo said “you can credit Michael Cohen’s testimony” despite his past.

“I suspect the defense will go to great lengths to get you to reject his testimony precisely because it is so damning,” the prosecutor said.

But up first: David Pecker

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker is the first witness for prosecutors, who say that Trump’s alleged scheme to conceal potentially damaging information from voters began with a 2015 Trump Tower meeting among the then-candidate, Pecker and Cohen. Pecker took the witness stand Monday before court broke for the day and his testimony is expected to continue Tuesday.

At the meeting, Pecker — a longtime Trump friend — agreed to aid Trump’s campaign by running favorable pieces about him, smearing his opponents, scouting unflattering stories about him and flagging them to Cohen for “catch-and-kill” deals. Those included the claims made by Daniels, McDougal and the former Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, prosecutors say. Trump says all were false.

Pecker will likely be asked about all the alleged efforts made by the Enquirer’s then-owner, American Media Inc., on Trump’s behalf. Federal prosecutors agreed in 2018 not to prosecute American Media in exchange for its cooperation in a campaign finance investigation that led to Cohen’s guilty plea, and the Federal Election Commission fined the company $187,500, calling the McDougal deal a “prohibited corporate in-kind contribution.”

Pecker’s brief turn on the stand Monday was mainly just about his background and other basic facts, though he did say the Enquirer practiced “checkbook journalism” — paying for stories — and that he had the final say on any story about a famous person.

‘The defendant’ or ’President Trump’?

The prosecutor referred to Trump during his opening statement as “the defendant.” Trump’s lawyer took a different tack, calling him “President Trump.”

“We will call him President Trump, out of respect for the office that he held,” Blanche said. At the same time, Trump’s lawyer sought to portray Trump as an everyman, describing him as a husband, father and fellow New Yorker.

“He’s, in some ways, larger than life. But he’s also here in this courtroom, doing what any of us would do: defending himself,” Blanche said.

Trump sat quietly while listening to opening statements, occasionally passing notes to his lawyers and whispering in their ears. But outside of the courtroom, he continued his pattern of trying to capitalize politically on the case that will require him to spend his days in a courtroom rather than on the campaign trail.

“This is what they’re trying to take me off the trail for. Checks being paid to a lawyer,” Trump said.

Isreal Easterday was 19 years old when he joined a mob of Donald Trump supporters in invading the Capitol. He used pepper spray to assault two Capitol police officers who were separately guarding the East Rotunda Doors.

Chief Judge James Boasberg cited Easterday’s youth as a reason for handing down a prison term — two years and six months — that was over five times lower than the Justice Department’s initial sentencing recommendation.

The judge said Easterday, who was homeschooled by his mother while living on a family farm, “may not have fully appreciated what was going on there” at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or recognized that the Confederate flag is a “symbol of rebellion.”

“January 6th was no less than an intent and an effort to replace by force who our country had voted for,” Boasberg said. “The mob was there because it hadn’t achieved what it wanted to at the ballot box.”

Easterday tearfully apologized to the officers whom he assaulted. He said he accepts responsibility for his actions on Jan. 6 and is “deeply ashamed” of himself.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Boasberg ordered Easterday to be detained to immediately begin serving his sentence. Some of Easterday’s supporters embraced each other as he was led out of the courtroom.

“I will not let you down,” Easterday told the judge after learning his sentence.

Prosecutors initially recommended sentencing Easterday to 12 years and seven months in prison. During the hearing, a prosecutor advocated for a sentence of 11 years and three months to reflect the court’s lower calculation of sentencing guidelines.

“With the 2024 presidential election approaching and many loud voices in the media and online continuing to sow discord and distrust, the potential for a repeat of January 6 looms ominously. The Court must sentence Easterday in a manner sufficient to deter him specifically, and others generally, from going down that road again,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

A jury convicted Easterday last October of nine counts, including charges that he assaulted Capitol police officers Joshua Pollitt and Miguel Acevedo with pepper spray that he acquired from other rioters.

Easterday traveled from his home in Bonnieville, Kentucky, to Washington, D.C., to attend then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on Jan. 6. A photograph captured Easterday holding a Confederate battle flag after he climbed a tree near the rally site.

After marching to the Capitol, Easterday joined other rioters in storming the East Plaza. He waved his flag as he pushed his through the mob to reach the the East Rotunda Doors, where he separately attacked the two officers.

Pollitt lost consciousness and collapsed in the mob after Easterday sprayed his unprotected face.

“Once Officer Pollitt regained consciousness, he was terrified by how vulnerable he had been,” prosecutors wrote. “The intense pain and vision loss continued for hours.”

A video shows Easterday smirking just before he sprayed Acevedo.

“Easterday’s smirk before deploying the second cannister, having observed the effects of his first spray against Officer Pollitt, demonstrates both his callousness towards other human beings and the enjoyment he received from engaging in violence,” prosecutors wrote.

Pollitt pulled other rioters into the Capitol as he entered the building. He spent roughly 13 minutes inside the Capitol.

Easterday, now 23, was arrested in December 2022 in Miami, where his boat was docked for a missionary trip to provide free bibles to churches in the Bahamas.

Prosecutors described the Confederate flag as a “symbol of treason, defiance of the law, and insurrection.” Easterday’s attorneys say he has led an “extremely sheltered life” at his Amish family’s farm in rural Kentucky and didn’t fully understand what the flag signifies.

“Unlike other defendants who posted messages on various social media platforms voicing their support for former President Trump and otherwise encouraging violent rhetoric, Isreal used this trip as an excuse to leave his family farm, which he never did until he was about 16 or 17 years old,” his lawyers wrote in a court filing.

More than 100 police officers were injured during the Jan. 6 attack. Over 1,350 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. More than 800 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-third receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years.

He promotes a $35 price cap for the medication for Americans on Medicare — in White House speeches, campaign stops and even at non-health care events around the country. His reelection team has flooded swing-state airwaves with ads mentioning it, in English and Spanish.

All that would seemingly add up to a sweeping political and economic impact. The reality is more complicated.

As his campaign tries to emphasize what it sees as an advantage over presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, Biden often overstates what those people who are eligible for the price cap once paid for insulin. It’s also not clear whether the number of Americans being helped will be enough to help sway November’s election, even in the most closely contested states that could come down to a few thousand votes.

“It is about political signaling in a campaign much more than it is about demonstrating for people that they benefit from the insulin cap,” said Drew Altman, president and CEO of KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues. “It is a way to make concrete the fact that you are the health care candidate.”

Many who are benefiting from the price cap were already getting insulin at reduced prices, were already Biden supporters, or both. Others who need reduced-price insulin, meanwhile, cannot get it because they do not have Medicare or private health insurance.

Biden’s campaign is emphasizing the president’s successful efforts to reduce insulin prices and contrasting that with Trump, who first ran for president promising to lower drug prices but took limited action in office.

“It’s a powerful and tangible contrast,” said Biden campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak. “And it’s one we are campaigning on early, aggressively, and across our coalition.”

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Roughly 8.4 million people in the United States control their blood sugar levels with insulin, and more than 1 million have Type 1 diabetes and could die without regular access to it. The White House says nearly 4 million older people qualify for the new, lower price.

The price cap for Medicare recipients was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which originally sought to cap insulin at $35 for all those with health insurance. When it passed in 2022, it was scaled back by congressional Republicans to apply only to older adults.

The Biden administration has also announced agreements with drugmakers Sanofi, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, to cap insulin co-payments at $35 for those with private insurance. They account for more than 90% of the U.S. insulin market.

But Biden says constantly that many people used to pay up to $400 monthly, which is an overstatement. A Department of Health and Human Services study released in December 2022 found that people with diabetes who were enrolled in Medicare or had private insurance paid an average of $452 annually, not monthly.

The high prices the president cites mostly affected people without health insurance. But the rates of the uninsured have fallen to record lows because of the Obama administration’s signature health care law and the Biden White House’s aggressive efforts to ensure those eligible to enroll are doing so more frequently.

So, in effect, one of the administration’s policy initiatives is undermining the economic argument for another.

That effort has not reached everyone, though.

Yanet Martinez who lives in Phoenix and supports Biden. She does not work or have health insurance, but gets insulin for around $16 per month thanks to steep discounts at her local clinic.

The lower prices only apply if her husband, a landscaper, does not make enough to exceed the monthly income limit. If he does, her insulin can jump to $500-plus, she said.

“I’ve heard people talk about the price of insulin going down. I’ve not seen it,” said Martinez, 42. “It should be uniform. There are a lot of people who don’t have any way to afford it and it makes things very difficult.”

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., is sponsoring bipartisan legislation to make the $35 insulin cap universal, even for people without health insurance. In the meantime, he said, what’s been accomplished with Medicare recipients and drugmakers agreeing to reduce their prices is “literally saving lives and saving people money.”

“This is good policy because it centers the people rather than the politics,” Warnock said. He said that as he travels Georgia, a pivotal swing state in November, people say “thank you for doing this for me, or for someone in my family.”

That includes people like Tommy Marshall, a 56-year-old financial services consultant in Atlanta, who has health insurance. He was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 45 and injects fast-acting insulin several times daily. He paid about $250 for four weeks to eight weeks worth of medication last November, but saw the price fall by half in February, after Novo Nordisk agreed to cut prices.

“If I was his political consultant, I’d be telling (Biden) to talk about it constantly,” said Marshall, a lifelong Democrat and longtime public advocate for cutting insulin prices, including for the advocacy group Protect Our Care Georgia.

Marshall said the price caps “have meaningful emotional resonance” and could sway a close election but also conceded, “You’re talking about 18- to 65-year-olds. I can just imagine there’s probably two or three other issues that are in front of this one.”

