One site, BetOnline.ag, is offering more than 40 different options related to Thursday's presidential debate in Atlanta.

Some of the wagers include how many "non-facts" will be uttered by the two White House contenders — the non-facts over/under for Trump is 15.5 while Biden 's is 9.5 — the first candidate to mispronounce a politician's name, and who will be the first to interrupt CNN's Jake Tapper or Dana Bash, the debate's moderators.

The over/under for Biden's longest pause is 4.5 seconds, whether Trump will be warned or scolded by the moderators, if either candidate walks off and if the current and former commanders in chief curse onstage are also among the wagers available.

Another site, BetUS.com, features contests about what type of necktie the political foes will sport — the color and whether solid or striped — whether Biden's age or Trump's legal issues will be brought up, and who will be the first to "audibly raise their voice" or "interrupt the other candidate first."

Both of the sites also include bets on who will win Thursday's matchup according to CNN's polls — with Trump currently listed as the odds-on favorite on each.

From the host of the meeting to its unique timing, the event breaks with tradition in myriad ways. The debate is set to lay down a key marker in the general election battle and could prove pivotal for either candidate.

Here are five major differences audiences will see in Thursday's match-up.

President vs. former president

This is not the first time a sitting president and a former president have faced off in a general election. But Thursday will mark the first meeting between two such figures on a televised debate stage, heaping another dose of intrigue onto Biden and Trump’s get-together. 

The two candidates had a pair of memorable debates four years ago, the first of which — widely remembered for Trump’s constant badgering and interrupting of Biden and moderator Chris Wallace — did the former president no favors in the final weeks of the campaign.

But that has not dissuaded Trump this go-around. He was vocal for months about wanting to debate Biden whenever possible, perhaps sensing an opportunity in polling providing a rosier outlook for the former president. 

Trump supporters see this meeting of two White House occupants as a chance to compare records, and they see economic and immigration arguments favoring their side.

“It’s pretty unique. … You have a pretty unique opportunity to review the tale of the tape,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who has helped Trump with debate prep ahead of Thursday, of the match-up of two presidents. “All of these debates have a life of their own, but I’m pretty confident [Trump’s] going to do well.”

Earliest televised debate in history 

Thursday’s match-up will be the earliest televised presidential debate in U.S. history by about three months, essentially firing the starting gun on the general election in an acknowledgment of how many voters have cast early ballots in recent years.

“In this day and age, more information is good, and people are going to be tuning in,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) told The Hill. “I expect that more people will be engaged from an earlier date and that’s good for our democracy.” 

That was one of the main gripes the Biden campaign had with the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the longtime organizer of the fall events.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, a top Biden aide, said in a letter to the commission that "tens of millions of Americans will have already voted” before its first proposed debate, citing it as one of the campaign’s many reasons for not agreeing to its slate of meetings. 

Previously, the earliest debate held between major party nominees was in 1976, when then-President Ford and former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter (D) met on Sept. 23. 

CNN runs the show

Sidestepping the commission also means that one network — CNN —  will be entirely in charge of operations come Thursday night, a major change for voters.

The network will effectively become the third major player at this debate. Two of CNN’s most respected news anchors — Jake Tapper and Dana Bash — will take on the role of co-moderators. And they will have additional tools to control the action compared to past moderators.

For one, both candidates will have their mic muted unless they are speaking, a big departure from in years past. 

Perhaps more jarring will be the lack of a studio audience — the first time that has happened since 1960. Biden’s campaign clamored for the change after the pair of 2020 debates. 

“It takes away the Jerry Springer feel to the swipes that Trump and Biden will likely give each other and it makes it less interesting for them to do those things without a crowd to cheer you on,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and the co-founder of Rokk Solutions. 

The 90-minute affair will also feature two commercial breaks, during which neither campaign can strategize with the candidates. 

Absence of the Commission

CNN’s presence comes at the exclusion of the CPD, which had been at the helm of the debate structure since 1988, after complaints from both sides.

The commission had long been considered a political boogeyman for Republicans, especially since 2012 after Candy Crowley, then a CNN anchor, fact-checked GOP nominee Mitt Romney live during his second debate with former President Obama. The CPD eventually agreed that having her moderate the event was a “mistake.” 

But surprisingly, it was Democrats who seemed to land a death blow to the commission after what the Biden campaign perceived to be multiple missteps in 2020. In addition to the proposed first debate coming weeks into early voting, O’Malley Dillon panned the commission for being “unable or unwilling” to enforce rules during the two debates four years ago and for its "model of building huge spectacles with large audiences."

"The debates should be conducted for the benefit of the American voters, watching on television and at home — not as entertainment for an in-person audience with raucous or disruptive partisans and donors, who consume valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or jeering,” O’Malley Dillon said. 

The commission was widely operated behind the scenes, meaning viewers on Thursday might not recognize a major difference outside of the lack of audience and CNN branding. But after their impact in recent years, political operatives are curious to see what Thursday will bring from a nuts-and-bolts perspective. 

“​​It feels like you're taking out a referee for setting the terms of a fair debate, and CNN is trying to step into that role,” Bonjean said. “We'll see how effective they are at that.” 

Convention precursor 

The late-June debate also means a major change to the traditional rhythms of the presidential season as it pushes the party’s national conventions from being the first major items on the calendar.

Thursday’s presidential back-and-forth will take place more than two weeks before Republicans flock to Milwaukee for their quadrennial confab — a complete reversal as the final convention has long taken place about a month before the first debate. It is about six weeks before the Democrats’ convention.

Democrats hope Thursday raises the bar for voters who thus far have tuned out the general election and puts the race on their radar earlier than it would have happened otherwise. 

“It's an important opportunity for the president to set the stakes for 2024,” one Democratic operative said. “Trump has been the GOP nominee for almost a year, there's been no question. The GOP convention is a coronation.”

“That's something everyone has known and it's time for voters to recognize as well,” the operative added.

Senate conservatives led by Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Ron Johnson (Wis.), Rick Scott (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) want to reform the GOP conference rules to shift power away from the leader, hoping to take advantage of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) decision to step down from leadership at the end of the year.

One of their top reforms is to limit the next leader to six years in office, something that McConnell says would be a bad idea.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who is running to succeed McConnell, hasn’t yet endorsed a term limit for the next leader, but two of his rivals for the top job — Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Scott — are backing the idea.

Tillis, the former Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, who came to the Senate in 2016, is now pushing back on calls to limit the next leader’s power.

He wrote in his letter to colleagues that it’s “so important that we consider proposals to strengthen not weaken the Republican conference leader position.”

And Tillis, a former management consultant, has suggested that Republicans take a look at the Senate Democratic conference rules to get a few ideas about how to increase party unity, if they want to move toward that goal.

He noted that after a bipartisan bill to address gun violence passed the Senate in 2022, some Republican colleagues complained “the Democrats would never do that” because “they stay unified.”

“If the goal is to enhance more of that kind of discipline among us, then weakening the leader would be counter-productive. So, as we are considering these things, let’s bear the goal and the consequences of changes in mind,” he advised.

He pointed out that the Senate Democratic conference, which usually acts more in lockstep with its leader than the Senate GOP conference, “has no treatment for term limits."

And he noted that none of the four party conferences in the Senate and House currently limit the tenure of its top leader.

He reminded colleagues that when the Senate GOP conference voted on term limits for its top leader in 1995 and 2008, it rejected the idea both times.

“Having term limits on the leader could make the political side of the job more difficult,” he warned. “I’m in the no-need-for-term-limits camp because we get to pick a leader every two years, and I’m not convinced incumbency by itself provides much of an advantage in a leadership election.”

McConnell, who became Senate Republican leader in 2007, only faced a leadership challenge once during his more than 17 years in the top job. That happened after the 2022 midterm election when Scott ran against him but lost by a vote of 36-10.

Tillis also argued if fellow GOP senators are calling to place a term limit on the Senate Republican leader, then they should also look at more restrictive term limits for committee chairs and ranking members.

He notes in his letter that senators with decades of seniority on multiple committees, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), can jump around to serve as the chair or ranking member of various committees once they hit a term limit for a specific panel.

Grassley, for example, who is 90 years old, chaired the Senate Finance Committee for years before jumping over to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, and now serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

“If we move forward with term limits for our leader, then I think we need to rethink all of our term limits for both the elected leadership positions and the committee chairs,” he wrote.

“Some will say that committee chairs already have term limits, but I do not agree. Once you become a chair, it’s simply a matter of which committee you are going to chair not whether you will be a chair in the future,” he argued.

He observed that Grassley has been either the chair or ranking member of a committee for nearly 30 years — or “six years longer than Mitch has been the leader.”

Tillis highlighted for GOP colleagues that the Senate Democratic leader has more power than his Republican counterpart in several areas.

For example, the Republican leader has the authority to pick half plus one of any open committee slots while the Democratic leader has the power to fill all open committee slots.

“Expanding the leader’s authority to be in alignment [with] the Democrat leader could empower the leader to position members on committees most likely to carry the agenda of the majority of the conference forward,” he suggested.

Tillis also reminded his Senate GOP colleagues that unlike in the Senate Republican Conference, the Democratic leader serves as the chair of the conference and presides over all conference meetings and lunches.

“Everyone except the leader has a time limit of 3 minutes or less to speak,” he said of the Democrats. “We could consider having a similar model or, at a minimum, adopt the time limits and reorient the lunches so that the leader sets the agenda and delegates to whip, conference leader, et al to preside.”

That proposal seemed aimed at Lee and Johnson, in particular. Lee presides over the weekly Senate Republican lunch as the chair of the Steering Committee. And Johnson is known for speaking at length during lunch meetings.

Tillis noted that the Senate Democratic leader appoints the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a selection then ratified by the rest of the Democratic conference, while the Senate GOP conference rules now leave it up to individual senators to run to become the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).

“Having the leader nominate the NRSC chair subject to conference ratification could make it more likely the NRSC chair will be in alignment with the priorities of the Republican leader and reduce the risk of conflicts in messaging and priorities,” he wrote. That reform seems aimed at Scott, who clashed with McConnell over messaging and fundraising strategy, when he served as chair of the Senate Republican campaign arm in the 2022 midterms.

It marks the first time the justices will weigh in on the issue, which could impact laws passed by 24 Republican-led states since 2021 that ban medications like puberty blockers and hormones for transgender children and teens. Legal challenges mounted by transgender youths, their families and medical providers have been met with mixed results. 

A federal judge earlier this month struck down a Florida law barring access to gender-affirming health care for minors and certain adults, and a similar Arkansas law was ruled unconstitutional last year. Federal court orders are blocking the enforcement of bans in Montana and Ohio. 

Monday’s announcement has left LGBTQ rights advocates grateful they will get their day in the nation’s highest court to object to Tennessee’s ban but also apprehensive about where the conservative-leaning court will land. 

“The future of countless transgender youth in this and future generations rests on this Court adhering to the facts, the Constitution, and its own modern precedent,” Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the American Civil Liberty Union’s LGBTQ & HIV project, said in a statement. 

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case comes at the urging of the Biden administration, which appealed to the justices after intervening in the challenge brought by a group of anonymous transgender children and their parents. 

Tennessee Republicans passed the law, Senate Bill 1, in 2023 amid a wave of gender-affirming care bans enacted in states across the country. 

The law bars health care providers from administering puberty blockers, hormones or surgery to help a minor transition, though the restrictions don’t apply to adults. Violations can lead to professional discipline and carry a $25,000 civil penalty and private lawsuits. 

The Supreme Court is not expected to hear arguments until next fall, with a decision likely by June 2025. 

The Justice Department contends Tennessee’s statute, and others like it, violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because they unconstitutionally discriminate against transgender individuals. Puberty blockers and doses of testosterone and estrogen are still available to minors who are not transgender under Tennessee’s and similar laws that restrict access to such care. 

“Those laws, and the conflicting court decisions about their validity, are creating profound uncertainty for transgender adolescents and their families around the Nation — and inflicting particularly acute harms in Tennessee and other States where the laws have been allowed to take effect,” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in the administration’s petition. 

The Department of Justice and the White House declined to comment on the court’s decision to hear the case, saying they do not comment on pending litigation. 

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (R), whose office has argued the law was enacted to protect children, urged the justices to let a lower ruling upholding it stand. 

“We fought hard to defend Tennessee's law protecting kids from irreversible gender treatments and secured a thoughtful and well-reasoned opinion from the Sixth Circuit. I look forward to finishing the fight in the United States Supreme Court,” Skrmetti said in a statement Monday. 

“This case will bring much-needed clarity to whether the Constitution contains special protections for gender identity,” he said. 

The Supreme Court in April narrowed an injunction blocking Idaho’s felony ban on gender-affirming care for minors. But that emergency ruling did not address the law’s constitutionality, and the court has otherwise abstained from intervening in most cases involving transgender rights. 

“This is a high-stakes moment for transgender youth and their families, and we’re glad that trans youth and their families will have their day in court to make the case that the bans are unconstitutional, interfere with private medical decisions, and severely harm families,” said Allison Scott, director of impact and innovation at the Campaign for Southern Equality, which supports LGBTQ people living in the South. “Everyone who needs gender-affirming care should be able to access it affordably, and close to home, and our team will never stop working to make that happen.” 

Gender-affirming health care for transgender adults and minors is considered medically necessary by every major medical organization, though not every trans person chooses to medically transition or has access to care. Groups including the Campaign for Southern Equality have poured hundreds of thousands into emergency funds meant to ease the financial burden of traveling out of state for treatment. In a national survey in February, more than half of trans people said they considered moving to another state because of laws that threaten access to gender-affirming health care. 

Tara Borelli, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, in a statement on Monday said the Supreme Court has historically rejected efforts to uphold discriminatory laws.

“Without similar action here, these punitive, categorical bans on the provision of gender-affirming care will continue to wreak havoc on the lives of transgender youth and their families,” she said. 

Two of the Supreme Court’s leading conservatives — Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — have long appeared eager to wade into disputes implicating transgender rights. 

The duo publicly dissented from their colleagues when the court turned away a school district’s defense of its transgender bathroom policy and an appeal of a ruling that found a transgender woman’s rights were violated in jail.

“This case presents a question of great national importance that calls out for prompt review,” Alito wrote, joined by Thomas, in the latter case. 

Agreeing to hear the challenge to Tennessee’s ban means at least four of the nine justices voted to do so. Cases that earn the high court’s review tend to be taken up after they are distributed consecutively for two of the justices’ closed-door conferences, where they vote on which appeals to hear. 

The Biden administration’s challenge to Tennessee’s law moved at an unusually sluggish pace, with it granted after being listed for the last six conferences, according to the case’s docket. 

Justices have indicated they sometimes relist petitions when persuading a colleague to provide the critical fourth vote. Monday’s vote tally was not disclosed. 

Despite the court’s conservative majority, advocates hope that the justices’ ruling next term will be broad enough to overturn laws passed across the country that restrict access to gender-affirming care. 

“Certainly, we can hope that there is a ruling that summarily is restoring access to care,” said Cait Smith, director of LGBTQI+ policy at the Center for American Progress. “I think that there’s a path towards restoration.” 

Smith linked efforts to limit access to gender-affirming care to attempts to restrict or ban abortion. The Supreme Court’s decision to take up the Tennessee case falls on the second anniversary of its landmark ruling that rolled back federal abortion protections. 

"The fight for access to abortion and reproductive care and the fight for access to practice transgender medical care are intertwined," Smith said. "This is all about access to best practice medical care." 

"This is all about bodily autonomy for all of us," they added. "Yes, this is incredibly crucial and important for young trans folks and for their families, but this is important for all of us and our access to health care." 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), its branch in Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation filed the suit on behalf of a multi-faith group of nine Louisiana families with children in public schools.  

The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana alleges the new law violates the First Amendment and “substantially interferes with and burdens” parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing.  

The plaintiffs are made up of a group of Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and non-religious individuals.  

“It also sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments — or, more precisely, to the specific version of the Ten Commandments that H.B. 71 requires schools to display — do not belong in their own school community and should refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences,” the lawsuit reads.  

The law requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed one easily readable posters in public school classrooms with three paragraphs about how the religious text have played an influential role in American history.  

“If you want to respect the rule of law,” Gov. Jeff Landry (R) said during his signing of the bill, “you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.”

Landry added at the time he "can’t wait to be sued," which the ACLU vowed to do just hours after the bill was signed into law.  

“As a nonreligious family, we oppose the government forcibly subjecting our child to a religious scripture that we don’t believe in. The State of Louisiana should not direct a religious upbringing of our child and require students to observe the state’s preferred religious doctrine in every classroom,” said Jennifer Harding and Benjamin Owens, plaintiffs in the case.  

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) said her office "cannot comment on a lawsuit we haven't seen."

“It seems the ACLU only selectively cares about the First Amendment — it doesn’t care when the Biden administration censors speech or arrests pro-life protesters, but apparently it will fight to prevent posters that discuss our own legal history," Murrill said.

—Updated at 4:36 p.m. ET

The high court on Monday announced that it would take up a case concerning the approval of a railway line that could ship oil in Utah. 

A lower court said that more assessment of the railway’s impacts on oil production and refining — and the corresponding environmental impacts — was needed before it could be approved. 

Railway company Uinta Basin Railway, LLC and Utah’s Seven County Infrastructure Coalition are hoping the Supreme Court will challenge that decision. 

But, more broadly, the case seeks to bar federal agencies from considering a project’s indirect emissions — those related to the project’s impacts on fossil fuel production or consumption. 

If the company wins out, this ruling could apply not only to rail projects, but also pipelines, shipping ports and other methods of transporting oil, gas and coal. 

Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said that it would be “very worrisome” for the climate if the petitioners win out. 

“It could reduce the consideration of climate impacts” for a “wide variety” of federal actions, Gerrard noted. 

A similar issue has played out politically in recent years. The Trump administration also sought to reduce consideration of a project’s indirect emissions — which was later reversed by the Biden administration. 

While it is not clear which way the high court will rule, its conservative majority has restricted the federal government's authority on regulating climate and water in recent years.

Luna sent a letter to her colleagues Monday saying she will call up her inherent contempt resolution “in the next few days.” When she raises the question of privilege, leaders will have to schedule action on the resolution within two legislative days.

Her move follows House Republicans holding Garland in contempt of Congress earlier this month over his refusal to provide audio recordings from Biden’s October interview with Hur about his handling of classified documents, which Republicans had subpoenaed. The Justice Department provided a written transcript of the conversation, and Biden has claimed executive privilege over the tapes.

“Under inherent contempt, the individual is brought before the bar of the House by the Sergeant at Arms, tried by the body, and can then be detained either in the Capitol or in D.C.,” Luna wrote in the letter, obtained by The Hill. “This process demonstrates the seriousness with which Congress views non-compliance and the potential consequences for those who refuse to cooperate.”

The Justice Department declined to comment on Luna’s plans.

Inherent contempt hasn’t been used in nearly 100 years, and doing so would raise a number of questions. There’s no guidelines or House rules for next steps for the sergeant-at-arms or the House, nor is there a protocol for an arrest of a Cabinet official protected by an FBI detail. 

House rules state that “the recalcitrant witness may be arrested and brought to trial before the bar of the House, with the offender facing possible incarceration,” but do not go into additional detail. A 2019 Congressional Research Service report described inherent contempt as a potentially powerful threat, but also a “cumbersome, inefficient” tool. 

Luna had long forecast her plans to force the vote. She filed her inherent contempt resolution in early May and promised to force a vote on it within 10 days of the other contempt resolution passing out of committee if the Justice Department did not act to produce the Biden-Hur audio.

“The only option to ensure compliance with our subpoena is to use our constitutional authority of inherent contempt. In the next few days, I will call up my resolution holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in inherent contempt of Congress, and I look forward to each of you voting in favor of it,” Luna said in her letter. “The urgency of this situation cannot be overstated. Our ability to legislate effectively and fulfill our constitutional duties is at stake. We must act now to protect the integrity and independence of the legislative branch.”

All but one Republican voted earlier this month to hold Garland in contempt, a resolution that acts as a referral to the Department of Justice, which then weighs whether any criminal charges are warranted.

The department announced just days after the vote that it would not pursue any contempt charges for Garland, noting precedent across administrations of both parties not to bring charges against officials when a president has claimed executive privilege over the materials. 

Garland earlier this month was critical of the House after it voted to approve the contempt resolution, accusing Republicans of using contempt as a "partisan weapon."

“It is deeply disappointing that this House of Representatives has turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon. Today’s vote disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department’s need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information we have provided to the Committees,” Garland said in a statement after the vote.

When asked on "Meet the Press" if she has received any vetting paperwork, Noem said, "The only person who knows who the vice president's going to be is Donald Trump."

"I haven't received any paperwork," she said, adding, "I've had conversations with the president, and I know that he is the only one who will be making the decisions on who will be his vice president."

Trump over the weekend said he has made up his mind about who will be serve as his running mate but declined to reveal a name.

The VP selection process has appeared to ramp up in recent weeks, with several prominent Republicans receiving vetting materials. A source familiar with the matter told The Hill earlier this month that North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Tim Scott (S.C.) and JD Vance (Ohio) received vetting requests.

Noem, a staunch Trump ally, was previously floated as a potential VP pick, though a series of controversies seems to have hurt those prospects.

The South Dakota governor came under sustained fire earlier this year after an excerpt from her new memoir, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” revealed how she shot Cricket, her family’s nearly 14-month-old hunting dog.

The governor said she shot the German wirehaired pointer on her property after taking it pheasant hunting. She “hated” the dog, Noem wrote, and claimed it was responsible for attacking a neighbor’s chickens and trying to bite her.

When asked if she believes the anecdote cost her a shot at the running mate slot, Noem said, "I would say that that was a story from 20 years ago about me protecting my children from a vicious animal."

"So we've covered that — and any mom in those situations, when you have an animal that's viciously killing livestock and attacking people, it's a tough decision," she continued. "The reason it's in my book is because that book is filled with challenging times and hard decisions. And it's a story, but I think many Americans will be able to read and to learn how they can get engaged with their government again."

NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander then asked Noem a second time if the story impacted her chances at VP, to which she questioned him on if he has read the story.

"And if you read the book, a lot of what got reported was not the truth, was not the truth on the story," she said. "So, I would encourage people to read the book and to really find out the truth on why that story is in there and read the other parts of the story about how we're not going back to politics the way that it used to be, how Donald Trump changed politics because we're having much more honest and genuine conversations about the challenges that people face."

Noem also faced criticism from Native American tribes in her state after she commented earlier this year that tribal leaders benefited from drug cartels. She has since been banned from all tribal lands in South Dakota.

The dispute turns on technical questions about Hungary’s immunity as a foreign sovereign, and it marks the second time the justices will take up the long-running legal battle.

It is set to be heard during the Supreme Court’s next annual term, with oral arguments likely to be held near the end of this year.

As Nazi Germany neared defeat in World War II, the Hungarian government in 1944 raced to deport and kill more than half a million Jews, one of the fastest and largest mass exterminations during the Holocaust. Along the way, the government confiscated and liquidated Jews’ valuable property.

In 2010, a group of Hungarian Holocaust survivors and their heirs brought a class-action suit against Hungary and its national railway, seeking compensation for their stolen property.

The parties in the 14 years since have battled over whether American courts have jurisdiction to hear the case.

Federal law makes foreign nations generally immune from lawsuits in the United States, but the survivors claim their suit falls under the law’s exception for the expropriation of property. 

At issue before the Supreme Court is the exception’s requirement that the property have a “commercial nexus” with the United States. The survivors claim Hungary commingled the proceeds of their stolen property with other funds, and some of the proceeds are now present in the United States in connection with Hungary’s commercial activity.

Though a lower court agreed the lawsuit can move forward under that theory, the survivors agreed the Supreme Court should review the ruling to resolve a split among the nation’s appeals courts on the issue — stressing that the living survivors are now all at least 90 years old.

“They deserve to know once and for all whether they will be able to pursue in this Nation’s courts recognition of and justice for the crimes Petitioners committed against them and humanity,” their attorneys wrote in court filings.

Hungary has long warned of the reciprocal dangers of abrogating foreign sovereign immunity, telling the Supreme Court it “will serve as a beacon for plaintiffs around the world to litigate all manner of historical grievances in domestic courts, and needlessly entangle the United States in disputes in which it has no legitimate connection.”

In 2021, the justices sent the Holocaust survivors’ lawsuit back to a lower court after weighing in on another issue related to Hungary’s immunity.

The high court previously avoided many opportunities to get involved in cases involving transgender protections, but after being urged by the Biden administration to take up the latest dispute, the justices agreed to do so in a brief order.

The battle over whether Tennessee’s law unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of sex is slated to take place during the court’s next annual term. Oral arguments are likely to be scheduled close to the end of this calendar year.

The justices’ eventual decision is set to impact the laws passed in the Tennessee and other Republican-led legislatures. Nearly half of the country has banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, affecting an estimated 100,000 trans adolescents and teenagers. 

Some laws also limit care for transgender adults, and bills introduced this year in a handful of conservative states aim to outlaw gender-affirming medical care completely.

Legal challenges mounted by transgender youths and their families have been met with mixed results, and federal appeals courts have split on whether laws that ban gender-affirming care are constitutional.

The Biden administration said the Supreme Court’s intervention was “urgently needed,” arguing that those conflicting court rulings have created “profound uncertainty” for transgender people.

“Absent this Court’s review, families in Tennessee and other States where laws like SB1 have taken effect will face the loss of essential medical care,” the Justice Department wrote in its petition to the high court.

“Those with the resources to do so may abandon their homes, jobs, schools, and communities to move to a State where the needed treatment remains available,” the petition continued. “Others will not have even that option. And families in much of the rest of the Nation will be left in limbo, waiting to see whether their State’s ban will be upheld or enjoined.” 

A group of anonymous transgender minors and parents in both states challenged the law, and the Justice Department later intervened in the dispute. A doctor is also a plaintiff.

A federal district judge agreed to issue an injunction blocking Tennessee’s law. On appeal, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals consolidated it with a similar case arising from Kentucky cases and reversed, handing a win to the two Republican-led states.

The Supreme Court’s order now grants the Justice Department’s request to review Tennessee’s law, but only on the question of whether it violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The other plaintiffs also wanted the justices to consider whether it violated due process protections.

Tennessee urged the Supreme Court to stay out of the dispute, which would keep the law intact, arguing the justices should allow the issue to further percolate in the appeals courts.

They’re tired of hearing about the hand-wringing of Democratic voters and donors over Biden’s age and electability and sick of reading about Rube Goldberg-like schemes, some of them pushed by Republicans or conservative media, to shake up the Democratic ticket.  

One Democratic senator feigned putting a make-believe pistol to their temple when asked about the prospect of yanking Biden off the ticket before the Democratic National Convention in August or the general election in November.

The senator, who requested anonymity, said stories about replacing Biden on the ticket sound “juicy” but are nothing more than a sign that political pundits have “too much time on their hands.”

“There’s no way in hell that’s true. Not a chance in hell that’s true,” the lawmaker insisted. “I don’t know what to say.”

The senator said Biden has seen a small bump in the polls since a Manhattan jury convicted former President Trump on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records.

“The latest national [poll] has him at 50 [percent]. I think that’s real,” the senator added.

Biden and Trump are tied at 40 percent in a head-to-head match-up, according to the latest analysis of recent national polls by FiveThirtyEight, but Trump previously had a small lead over the president for months.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said stories about Biden dropping off the ticket this summer or fall are simply “bizarre.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also poured cold water on the speculation.

“I’ve heard no credible plan B, and I’m not counting on a plan B,” he said.

The Democratic senator said Thursday's debate between Biden and Trump “will be a really critical point” in the campaign and would set the trajectory of the race.

“All of the questions that people are asking right now will have different answers after this debate,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s going to be a choice between the two of them. I think Biden is so much sharper, quicker, knowledgeable than even Democrats give him credit for.