“Maybe someone sort of on-the-fence, he added “this could maybe sway them.”

Geoff Garin, a pollster for Biden’s reelection campaign, said the insulin cap is one of the president’s highest performing issues. He said the data was “clear, consistent and overwhelming.”

Rich Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, which has endorsed Biden, called the insulin cap a strong issue for the president among older voters.

“For the persuadables — and there are some still out there, believe it or not — drug costs are a very important factor,” said Fiesta, whose group has 4.4-million members and advocates for health and economic security for older people.

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Trump’s campaign did not respond to questions. But Theo Merkel, senior fellow at the conservative Paragon Health Institute, countered that the insulin price cut an example of “policies written to fit the talking points other than the other way around.”

Merkel, who was a Trump White House adviser on health policy, said manufacturers that have long made insulin prefer caps on how much the insured pay because it gives them more leverage to secure higher prices from insurance companies.

The president’s approval ratings on health care are among his highest on a range of issues, but still only 42% of U.S. adults approve of Biden’s handling of health care while 55% disapprove, according to a February poll from The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

KFF found in its own poll in December that that 59% of U.S. adults trust the Democratic Party to do a better job addressing health care affordability issues compared to 39% for Republicans, even if only 26% of respondents in the same poll said they knew about the insulin price cap.

“In political terms, the Democrats and Biden have an advantage on health care,” Altman said. “They’re pressing it.”

Trump leads Biden by 2 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, 46% to 44%, in the new NBC News poll

Yet when the ballot is expanded to five named candidates, Biden is the one with a 2-point advantage: Biden 39%, Trump 37%, Kennedy 13%, Jill Stein 3% and Cornel West 2%.

The big reason why is that the poll finds a greater share of Trump voters in the head-to-head matchup backing Kennedy in the expanded ballot. Fifteen percent of respondents who picked Trump the first time pick Kennedy in the five-way ballot, compared with 7% of those who initially picked Biden.

Also, Republican voters view Kennedy much more favorably (40% positive, 15% negative) than Democratic voters do (16% positive, 53% negative).

“At this stage, [Kennedy’s] appeal looks to be more with Trump than Biden voters,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt, who conducted the NBC News poll with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.

This finding, however, contrasts with the conventional political wisdom — as well as the results of other national polls — suggesting that a bigger third-party vote hurts Biden more.

The NBC News poll results on Kennedy’s impact are “different than other surveys,” said McInturff, the GOP pollster. “So there’s always two possibilities: One, it’s an outlier. … Or two, we’re going to be seeing more of this, and our survey is a harbinger of what’s to come.”

The Biden campaign has actively tried to peel support away from Kennedy. Most recently, Biden held an event Thursday with members of the Kennedy family who are endorsing the president over their relative.

Overall, the party is paying much closer attention to Kennedy than it has to past third-party candidates, mobilizing new super PACs and an arm of the Democratic National Committee focused on reducing the pull of his candidacy.

The NBC News poll was conducted April 12-16 of 1,000 registered voters nationwide — 891 contacted via cell phone — and the poll has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Presidential approval tracker: How popular is Joe Biden?
• Zelenskyy: ‘We will have a chance at victory’ thanks to weapons provided to Ukraine in new U.S. aid package
• How Trump could win at the Supreme Court even if his broad immunity argument is rejected

With overwhelming support, the $61 billion in aid for Ukraine delivered a strong showing of American backing as lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of U.S. support to the war-torn ally. Some lawmakers cheered on the House floor and waved blue-and-yellow flags of Ukraine.

The unusual process, with each bill having its own vote, allowed unique coalitions to form around the bills, pushing them forward. The whole package will go to the Senate, where passage in the coming days is nearly assured. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.

“We did our work here, and I think history will judge it well,” said embattled Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who is risking his own job to marshal the package to passage.

Biden, in a statement, thanked Johnson, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and the bipartisan coalition of lawmakers “who voted to put our national security first.”

“I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law and we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs,” the president said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said he was “grateful” to both parties in the House and “personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track,” he said on X.

“Thank you, America!” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

The weekend scene presented a striking display of congressional action after months of dysfunction and stalemate fueled by Republicans, who hold the majority but are deeply split over foreign aid, particularly for Ukraine as it fights Russia’s invasion. Johnson relied on Democratic support to ensure the military and humanitarian package won approval.

The morning opened with a somber and serious debate and unusual sense of purpose as Republican and Democratic leaders united to urge quick approval, saying that would ensure the United States supported its allies and remained a leader on the world stage. The House’s visitor galleries crowded with onlookers.

“The eyes of the world are upon us, and history will judge what we do here and now,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee

Passage through the House cleared away the biggest hurdle to Biden’s funding request, first made in October as Ukraine’s military supplies began to run low. The GOP-controlled House struggled for months over what to do, first demanding that any assistance be tied to policy changes at the U.S.-Mexico order, only to immediately reject a bipartisan Senate offer along those very lines.

Reaching an endgame has been an excruciating lift for Johnson that has tested both his resolve and his support among Republicans, with a small but growing number now openly urging his removal from the speaker’s office. Yet congressional leaders cast the votes as a turning point in history — an urgent sacrifice as U.S. allies are beleaguered by wars and threats from continental Europe to the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.

“Sometimes when you are living history, as we are today, you don’t understand the significance of the actions of the votes that we make on this House floor, of the effect that it will have down the road,” said New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “This is a historic moment.”

Opponents, particularly the hard-right Republicans from Johnson’s majority, argued that the U.S. should focus on the home front, addressing domestic border security and the nation’s rising debt load, and they warned against spending more money, which largely flows to American defense manufacturers, to produce weaponry used overseas.

Still, Congress has seen a stream of world leaders visit in recent months, from Zelenskyy to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, all but pleading with lawmakers to approve the aid. Globally, the delay left many questioning America’s commitment to its allies.

At stake has also been one of Biden’s top foreign policy priorities — halting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advance in Europe. After engaging in quiet talks with Johnson, the president quickly endorsed Johnson’s plan, paving the way for Democrats to give their rare support to clear the procedural hurdles needed for a final vote.

“We have a responsibility, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans to defend democracy wherever it is at risk,” Jeffries said during the debate.

TikTok Apr 20

The House votes for possible TikTok ban in the US, but don't expect the app to go away anytime soon

news Apr 19

Ukraine war updates: Ukraine says it downed strategic bomber for the first time; 8 killed in major attack by Russia

While aid for Ukraine will likely win a majority in both parties, a significant number of progressive Democrats are expected to vote against the bill aiding Israel as they demand an end to the bombardment of Gaza that has killed thousands of civilians.

At the same time, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has loomed large over the fight, weighing in from afar via social media statements and direct phone calls with lawmakers as he tilts the GOP to a more isolationist stance with his “America First” brand of politics.

Ukraine’s defense once enjoyed robust, bipartisan support in Congress, but as the war enters its third year, a bulk of Republicans oppose further aid. Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., offered an amendment to zero out the money, but it was rejected.

At one point, Trump’s opposition essentially doomed the bipartisan Senate proposal on border security. This past week, Trump also issued a social media post that questioned why European nations were not giving more money to Ukraine, though he spared Johnson from criticism and said Ukraine’s survival was important.

Still, the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus has derided the legislation as the “America Last” foreign wars package and urged lawmakers to defy Republican leadership and oppose it because the bills do not include border security measures.

Johnson’s hold on the speaker’s gavel has also grown more tenuous in recent days as three Republicans, led by Greene, supported a “motion to vacate” that can lead to a vote on removing the speaker. Egged on by far-right personalities, she is also being joined by a growing number of lawmakers including Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who is urging Johnson to voluntarily step aside, and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.

The package includes several Republican priorities that Democrats endorse, or at least are willing to accept. Those include proposals that allow the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine; impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl; and legislation to require the China-based owner of the popular video app TikTok to sell its stake within a year or face a ban in the United States.

Still, the all-out push to get the bills through Congress is a reflection not only of politics, but realities on the ground in Ukraine. Top lawmakers on national security committees, who are privy to classified briefings, have grown gravely concerned about the situation in recent weeks. Russia has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs — which allow planes to drop them from a safe distance — to pummel Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition.

The decision by House Republicans to include TikTok as part of a larger foreign aid package, a priority for President Joe Biden with broad congressional support for Ukraine and Israel, fast-tracked the ban after an earlier version had stalled in the Senate. A standalone bill with a shorter, six-month selling deadline passed the House in March by an overwhelming bipartisan vote as both Democrats and Republicans voiced national security concerns about the app’s owner, the Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd.

The modified measure, passed by a 360-58 vote, now goes to the Senate after negotiations that lengthened the timeline for the company to sell to nine months, with a possible additional three months if a sale is in progress.

Legal challenges could extend that timeline even further. The company has indicated that it would likely go to court to try and block the law if it passes, arguing it would deprive the app’s millions of users of their First Amendment rights.

TikTok has lobbied hard against the legislation, pushing the app’s 170 million U.S. users — many of whom are young — to call Congress and voice opposition. But the ferocity of the pushback angered lawmakers on Capitol Hill, where there is broad concern about Chinese threats to the U.S. and where few members use the platform themselves.

“We will not stop fighting and advocating for you,” TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in a video that was posted on the platform last month and directed toward the app’s users. “We will continue to do all we can, including exercising our legal rights, to protect this amazing platform that we have built with you.”

The bill’s quick path through Congress is extraordinary because it targets one company and because Congress has taken a hands-off approach to tech regulation for decades. Lawmakers had failed to act despite efforts to protect children online, safeguard users’ privacy and make companies more liable for content posted on their platforms, among other measures. But the TikTok ban reflects widespread concerns from lawmakers about China.

Members of both parties, along with intelligence officials, have worried that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over American user data or direct the company to suppress or boost TikTok content favorable to its interests. TikTok has denied assertions that it could be used as a tool of the Chinese government and has said it has not shared U.S. user data with Chinese authorities.

The U.S. government has not publicly provided evidence that shows TikTok shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government or tinkered with the company’s popular algorithm, which influences what Americans see.

The company has good reason to think a legal challenge could be successful, having seen some success in previous legal fights over its operations in the U.S.. In November, a federal judge blocked a Montana law that would ban TikTok use across the state after the company and five content creators who use the platform sued.

In 2020, federal courts blocked an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump to ban TikTok after the company sued on the grounds that the order violated free speech and due process rights. His administration brokered a deal that would have had U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in TikTok. The sale never went through for a number of reasons; one was China, which imposed stricter export controls on its technology providers.

Dozens of states and the federal government have put in place TikTok bans on government devices. Texas’ ban was challenged last year by The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which argued in a lawsuit that the policy was impeding academic freedom because it extended to public universities. In December, a federal judge ruled in favor of the state.

Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union have backed the app. “Congress cannot take away the rights of over 170 million Americans who use TikTok to express themselves, engage in political advocacy, and access information from around the world,” said Jenna Leventoff, a lawyer for the group.

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Since mid-March, TikTok has spent $5 million on TV ads opposing the legislation, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking firm. The ads have included a range of content creators, including a nun, extolling the positive impacts of the platform on their lives and arguing a ban would trample on the First Amendment. The company has also encouraged its users to contact Congress, and some lawmakers have received profanity-laced calls.

“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually,” said Alex Haurek, a spokesman for the company.

California Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat, voted against the legislation. He said he thinks there could have been less restrictive ways to go after the company that wouldn’t result in a total ban or threaten free speech.

“I think it’s not going to be well received,” Khanna said. “It’s a sign of the Beltway being out of touch with where voters are.”

Nadya Okamoto, a content creator who has roughly 4 million followers on TikTok, said she has been having conversations with other creators who are experiencing “so much anger and anxiety” about the bill and how it’s going to impact their lives. The 26-year-old, whose company “August” sells menstrual products and is known for her advocacy around destigmatizing menstrual periods, makes most of her income from TikTok.

“This is going to have real repercussions,” she said.

___

The vote of 60-34 sends the bill to President Joe Biden, who has championed it. The legislation extends Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, for two more years, according to NBC News.

The final vote came after the Senate defeated six amendments from progressive and conservative senators who said the spying powers are too broad and demanded protections for Americans’ civil liberties and privacy. The Biden administration and FISA supporters had warned that even a brief lapse could have a detrimental impact on the intelligence-gathering process.

Senators just missed the midnight deadline to reauthorize the FISA Section 702 statute but voted to reauthorize it minutes later. Had any amendments been adopted, the bill would have been sent back to the House, potentially forcing a lengthy lapse of the law.

“In the nick of time, bipartisanship has prevailed here in the Senate,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

“It wasn’t easy, people had many different views, but we all know one thing: letting FISA expire would have been dangerous. It’s an important part of our national security to stop acts of terror, drug trafficking, and violent extremism,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Thank you to all my Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their good work in getting this done.”

The House passed a two-year FISA renewal last week after defeating, by the slimmest of margins, an amendment to require a warrant to search through the communications of Americans as part of data collected while surveilling foreigners. Senators delayed a vote for days by pushing for amendments to make changes to the bill.

The bill’s passage came on the heels of a pitched battle between the U.S. intelligence community and an unusual coalition of progressive and conservative civil liberties advocates, who argued that the powers are too expansive and impinge on the privacy of Americans.

“It’s important that people understand how sweeping this bill is,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee and outspoken proponent of privacy protections. “Something was inserted at the last minute, which would basically compel somebody like a cable guy to spy for the government. They would force the person to do it and there would be no appeal.”

In a rare break with Schumer and Biden, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the president pro tempore, opposed the bill, saying: “I have strong concerns that this expansion of FISA Section 702 authorities would allow for increased abuse and misuse of the law — infringing on the rights of Americans here at home.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner, D-Va., pushed back on that and other criticisms of a House amendment added to the FISA reauthorization bill, arguing that it “is narrowly focused on a significant intelligence gap,” but some members like Wyden worry it could be abused.

“Contrary to what some have been saying, it expressly excludes coffee shops, bars, restaurants, residences, hotels, libraries, recreational facilities and a whole litany of similar establishments,” Warner said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “It also absolutely would not, as some critics have maintained, allow the U.S. government to compel, for example, a janitor working in an office building in Northern Virginia to spy for the intelligence community.”

Warner said that allowing FISA to expire would have put the U.S. in “uncharted territory” as companies who work with the government to provide intelligence might have stopped doing so without a reauthorization.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said that “60% of the president’s daily brief is composed of 702-derived materials, so this is absolutely critical.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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Democrats got 37,000 Virginians to sign a petition for Youngkin to sign the Right to Contraception Act approved by the Democrat-controlled Virginia Senate and House of Delegates.

Guaranteeing access to all contraception is crucial, co-sponsor Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-District 15, said. Supporters of the measure fear the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn precedents that protect contraception much like the Dobbs decision stripped away abortion rights in many states.

“This particular measure will ensure that Virginians have those protections in place should federal action happen,” Hashmi said. 

The bill defined contraception, prevented any restrictions and established enforcement by civil penalty.

Instead of signing the bill, Youngkin sent back a substitute measure that was not a new law but a policy statement that Virginians have a right to access contraception under current Supreme Court precedents.

“We know that we need more teeth in terms of having protections in place, so when the governor gutted the legislation, he really made it entirely meaningless,” Hashmi said. “It serves no purpose to protect reproductive health care and contraception.”

In Wednesday’s reconvened legislative session, the House and Senate let Youngkin’s proposed substitute die. The original bill is back in his hands.

“Gov. Youngkin has been consistently clear that he supports access to contraception but desires to protect Virginians’ constitutional rights and religious liberties,” a spokesman told News4.

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“If he doesn’t sign the bill, then he is working against the wishes of over 80% of Virginians who do support the right to contraception,” Hashmi said.

“So, I hope that the governor is listening, listening to Virginians, listening to the people he represents and that he is going to do the right thing by signing the legislation,” Hashmi said.

Youngkin has until May 17 to decide.

Scott Miller, who helped lead a Proud Boys chapter for Maryland and Washington, D.C., coordinated with other group members before they invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to federal prosecutors. Miller, 33, attacked police seven different times with weapons, including a bottle, a stick and poles.

Notes found on Miller’s cellphone indicate that his white supremacist ideology and antisemitic views influenced his decision to storm the Capitol, a prosecutor wrote in a court filing. He expressed his intent to “fight” in order to protect “White America,” the filing says.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing former President Donald Trump’s election interference case in Washington, said an attack like the Jan. 6 insurrection “can happen again” in the U.S.

“Extremism is alive and well in this country,” she said before sentencing Miller to five years and six months behind bars.

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Miller apologized for assaulting police at the Capitol. He acknowledged that he embraced extremist ideologies before the Capitol riot, but told the judge that he is “reforming” himself.

“I am not a violent or hateful person despite some of the things you’ve seen,” he told Chutkan.

Investigators found Nazi paraphernalia and memes promoting racially motivated violence when they searched Miller’s Millersville, Maryland, home and his phone. A photo found on Miller’s phone shows him posing and smiling next to a news story describing the drowning of migrants, prosecutors said.

Authorities also found a shirt that Miller wore for Halloween to dress up as Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, a Black man, in the summer of 2020. Miller posed for a photo wearing the costume while kneeling on the floor. Chauvin pressed a knee on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes.

Chutkan said the extent of Miller’s violent ideology and the racist, antisemitic material stored on his phone left her questioning whether Miller is genuinely remorseful or capable of such a rapid transformation.

“They don’t just arrive there by some random algorithm,” said the judge, who read aloud some of the most hateful messages.

Chutkan has been one of the toughest punishers of Jan. 6 defendants. Miller’s prison sentence is the longest that she has handed down so far in 45 cases, according to an Associated Press review of court records.

Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of five years and 11 months for Miller, who was arrested in December 2022. He pleaded guilty in January to assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon.

“Miller’s participation in the riot – a riot that disrupted the peaceful transfer of power – was particularly egregious, given his multiple and repeated violent attacks on police officers and his coordination and planning with other members of the Proud Boys,” Justice Department prosecutor Kaitlin Klamann wrote.

In 2019, Miller was arrested on charges of disrupting a “Drag Queen Story Time” for children at a library in his Maryland hometown, The Baltimore Sun reported. Miller was accused of shouting at a performer and shoving a library board member who tried to intervene.

“While these charges were ultimately dropped, Miller’s actions on this occasion serve as further proof that Miller is willing to use violence to enforce his personal beliefs,” Klamann wrote.

In the days leading up to the Jan. 6 riot, Miller and other Proud Boys members discussed their plans for that day and the possibility of violence, prosecutors said. Miller arrived at the Capitol after the riot erupted, wearing gloves with plastic knuckles, ski goggles and a military-style backpack.

He joined the mob attacking police officers guarding a tunnel leading to an entrance on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where some of the most brutal violence occurred. Picking up a pole, he charged at police and repeatedly struck an officer with it.

After throwing several objects at police, Miller picked up another pole and struck at least two officers several times. He also grabbed a shield from police officers and handed it to other rioters in the crowd outside the Capitol.

Miller is ashamed of his conduct on Jan. 6 and cut ties with the Proud Boys about a month after the riot, defense attorney Elizabeth Mullin said in a court filing.