“We all have moments when we can’t remember a name, but that’s not what’s important about being president of the United States,” he said. “I don’t have a plan B; I’m not looking for a plan B.”

Democratic senators have insisted for months that Biden will be their nominee for president in November, and they feel confident he will beat Trump in the general election.

But that hasn’t stopped speculation from bubbling up in the media that there could be a last-minute overhaul of the ticket.

One Democratic fundraising consultant said Democratic strategists and donors sometimes ask whether Biden will still be the party’s nominee for president in November, but the conversation usually fizzles out pretty quickly.

“If people mention that, if it’s talked about in settings, even if somebody says we need to have an alternative, it’s not really taken as something that seriously could happen,” the strategist said.

“You’re in a conversation with somebody, somebody says, ‘Do we have a backup?’ Something like that. Because, honestly, [Vice President] Harris is not really seen as ready for prime time,” the source added.

The Democratic consultant said there’s “zero” chance of replacing Biden.

Business Insider earlier this month published a list of the “7 Democrats who could replace Biden if he drops his 2024 reelection bid.”

That was followed by “Fox and Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade asking Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who was one of the names on Business Insider’s list, in an interview Wednesday if he would be ready to replace Biden. Moore quickly waved away the theory and declared Biden “the best candidate for the presidency.”

Politico published a piece Thursday reporting that Democratic voters are enthusiastic about Democratic candidates but not about Biden, citing it as “another ominous sign for the president.”

Politico Magazine published an analysis in February warning “Democrats might need a Plan B” and offering possible scenarios.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant for former Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, wrote an op-ed for The Hill last month declaring, “Democrats can still jettison Biden as an ‘August Surprise.’

The Boston Herald reported this week that “a number of Democratic consultants are speculating that top party officials could be very quietly looking to remove Biden from the ticket before the convention and find a younger, more dynamic leader” such as Michelle Obama.

The paper asked if Hillary Clinton, who’s kept her name in the news, might be “paving the way for Democrats to pick her as the presidential nominee.”

British journalist Piers Morgan hosted a lengthy panel discussion on his show “Piers Morgan Uncensored” about replacing Biden atop the ticket after airing clips of Biden seeming confused during a fundraising event in Los Angeles with former President Obama.

The White House later slammed the video clip as selectively edited “misinformation” to make the president look bad, while Trump shared it on his media platform, Truth Social, with the comment, “Is this really who you want to be your President?”

The media speculation about Biden dropping off the ticket has been fueled by polls showing that a majority of voters think he's too old to be an effective president. 

A New York Times/Siena College survey of voters nationwide published in March found that 73 percent of voters thinks that, including 61 percent of voters who backed Biden in 2020. 

Kathleen Parker, a columnist for The Washington Post, this month suggested that Democrats could address voters’ concerns about Biden’s age by replacing Harris with former secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton, the party’s 2016 nominee.

“Biden’s steady decline the past few years — his stumbles, his search for words, his occasional blank stare — have been impossible to ignore,” she wrote.

She argued Harris is a “significant obstacle” to Biden because independents and disenchanted Republicans might swing for Biden if it weren’t for the prospect of a President Harris.”

Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democratic leader, however, panned the idea of Clinton running for president or vice president as implausible.

“No, I don’t think she’s likely to run again,” he said.

Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) acknowledged Democratic voters are alarmed over polls showing Trump has a solid chance of beating Biden in the fall.

“Everyone’s seen the polls and I think people are so alarmed that we could elect someone who’s kind of revealed themselves to be a demagogue,” he said, referring to Trump.

“Maybe he’ll only be a dictator for a day … but he’s revealed himself, and I think people are very, very concerned about that,” he said. “People look at those polls, and they’re nervous and anxious, but I don’t think there are any other alternative plans.”

The law signed by the state's GOP governor has been blasted by civil liberties groups, which argue it infringes on the rights of students and blatantly ignores the separation of church and state. 

The issue will soon be headed to the courts, with organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) saying they plan to sue the state, and Gov. Jeff Landry vowing to defend the law. 

It is also showing signs of becoming intertwined in national political races, with former President Trump embracing the law in a Truth Social post. 

“I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER. READ IT — HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG???” Trump said.  

“THIS MAY BE, IN FACT, THE FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY,” he added.  

The biblical posters in Louisiana classrooms must be in “large, easily readable font” by the beginning of next year. The displays will also include three paragraphs that explain the prominence of the Ten Commandments in American education history. 

“We're thrilled to see that Governor Landry signed this bill into law. We think it gets us back more closely to the original intent of our founding fathers,” said Matt Krause, attorney for First Liberty Institute.  

Since the 1980s, Krause said, “the Ten Commandments were allowed on schoolhouse walls. So, we've lived a lot more of our country's history with the ability to do that than we haven’t. We feel like this is a good step forward to kind of reintroduce, especially to our students, some of those founding principles of our country, and we think it's a great thing."

But the ACLU, its Louisiana branch, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation announced immediately after the law was signed that they would go to court over the measure, which they say violates the First Amendment, creating an “unconstitutional religious coercion of students” and making students feel unwelcome if they are not Christian. 

“It is a prime example of how Christian nationalism is on the march across this country. It would force public school children of all religions to read and venerate the state's preferred brand of Christianity. This is a complete violation of church-state separation,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. 

The crux of the argument could lie in the Supreme Court’s decision to nullify the Lemon test back in 2022. The standard first appeared in the 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman, when the justices ruled the government could not provide funding to nonsecular schools without violating the Establishment Clause.

In 1980, the high court took on the Stone v. Graham case, where it ruled based on the Lemon test that a Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments in schools was unconstitutional.

But in the 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a football coach who was fired for praying after games. The school had justified its decision by saying the coach was violating the Establishment Clause.

In the court's decision, the justices said "[i]n place of Lemon and the endorsement test" the justice system now needs to interpret the Establishment Clause by "reference to historical practices and understandings."

Krause said that "it'd be hard to argue, for anybody to argue, that the Ten Commandments aren’t a historical traditional part of the American education system, American culture, and that's why in all likelihood, it will survive any kind of constitutional scrutiny."

“There's really not another document, religious or otherwise, that is ubiquitous in American history,” he said, pointing to references to the text in the Supreme Court and the Capitol, and adding it will be good for Louisiana students to ask about the posters in classrooms so teachers have a “chance to go back into the history of founding of America.” 

But opponents of the law say the Founding Fathers would in fact be on their side.

“All of these sources make clear that the Establishment Clause was intended to prevent any sort of religious coercion or preference by government or the government taking positions on religious issues,” Laser said.

Other red states could soon be trying to follow in Louisiana's footsteps. Neighboring Texas had previously looked at mandating the Ten Commandments in public classrooms but had run out of time in its legislative session.

“Texas WOULD have been and SHOULD have been the first state in the nation to put the 10 Commandments back in our schools,” said GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Thursday.  

“I will pass the 10 Commandments Bill again out of the Senate next session,” Patrick added.  

Laser pointed to other instances in Republican-led states where she says there is a concerning trend of religion mixing with taxpayer-funded schools, including chaplains replacing school counselors, coaches praying with students and the push for religious charter schools.

“We don't need states turning public schools into Sunday schools. We need a national recommitment to church-state separation. That's what protects everybody's freedom to live as themselves, and believe as they choose, so long as they don't harm others,” she added. 

Days after Biden’s order, former President Trump told a podcast host he would essentially staple a green card to every U.S. college diploma earned by a foreign national, a proposal that’s popular among business circles but would likely require an act of Congress.

The immigration debate’s swing into a buyer’s market for certain groups follows years — if not decades — of polling showing the general public broadly favors a fair immigration system.

Biden’s announcement, which promises a path to citizenship for about half a million undocumented immigrants married to or adopted by U.S. citizens, changed a pattern many immigrants thought was etched in stone.

“Since the beginning of the Trump era, there has been a feeling that things are only going to go backward, and this is a significant — a really significant announcement, and proof that we can actually move forward in a way that's actually good for these families,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas).

Public debate on the topic has centered on security and enforcement — with in-depth argumentation about specific policies such as wall construction or Title 42 expulsions — while discussion of the immigration system itself is often framed around broader concepts such as “comprehensive immigration reform” or “path to citizenship.”

Over the last two decades, no major bill to reform or improve immigration processes has passed, though enforcement funding has more than tripled since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in 2003.

That’s made many immigrant communities skeptical that any beneficial change could be coming their way; immigration and border policy has been a one-way street for a generation.

A poll of voters conducted between April and May in battleground states by Equis found both parties underwater with Hispanics on immigration: Only 38 percent of respondents said they trust Biden and Democrats on immigration, while 41 percent trust Trump and Republicans.

Broad majorities of respondents said their problem with Democrats is they haven’t delivered reform, and their issue with Republicans is they’re too harsh.

“Broken promises” by Democrats was listed as a top concern by 72 percent of respondents, and 65 percent listed a failure to deliver a pathway to citizenship.

Trump’s negatives came in at 64 percent of respondents concerned about his “extreme measures” and “racism and division,” and 62 percent about “border politics and chaos.”

Proposals such as Trump’s green card pitch, which has already been panned by restrictionist groups that generally support him, has historically been a priority of business interests and East and South Asian immigrant groups.

It’s unlikely to move the needle among Latinos, but it’s also unknown so far whether Biden’s announcement is attracting converts.

A separate poll conducted for UnidosUS in mid-May found that the economy is by far the most important issue for Latino voters, but on immigration, 53 percent said their top priority is providing a path to citizenship for long-term undocumented immigrants, and 42 percent pushed for a path to citizenship for Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the country as minors.

The top enforcement-related concern for that poll’s respondents was cracking down on human smugglers, listed by 29 percent, followed by 28 percent who cited the need for more border security.

Those priorities are far from a secret among Latinos — an entire ecosystem of advocacy groups has been pushing for immigrant relief for decades.

“First, Latino voters, like other Americans, are frustrated by the situation at the southern border and by the seeming impasse in Washington on getting a solution. This frustration is demonstrated by increased openness to a variety of options Latino voters may not have entertained before, but this frustration should not be misinterpreted as a fundamental shift among Latino voters,” said Clarissa Martínez de Castro, president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUs.

“What is clear from our poll is that the top immigration priority for Latino voters remains providing relief to the long-term undocumented in this country, and Latino voters are more frustrated by the lack of support for immigrants than they are by the situation at the border.”

That’s why Biden’s immigrant relief initiative, which essentially makes it easier for qualifying undocumented immigrants to clean up their paperwork, was met with full-throated support by advocacy groups, particularly those on the left.

Along with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program of 2012 and its sister program, 2014’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), Biden’s announcement is the only major victory in decades for those who prioritize a path to citizenship.

But it’s still up in the air whether Biden’s program — due to start receiving applications in August — will result in green cards for half a million spouses and adoptive children of U.S. citizens, or whether it will suffer the fate of DAPA.

DAPA never signed up beneficiaries because it was blocked by lawsuits and essentially buried by the Supreme Court in 2016 in a 4-4 decision that affirmed a lower court’s injunction.

“There was the huge excitement around both DACA and DAPA being announced, and then, tragically, DAPA taking the huge hit that it took,” said Casar.

“I think that this one could wind up being of enormous importance, because there's so much, I think, despair in mixed-status families and in Latino districts like mine, that nothing's ever going to get done, and I think this could crack open that despair and provide a path of hope. And I think that's really important.”

For the Biden administration to provide that path, advocates warn, an announcement that falls flat in court won’t cut it.

“So if you're looking at it from an operational standpoint, you know the administration is going to need to enroll folks quickly and soon to be able to pull this off,” said Cris Ramón, senior immigration policy advisor at UnidosUS.

“It really has to sell this policy to the community, but also needs to be able to be able to work with trusted community-based organizations and legal service providers to ensure that people can navigate this process and be able to get the protection that they deserve.”

A Democratic-aligned super PAC and Democratic candidate Adam Frisch’s campaign have aired ads in the GOP primary for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District either touting hard-line Republican candidate Ron Hanks as “too conservative” and tying him to former President Trump, or raising scrutiny on the establishment-backed Jeff Hurd. 

The moves come as Democrats see Hanks, an election denier, as the weaker of the candidates heading into November and their best chance at flipping a red seat. 

“It's no surprise that the Democrats desperately want Ron Hanks to be the nominee because he would be a certain loser to Adam Frisch. There's no doubt in my mind,” explained former state GOP Chair Dick Wadhams.  

Hurd, Hanks and Colorado State Board of Education member Stephen Varela are considered the leading candidates among a handful of contenders vying for the Republican nomination in the western Colorado congressional district. They’re running for the seat since Boebert opted to run in a different district this cycle. 

Rocky Mountain Values PAC, a liberal group, started airing advertisements last month using clips of Hanks speaking about his position on immigration, with the narrator in the ad at one point saying that “Ron Hanks and Donald Trump are just too conservative.” The ad also notes that both candidates were endorsed by the Colorado GOP.  

Meanwhile, Frisch’s campaign more recently aired an ad about Hurd, claiming the candidate was “hiding,” “ducking Republican debates” and declining to say where he stood on several issues such as abortion, the Second Amendment and whom he voted for in the last few election cycles. 

The strategy is apparently to elevate Hanks in the primary and make him sound like the more appealing conservative candidate while hurting Hurd’s chances. Democrats hope that Hanks’s controversial stances on issues like the 2020 election, which he maintains was stolen, will turn off moderate Republicans and unaffiliated voters in November.

That has prompted Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), a House GOP leadership-aligned super PAC, to air a last-minute ad of their own hitting Hanks.  

“Why are liberals supporting Ron Hanks? They know they can count on him,” says the narrator of the 30-second ad, referring to the Democratic-aligned super PAC ads. The ad claims Hanks had an “anti-gun agenda” and “abandoned Trump.”  

It’s an approach Democrats have used in the past, both in Colorado and in other parts of the country. Democrats sought to elevate Hanks during the Colorado Senate GOP primary in 2022, when he was running against mainstream candidate Joe O'Dea.  

O'Dea ultimately won the GOP primary, later losing to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) in the general election. However, Hanks notably won the 3rd Congressional District during the primary.  