“He disavows the group and the principles it stands for,” she wrote.

Mullin said there is no evidence that Miller planned to attack police.

“Regrettably, like so many others there that day, he became carried away by the frenzy of the crowd, which had been whipped into a fervor by Mr. Trump and the other rally speakers,” she wrote.

The person, identified as Maxwell Azzarello, set himself aflame after walking into Collect Pond Park around 1:30 p.m. Friday, in the designated protest area across the street from the courthouse in lower Manhattan where Trump’s trial is taking place, according to NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.

He started shuffling around his clothes and opened a backpack, taking out pamphlets and throwing them around the small park. Azzarello then took out a cannister, poured a liquid accelerant on himself, and lit himself on fire, Maddrey said. Police believe the accelerant was a type of alcohol-based substance used for cleaning.

He was able to take a few steps while on fire and walked into a police barrier, then fell down, according to Maddrey. Video appeared to show the moments after the self-immolation, as Azzarello laid on the ground burning, at times seemingly seizing.

There was already a heavy NYPD presence already outside the building due to the high-profile nature of the trial, and officers rushed to get what appeared to be a fire extinguisher to douse the flames, while others tried to use jackets to cover the fire. Their first attempt to put out the blaze was unsuccessful, and video appeared to show the man trying to sit up as onlookers shrieked in shock.

The fire was ultimately put out minutes later after police and FDNY brought a larger extinguisher, leaving a smoky scene outside court as a gaggle of reporters and horrified witnesses looked on.

The man was taken away by EMS to a burn unit at NewYork-Presbyterian Cornell Medical Center in critical condition, the FDNY said. He was later declared deceased by hospital staff, the NYPD said. No time of death was given by police.

Six other first responders, including at least three NYPD officers and a court officer, also suffered minor injuries while responding to the incident, according to the fire department.

The bomb squad swept the park after the incident looking for any possible devices. Nothing was found, police said.

It came as a full jury of 12 people and six alternates had been seated in the case against Trump, the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The trial will place Trump in a Manhattan courtroom for weeks, forcing him to juggle his dual role as criminal defendant and political candidate against the backdrop of his tightly contested race against President Joe Biden.

For more coverage of the Trump trial, click here.

Who is the man who set himself on fire?

Maxwell Azzarello, a 37-year-old from St. Augustine, Florida, came to New York City earlier in the week, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a press conference. While it wasn’t clear when exactly he arrived in the city, police said he was in Florida as recently as April 13.

His family was unaware he had traveled to NYC, Kenny said. Azzarello is originally from Long Island.

Police said it is believed he walked over from Leonard Street, adjacent to Collect Pond Park, and set himself on fire soon after. It was not immediately clear if he drove to the area of lower Manhattan or had taken some form of public transit.

“This gentleman did not breach security protocols. The park was opened to the public. But, of course, we’re going to take a look at everything and with the magnitude of what’s going on around right here, we’ll reassess our security with our federal partners,” said Maddrey.

Azzarello was said to have thrown pamphlets around before self-immolating. According to Kenny, the pamphlets were “propaganda-based” and involved a conspiracy theory “in regards to Ponzi schemes.” They also contained theories that about local educational institutes and the Mafia.

Police said it did not appear Azzarello carried out the incident with any intention of targeting Trump supporters or protesters, and didn’t seemingly have any intentions beyond promoting the conspiracy theories detailed in the pamphlets.

It was not clear whether Azzarello said anything before lighting himself on fire, but police didn’t have any information leading them to believe he did. The department did comb through his social media and found he posted something online in advance that was connected to the incident, which shared more information about the conspiracy theories the pamphlets touted.

The vast conspiracy theory he described online involved the American government, a university, political figures and major financial players. His actions did not appear to be a clear direct response to what the Trump trial going on inside inside the courtroom, but rather were done at that particular place and time in order to draw media attention to his conspiracy claims.

Kenny said it did not appear Azzarello had any criminal history in New York. Police records show he was arrested on four misdemeanor charges including criminal mischief, property damage, disturbing the peace in Florida in Aug. 2023

Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, niece of former President John F. Kennedy and sister of the current presidential candidate, delivered the endorsements in Philadelphia by calling Biden “my hero.”

“We want to make crystal clear our feelings that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four more years,” she said.

She never directly mentioned her brother, but insisted “there are only two candidates with any chance of winning the presidency” this year, framing the campaign as a choice between Biden and Trump, with no room for a third party contender.

Biden, who keeps a bust of Robert F. Kennedy in the Oval Office, said the endorsements were “an incredible honor.” He said Trump, the former president who is the presumptive Republican nominee, was a threat to America’s democratic traditions and that “now it’s time to keep going and not slow down because there’s so much at stake.”

The decision to highlight the Kennedy family’s support more than six months from Election Day is an indication of how seriously Biden’s team is taking a long shot candidate using his last name’s lingering Democratic magic to siphon support from the incumbent.

Kennedy Jr. played down the endorsements, writing on social media that his family was “divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other.” He said his campaign was about “healing America.”

Given Kennedy Jr.’s quixotic political positions and the expectation this year’s campaign will be decided by thin margins, both Democrats and Republicans worry that he could play the role of spoiler.

Biden used the campaign event, which capped a three-day swing in a battleground state critical to his reelection effort, to keep up the pressure on Trump.

“Donald Trump’s vision is one of anger, hate, revenge and retribution,” Biden said, adding, “I have a very different view of America, one of hope and optimism.”

After the event, Biden thanked about three dozen supporters and volunteers who were gearing up to call voters or knock on doors for his campaign.

“What you’re doing here is bigger than me, bigger than you, bigger than all of us combined. It’s about what kind of country our kids are going to live in,” Biden said.

He protrayed the election as less about keeping himself in office than keeping Trump out, saying the race was important “not because I’m running” but because of “what happens if we lose this election.”

The Kennedy family endorsements are hardly a surprise. Members of the prominent Democratic family have been vocal that they don’t see eye to eye politically with Kennedy Jr., who started as a protest primary challenger to Biden in the Democratic Party and now is running as an independent. Biden last month hosted more than 30 members of Kennedy’s extended family at the White House for St. Patrick’s Day, when family members posed with the president in the Rose Garden and Oval Office.

Later, Biden and members of the Kennedy family were to meet with supporters at a campaign event, and some Kennedy were planning to make calls to voters and knock on doors on Biden’s behalf.

Several notable members of the family were not endorsing, including Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia, and nonprofit leader Maria Shriver, which the Biden campaign said was due to their nonpolitical professional roles.

Shriver, however, has been a conspicuous White House guest recently, attending the State of the Union and speaking at a women’s history month reception last month.

Bernard Tamas of Valdosta State University, an expert on third parties, said it was unclear whether Kennedy Jr. would pull more votes from Democrats or Republicans.

“He is pro-science when it comes to the environment, but a conspiracy theorist when it comes to vaccines,” Tamas said.

Kennedy Jr.’s lack of a clear political lane limits his potential impact on the election, Tamas said, but Democrats appear to be more concerned because his last name could lead some voters to believe that he is carrying on his family’s political legacy.

Other than that, Tamas said, “I don’t know what else he has to attract progressive voters.”

Kennedy Jr. has spoken publicly in the past about disagreeing with his family on many issues, but maintains it can be done in “friendly” ways. After a super political action committee supporting his campaign produced a TV ad during the Super Bowl that relied heavily on imagery from John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential run, Kennedy Jr. apologized to his relatives on the X social media platform, saying he was sorry if the spot “caused anyone in my family pain.”

The Democratic National Committee has hired a communications team to combat the appeal of third-party candidates, Kennedy Jr. first among them. The DNC also filed a recent Federal Election Commission complaint against Kennedy Jr.’s campaign, charging that it coordinated too closely with an affiliated super PAC to get his name on the presidential ballot in some states.

Kennedy Jr. is also viewed warily by the Trump campaign. While Trump has released a recent video saying, “If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden,” he has sometimes criticized Kennedy Jr. as being more “radical left” than Biden.

Biden’s travels across Pennsylvania this week were an opportunity to reconnect with his roots, starting on Tuesday in Scranton, where he lived until age 10. He swung by his childhood home, a three-story colonial that his family rented, and reminisced about attending Mass at St. Paul’s.

In Pittsburgh, he called for higher tariffs on steel and aluminum from China to protect U.S. industry from what he called unfair competition.

But even that event involved some nostalgia, as Biden recalled an endorsement from the steelworkers when he was “a 29-year-old kid” from Delaware running for U.S. Senate.

“It changed everything,” he said.

The court quickly turned to selecting alternate jurors, with the process on track to wrap up by the end of the week. Prosecutors could begin presenting their case early next week.

The jury of seven men and five women includes a sales professional, a software engineer, a security engineer, a teacher, a speech therapist, multiple lawyers, an investment banker and a retired wealth manager.

The first-ever trial of a former American president is unfolding in New York during this year’s race for the White House, meaning the presumptive Republican nominee will spend his days in court confronted by salacious and unflattering testimony about his personal life while simultaneously campaigning to reclaim the office he held for four years.

He’s made clear his determination to use his legal jeopardy, already a central issue in the race against Democratic incumbent Joe Biden, to his advantage. After a full day of jury selection, he complained to reporters that he should have been out campaigning but was in court instead for what he said was a “very unfair trial.”

“Everybody’s outraged by it,” he said. “You know the whole world’s watching this New York scam.”

Jury selection proceeded at a plodding pace earlier Thursday when two jurors were dismissed, one after expressing doubt about her ability to be fair following disclosure of details about her identity and the other over concerns that some of his answers in court may have been inaccurate.

But lawyers who began the day with only five jurors settled on the remaining seven in quick succession, along with one alternate. Judge Juan Merchan has said his goal is to have six alternates.

The process of picking a jury is a critical phase in any criminal trial but especially so when the defendant is a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee. Prospective jurors have been grilled on their social media posts, personal lives and political views as the lawyers and judge search for any bias that would prevent them from being impartial.

Inside the court, there’s broad acknowledgment of the futility in trying to find jurors without knowledge of Trump. A prosecutor this week said lawyers were not looking for people who had been “living under a rock for the past eight years.”

To that end, multiple jurors chosen for the panel acknowledged having personal opinions of Trump or his presidency.

One juror, a man who works in investment banking, earlier described himself as “ambivalent” about Trump, adding, “I might not like some of his policies, but there has been some good” for the country.

A woman picked for the jury said she thought Trump seemed “very selfish and self serving,” adding, “I don’t really appreciate that from any public servant.” Defense lawyers were out of peremptory strikes, which would allow them to dismiss a juror without giving a reason.

The trial centers on a $130,000 payment that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, made to porn actor Stormy Daniels to prevent her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump from becoming public in the final days of the 2016 race.

Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of the payments in internal records when his company reimbursed Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2018 and is expected to be a star witness for the prosecution.

Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He could get up to four years in prison if convicted, though it’s not clear that the judge would opt to put him behind bars. Trump would almost certainly appeal any conviction.

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Trump faces four criminal cases, but it’s not clear that any others will reach trial before the November election. Appeals and legal wrangling have caused delays in the other three cases charging Trump with plotting to overturn the 2020 election results and with illegally hoarding classified documents.

The jury selection process picked up momentum Tuesday with the selection of seven jurors. But on Thursday, Merchan revealed in court that one of the seven, a cancer nurse, had “conveyed that after sleeping on it overnight she had concerns about her ability to be fair and impartial in this case.”

And though jurors’ names are being kept confidential, the woman told the judge and the lawyers that she had doubts after she said aspects of her identity had been made public.

“Yesterday alone I had friends, colleagues and family push things to my phone regarding questioning my identity as a juror,” she said. “I don’t believe at this point that I can be fair and unbiased and let the outside influences not affect my decision making in the courtroom.”

A second seated juror was dismissed after prosecutors raised concerns that he may not have been honest in answering a jury selection question by saying that he had never been accused or convicted of a crime.

The IT professional was summoned to court to answer questions after prosecutors said they found an article about a person with the same name who had been arrested in the 1990s for tearing down posters pertaining to the political right in suburban Westchester County.

A prosecutor also disclosed that a relative of the man may have been involved in a deferred prosecution agreement in the 1990s with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting Trump’s case.

Because the juror was questioned Thursday at the judge’s bench, off-microphone and out of earshot of reporters, it was not known whether the man confirmed or denied that either instance was connected to him.

After dismissing from the jury the nurse who had already been selected, Merchan ordered journalists in court not to report prospective jurors’ answers to questions about their current and former employers.

“We just lost, probably, what probably would have been a very good juror for this case, and the first thing that she said was she was afraid and intimidated by the press, all the press, and everything that had happened,” Merchan said.

In other developments, prosecutors asked for Trump to be held in contempt over a series of social media posts this week.

The district attorney’s office on Monday sought a $3,000 fine for Trump for three Truth Social posts they said violated the judge’s gag order limiting what he can say publicly about witnesses. Since then, prosecutors said Trump made seven additional posts that they believe violate the order.

Several of the posts involved an article that referred to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen as a “serial perjurer,” and one from Wednesday repeated a claim by a Fox News host that liberal activists were lying to get on the jury, said prosecutor Christopher Conroy.

Trump lawyer Emil Bove said Cohen “has been attacking President Trump in public statements,” and Trump was just replying.

The judge already scheduled a hearing for next week on the prosecution’s request for contempt sanctions over Trump’s posts.

Several measures introduced and passed in the House and Senate seek to both publicly condemn Iran and punish the Islamic Republic financially. Lawmakers have denounced Iran’s actions, which came in response to a suspected Israeli strike weeks earlier on an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed two Iranian generals.

“The world is on fire, and history will judge us for our action,” said Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, during a news conference Tuesday.

The swift, bipartisan condemnation of Iran has put on sharp display the durability of American support for Israel, even amid growing partisan division over how the country is handling its more than six-month war with Hamas.

The House passed nearly a dozen bills by Wednesday that would, among other things, issue a slate of new sanctions and other financial restrictions against Iran and its leaders. Other legislation looks to prevent current Iranian officials sanctioned from evading those penalties and urge the European Union to “expeditiously” designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization as the U.S. has already done.

Iran Apr 17

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‘Prelude to World War III': World leaders react to Iran's air attack against Israel

On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday advanced five bills, including ones that targeted Iran for its human rights record and would require sanctions on ports and refineries that receive and process Iranian oil.

“Iran’s direct attack on Israel this week underscores the need to further cut off the Iranian regime’s key revenue streams,” Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said in a statement. “I urge my colleagues in the Senate to support this bill — which has already passed the House — so that we can send it to President Biden’s desk immediately.”

A number of the bills had passed the House weeks before Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel in October but have been stalled in the Senate committee. An Israeli offensive in Gaza has since caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,000 people, according to local health officials. Israel’s conduct of the war has revealed the depth of unease among U.S. lawmakers as concerns over the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza have caused even some of President Joe Biden’s closest allies to threaten conditioning future aid to Israel.

Congressional Democrats have been reluctant to challenge Biden’s handling of the ongoing conflict and related regional tensions that have taken shape, mindful that criticism could further weaken Biden in his reelection campaign against former President Donald Trump.

But the attack on Saturday has proven to consolidate public support for the Biden administration’s quick response as it ordered U.S. forces to help Israel down “nearly all” the 300 drones and missiles that were headed its way.

It also comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., released legislation Wednesday that would provide $95 billion in aid collectively to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. The aid package had been held up for months over Republican opposition to continuing wartime funding for Ukraine as it battles Russia. Iran’s attack on Israel added urgency to Johnson’s plans to bring the issue to the floor for a vote.

While the measures targeting Iran have received overwhelming support — with the series of House bills mostly passing with at least 300 votes — there has been a quiet but growing dissent among progressive Democratic lawmakers in both chambers, who warn that legislative efforts could risk further escalation in the Middle East.

“Following last weekend’s unprecedented response by Iran to Israel’s attack on its consulate, the Republican Majority is explicitly leveraging a series of bills to further escalate tensions in the Middle East,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said in a statement Tuesday. “This is a blatant attempt to distract from their own incompetence.”

The strike on Saturday marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israel has vowed to retaliate against Iran, risking further expanding the shadow war between the two foes into a direct conflict.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, condemned Iran’s attack in a statement but called on his colleagues to respond cautiously. He warned that further U.S. action against Iran could lead to a dangerous escalation that could drag America into a war in the Middle East.

“Cooler heads must now prevail to ensure peace in the region and security for Israel,” Sanders said.

While in Pittsburgh, Biden spoke about his uncle, 2nd Lt. Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., aiming to draw a contrast with reports that Trump, while president, had called fallen service members “suckers” and “losers.”

Finnegan, the brother of Biden’s mother, “got shot down in New Guinea,” Biden said. The president said Finnegan’s body was never recovered and “there used to be a lot of cannibals” in the area. Biden, who also relayed a version of the story earlier in the day after stopping by the memorial in Scranton, was off on the particulars.

The U.S. government’s record of missing service members does not attribute Finnegan’s death to hostile action or indicate cannibals were any factor.

“We have a tradition in my family my grandfather started,” said Biden, a toddler at the time of his uncle’s death in 1944. “When you visit a gravesite of a family member — it’s going to sound strange to you — but you say three Hail Marys. And that’s what I was doing at the site.”

Referring to Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Biden said, “That man doesn’t deserve to have been the commander in chief for my son, my uncle.”

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Biden’s elder son, Beau, died in 2015 of brain cancer, which the president has stated he believes was linked to his son’s yearlong deployment in Iraq, where the military used burn pits to dispose of waste.

Some former Trump officials have claimed the then-president disparaged fallen service members as “suckers” and “losers” when, they said, he did not want to travel in 2018 to a cemetery for American war dead in France. Trump denied the allegation, saying, “What animal would say such a thing?”

According to the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Biden’s uncle, known by the family as “Bosie,” died on May 14, 1944, while a passenger on an Army Air Forces plane that, “for unknown reasons,” was forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea. “Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard,” the agency states in its listing of Finnegan. “Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash.”

The agency said Finnegan was a passenger on the plane when it was lost. “He has not been associated with any remains recovered from the area after the war and is still unaccounted-for,” according to the agency.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates did not address the discrepancy between the agency’s records and Biden’s account when he issued a statement on the matter.

“President Biden is proud of his uncle’s service in uniform,“ Bates said, adding Finnegan ”lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea.”

Biden “highlighted his uncle’s story as he made the case for honoring our ‘sacred commitment … to equip those we send to war and take care of them and their families when they come home,’ and as he reiterated that the last thing American veterans are is ‘suckers’ or ‘losers.’”

The Democratic president also misstated when uncles enlisted in the military, saying they joined “when D-Day occurred, the next day,” in June 1944, when they actually joined weeks after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

After Finnegan’s death, a local newspaper published a telegram from Gen. Douglas MacArthur expressing condolences to Finnegan’s family:

“Dear Mr. Finnegan: In the death of your son, Second Lieutenant Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., while in service of his country, you have my profound sympathy. Your consolation may be that he died in the uniform of our beloved country, serving in a crusade from which a better world for all will come. Very faithfully, Douglas MacArthur.”