Zack Roday, a partner at Ascent who managed O'Dea’s Senate campaign, said the tactic forced them to change their advertising in the home stretch of the GOP primary.  

“This is the only play for CLF and others,” Roday said.  

“With Joe O'Dea in 2022, we upped our spend, and we went instead of, unfortunately, a full contrast with Michael Bennet in the closing days of the June primary, we had to go on a contrast with Ron Hanks,” he added.  

Republicans have argued that it’s hypocritical for the Democratic Party to brand itself as “pro-Democracy” while elevating someone who contests the 2020 election results and attended the Trump rally in Washington, D.C., on the day of the Capitol riot.  

Still, some members of the GOP have differing thoughts on whether it could jeopardize the seat for them in November.  

“I think it's a really dirty tactic,” said Jon Kelly, Pitkin County GOP chair. “I think it really undermines any of the claims that Democrats have ... when Democrats claim that certain candidates are extreme.”

Pueblo County GOP Chair Michelle Gray, who like other GOP county chairs is remaining neutral in the primary, expressed concern that Democrats’ involvement in the Republican primary could hurt the GOP’s chances of keeping the seat in November. 

“If a voter here in Pueblo had a candidate in mind, and then they're changing their mind based on these Democrat flyers that are coming out, yes ... I do believe that it can affect the outcome of the race,” she said. 

Both the super PAC and Frisch’s campaign have defended intervening in the Republican primary.  

Amber Miller, a spokesperson for the Rocky Mountain Values PAC, said the super PAC got involved this cycle to set the record straight about Republicans’ choices in the district. 

Rocky Mountain Values PAC "is run by Coloradans, who are very focused on defeating extreme Colorado Republicans, right, and ensuring voters in [the 3rd Congressional District] know the truth about who the two leading Republican candidates are for this open congressional seat,” she said. 

She noted it was important for them to broadcast where candidates stood on issues or if they declined to say.  

Frisch’s campaign, meanwhile, explained that they got involved in the Republican primary as a way to combat attacks Frisch was receiving from both candidates. 

“There are two Republican candidates who can win the Republican Primary,” said Frisch campaign manager Camilo Vilaseca in a statement. “Ron Hanks is endorsed by the Republican Party and too extreme. Jeff Hurd is funded by corporate out-of-state interests, yet he continues to hide what he believes. I'm tired of watching Adam take shots from both of them. As far as I’m concerned, the general election has started.” 

Vilaseca said the ads demonstrate why both GOP candidates “are the wrong choice" for Colorado's 3rd District.

“Regardless of Tuesday’s outcome, it’s crucial for CD-3 voters to know who they are voting for,” she added.

The congressional district, which includes the Western Slope and almost half of the state, has voted for Republicans in more recent years. Before that, it swung between Democrats and Republicans. Trump won the district in 2020 by 8 points.  

Though the seat is favorable to Republicans, the party can’t take it for granted. The nonpartisan election handicapper Cook Political Report rates the seat “lean Republican.” 

Asked about some of the accusations in the super PAC ad regarding his debate attendance and his hedging on issues, Hurd argued that “the fact that [Democrats are] engaged in the primary, and they're repeating some of the talking points that other Republicans in the primary are raising, just goes to show that they're nervous about me in the general election.” 

“I'm the one that had the political courage to enter the race when the odds seemed long,” he added. “And so I don't really take a lot of credence from other competitors telling me what events I should be at and what events I shouldn't be at, given that there are dozens and dozens of events that I attended well before they got in the race.” 

Valera, the Colorado State Board of Education member, also criticized the Democratic interference, explaining he left the Democratic Party before becoming a Republican because of “a lot of these kind of dirty tactics and dirty politics.” 

Hanks suggested he didn’t have a problem with Rocky Mountain Values airing ads on his behalf.

“I'm glad they're not lying about me. Now, the Republicans, on the other hand, are lying about me. Isn't that an ironic turn?” Hanks said, alluding to the CLF ad. 

Hanks brushed off Republican concern over his candidacy. He affirmed he had attended the Washington, D.C., rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and didn’t believe President Biden had won the last election.  

With little public polling done in the race, it’s unclear how much the ads will impact either candidate. Some Republicans like Dolores County GOP Chair John Funk say they don’t see a problem with the act, saying it’s protected by the First Amendment.  

But Funk worries voters may not be savvy enough to understand the ads. 

“The concern is that it — that we have an electorate that doesn't know the facts,” Funk said. 

Last week, the president’s reelection campaign rolled out its "Seniors for Biden-Harris" effort, which will be led by first lady Jill Biden. The effort will include bingo nights and pickleball events in key states including Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada and Arizona. 

The push comes as Biden has struggled to appeal to key voting groups, resulting in less-than-desirable poll numbers ahead of Election Day. But older voters are proving to be a bright spot for the campaign. A Fox News poll released this week showed Biden up 2 points over former President Trump for the first time since October. And among voters 65 years and older, the poll showed Biden up 15 points over Trump. 

“Seniors are up for grabs,” said Bob Ward, a pollster at the Republican firm Fabrizio Ward. “It’s in their best interest to focus on senior voters just as I think it’s in the Trump campaign’s best interest to focus on senior voters.”  

Ward worked with the Democratic firm Impact Research to poll voters from 44 of the most competitive congressional districts on behalf of AARP. According to the findings released Thursday, Biden leads by 5 points among voters 65 years and older. 

At the same time, voters between the ages 50 and 64 appear to be leaning toward Trump. The AARP poll found Trump leading by 15 points with that group. 

“Older voters are not a monolith,” Ward said. “The group right below seniors is overwhelmingly Republican. It is the most Republican age group across the electorate.”

Both voting blocs — 50 to 64 years old, and 65 years and older — are some of the most motivated voters. Eighty-four percent of voters over 50 said they were “extremely motivated” to vote in November, according to the AARP survey. Meanwhile, 63 percent of voters under 50 said the same. Another upside to appealing to older voters is if they are retired, they may have more time to aid the campaign through phone banking and canvassing. 

The support for Biden among voters 65 years and older marks a generational realignment for Democrats. Since the 2000 presidential election, the voting bloc has traditionally swung toward Republicans. 

“This has been a huge swing in the Trump era,” said Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist. “Donald Trump has soured older voters who do not stand with extremism, who do not stand with instability and who are very much against his disruption [and] lack of civility.” 

That sentiment has been reflected in other recent polling. A Quinnipiac University poll released last month showed that 35 percent of voters 65 years and older said democracy was the most urgent issue facing the country, compared to 10 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 who said the same. 

The data and Biden’s effort come as his campaign struggles to appeal to younger voters, particularly members of Generation Z. A Harvard Youth poll released in late April found Biden leading Trump 45 to 37 percent support among people ages 18 to 29. For perspective, Biden had a 23-point advantage over Trump with the age group four years ago. 

Biden has struggled with younger voters of color as well. A poll released by the University of Chicago’s GenForward project earlier this month showed Biden’s wavering support among young Black and Latino voters. 

Younger voters have taken particular issue with Biden for his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas. The issue could prove to be detrimental to Biden in certain swing states, like Michigan. 

But in Arizona, another critical swing state, the political landscape looks different. Census data from 2020 found that 16 percent of Arizona’s population of 7.5 million people were 65 years or older. Biden carried Arizona by less than a percentage point in the 2020 presidential election. 

Democratic strategists argue that Biden doing better among voters of that age group could offset damage from the potential loss of younger voters. 

Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist and former communications director for Vice President Harris, said Biden doing better with older voters could help “blunt” the potential loss of young voters who are not as enthusiastic about the campaign. 

“What’s helpful for Biden is older voters are more educated, they have more assets, and tend to be more informed about what’s happening in the news, and people who are more informed tend to like Donald Trump less,” Simmons said. 

Simmons emphasized that young voters are still very much a driving part of the political and cultural conversation. 

“The temptation to pay attention to younger voters is very high because they give so much energy, they volunteer, and they really set the cultural moment for the country,” he said. 

However, some data points show that younger voters are still less enthusiastic ahead of the presidential race. 

A December poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics found that only 49 percent of voters in the 18- to 29-year-old age group who voted in the 2020 election said they “definitely” will be voting in November’s election. 

One of Biden’s issues with young voters is that they are not as familiar with him, unlike older voters who watched his Senate tenure, multiple presidential runs and vice presidency. This dynamic has played a role in shifting the Democratic coalition that was key to former President Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012. 

“It’s always helpful to remember that these age categories are not static,” Simmons said. “People who are 65 today were in their 50’s when Barack Obama ran for president.”

“We think of Joe Biden as being a very known quantity, but the truth is for voters who are in their early 20s, they don’t really know that much about Joe Biden,” he said. 

The ruling immediately flipped the fight to the other side, galvanizing abortion rights supporters and making it a driving election issue. And since then, the anti-abortion movement has struggled with a new reality for which it may have been unprepared — the public is largely supportive of abortion rights and opposes significant efforts to ban or restrict the procedure.

“It's setting the agenda up and down the ticket. Because it's such a clear contrast, and voters think they can really sort it out,” said Celinda Lake, one of the Biden campaign’s lead pollsters in 2020. “It's a yes or no issue.”

At the same time, the Republican Party has struggled to coalesce around a messaging strategy to describe its next steps.

“There are some disagreements that I see in the anti-abortion space, but what I know is that they have been very clear about their wanting to end abortion access ... their disagreement is how they get there,” said Nourbese Flint, president of abortion rights group All Above All. 

“So I wouldn't categorize it as disarray. I would categorize it as they're trying to figure out how to message,” Flint said.

Abortion rights activists said they feel more organized now, with much larger groups of supporters than those seen prior to Dobbs. 

Many said they had tried to sound the alarm about coordinated conservative efforts to bring down Roe v. Wade, but some admitted they got complacent.

“I think you know, one of the things that we've thought about post-Dobbs decision, post-Roe, is how we didn't have maybe the best strategy to absorb people who were interested in the issue, and to activate them when we didn't have a crisis,” said Lupe M. Rodriguez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice.

Reproductive rights advocates argue that they’ve put in the work to learn how to keep voters engaged in every post-Roe election, with hopes that 2024 will be no different.

“We've learned a lot about how to work with folks longer term, to really sort of find ways to engage people on these issues,” Rodriguez said.

On the flip side, anti-abortion activists are finding their priorities set aside by the same politicians they’ve long supported and influenced. For political expediency, the Republican Party has concluded harsh anti-abortion policies are hurting candidates in key races.

GOP lawmakers and candidates, including former President Trump, now say abortion decisions should be left to the states — a stark departure from previous efforts to regulate it at the federal level.

Anti-abortion groups have said they are disappointed with that rhetoric but remain committed to helping elect Republicans.

One of the most powerful of those groups, SBA Pro-Life America, wants to spend at least $92 million to reach 10 million voters in battleground states this cycle. Their message: Democrats want to repeal abortion bans and pass laws guaranteeing abortion access at any stage in pregnancy.

After a surprising number of Democratic victories from candidates running on abortion in the 2022 midterm election, Republicans in 2024 have had to choose between doubling down on restrictions or backing away from the issue.

To be sure, GOP voters rank abortion much lower on their priority list than inflation, crime and immigration. 

Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, said abortion has done better when it’s a stand-alone ballot issue rather than when it’s been used as an attack against a popular GOP candidate. 

For example, five statewide ballot measures in 2022 all came out in favor of abortion rights, even in red states like Kentucky and Montana. But conservative anti-abortion governors in Ohio and Georgia also won.

“I think [abortion] is an important and potent issue for Democrats. But it's simply not a single issue that will drive massive vote choice — it'll affect it, but not be determinative,” Franklin said.

Democrats want to keep up the pressure on Republicans and build on their success from 2022.

In the wake of restrictive abortion laws in states like Arizona, Alabama and Florida, Democrats have been unified in their message. The laws were passed by Republicans and were only possible because Trump’s nominated Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade.

Abortion access is now made up of a patchwork of state laws and court decisions, and nearly two dozen states have bans or restrictions in place. Abortion supporters want to tie the experiences of women in those states squarely to Republicans.

“Every time I feel like this issue may be fading, we hear another story of how it's affecting people's lives and their health and their ability to have a healthy pregnancy,” said Cecile Richards, a former president of Planned Parenthood and co-chair of the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. “The Republicans have an unsustainable, unsupportable position on these issues, and I think they're going to be held to account.”

In the Senate, Democrats are working to highlight Republican opposition to reproductive rights by holding votes on issues like in vitro fertilization (IVF), contraception access and abortion rights.

“They’re trying to remind everyone where the parties stand, and that has been largely viewed as a Democratic strength and not ground that Republicans prefer to play on right now, because there's so many other issues that we're ahead on, such as the economy, immigration, foreign policy, energy,” said GOP strategist Ron Bonjean, co-founder of ROKK Solutions.

Senate Republicans attempted to pass a bill earlier this month, which was blocked by Democrats, that would create an incentive for politicians not to pass legislation banning IVF but wouldn’t stop a court from restricting the procedure. 

Senate Republicans also signed a pledge saying they “strongly support” continued nationwide access to IVF, despite GOP efforts in states like Alabama to block it.

Democrats argue that they are going into November unified on their abortion rights messaging.

“Everywhere from six-week abortion bans to IVF — Republicans are all over the place, they can’t really seem to settle on anything particularly that satisfies all corners. Therein lies where Democrats have been unified on this issue and maintaining reproductive rights for women and the right to choose,” said former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.).

He added, “when it comes to hard-core belief in terms of what draws voters out, this is one of those issues that year after year has done that.”

With just days left until the justices’ self-imposed deadline of finishing their opinions by the end of June, they have yet to release decisions in 14 argued cases this term. 

The court’s remaining opinions are set to have profound impacts, but chief among them is a decision on whether former President Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution.

Cases implicating Jan. 6 defendants, social media regulation and the power of federal agencies are among the litany of issues that remain. The court expects to release the next batch of opinions Wednesday. 

Here are the five biggest decisions still unresolved as the Supreme Court’s opinion season reaches its peak. 