Biden, in his 2008 book “Promises to Keep,” made only brief mention of his uncle, describing him as flyer who was killed in New Guinea.

The update comes more than a week after the lawmaker’s office referred to “his improvement,” a “good” prognosis and the expectation of a “full recovery.”

“Congressman Donald M. Payne, Jr. suffered a cardiac episode based on complications from his diabetes last week,” his office said in a statement Wednesday. “Today, he is in stable condition at a local hospital and continues to be under doctor’s care. While we hope for a full recovery, we ask everyone to keep him in your prayers.”

The new statement also follows a New Jersey Globe report that said Payne remains unconscious. Asked about that report, a spokesperson for Payne directed NBC News to the office’s recent statement.

The latest characterization paints a more stark image of the severity of Payne’s condition than the first statement put out on April 9, days after the incident.

“Currently, he is recovering in the hospital as doctors conduct routine exams to monitor and observe his improvement,” the earlier statement said. “The Congressman’s prognosis is good and he is expected to make a full recovery.”

Payne, 65, is running unopposed in the state’s June 4 Democratic primary. He has represented New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District, which covers parts of Essex, Hudson, and Union counties, since 2012. His father was the first Black person to be elected to Congress in New Jersey; he died of cancer in 2012.

With narrow margins in the House, Payne’s absence can have a significant impact on floor votes.

The current party breakdown is 218 Republicans to 213 Democrats, but when Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., resigns this weekend that will change to 217-213. With Payne absent, the maximum number of Democrats voting would be lowered to 212.

In a 217-213 scenario, Republicans can afford only one GOP defection. But if it’s a 217-212 breakdown, they can afford two defections and still pass legislation without help from Democrats.

Kyle Stewart reported from Washington, Zoë Richards reported from New York.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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Prosecutors and the defense team whittled down a pool of nearly 200 people to 12 jurors and an alternate after grilling them on their personal history, political views, social media posts, and ability to remain impartial despite any opinions they might have about the polarizing former president.

Seven people were sworn in Tuesday but two of them ended up being removed on Thursday for possible conflicts. Later Thursday, the remaining seven jurors were sworn in, plus one alternate.

The trial is expected to last as long as eight weeks.

The jurors in Trump’s New York criminal trial

Juror 1

A man who lives in West Harlem and works in sales. He is married, likes to do “anything outdoorsy,” and gets news from The New York Times, Fox News and MSNBC.

Juror 2

A man who works in investment banking, follows Twitter as well as Truth Social posts from Trump and said, “I don’t have any beliefs that might prevent me from being fair or impartial.”

Juror 3

A young man who has lived in Chelsea for five years, works as an attorney in corporate law, and likes to hike and run. He gets news from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Google.

Juror 4

A man who’s a security engineer and likes woodworking and metalworking.

Juror 5

A young woman who is a Harlem resident and works as a teacher. She lives with her boyfriend, loves writing, theater and traveling. She gets news from Google and TikTok and listens to podcasts on relationships and pop culture.

Juror 6

A young woman who lives in Chelsea and works as a software engineer. She gets news from The New York Times, Google, Facebook and TikTok.

Juror 7

A man who lives on the Upper East Side and works as attorney as a civil litigator. He enjoys spending time in the outdoors and gets his news from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the Washington.

Juror 8

A man who’s retired but worked for a major wealth manager. He said he enjoys skiing, fly fishing and yoga.

Juror 9

A woman who is a speech therapist, gets news from CNN and likes reality TV podcasts.

Juror 10

A man who works in commerce, reads The New York Times and listens to podcasts on behavioral psychology.

Juror 11

A woman who works as a product development manager and watches late-night news and reads Google, business and fashion news.

Juror 12

A woman who is a physical therapist who likes running and tennis and listening to podcasts on sports and faith.

Alternate 1

A woman who works as an asset manager and likes to run, hang out with her friends and eat.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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The package totals $95.3 billion in spending, which matches the total that the Senate passed in mid-February. But there are also a few differences with the Senate bill designed to win over some House conservatives.

Here’s a look at what is in the bills that Johnson hopes to pass by this weekend.

The aid to support Ukraine totals about $61 billion. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee said that more than a third of that amount would be dedicated to replenishing weapons and ammunition systems for the U.S. military.

The overall amount of money provided to Ukraine for the purchase of weapons from the U.S. is roughly the same in the House and Senate bills — $13.8 billion.

The main difference between the two packages is that the House bill provides more than $9 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine in the form of “forgivable loans.” The Senate bill included no such provision seeking repayment.

The president would be authorized to set the terms of the loan to Ukraine and also be given the power to cancel it. Congress could override the cancellation but would have to generate enough votes to override a veto, a high bar considering how the two chambers are so evenly divided.

Johnson, as he seeks GOP support for the package, noted that former President Donald Trump has endorsed a “loan concept.”

He also noted that the House package includes a requirement for the Biden administration to provide a plan and a strategy to Congress for what it seeks to achieve in Ukraine. The plan would be required within 45 days of the bill being signed into law. House Republicans frequently complain that they have yet to see a strategy from Biden for winning the war.

The bill said the report from the administration must be a multiyear plan that spells out “specific and achievable objectives.” It also asked for an estimate of the resources required to achieve the U.S. objectives and a description of the national security implications if the objectives are not met.

Aid in the legislation to support Israel and provide humanitarian relief to citizens of Gaza comes to more than $26 billion. The amount of money dedicated to replenishing Israel’s missile defense systems totals about $4 billion in the House and Senate bills. An additional $2.4 billion for current U.S. military operations in the regions is also the same in both bills.

Some conservatives have been critical of the aid for Gaza. At the end of the day, though, Johnson risked losing critical Democratic support for the package if Republicans had excluded it. The humanitarian assistance comes to more than $9 billion for Gaza, where millions of Palestinians face starvation, lack of clean water and disease outbreaks.

The investments to counter China and ensure a strong deterrence in the region come to about $8 billion. The overall amount of money and the investments in the two bills is about the same with a quarter of funds used to replenish weapons and ammunition systems that had been provided to Taiwan.

Lawmakers were meeting in Richmond for a one-day session to consider Youngkin’s vetoes and proposed amendments to legislation, including the budget. As recently as Tuesday afternoon, legislative leaders had indicated they were prepared to reject the substance of Youngkin’s proposed changes to the new two-year spending plan, a move that would have set up a likely budget veto, leaving lawmakers facing the looming prospect of a government shutdown if they failed to strike a deal by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

A series of meetings between lawmakers and Youngkin helped both sides agree to a new approach: tossing aside the version of the budget that lawmakers passed in March and starting anew, with plans to meet for a vote on a still-to-be-hashed-out compromise version in a special session beginning May 13.

“That will put us on a path to have a budget that serves Virginia and does not put us in jeopardy between here and there,” Youngkin said.

Prior to Wednesday’s so-called reconvened session, Democratic lawmakers spent weeks publicly at odds with Youngkin over the budget that the Assembly sent him in a bipartisan vote on the final day of its regular session.

Youngkin embarked on a series of public events during which he blasted what he called the “backward budget,” criticizing lawmakers for including a sales tax expansion to digital products that he initially proposed at the start of the process in December but had paired with an income tax cut that Democrats rejected. The governor has said unequivocally that he won’t sign a budget that increases taxes.

Democrats criticized Youngkin for his tour but then launched one of their own to defend their budget plan, which would increase K-12 education spending and pay for teachers and other public workers.

With his budget amendments, the governor had proposed sticking with the tax policy status quo, which required him to also suggest spending cuts and other accounting maneuvers to account for the revenue that would be lost by eliminating the new digital sales tax.

Lawmakers in the House of Delegates used a procedural maneuver to vote down those amendments and then effectively scrap the current budget bill so that negotiators can start over.

House Speaker Don Scott told reporters the decision was made in the hopes of restarting talks in a more conciliatory manner.

“I think we’re in a better, more mature place regarding the budget now. And I think everybody understands where their roles and responsibilities are a little bit better,” he said.

After lawmakers dispatched the budget bill, they started to work through dozens of other bills Youngkin returned to them with suggested changes.

In one of the day’s most closely watched votes, lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected Youngkin’s proposed amendments to a heavily lobbied measure dealing with so-called skill games, gambling machines that proliferated in convenience stores and other small businesses around the state before lawmakers passed a ban in 2020.

This year’s legislation would legalize, regulate and tax the machines, though the changes Youngkin suggested would implement far stricter limits and a higher tax rate than the version the Assembly sent him. Convenience stores around the state staged demonstrations this week, briefly halting lottery ticket sales Monday and closing for an hour on Tuesday in an effort to draw attention to the issue and urge lawmakers to reject the governor’s amendments.

With Youngkin’s amendments stripped out, the measure now goes back as it passed to the governor, who can veto it or let it become law. A coalition that opposes the machines and includes the state’s casinos called on Youngkin to veto the bill, while a pro-skill games coalition noted the subject could be addressed further during the special session.

Metro (WMATA) Apr 9

Virginia governor strikes extra funding for Metro from budget

Virginia Apr 8

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Virginia Gov. Youngkin says state budget is a bipartisan win, vetoes abortion-related protection

Youngkin’s other amendments spurred mixed responses. Lawmakers — sometimes on a bipartisan vote — rejected some changes but also accepted many of them, including one that would add Petersburg to the list of eligible casino host cities. That means the bill as amended becomes law. Most new legislation takes effect July 1.

Lawmakers did not override any of Youngkin’s vetoes. Democrats in the House, whose narrow majority falls far short of the 2/3 needed for an override, spoke critically of a handful of vetoes but didn’t vote on any of them.