Trump’s immunity claims 

Do former presidents have criminal immunity for official acts while in the White House? 

For months, Trump has delayed his criminal trial in Washington, D.C., on charges he conspired to subvert the 2020 election by appealing his claims that he is protected by presidential immunity. 

Lower courts have rejected his assertion, but the Supreme Court at oral arguments appeared inclined to carve out some immunity for former presidents, though perhaps a shield less extensive than Trump’s lawyers desire. 

That outcome would send the immunity battle back to a lower court. No matter how it shakes out, it would likely aid Trump in delaying his trial until after the election, when he hopes to win the presidency and halt his prosecutions. 

Even if the justices completely reject Trump’s presidential immunity theory, it remains unclear if his case will proceed to trial before November. 

With the clock ticking, some observers have criticized the justices for not further expediting their decision, though the court did schedule Trump’s appeal faster than a normal case. 

With no decision yet, the court’s final potential days of opinions overlap with the first presidential debate, scheduled for Thursday night. 

Jan. 6 obstruction charge 

Was the Justice Department proper in charging more than 300 Jan. 6 defendants with an obstruction charge? 

Another case stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot stands to disrupt the Justice Department’s prosecution of rioters who stormed the Capitol where the certification of the 2020 presidential election was underway. 

One rioter, Joseph Fischer, challenged an obstruction law used against him and hundreds of others in the attack’s aftermath. Fischer argued that the charge — which criminalizes “corruptly” obstructing, impeding or interfering with an official government proceeding — was improperly applied to the rioters given its origin: the Enron accounting scandal. 

The justices appeared wary of the government’s use of the charge during oral arguments. 

Siding with Fischer could upend many rioters’ already established sentences. Though most also faced other felony counts, 50 rioters were sentenced with the obstruction law as their only felony, according to U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.  

A ruling in favor of the rioters could also lend credence to claims by Trump and his allies that the Justice Department overreached in its prosecution of the attack. Trump has vowed to consider pardoning some rioters.    

And, it could undermine the Justice Department’s narrative that the Capitol riot was an attack on American democracy.  

Biden social media contacts 

Did the Biden administration coerce social media companies to remove false or misleading content in violation of the Constitution? 

A challenge to the Biden administration’s efforts to curb misinformation in the wake of the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic could upend how the federal government communicates with social media platforms about false and misleading content.  

Two Republican attorneys general contend that federal officials violated the First Amendment by “coercing” social media companies to remove content that the government deemed potentially dangerous.  

The Justice Department has warned that, if the justices side with the states, it could limit their ability to address matters of public concern, prevent national security threats and relay information. But during oral arguments, the high court seemed to lean toward siding with the government. 

Florida, Texas social media laws 

Can the government tell social media platforms how to moderate content without running afoul of the First Amendment? 

Laws in Texas and Florida regulating social media bans have placed the rights of social media companies on the line. 

At the heart of each case are efforts to prevent social media platforms from banning users for their political views, even if they violated platform policies. Detractors of the laws, like the tech industry groups challenging them, say they step on private companies’ First Amendment right to editorial discretion.  

If allowed to stand, the laws would transform online speech by essentially eliminating unique content moderation decisions that set platforms apart, potentially chilling competition between small- and medium-sized companies. 

It could also increase the amount of hateful, inappropriate or incorrect content online, over hesitance to moderate material on their platforms.  

Federal agency power 

Should courts defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of ambiguous laws?
 
On Tuesday, a Supreme Court precedent bolstering federal agencies’ ability to regulate wide aspects of American life will mark its 40th anniversary. 

When the justices return to the bench Wednesday, they may put it on its death bed. 

The doctrine, known as Chevron deference, requires courts to accept agencies’ reasonable interpretations of federal laws when they are ambiguous.  

Presidential administrations have invoked it to uphold regulations from those on fishing boats to cryptocurrency to environmental protections. 

Antiregulatory interests, who deplore the growth of the “administrative state” in recent decades, are hoping the conservative-leaning Supreme Court will use two of its current cases to claw back the executive branch’s power by overruling Chevron. 

The cases have also attracted attention from advocacy groups on many issues who support Chevron and anxiously hope the justices will not question the legal basis for their favored government regulations. 

Trump’s 2020 debate performance is remembered for interruptions, badgering and running roughshod over Biden and debate moderator Chris Wallace — as well as his infamous response that the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by.”

Now, Republicans are urging him to tone it down in the name of presidential success.

"Don't take the bait," said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican who is running to become leader next year. "Demeanor's important, tone's important. I think you can be decisive and strong, as he is, but I think in many ways you want to give President Biden as much rope as possible because I don't think that probably is going to play well for him."

"This is why you play them, right? The debates are going to be important as they always are," he continued. "If [Trump] comes in there and just shows strength and leadership but maintains a calm demeanor and lets Biden go, it goes well for him."

This week’s debate, which is scheduled ahead of both national conventions for the first time since the advent of televised debates in 1960, is set to become one of the first major moments of the general election battle.

It could be a turning point in the race, in which Biden has struggled to put Trump away in battleground state polls.

But as failed candidates of the past can attest, a campaign can change with one bad night — just as Trump’s did four years ago. Republicans are hopeful the shoe will be on the other foot this go-around.

“The main focus is going to be: is Biden capable?” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a top Trump ally in the upper chamber. 

“If I were President Trump, I would talk about right track, wrong track,” he continued. “I don’t think he needs to be overly-aggressive. Just make the case that if you think we’re on the wrong track, you’re right.”

Trump immediately agreed to Thursday’s debate at CNN studios in Atlanta after saying for months he wanted as many debates as possible against Biden. His campaign has spent weeks lowering expectations around Biden’s performance, portraying the president as weak, ailing and mentally incompetent.

But Trump’s team is also preparing for the possibility that Biden exceeds expectations, laying the foundation to dismiss the performance as a charade — just as it did after Biden’s State of the Union address in early March. 

Biden’s team also jumped at the chance to debate next week as they hope to raise the stakes of this election and put the race on the map for some voters who still haven’t turned their attention to the political season. 

“I think they’re going to be looking for other cues in terms of: is President Biden answer capable of answering all the questions relevantly, and is President Trump within the rails?” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said. “Who knows? That’s why I think [the debate] presents all sorts of questions.” 

Biden departed for Camp David on Thursday to take part in days of extensive debate prep — a process Trump has eschewed since he launched his 2016 presidential campaign. 

The importance of Thursday, however, is not lost among Trump supporters who are well aware of what happened four years ago. Not only was Trump uber-aggressive and barely allowed Biden to get a word in edgewise, but he was also visibly sweating, a fact that was compounded days later when he tested positive for COVID-19. 

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who is reportedly on Trump’s shortlist to become his running mate, acknowledged the stakes but maintained confidence that the former president will see a favorable outcome. 

“I think it’s going to be a good night, but it’s a very important night,” Vance said. “He just has to make his case to the American people. There’s a very clear contrast between how things were under him and how things were under Biden. He just, I think, has to hit that theme and that’s what we’ll do.”

Other Trump supporters are bullish that he will flip the script from 2020. 

“Trump’s going to kick his a‑‑,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said. “You can quote me on that.”

The Trump campaign advertised that more than $50 million flowed in to support him within a day after the verdict was announced, contributing to his total. May helped erase the cash advantage that Biden has enjoyed throughout the election cycle, though both candidates have a lot of money at their disposal.

Here are five takeaways from the campaigns’ Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings this month:

Trump outpaces Biden

Even as polling has shown the race either neck and neck or Trump slightly ahead in the key states that will likely decide the election, one bright spot for Biden has been his fundraising totals.

Not anymore.

That changed for the first time in April when Trump outraised Biden with $76 million to the incumbent’s $51 million. And Trump widened the difference much more significantly in May with a huge sum of $141 million to Biden’s $85 million. 

Trump’s campaign, along with the Republican National Committee (RNC), received 2 million donations last month, a quarter of which were from first-time donors. Meanwhile, the Biden campaign said May was its operation’s best with recurring donors so far. 

Trump also now has more money in the bank both in a direct comparison of the candidates’ campaigns and when taking into account the totals for the Republican and Democratic national committees. Filings from the FEC show that Trump and the RNC had $171 million in cash on hand, compared to $157 million for Biden and the Democratic National Committee. 

Experts have noted that both candidates will have many millions of dollars to spend throughout their campaigns and a lack of funds will likely not be an issue, but these past two months mark a shift for Trump after having spent most of the election cycle trailing Biden in money. 

Trump’s conviction supercharged donations

The first criminal conviction of a former president and presumptive major party presidential nominee last month was unprecedented in U.S. history, and the fundraising numbers on both sides reflected that. 

About $53 million, or more than a third, of Trump’s total intake for May came through online donations in the 24 hours after the Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush money case. It may be the only one of the four criminal trials that Trump is facing to happen before Election Day. 

But even as Trump supporters rallied around him in response to the verdict, the Biden campaign also had a jump in its fundraising, with a source familiar with the matter having told The Hill that the campaign had its best fundraising hours to date after the jury revealed its verdict. 

A verdict in one of Trump’s cases is of course an unusual event in the election calendar that may not reoccur if the other cases are delayed, but it was a major contributor to Trump’s ability to close the money gap overall. 

Down-ballot fundraising is heating up

The battle for control of Congress is picking up at the same time as the presidential race, demonstrated by the amount that the parties’ House and Senate campaign arms raised last month. 

Both the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) broke records for their totals in a month of May. But the NRCC had the edge over the DCCC for the first time this year last month, bringing in $12.6 million compared to $11.9 million. 

The NRCC also seemed to get a boost from Trump’s conviction, raising more than $1 million from small-dollar donors in the following days. A third of them had not previously donated to the committee. 

On the Senate side, the National Republican Senatorial Committee also topped the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) in May, $12.4 million to $10.6 million. 

The Democratic committees still have more cash on hand though as June started. The DCCC led its Republican counterpart with $78.8 million to $64.9 million, while the DSCC led its counterpart with $48.3 million to $41 million. 

Trump is holding on to a lot of his money

While Trump significantly outraised Biden in May, he also held on to his funds much more than Biden did, allowing him to enter June with more cash on hand. 

FEC filings show Biden’s campaign spent $30.6 million last month compared to only $7.9 million that Trump has spent. The public won’t see the full spending from the candidates until next month when their joint fundraising committees, which bring together multiple campaign committees to a more streamlined entity to raise money, are required to submit their FEC filings for the second quarter of 2024. 

The Biden campaign has said its spending is allowing it to build campaign infrastructure in key battleground states. 

One ongoing financial issue that has been plaguing Trump for months and may continue has been the exorbitant amounts he has needed to spend on legal fees. Trump’s fundraising committees spent about $50 million in legal fees throughout 2023 and have spent millions more throughout this year. 

It will continue to be a financial thorn in Trump’s side despite the large amounts he has raised recently, though holding on to his funds for now will allow him to concentrate them closer to the election. 

Billionaires step in to plug fundraising holes

Although FEC regulations place limits on how much an individual can donate to a specific candidate’s campaign, they do not restrict people’s ability to donate to super PACs that support a candidate but act independently of the campaign. And wealthy individuals are showing a willingness to spend grand amounts on both sides. 

One of the most significant contributions from last month was billionaire Timothy Mellon, who donated $50 million to a super PAC supporting Trump, MAGA Inc. Mellon made the donation on May 31, one day after the New York verdict was handed down, FEC filings show. 

While Trump can’t direct where those funds go, they can be used to support his candidacy. 

Biden is set to get a lift from billionaire philanthropist and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who reportedly donated $19 million to a super PAC supporting Biden called Future Forward. He also donated nearly $1 million to the Biden Victory Fund, Biden’s joint fundraising committee. 

These funds and others from ultra-wealthy donors may not go directly to one campaign but do still contribute to advocating for or against a candidate.

He has vowed to pursue a recount in the race, saying there should be a full accounting of “every legal vote.”

Good pointed to alleged “fires” in three precincts on the primary election day and has charged that one county registrar’s office improperly started a ballot process two hours early with his opponent’s representative present, but without notifying his team. 

The Good campaign sent a legal letter about the ballot canvass process and Freedom of Information Act requests about the fire alarms on Friday.

The seeds of doubt about the election are the latest chapter in a contentious GOP civil war of a campaign that saw former President Trump, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and many House Republicans make endorsements for Good’s challenger, former Navy SEAL and state Sen. John McGuire, that were widely seen as revenge. Good, the chair of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, had endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president and was one of eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, throwing the House into chaos.

They are also an example of the election skepticism among conservatives that has been prevalent since Trump and his allies refused to concede that President Biden fairly won the 2020 election.

State and local election officials in Virginia said no fires occurred at polling places and signaled that fire alarms that sounded at those precincts had minimal to no impact on election operations. 

And a local election official pushed back on the Good campaign’s concerns about a meeting that occurred prior to a time designated for election canvassing, saying it was a typical process. The McGuire campaign was present because it had called to check on the timing of the meeting, the official said, while Good’s campaign did not. It is evident, though, that the Good campaign believes proper procedure was not followed.

Good trailed McGuire by just more than 328 votes as of Friday evening, according to Decision Desk HQ. McGuire has declared victory in the race. Good has called to ensure a “fair and accurate count of every legal vote” and has vowed to head to a recount, which he can request if less than a percentage point separates the two candidates.

“We’re going to have a full recount. We’re going to have a full investigation,” Good said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show Thursday, saying that he has “a tremendous number of lawyers at our disposal.”

In a post on social platform X, Good said “fires” disrupted voting in three precincts on election day.

“We had 3 ‘fires’ on election day in 3 precincts, all requiring the precincts to be evacuated for 20 minutes. Albemarle County, Hanover County, and Lynchburg City. What is the probability?  Does anyone recall even 1 fire at a precinct on election day?” Good said. “AI estimates the probability being 0.0000000318% chance.”

Election officials and spokespeople from the state of Virginia and in those local jurisdictions stressed that no voters were turned away in the three voting locations that dealt with fire alarms on Election Day.

In Lynchburg, election officials said that a precinct on the campus of Liberty University had to evacuate for 15 minutes after a fire alarm went off and were told it sounded due to use of cleaning equipment. That location only served students who lived on campus, and with it being summer, only six votes were cast in the precinct.

An Albemarle County official said that according to a fire rescue report, a ceiling tile with water damage fell and pulled an alarm, leading election officials to evacuate for 20 minutes.

And in Hanover County, a local official said the fire department determined that steam from a water heater caused the alarm, with a state official adding that 15 voters waited and voted when the precinct was opened 30 minutes later.

The fire alarm issue is not the only concern Good is raising. 

On Bannon’s show, Good alleged that Albemarle County did not properly notify his campaign of a ballot process that started “two hours early” and that while a representative for McGuire was present, his own campaign was not notified.

Bannon compared the situation to the 2020 “Stop the Steal” movement. “I'm worried about the canvassing, and people should consider this a test run” for November, he said. “The 2020 election was stolen, and we're never having another election stolen.”

Lauren Eddy, the general registrar and director of elections for Albemarle County, told local radio station WINA and The Hill on Friday that Good was referring to a closed meeting regarding provisional ballots that started at noon, two hours before a public canvass meeting at 2 p.m. Eddy said it is not her office’s normal practice to notify campaigns directly about the provisional ballots meeting, and that a representative for the McGuire campaign had called her office to learn about the meeting time. While the ballots were processed, no votes were counted during that meeting, she said.

But the Good campaign evidently disagrees with the appropriateness of the meeting, with legal counsel for his campaign sending a letter Friday — obtained by The Hill — asking a litany of questions about the provisional ballots being “reviewed in the absence of the campaign’s observer and outside of the public notice time.” 

A 2023 state department of elections handbook instructs to “provide public notice of the date and time of the provisional ballots meeting and canvass” on the Friday before the election.

As Good brings up complaints about the election process, the McGuire campaign is knocking him for doing so.

“Rather than accept his fate and the will of the people, Bob Good has chosen to undermine the integrity of Virginia voters,” Sean Brown, a spokesperson for the McGuire campaign, said in a statement. “His antics now are beneath the dignity of a soon to be former elected official. Bob should put Virginia and our country first, let this process play out, and then congratulate John McGuire on a free and fair election victory.”

McGuire, notably, attended the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but says he did not go inside the building.

Good’s campaign is defending its actions.

“We are committed to making sure every legal vote is counted in what remains a very close race that will likely be in recount territory,” Diana Shores, senior adviser and manager of the Good campaign, said in a statement. “We believe the public should be informed of incidents that occurred on both Election Day and in the canvassing process since, and we will continue to educate them on the process.”

Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled that prosecutors with the Nevada attorney general's office chose the wrong venue in which to file the case, calling off a trial scheduled for January.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford (D) brought the case in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, but defense attorneys contended that it should have been filed in a northern Nevada city closer to where the alleged crime occurred.

"We disagree with the judge's decision and will be appealing immediately," said John Sadler, a spokesperson for the Nevada attorney general's office.

Following the judge’s decision, defense attorneys told reporters the case is “done” since a three-year statute of limitations on filing charges expired in December, meaning that the state likely could not bring the case to a grand jury in a different venue. 

The pro-Trump electors who were charged were Michael McDonald, Jesse Law, Jim DeGraffenreid, Durward James Hindle III, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice. They each faced felony charges of offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged document, which carry penalties up to four or five years in prison.

When announcing their indictments, the state attorney general's office said in a statement they posed as "duly qualified" electors to “disrupt the results of a free and fair presidential election.”

The alternate electors scheme relied on former Vice President Mike Pence to certify slates of Trump-supporting electors in battleground states instead of the true Electoral College votes cast for now-President Biden. Pence declined to do so on Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the election certification, after which a mob of Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol.

In addition to Nevada, slates of pro-Trump electors have faced criminal charges in three of those states — Michigan, Georgia and Arizona.

Trump’s lawyers spearheaded the plan, and several face charges in other states in connection with it. Trump himself also faces federal charges and charges in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in his favor. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases. 

Biden won Nevada by more than 33,000 votes in 2020.

The Associated Press contributed.

— Updated at 4:13 p.m. EDT

Five LGBTQ veterans filed the class action lawsuit last summer in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, arguing that the Defense Department violated their constitutional rights by failing to update them to honorable discharges after repealing its “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy, which dismissed them with less-than-honorable discharges, more than a decade ago. 

Separation documents assigned to veterans discharged under DADT for their actual or perceived sexual orientation denotes their sexuality as the reason for their discharge, which the plaintiffs argue violates their privacy. The discharge papers also deprive LGBTQ veterans of certain benefits, such as a veteran designation on their state ID or driver’s license and some military discounts, according to the lawsuit. 

While veterans may apply to correct their discharge papers, the plaintiffs argue the process is lengthy and burdensome. 

Attorneys for the Pentagon had sought to dismiss the lawsuit, citing a 2011 internal policy guidance that instructed military correction boards to grant veterans’ requests for discharge upgrades following the repeal of DADT. The guidance noted, however, that “broad, retroactive corrections of records from applicants discharged under DADT are not warranted.” 

Correction boards have reviewed “more than 1,683 applications by veterans for records correction and have granted relief to more than 1,406 former service members who, like Plaintiffs here, were discharged pursuant to the DADT policies,” the department wrote in its motion to dismiss. 

U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero rejected that request late Thursday, ruling that the plaintiffs will likely prove the department violated their right to equal protection under the Fifth and 14th amendments by failing to systematically correct the paperwork of all veterans discharged under DADT and similar policies. 

At a February motion hearing, Pentagon attorneys argued the rules and procedures governing the department’s records correction process are indiscriminate.

Spero on Thursday said he disagreed, and the military’s decision to leave the discharge paperwork of LGBTQ veterans dismissed under DADT unchanged “was motivated by discriminatory intent.”  

He wrote in his decision that the plaintiffs are also likely to succeed in arguing that the Department of Defense’s actions violated their rights to substantive and procedural due process. 

The plaintiffs’ allegations, he wrote, are sufficient to “raise a plausible inference” that the department’s conduct was intended to injure in some way unjustifiable by any government interest, “namely, to perpetuate discrimination against Plaintiffs based on their sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation even after they were wrongfully discharged from the armed services on that basis.” 

The Department of Defense did not immediately return a request for comment. 

The department has in recent years taken steps to correct discharge designations given to LGBTQ veterans who served under DADT. Last year, it said it would proactively review military records of veterans who received a less-than-honorable discharge because of their sexual orientation. 

A resolution filed by Senate Democrats earlier this week would formally apologize for past actions that discriminated against LGBTQ service members and federal employees, including DADT, which was repealed in 2011. 

Attorneys for the veteran plaintiffs celebrated Thursday’s ruling in a joint statement. 

“This ruling allows us to move forward in rectifying the discriminatory effects of the Department of Defense’s policies, ensuring that LGBTQ+ veterans receive the honor they rightfully deserve, having served our country with dignity and integrity,” attorneys from the Impact Fund, Legal Aid at Work and King & Spalding LLP said in the statement. 

“This decision is especially significant as it comes during Pride Month, a time when we celebrate the progress, and recognize the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ rights,” they added. “These brave veterans honorably served our country, and we look forward to securing the justice they rightfully deserve.” 

The former president will be joined by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), a source confirmed to The Hill, marking the first time the two have made a public appearance together during the 2024 cycle.

The Trump event will likely take place next Friday near Virginia Beach, a second source said, though the final location had not been finalized.

CBS News first reported on the Virginia rally.

Youngkin mostly kept his distance from Trump during his successful 2021 campaign for the governor’s mansion, and he generated buzz as a potential alternative to Trump in the 2024 presidential contest. But Youngkin opted not to launch a presidential campaign, saying he was committed to serving the remainder of his term as governor.

Trump and Youngkin met in person for the first time earlier this month at Trump’s golf club in Sterling, Va.

Polling has shown Virginia could be a much closer race than it was in 2020, when Biden carried it by 10 percentage points over Trump.

A Fox News poll of Virginia registered voters conducted June 1-4 showed Biden and Trump tied with 48 percent each. A Roanoke College poll conducted in mid-May showed the two candidates tied in a head-to-head match-up, and it found Biden leading Trump by 2 percentage points when third-party candidates were added.

Trump and Biden are set to meet for the first of two scheduled debates Thursday in Atlanta. The debate will be hosted by CNN.

While Trump will travel to Virginia the following day, President Biden will hold his own campaign event in Raleigh, N.C., where he will be joined by first lady Jill Biden.

Biden and Vice President Harris have made several trips to North Carolina this year as the Biden campaign eyes the Tar Heel State as a battleground that could flip from red to blue in November.

Trump carried North Carolina in 2020 by less than 2 percentage points, and polling out of the state in 2024 so far has shown the former president leading his Democratic rival.

A Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll conducted last month showed Trump leading Biden by 7 percentage points, while an East Carolina University poll conducted in early June showed Trump ahead by 5 percentage points.

Thomas broke with his eight colleagues, who all voted to uphold a federal gun ban for people under domestic violence restraining orders, a decision that handed a win to the Biden administration and gun control groups. 

It’s a striking change for Thomas, who authored the Supreme Court’s expanded Second Amendment test two years ago, known as Bruen, that was at the center of Friday’s case. 

That test requires gun regulations to fit within the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by seven of his colleagues, said Friday the domestic abuser gun ban could be compared to a tradition of disarming people who pose a credible safety threat. 

“The question is whether the Government can strip the Second Amendment right of anyone subject to a protective order — even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime. It cannot,” Thomas responded in his 32-page dissent, nearly twice as long as Roberts’s majority opinion. 

“The Court and Government do not point to a single historical law revoking a citizen’s Second Amendment right based on possible interpersonal violence,” he continued, referring to the statute at issue, adding that he believed the government had not "borne its burden."

President Biden's Justice Department defended the law by pointing to surety and affray laws.

Thomas wrote that "neither is a compelling historical analogue," insisting the majority didn't reckon with "vital differences" when it reached the opposite conclusion.

In a separate concurring opinion authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, she called Thomas’s opinion “the strictest possible interpretation of Bruen.” 

“It picks off the Government’s historical sources one by one, viewing any basis for distinction as fatal,” Sotomayor wrote, joined by fellow liberal Justice Elena Kagan. 

The case follows several landmark Supreme Court decisions that expanded gun rights over the past 15 years, with the dispute marking the justices’ first plenary Second Amendment case since it established the Bruen test.

A Texas man’s challenge of his conviction under the domestic violence gun law had forced the justices to consider the limits of their recent expansion and clarify the test for lower courts that have voiced confusion.

That man, Zackey Rahimi, was placed under a restraining order after he dragged his girlfriend, with whom he has a child, in a parking lot and attempted to shoot a witness. Rahimi later participated in a series of five shootings, court filings show, and was indicted on the gun charge after police searched his home and found a rifle and a pistol.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said Thursday that preliminary data since the announcement shows a 25 percent decrease in such encounters, but it warned that “migration flows are dynamic.”

“Our enforcement efforts are continuing to reduce southwest border encounters. But the fact remains that our immigration system is not resourced for what we are seeing,” said Troy Miller, the acting commissioner of CBP.  

“The dedicated men and women of CBP will continue to prioritize national security and disrupt criminal networks, while maximizing consequences for unlawful entry, including detention, prosecution, and removal under recently announced executive actions to further secure the border.”

If the decrease holds, it could be a political boost for President Biden — for years, Republicans have relentlessly attacked the president over his management of the border.

Official CBP data from before the asylum crackdown shows encounters have plateaued since January at levels similar to or slightly below the average for late winter and spring throughout the Biden administration.

Temporary dips in migration are not uncommon after major border policy announcements.

For instance, Border Patrol encounters dropped 40 percent from May to June 2023, after the Biden administration terminated the pandemic-inspired summary expulsion policy known as Title 42.

Most border experts associate those temporary drops with a wait-and-see approach by migrants and smugglers, who hold back on certain crossings while new U.S. policies are tested.

Under Biden’s asylum rule, most migrants encountered between ports of entry are not screened for asylum claims, and they can be subject to quick expulsion to Mexico, accelerated deportation procedures to their home country and criminal and administrative consequences.

The asylum rule does not apply to migrants who enter the United States at ports of entry through established programs such as appointments on the CBP One app.

“An even-handed approach thus strongly favors allowing Mr. Bannon to remain on release,” Bannon attorney Trent McCotter wrote in the 47-page appeal to the high court. 

“There is also no denying the fact that the government seeks to imprison Mr. Bannon for the four-month period immediately preceding the November presidential election,” McCotter added. “There is no reason for that outcome in a case that presents substantial legal issues.”

Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 after failing to appear before the House Jan. 6 committee and refusing to turn over documents. A federal judge sentenced him to four months of incarceration, and he was ordered to report to prison by July 1. 

Late Thursday, a federal appeals panel denied Bannon’s efforts to stay out of jail in a 2-1 decision. The majority opined that Bannon “knew what the subpoena required yet intentionally refused to appear or to produce any of the requested documents.”

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Justin Walker — an appointee of former President Trump — wrote that Bannon should not be incarcerated before the Supreme Court considers the appeal of his conviction.

“Applicant Mr. Bannon seeks the narrow relief of continued bail pending completion of his further appeals—relief that Judge Walker would have granted below, as explained in his dissent,” McCotter wrote. 

The Justice Department’s response to Bannon’s request is due by Wednesday.

Bannon is the second Trump adviser sentenced to jail in connection with efforts to evade the House Jan. 6 committee. Peter Navarro, a former economic adviser to Trump, is serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress after his emergency appeals all failed, including at the Supreme Court. His release is scheduled for July 17. 

Updated at 11:37 a.m. EDT

Under that two-year-old precedent, which found a right to bear arms outside the home for the first time, the court has prescribed a new test requiring gun control measures fit within the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. 

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, noted a tradition of disarming individuals found to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, rejecting a defendant’s challenge to the gun possession ban.

“Since the founding, our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,” Roberts wrote. 