The Senate failed to secure the 2/3 vote needed to override the governor’s vetoes on 20 bills, but came close with some GOP support on one bill that would have allowed counties and cities to impose an additional local sales tax to be earmarked for construction or renovation of schools.

Senators voted to dismiss both articles of impeachment and end the trial, with Democrats arguing that the articles were unconstitutional. The first article charged Mayorkas with “willful and systemic refusal to comply” with immigration law. The second article charged Mayorkas with a “breach of trust” for saying the border was secure. The votes were 51-48 and 51-49, both along party lines.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the House Republicans’ case failed to meet “the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors” and could set a dangerous precedent.

“For the sake of the Senate’s integrity and to protect impeachment for those rare cases we truly need it, senators should dismiss today’s charges,” said Schumer, D-N.Y., as he opened Wednesday’s session.

Senate Republicans had argued for a full impeachment trial after the House narrowly voted in February to impeach Mayorkas for his handling of the border, arguing in the two articles that he “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws. The House vote was the first time in nearly 150 years that a Cabinet secretary was impeached.

An outright dismissal of House Republicans’ prosecution of Mayorkas, with no chance to argue the case, is an embarrassing defeat for House Republicans and embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who made the impeachment a priority. And it is likely to resonate politically for both Republicans and Democrats in a presidential election year when border security has been a top issue.

Republicans argue that President Joe Biden has been weak on the border as arrests for illegal crossings skyrocketed to more than 2 million people during the last two years of his term, though they have fallen from a record-high of 250,000 in December amid heightened enforcement in Mexico. Democrats say that instead of impeaching Mayorkas, Republicans should have accepted a bipartisan Senate compromise aimed at reducing the number of migrants who come into the U.S. illegally.

House impeachment managers delivered the charges to the Senate on Tuesday, standing in the well of the Senate and reading them aloud to a captive audience of senators. But they did not get a chance to present the case before the Senate dismissed it.

Once the senators were sworn in on Wednesday, the chamber turned into the court of impeachment, with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington presiding. Murray is the president pro tempore of the Senate, or the senior-most member of the majority party who sits in for the vice president. Senators approached the front of the Senate in groups of four to sign an oath book that is stored in the National Archives.

Schumer then called for the votes to dismiss the trial after Republicans rejected a proposed agreement for Senate debate time and several votes on GOP objections. Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt said Democrats were “bulldozing 200 years of precedent” on impeachments by trying to dismiss the trial.

Angry Republicans called for several votes to delay the inevitable final outcome, but none of them passed as all Democrats and three Independents held together.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said “history will not judge this moment well.”

“This process must not be abused,” McConnell said. “It must not be short-circuited.”

Still, Republicans similarly moved to dismiss former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021, weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. All but five GOP senators — including McConnell — voted to end the trial, arguing it was unconstitutional because Trump had already left office.

As Johnson signed the articles Monday in preparation for sending them across the Capitol, he said Schumer should convene a trial to “hold those who engineered this crisis to full account.”

Schumer “is the only impediment to delivering accountability for the American people,” Johnson said. “Pursuant to the Constitution, the House demands a trial.”

Even if the Senate held a trial, Republicans would not be able to win the support of the two-thirds of the Senate that is needed to convict and remove Mayorkas from office — Democrats control the Senate, 51-49, and they appear to be united against the impeachment effort. Not one House Democrat supported it, either.

Mayorkas, who was in New York on Wednesday to launch a campaign for children’s online safety, reiterated that he’s focused on the work of his department. “The Senate is going to do what the Senate considers to be appropriate as that proceeds,” he said. “I am here in New York City on Wednesday morning fighting online sexual exploitation and abuse. I’m focused on our mission.”

Johnson delayed sending the articles to the Senate for weeks while both chambers finished work on government funding legislation and took a two-week recess. Johnson had said he would send them to the Senate last week, but he punted again after Senate Republicans said they wanted more time to prepare.

At a hearing with Mayorkas on Tuesday about President Joe Biden’s budget request for the department, some of the House impeachment managers previewed the arguments they would have made.

Tennessee Rep. Mark Green, the chairman of the House Homeland Security panel, told the secretary that he has a duty under the law to control and guard U.S. borders, and “during your three years as secretary, you have failed to fulfill this oath. You have refused to comply with the laws passed by Congress, and you have breached the public trust.”

Mayorkas defended the department’s efforts but said the nation’s immigration system is “fundamentally broken, and only Congress can fix it.”

The impeachment trial is the third in five years. Democrats impeached President Donald Trump twice, once over his dealings with Ukraine and the second time in the days after the Capitol attack. Trump was acquitted by the Senate both times.

If the Senate had moved to a trial on Mayorkas, senators would have been forced to sit in their seats for the duration, maybe weeks, while the House impeachment managers and lawyers representing Mayorkas made their cases.

Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri in Washington and Elliot Spagat in San Diego, California contributed to this report.

But what does the choice represent for ordinary voters and the economic and cultural issues they care about? A rematch between the Democratic incumbent and his Republican predecessor may feel uninspiring to many voters, but the policy stakes are enormous for tens of millions of Americans — and the world.

Here are seven big issues at stake in the 2024 election.

Abortion

The contrast: Biden favors federal abortion protections; Trump opposes them. Trump supported nationwide restrictions on abortion as president but now downplays the need for a federal ban, as Republicans are divided over the issue. Biden does not support federal limits.

Biden has championed the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill to protect abortion rights in all 50 states under federal law and prohibit medically unnecessary hurdles to accessing the procedure. He has asked voters to send him a Democratic Congress that supports legal abortion to achieve that.

Trump has boasted that he “broke Roe v. Wade” by picking three of the five Supreme Court justices who overturned it, delivering on a four-decade goal of the GOP. More recently, Trump has openly fretted that the backlash may cost him and his party the election. Last week, Trump said the issue should be left to states, a shift from his support for nationwide restrictions when he was president. His new stance has drawn pushback from GOP allies, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, and anti-abortion-rights advocates, who say that he is wrong and that Republicans should not be deterred from their long-standing goal of enacting some nationwide abortion limits.

Some Republicans downplay the prospects of federal abortion restrictions’ passing Congress, even if they win full control. Biden and his allies are telling voters to look at the GOP’s long history of championing federal restrictions and not their recent rhetoric.

abortion Apr 8

Trump says abortion laws should be left to states

abortion Jan 22

Biden administration announces new abortion initiatives on Roe anniversary

Immigration

The contrast: Trump has promised a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration and tougher executive actions; Biden is asking Congress to give him more tools to manage an overwhelmed border and create new legal pathways to immigrate to the U.S.

Trump has called existing border laws an existential threat to the U.S., saying migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and bringing new “languages.” His campaign website says: “President Trump will shut down Biden’s border disaster. He will again end catch-and-release, restore Remain in Mexico, and eliminate asylum fraud. In cooperative states, President Trump will deputize the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing illegal alien gang members and criminals.”

After having rescinded some of Trump’s policies, Biden has recently shifted to support stricter immigration laws as the system remains overwhelmed. He championed a bipartisan bill to raise the bar for gaining asylum, grant more U.S. resources to process asylum claims and turn away migrants who do not qualify, and empower the president to temporarily shut down the border if migration levels hit certain triggers. (Republicans blocked the bill in the Senate amid lobbying by Trump, who wants to use the border as an election issue.) Biden has also endorsed the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would grant a pathway to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally if they pass background checks and pay their taxes.

Fundamentally, Trump has aligned with forces who want less immigration into the country, while Biden has embraced the belief that immigrants make the U.S. better.

US-Mexico Border Apr 4

Border Patrol must care for migrant children in ‘safe and sanitary' facilities, judge rules

Immigration Mar 27

Texas' controversial immigration law remains on hold after latest pass through appeals court

Health care and prescription drugs

The contrast: Biden wants to extend Affordable Care Act provisions and empower Medicare to negotiate more prescription drugs; Trump has aggressively criticized the ACA but not offered a health care plan.

Biden, who was vice president when the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, sees it as a cherished achievement to protect and strengthen. The law, also known as “Obamacare,” which has extended coverage to 45 million people through subsidies, insurance mandates and a Medicaid expansion, continues to face conservative opposition.

Separately, Biden has touted a provision in his party-line Inflation Reduction Act that empowers Medicare to negotiate lower prices for 10 prescription drugs. He said he wants to boost that to 50 if he is re-elected, with the goal of $200 billion in savings.

Trump spent his four years as president fighting unsuccessfully to repeal and unravel the law — through legislation and executive action and endorsing lawsuits to wipe it out. In November, Trump called for revisiting plans to “terminate” the ACA. He has recently sought to downplay that and insists he only wants to improve the law. But he has not offered a health care plan. Many of his GOP allies in Congress still favor repealing or undoing the ACA, including a budget by the Republican Study Committee, which boasts about 80% of the House GOP conference as members, including Speaker Mike Johnson, of Louisiana.

Dec 14, 2023

Biden on prescription drugs, ‘It's about fairness, it's about dignity'

news Dec 5, 2023

CVS to change how it prices prescription drugs with new pharmacy reimbursement model

Taxes

The contrast: Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of next year, and he has called for extending them; Biden has called for raising taxes on families earning over $400,000 to fund various priorities.

A series of Trump tax cuts, which Republicans passed on a party-line basis in 2017, expire at the end of 2025. Congress and the winner of the election will decide what happens to them.

In a recent private speech to wealthy donors, Trump said his policies include “extending the Trump tax cuts” if he is elected, according to a Trump campaign official. That would preserve lower rates across the income spectrum, with the biggest benefits for top earners.