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, writing that “not a single historical regulation justifies that statute at issue.” 

“Yet, in the interest of ensuring the Government can regulate one subset of society, today’s decision puts at risk the Second Amendment rights of many more. I respectfully dissent,” Thomas wrote. 

The decision rules in favor of President Biden’s Justice Department, which appealed to the Supreme Court to defend the statute after a lower court deemed it unconstitutional under the new standard, throwing out a Texas man’s conviction. 

"No one who has been abused should have to worry about their abuser getting a gun. As a result of today’s ruling, survivors of domestic violence and their families will still be able to count on critical protections, just as they have for the past three decades," Biden said in a statement after the opinion was released.

Zackey Rahimi, the man, had been placed under a restraining order after he dragged his girlfriend, with whom he has a child, into a parking lot and attempted to shoot a witness. Rahimi later participated in a series of five shootings, court filings show, and he was indicted on the gun charge after police found a rifle and a pistol while searching his home. 

The dispute marked the justices’ first plenary Second Amendment case since they established their new history-based test, known as the Bruen test.

Advocates on both sides of the gun control issue have closely followed Rahimi’s case to see how the justices might clarify their recent Second Amendment expansion or rein in lower courts that have in the two years since invalidated a dizzying array of firearms provisions. 

Many of those challenges have reached the Supreme Court but were held in limbo pending the resolution of Rahimi’s case. Among the stalled petitions include the Justice Department’s defense of the provision that Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was convicted under in his recent criminal trial. 

Six of the seven justices who joined Roberts in the majority Friday wrote or joined separate opinions discussing the Bruen test.  

Justice Neil Gorsuch forcefully defended it. Fellow conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett wrote solo opinions making observations about the history-based inquiry. 

The court’s three liberals, however, all raised how lower courts have expressed struggles in attempting to apply the Bruen test.

“In my view, the blame may lie with us, not with them,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, said she continues to think the Second Amendment test used by courts prior to Bruen remains “the right one,” but that no party had asked the court to overrule their new precedent. 

Nearly 200 Democratic members of Congress and 23 Democratic states attorneys general filed written briefs backing the Biden administration in defending the law. They were joined by advocacy groups that advocate for stronger gun restrictions, including March for our Lives, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and Everytown for Gun Safety. 

Rahimi’s challenge was backed by the National Association for Gun Rights, the National Rifle Association, the Firearms Policy Coalition, other gun rights groups and the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. 

Updated at 11:56 a.m. EDT

Trump and other conservatives have in recent days floated the baseless claim that if Biden does well at next week’s debate in Atlanta, it will be because he’s using some kind of performance enhancer. 

The claims echo a similar strategy Trump and others used to downplay Biden’s well-received State of the Union speech earlier in the year. They also come as some Republicans worry Biden will defy the caricature that Trump and right-wing media have painted of him as a feeble, confused old man.

“Republicans would be wise to play down expectations,” one Republican strategist said. “Make the point that Biden is a good debater.”

Trump has so far declined to make that case. Instead, he’s fluctuated between claims that Biden is feeble and incompetent, and preemptively trying to create a narrative that if Biden does well, it’s because he had the help of some unnamed, mysterious substance. 

“He’s gonna be so pumped up. He’s gonna be pumped up,” Trump told supporters Tuesday at a Wisconsin rally.

In response to questions about Trump’s debate prep, senior campaign adviser Jason Miller similarly implied Biden would be using some kind of substance during the debate.

“President Trump takes on numerous tough interviews every single week and delivers lengthy rally speeches while standing, demonstrating elite stamina,” Miller said in a statement. “He does not need to be programmed by staff or shot up with chemicals like Joe Biden does.”

Fox News host Sean Hannity, who is also friends with Trump, floated during his show earlier this month that Trump might consider skipping the June 27 debate and suggested Biden would be aided by Red Bull, caffeine pills or something else.

“Whatever Joe drank, ate, took before the State of the Union — maybe it was just Red Bull and caffeine pills. I don’t know. Whatever it was, that was not the normal Joe,” Hannity said. “We never saw it before, and we haven’t seen it since. But we will see it for the debate.”

The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the claims from Trump and his allies.

But at the same time Trump has sought to set the narrative around a strong Biden performance, he has also repeatedly lowered the bar for his opponent.

At his Wisconsin rally, Trump referred to Biden as “incompetent,” “weak,” “failing” and said he “has no clue” and “doesn’t know where he is.” Trump has claimed Biden “doesn’t know he’s alive.” He quipped at one point he’d also be debating moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, meaning he’d be facing “three people instead of one-half of a person.”

Republicans have in recent days shared videos of Biden, some of them deceptively edited or cropped, and claimed the footage shows Biden freezing up or wandering off.

The White House has sharply pushed back on those videos, calling them “cheap fakes,” and arguing Republicans are pushing misleading claims about Biden’s competence because they can’t argue with the president’s legislative record.

The Biden campaign Thursday posted a two-minute montage of footage from Trump’s presidency in which Trump walked away from world leaders or a bill signing too soon or walked off in the wrong direction.

While Republicans routinely question Biden’s sharpness and stamina, the president has shown throughout his first term in office he is capable of delivering strong, energetic speeches in big moments.

His last two State of the Union speeches have been well received, including last year, when he essentially baited Republicans in the audience into agreeing that cuts to Medicare and Social Security should be off the table.

Biden delivered a clear, energetic speech earlier this year on the three-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol in which he warned of the threat Trump poses to democracy, effectively kicking off his reelection bid.

“It's a big moment for both, but the stakes are much higher for Biden,” said Doug Heye, a former Capitol Hill aide and Republican National Committee spokesperson. “Given the legitimate questions about his age and how he is sometimes hard to hear, he can ill afford to cement that in voters' minds — especially the double haters. A really bad slipup could mean that Democrats say publicly what they've been saying privately about their concerns about Biden.”

Despite low voter enthusiasm, lawmakers and experts are predicting that Americans will tune into Thursday’s debate in droves. Whoever puts on the better performance could seize a huge victory as the race moves to the final stretch.

Both candidates face serious questions from voters about their fitness for office, from issues related to age and temperament. Biden, who is behind in swing-state polls to Trump, in particular needs a game-changing moment. 

“I think it’s going to be really important,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said. 

“We’ve seen this with other candidates, and if you don’t handle a question correctly or if you misspeak,” she said. “Your answers are pretty consequential, so this is pretty high stakes.”

Biden and Trump both officially met the requirements to qualify for the debate Thursday. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. failed to qualify, making the first debate a true repeat of the 2020 presidential debates.

Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, go into the debate with polls largely showing them neck and neck, highlighting the significance of the moment.

Tevi Troy, a presidential historian at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that Americans, despite low enthusiasm, will tune in to judge the mental fitness of the candidates.

“Even if people are unenthusiastic about candidates, they want to see if there's a meltdown on stage. And there could be two types of meltdown. Trump could have an anger meltdown, and Biden could have an age meltdown,” he said. 

Thursday’s presidential debate will be the first one since 1984 not hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates. And prior to this year, no televised general election debate had been held before late September dating back to their creation in 1960, putting Thursday’s meeting truly in foreign territory and leaving people to wonder what it means for the Biden-Trump rematch. 

“That’s an unknown,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), adding that early voting has forced debates to move earlier in the calendar. He noted that Virginia holds a gubernatorial and Senate debate in July, months ahead of when early voting kicks off in mid-September. 

“Having debates in October doesn’t make much sense,” Kaine added. “Just to accommodate the states that do early vote, the calendar does need to move earlier.” 

Others note the interest also comes from the fact that there’s only two debates — next week’s and another in September. There is also expected to be a vice presidential debate held, but the importance of those is usually diminished in comparison with the top-of-the-ticket events.

“Given that there’s only two, and just given the discussion and talk about the preparedness of both candidates, I think people are looking to see Biden perform, looking to see how crazy Trump will be. So I do think there’s going to be a lot of interest in the debates,” said former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.).

Biden goes into the debate under pressure to get a much-needed boost in polling after he has not been able to gain much ground on Trump, even after the former president’s conviction in a New York hush money trial. Trump holds a narrow lead in key swing states in the wake of the verdict, a new poll from Emerson College Polling/The Hill found, and the former president is polling 0.6 percentage points ahead of Biden, according to an aggregation of polls from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill.

The debate is Biden’s to lose and could determine the whole election, argued CNN’s Van Jones on Thursday.

“This is the entire election as far as I'm concerned,” he said. “Because, if Biden goes out there and messes up, it's game over. If he walks out there and a week later he's lower in the polls, it's panic in the party. But if he goes in there and he can handle himself against Donald Trump, a runaway train, a locomotive, a raging bull, then this guy deserves another shot to be president, because that is tough.”

There are mixed opinions about the amount of Americans who will tune in, with some like Capito predicting a “huge audience” that may rival the first meeting between Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Others, like Troy, argue that the numbers could be low compared to other debates because of the other ways Americans can access parts of the debates, such as through TikTok or the social platform X.

“Now, if there’s a great moment, there’s a gaffe, there’s a meltdown, everyone’s going to watch it via social media even if they didn’t watch it live,” Troy said. “I think the reach is greater even if the viewership isn’t."

The importance of debates in terms of changing voters’ thinking is an unsettled argument in political circles, with experts noting that some debates became a major part of history while others ended up being a blip in the overall election cycle.

“There's a general question of how often the debates have actually mattered. There are structural elements to a race that determine what’s going to happen in the race, and do the debates really shift things?” Troy said.

He noted that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) had a great first debate against former President Obama in 2012, but ended up losing that race. On the other hand, there are other times when debates have mattered, including in 1984, when former President Reagan famously said that he wouldn’t “exploit” former Vice President Walter Mondale’s “youth and inexperience.”

Nevertheless, Thursday’s debate still marks the first major moment of the campaign as it arrives ahead of both national conventions. 

“It’s big,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told The Hill. “I’m glad to see it. We know who the candidates are going to be. Why not let them bang heads. I’m all in favor of it. I think it’s good. Let’s get it out there, let them talk to each other.” 

Warren argued that the early event will be beneficial for Biden’s bid for a second term as it will give “everyone ... a chance to see up close and personal Donald Trump being Donald Trump.”

“I think that will be the single biggest issue in the upcoming [election],” she said. 

“Remind everybody again exactly who these two people are,” she continued. “If that’s what comes through in this debate, exactly who they are at their core, then I’m feeling pretty good about this.” 

"Allegations have surfaced revealing this Court may have engaged in actions fundamentally incompatible with the responsibilities attendant to donning the black robe and sitting in judgment," Trump attorneys Alina Habba and Clifford Robert wrote in a 24-page recusal motion.

On Feb. 16, the day Judge Arthur Engoron handed down his multimillion-dollar judgment against Trump, a high-profile New York real estate lawyer said in an interview with NBC New York that he approached the judge about three weeks earlier to offer unsolicited advice about the case.

"I saw him in the corner [at the courthouse] and I told my client, 'I need to go.' And I walked over and we started talking. … I wanted him to know what I think and why … I really want him to get it right," the lawyer, Adam Leitman Bailey, told NBC New York on Feb. 16.

Bailey later said that "the word 'Donald Trump'" was never mentioned in the conversation, NBC New York reported, but when asked if it was clear they were discussing Trump's case, the lawyer replied, "Well, obviously we weren't talking about the Mets."

At the time, court spokesperson Al Baker told the outlet that Engoron's decision "was his alone, was deeply considered and was wholly uninfluenced" by Bailey, denying any ex parte conversation where the case was discussed without all parties present.

In an email to The Hill, Bailey contended that his remarks to NBC New York were “off the record” and said he “only discussed with the Judge the September Summary Judgment decision,” where Engoron found Trump and his co-defendants liable for fraud. 

“I did not think that speaking to Judge Engoron about my own personal views of his already published decision was wrong in any way,” he said.

“I was tricked, I was duped and I'm devastated that any of this is happening, it's just wrong,” he continued. “I am devastated and I am hurt that even though Judge Engoron is retiring very soon that he still has to deal with this, because of a statement I gave off the record.”

The conversation between Bailey and Engoron sparked a state judicial conduct investigation last month.

"The New York Code of Judicial Conduct exists to ensure that litigants are afforded a fair and impartial trial," Habba said in a statement. "Justice Engoron's communications with Attorney Adam Leitman Bailey regarding the merits of this case, however, directly violate that code and demonstrate that Judge Engoron cannot serve as a fair arbiter.

"It is clear that Judge Engoron should recuse himself immediately," she said.

Engoron ruled in February that Trump, the Trump Organization and top executives conspired to alter the former president's net worth for tax and insurance benefits. He ordered them to pay a combined $464 million, plus interest. Trump has appealed the ruling.

Updated at 7:48 pm EST.

New Emerson College Polling/The Hill state polls find Trump up 4 points over Biden in Arizona and Georgia, 3 points up in Wisconsin and Nevada, and 2 points up in Pennsylvania. In Michigan, Trump leads by 1 point, and the pair are dead even in Minnesota. 

“In our first polling in several key swing states since Trump’s conviction last month, there has been little movement, with support for both Trump and Biden staying largely consistent since November,” said Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling. The results notably fall within the polls' margin of error. 

Trump was found guilty in his Manhattan hush money trial last month, but the legal blow has largely failed to dent his edge in the presidential race as he heads toward a rematch with Biden in November. He's set to be sentenced in early July, just ahead of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

A plurality of voters in all seven swing states surveyed said Trump's conviction has no impact on their votes. 

At the same time, a majority of voters in each state said the recent conviction of Biden’s son Hunter Biden will also have no impact on their vote. 

The president isn’t implicated in that case, which marked the first trial of a sitting commander in chief’s child, but some Democrats are reportedly worried that the matter could take a toll on Biden and prove a distraction along the campaign trail.

The new Emerson/The Hill polling also found independent voters broke for Trump in all seven states, though his support among that group has fallen in three states since April — down 5 points in Arizona, 3 points in Michigan, and 8 points in Pennsylvania. 

Biden, on the other hand, lost support among independents by 6 points in Georgia and 5 points in Nevada across that same period. 