Biden has attacked that law as a giveaway to the wealthiest Americans, vowing to make “big corporations and the very wealthy finally pay their fair share.” He has backed a corporate tax rate hike from 21% to 28% and said that “nobody earning less than $400,000 will pay an additional penny in federal taxes.” Biden is also calling for a $3,600-per-child tax cut for families, an $800 average tax break for “front-line workers” and a 25% minimum tax on billionaires, according to a newly released campaign plank.

The expiration of the Trump tax cuts will restore the unlimited federal deduction for state and local taxes, which Republicans had capped at $10,000 in the 2017 law. Republicans broadly support preserving the cap, with some exceptions, while most Democrats want to lift it.

news Sep 14, 2023

Biden blasts Republican plan to cut taxes on the wealthy, cut social safety net programs

news Mar 7

Trump vs. Biden: What a presidential election rematch could mean for your taxes

Judges and the Supreme Court

The contrast: Their track records tell a clear story. Trump has picked young conservative judges to serve on the federal bench, while Biden has picked liberals with a focus on professional and personal diversity.

One of the clearest contrasts is what kinds of judges Trump and Biden would pick for lifetime appointments on the federal courts. A simple way for voters to think about it is whether they prefer new judges with the conservative views of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme Court pick, or with the liberal views of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden’s (so far only) high court pick.

As president, Trump nominated young conservative judges who will serve for generations. Biden has focused on finding judges with diverse backgrounds and résumés, including more civil rights lawyers and public defenders.

Perhaps the biggest question is whether a Supreme Court vacancy will open up in the next four years. The presidential election winner and the party that controls the Senate would fill it.

Supreme Court Apr 16

Supreme Court questions obstruction charges brought against Jan. 6 rioters and Trump

decision 2024 Mar 4

Supreme Court rules states can't kick Trump off ballot, says only Congress can use insurrection clause

Trade

The contrast: Trump is pushing a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports; Biden’s White House opposes that, saying it would raise inflation.

Trump, long a skeptic of U.S. trade deals, has proposed to impose a 10% tariff on all imported goods if he returns to the White House. He recently told Fox News that it could be 60% — or potentially “more than that” — on imports of Chinese goods.

Biden opposes that idea. In a memo over the weekend, the White House slammed the idea of “across-the-board tariffs that would raise taxes and prices by $1,500 per American family,” without naming Trump; it referred to an estimate by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, that Trump’s 10% tax on imports could cost an average American household $1,500 per year.

Biden, instead, has sought to boost domestic manufacturing with major federal investments in semiconductors and electric vehicles.

news Apr 8

Yellen says she won't rule out possible tariffs on China's green exports

news Mar 13

Here's what Trump's proposed tariffs could mean for your wallet

Foreign policy and NATO

The contrast: Biden favors Ukraine aid, while Trump is skeptical of it; Biden supports NATO and a traditional view of American power, while Trump has criticized NATO and voiced some isolationist views.

The clearest example of the foreign policy differences between the two concerns the fate of Ukraine, which is running low on ammunition and says it needs U.S. assistance to continue holding off Russia’s aggression. Biden is an ardent proponent of helping Ukraine, while Trump has poured cold water on U.S. aid to Ukraine and successfully pressured House Republicans to block it since they took the majority in January 2023.

And that points to a deeper divide: Biden is an outspoken supporter of the NATO alliance as a bulwark against adversaries like Russia and China and of preserving the post-World War II order. Trump has dialed up his criticisms of NATO and aligned with a growing isolationist wing in the U.S. that wants to be less involved in global affairs. Trump recently said that as president, he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to member countries who are “delinquent” in their dues.

Ukraine Apr 14

More civilians die in Ukraine as a think tank warns delays in US aid will hamper Kyiv's forces

Congress Apr 11

House Speaker Mike Johnson negotiating with White House to advance Ukraine, Israel aid

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Ukraine sees an ‘extremely strange’ double standard after U.S. and allies help defend Israel
• One of 2022’s closest House races is primed for a rematch — with a fight over the GOP’s future first
• U.S. Navy flies aircraft through the Taiwan Strait a day after U.S.-China defense chiefs hold rare talks

NBC 5 obtained a letter of public resignation statement on Tuesday, April 16, in which Haynes announced his resignation as CEO and president of the civil rights movement organization effective immediately.

“I remain committed to honoring the rich history of RPC and the legacy of its esteemed leader, the incomparable Reverend Jesse L. Jackson Sr., and most significantly, to the calling and pursuit of social justice. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to all who have expressed their support since my appointment in July of last year. Rest assured that my work in the fight for liberation and freedom continues.” – Dr. Frederick Haynes III

Haynes, who has been senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas for over 40 years, stayed in Dallas while leading the coalition. The pastor stated that his work at Friendship-West would expand the work done by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which is still based in Chicago.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, a protégé of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., parted ways with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1971 and established Operation PUSH, which initially stood for People United to Save Humanity.

The organization was later renamed the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. The group’s initiatives include advocating for minority hiring in the corporate sector and conducting voter registration drives in communities of color.

Haynes said he was inspired by Jackson’s presidential runs and was invited to speak at Rainbow PUSH after they connected in the 1990s. In July 2023, Jackson hand-picked Haynes to replace him in the Chicago civil rights organization.

The renowned Dallas pastor was officially installed on Feb. 1 at The Black Academy of Arts and Letters. Rainbow PUSH then hosted the Inaugural Social Justice Conference at Paul Quinn College on Friday, Feb. 2.

Haynes posted a Facebook reel announcing his resignation but pledging continued support for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition despite their parting ways.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

The panelists who were selected are an information technology worker, an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers.

Eleven more people still must be sworn in before opening statements begin as early as next week in the first criminal trial of a former commander in chief. It’s a moment of reckoning for Trump, who has tried to put off his prosecutions until after the November election and casts himself as the victim of a politically motivated justice system.

The trial puts Trump’s legal problems at the center of his closely contested race against President Joe Biden. It’s the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to reach trial, and it may be the only one to return a verdict before voters decide whether to elect the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. Jury selection was to resume Thursday.

The methodical process unfolding in the Manhattan courtroom highlights the unprecedented challenge of finding people who can fairly judge the polarizing defendant in the city where he built his real estate empire before becoming president in 2016.

On his way out of the courthouse, Trump stopped in the hallway to rail against the case to reporters, accusing the judge of “rushing” the trial.

“We are going to continue our fight against this judge,” said Trump, who pushed unsuccessfully to have the judge removed from the case.

Over two days, dozens of potential jurors have been excused after saying they could not be impartial or because they had other commitments. Trump’s lawyers challenged a handful of people over social media posts, and one person was dismissed over a 2017 post about Trump that said “Lock him up!”

Several would-be jurors told the judge they believed they could decide the case fairly, no matter their feelings about Trump or his policies as president.

Trump looked on in the courtroom as his lawyers urged the judge to remove one potential juror for a social media post she made after his 2020 election loss. The judge admonished Trump at one point after he spoke loudly and gestured while the judge questioned the woman about her post.

“I don’t know what he was uttering, but it was audible and he was gesturing. And he was speaking in the direction of the juror,” Judge Juan Merchan said. “I won’t tolerate that. I will not tolerate any jurors being intimidated in this courtroom.”

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass took Trump’s notoriety head-on, telling would-be jurors that attorneys were not looking for people who had been “living under a rock for the past eight years.” They just needed to keep an open mind.

“This case has nothing to do with your personal politics … it’s not a referendum on the Trump presidency or a popularity contest or who you’re going to vote for in November. We don’t care. This case is about whether this man broke the law,” he said.

Donald Trump Apr 15

Trump's historic hush-money trial gets underway; 1st day ends without any jurors being picked

Donald Trump Apr 14

How will jury selection work in Donald Trump's hush money trial?

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged effort to keep salacious — and, he says, bogus — stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign.

With the trial expected to last for six weeks or more, several jury pool members brought up plans they have for Memorial Day and beyond.

One man was excused after saying he feared his ability to be impartial could be compromised by “unconscious bias” from growing up in Texas and working in finance with people who “intellectually tend to slant Republican.”

“I’m not sure that I can say beyond a reasonable doubt that I can be fair,” another potential juror told the judge. “I can try. But I’m not 100% sure I can be fair.” She was also dismissed.

One woman said she disagrees with Trump’s policies and sometimes finds herself frustrated by him. But she pledged to be fair and impartial, telling defense lawyer Todd Blanche that she would give her “level-headed best” if she were picked for the jury.

“I didn’t sleep last night thinking about could I do that,” she said.

Trump broke into a grin, nodding his head in an exaggerated manner, when another person said he had read two of the former president’s books, “The Art of the Deal” and “How to Get Rich.” The man, who said some of his wife’s family members are lobbyists for the Republican Party, said he didn’t think there was anything that would prevent him from looking at the case fairly.

“I feel that no one’s above the law,” he said.

The charges center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the encounter ever happened.

Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees. The prosecution has described the money as being part of a scheme to bury damaging stories Trump feared could help his opponent in the 2016 race, particularly as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time from comments he made about women.

Trump has acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the payment and that it was designed to stop Daniels from going public about the alleged encounter. But Trump has said it had nothing to do with the campaign.

In court papers filed Tuesday, prosecutors urged the judge to fine Trump $3,000 over social media posts they say violated a gag order limiting what he can say publicly about witnesses. In the posts, Trump called Cohen and Daniels “two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!”

Prosecutors wrote that the judge should admonish Trump to comply with the gag order and warn him that further violations could be punished not only with additional fines but also jail time.

If convicted of falsifying business records, Trump faces up to four years in prison, though there’s no guarantee he will get time behind bars.