But while Biden trails Trump in the key battlegrounds, Democratic Senate candidates are leading their respective Republican rivals in Arizona, Minnesota, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Democratic Senate contender in Arizona, is beating Republican Kari Lake and outperforming Biden by 2 points — as is Sen. Bob Casey (D) in his race against Republican nominee Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) against likely GOP challenger Eric Hovde in Wisconsin. 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) is outperforming Biden by 3 points in Minnesota, and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) is running ahead of the president by 7 points in Nevada. 

The polls surveyed 1,000 registered voters in each state June 13-18 and had a credibility interval of 3 percentage points in 19 of 20 cases in each state. 

The high court avoided weighing in on what constitutes “income” that the federal government can tax under the 16th Amendment, which has implications for large swaths of the U.S. tax code and could also foreclose the possibility of a wealth tax. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, did not delve into whether the 16th Amendment imposes a realization requirement. Instead, he resolved a couple’s challenge to the law’s mandatory repatriation tax on narrow grounds. 

“So the precise and narrow question that the Court addresses today is whether Congress may attribute an entity’s realized and undistributed income to the entity’s shareholders or partners, and then tax the shareholders or partners on their portions of that income,” Kavanaugh wrote.  

“This Court’s longstanding precedents, reflected in and reinforced by Congress’s longstanding practice, establish that the answer is yes.”

Kavanaugh's opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's three liberals.

Though the majority sidestepped the broader constitutional question, the four other conservative justices did address it, all expressing that they believe the 16th Amendment does impose a realization requirement.

"The Moores are correct. Sixteenth Amendment 'incomes' include only income realized by the taxpayer," Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, agreed with their two fellow conservatives, rejecting the government's argument that the amendment authorizes Congress to tax unrealized income without apportionment among the states. 

"The answer is straightforward: No," Barrett wrote.

But Barrett and Alito still voted to uphold the tax alongside the majority, writing that the couple had not met their burden after conceding a key point during oral arguments.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joined the majority in upholding the tax, wrote separately to cast doubts about a realization requirement.

"I have no doubt that future Congresses will pass, and future Presidents will sign, taxes that outrage one group or another—taxes that strike some as demanding too much, others as asking too little. There may even be impositions that, as a matter of policy, all can agree are wrongheaded," Jackson wrote.

"However, Pollock teaches us that this Court's role in such disputes should be limited," she added, referring to a key precedent implicated in the case.

Charles and Kathleen Moore brought their challenge to the Supreme Court after paying roughly $15,000 in taxes under the provision in Republicans’ 2017 law. 

The mandatory repatriation tax imposed a one-time tax on Americans who owned shares in foreign corporations, even if the corporation hadn’t distributed any earnings to the taxpayer. 

The Moores had invested in KisanKraft, an Indian company that sells farm equipment. But the couple claimed they never received any distributions or payments from the company, meaning they did not realize any income the federal government was authorized to tax. 

Under the 16th Amendment, Congress can levy taxes “on incomes, from whatever source derived.” Otherwise, all other direct taxes must be apportioned among the states. 

The Supreme Court’s decision leaves unresolved whether income must be realized for it to fall under the Amendment’s carveout.  

Instead, the justices sided against the Moores by finding the income in their situation was realized. KisanKraft realized the income, the court ruled, and Congress fairly attributed the income to the couple. 

Alito previously rejected calls to recuse from the case after he sat down for two interviews with an attorney who represents the couple.

Updated 11:18 a.m. EDT

Trump told Fox News last week that he would like to see Hogan win, despite the former governor having emerged as one of his most vocal GOP critics over the last several years.

Hogan has already taken steps to distance himself from Trump since then, including releasing an ad in which he touts his independence, underscoring the difficulty he faces as he squares off against Democrat Angela Alsobrooks in November.

“It more than anything is illustrative of the problem that is going to plague Gov. Hogan throughout this campaign, which is that no matter what he does or what he says to distance himself from Donald Trump, that is always going to be the canopy over which he runs this race,” said Len Foxwell, a Democratic strategist based in Maryland.

Hogan’s decision to run shook up the race to succeed retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D) in what otherwise would have been an easy win for Democrats. Hogan won an upset victory to be elected governor in 2014 and comfortably was reelected in 2018, the first Republican to win reelection as the top executive of the state since the 1950s.

He campaigned both times as a moderate Republican and enjoyed a high approval rating that placed him as one of the most popular governors in the country throughout his tenure. During Trump’s time in office, Hogan emerged as one of the GOP’s most prominent critics of the former president — garnering him plaudits from across the aisle and briefly stirring speculation that he might try to run for president in 2024.

Instead, Hogan made the surprise announcement to run for Senate, a curveball that has given Republicans hope of getting a GOP senator in a blue state and increasing their chances of winning back control of the chamber.

Since then, Hogan has sought to emphasize his independent streak and convince voters he would not automatically side with other Senate Republicans if elected. He has said he would support federal legislation to codify protections for abortion into law and sponsor legislation to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). He has also maintained that Republicans could not count on his vote in the Senate. 

Hogan has also said he will not support Trump in the presidential election. In response to Trump’s endorsement, a Hogan campaign spokesperson told Fox News that the governor “has been clear he is not supporting Donald Trump just as he didn’t in 2016 and 2020.” 

But Democrats say Hogan will have trouble separating himself from the Republican label, and in particular Trump, now that the former president has thrown his support behind him.

“It really does crystallize the arguments that Democrats are going to use against Hogan, which is that a vote for Hogan — whether you like him personally or not — is a vote for Republican control of the Senate and a vote for the Trump agenda,” Foxwell said.

He said Hogan’s response that he is not supporting Trump was a necessary statement for him to make, but the governor still faces a challenge in a race with national implications beyond Maryland.

Hogan followed up his response to the endorsement with an ad released Monday in which he did not mention Trump by name but highlighted instances of Republicans acting independently, including then-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voting against a repeal of the Affordable Care Act and Hogan’s own record responding to the COVID-19 pandemic as governor. 

He said Washington needs “strong, independent leaders” and quoted former President Kennedy in saying, “Sometimes, party loyalty demands too much.”

The Hill has reached out to Hogan’s campaign for comment. 

Alsobrooks campaign spokesperson Connor Lounsbury argued that running as an independent voice will be a difficult sell for Hogan. 

“The reason Trump wants Hogan to win is the same reason Hogan wants Hogan to win, is that so they have a majority in the Senate. And I think we all can attest to the fact that the majority controls 100 percent of the agenda, full stop,” Lounsbury said.

Democrats have also accused Hogan of flip-flopping on abortion, pointing to comments in which he avoided saying whether he’d support bills to codify Roe v. Wade and protect IVF. They also have pointed to legislation he vetoed as governor to require most insurance plans to cover abortions and lift a requirement that only physicians can perform them and his decision to withhold funding allocated to train new abortion providers. 

“I don’t know what to say besides the record’s pretty loud and clear here,” Lounsbury said. 

Meanwhile, Republicans stress that Hogan can back up his pitch as an independent, and say that platform matters more than Democratic attempts to tie him to Trump. 

Republican strategist Doug Heye, who worked on former GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele’s unsuccessful 2006 Maryland Senate bid, said Democrats would still try to link Trump and Hogan even if the former president had continually slammed him. He said the same happened in 2006 with Steele being tied to the unpopular President George W. Bush despite Steele’s willingness to criticize the administration.

“Those Democrats who have voted for Larry Hogan twice, or those independent voters who voted for Hogan twice, they know what Hogan has said. And that is more important to them, I would think, than Trump essentially saying that as a Republican, he supports the Republican candidate,” Heye said.

Trump’s endorsement of Hogan notably did not come in the same grand announcement made for his other endorsements. He only said he “would like to see [Hogan] win” in a Fox interview and did not make a post on Truth Social that Hogan has his “complete and total endorsement,” as he often does with other candidates.

Hogan’s campaign has not expanded on its comment about Trump’s endorsement beyond the initial short statement.

Hogan himself reportedly told Fox in an interview in the spring that Trump having lost Maryland in 2020 by more than 30 points would not be “helpful,” but he expects to “overcome that challenge.”

Still, Heye said having Trump’s support is better than the criticism Hogan received from Trump surrogates shortly before the endorsement.

After Hogan said Americans should respect the guilty verdict in Trump’s hush money case last month, Trump adviser Chris LaCivita wrote in a post on the social platform X that Hogan “just ended” his campaign. Republican National Committee co-Chair Lara Trump said Hogan "doesn’t deserve the respect" of anyone in the GOP or the country. 

But Trump’s word is the one that matters, Heye said. 

“This allows him to continue to have that conversation with a very diverse group of folks,” he said. 

State Sen. Justin Ready (R), also a strategist, said Hogan has developed his own “brand” of Republican politics and will benefit from having a record to run on. He said Marylanders will be more able to trust Hogan’s word because of his time as governor compared to if he was just running for office for the first time as a businessman.

Ready noted that Hogan won in 2018, in an otherwise tough year for Republicans nationally.

“I think it's pretty well-established that he's been pretty independent of the national Republican scene, and he’s a Republican, but his focus is on a lot of consensus-based issues,” he said.

With bitter anger about Good’s vote to yank away former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) gavel in large part fueling the opposition to him, those who worked against Good say the race should serve as a warning against the kind of tactics, style and demeanor that contributed to discord in the House.

“He represented, for many of us, what was wrong with this Congress, the dysfunction. And he was sort of part of the soul of it — the seed of all this dysfunction,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who endorsed McGuire.

“Is it conservative to shut down government? I don't think it is,” Bacon said. “What does conservative mean? I think the way he went about it by trying to dethrone, you know, McCarthy — he did — and all the other shenanigans this year, I don't think that's conservative.”

To be sure, former President Trump’s endorsement of McGuire after Good initially endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the GOP presidential primary played a key role in the outcome. But Good’s detractors in the House point to the support — and money — McGuire got that stemmed from anger about McCarthy and Good's political choices as having played a large part in the race.

Still, the race is not final.

McGuire led Good by 307 votes — or 0.4 percent — as of Wednesday afternoon, according to Decision Desk HQ, which reported 95 percent of the vote in. The election is at a standstill for now: Votes are not expected to be tallied Wednesday, Juneteenth, which Virginia observes, according to The Associated Press.

Even so, the race is likely headed for a recount: In the Old Dominion, candidates can request a recount if the margin is less than 1 percent.

Good, for his part, is keeping the faith, calling the race “too close to call,” warning that counting can stretch on for weeks and expressing a strong sense of optimism that the tally could flip in his direction.

“We believe we can still prevail,” he wrote on the social platform X.

McGuire, however, sees the race differently. The former Navy SEAL declared victory Tuesday night, telling the crowd at his victory party, “It is an honor to be your Republican nominee.”

“There are still a few votes left to count, but it’s clear that all paths end with a victory,” he echoed in a post on X early Wednesday morning.

A number of McGuire’s supporters followed with celebrations on social media, including Bacon and Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.). Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who also supported McCarthy and was removed from the Freedom Caucus last year after clashes with members, called Good “toxic” as she congratulated McGuire in a post on X.

“I hope he's right,” Bacon said of McGuire’s victory lap coming before the race was called. “Talking to other people in Virginia right now, they're pretty confident.”

Sarah Chamberlain, the president and CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership, said she hopes the uprising against Good gives other members pause before using the kind of tactics that he used. Defending Main Street, her group’s affiliated super PAC, spent $452,000 on ads supporting McGuire.

“He votes against Republican bills. He also votes Republican rules, so we don't even get the bills to the floor,” Chamberlain said of Good, referring to procedural votes that are normally party-line measures but that Good and other Republicans have used to protest bills.

“It wasn't as much about Kevin McCarthy as it was like, listen, can't have Republican members voting with the Democrats to take down Republican initiatives,” Chamberlain said.

Good is only the second incumbent Republican that Defending Main Street has campaigned against in a primary, with former Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) being the first in 2020.

Good’s endorsements of challengers to other incumbent Republicans earlier in the year also inspired support for McGuire. Bacon endorsed McGuire in large part because Good backed his more hard-line conservative challenger, who fell short of unseating the incumbent by 24 percentage points.

“This is a little bit about ideology, I think, but more of it was how Bob Good treated people. He was sort of just obnoxiously rude,” Bacon said.

McGuire is not the Republican who would usually be lumped in with moderates like Bacon. He attended the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — but did not go into the Capitol — and has defended doing so, saying Tuesday on CNN that “Trump was robbed.”

But if GOP members who supported the Virginia state senator hope it will change how hard-line conservatives in the conference act, they will have to hope that their colleagues discount other major takeaways from the race.

Good supporters could argue that the results in the race — albeit still pending — reflect a strong showing and outperformance of expectations in the face of so much opposition.

A poll conducted June 2-4 and commissioned by the conservative Virginia Faith and Freedom Coalition found McGuire with a 10-point lead over Good — a far cry from the half-percentage point that separates them in the current vote tally. Twenty-nine percent of poll respondents were undecided.

Good was also outspent on the airwaves; the ad tracking firm AdImpact found $9 million was spent on ads in support of McGuire or opposed to the incumbent, compared to $5.6 million worth that was supportive of Good or opposed to McGuire. 

Perhaps most important is the influence of Trump.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), another one of the eight Republicans who had moved to oust McCarthy, said McGuire’s strong showing, and potential victory, was due to Trump’s backing more than anything else.

“It 100 percent has to do with Trump,” Burchett said. “The President is very, very strong, especially in the grassroots. That carries a lot of weight.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), another Republican who voted to oust McCarthy, prevailed in her primary last week despite McCarthy and his allies supporting her opponent in the first stop on the former Speaker's “revenge” primary tour against those who voted to remove him. Mace had the support, importantly, of Trump.

Burchett is not facing a primary challenger this year, though his antagonists tried to find one.

Still, Burchett said the support for Good from those who did not like his tactics and style are not dissuading him from voting how he wants to.

“I knew it could possibly cost me my job,” Burchett said of his vote to remove McCarthy, “but I still think it was the right decision to make at the time.”

The administration is focusing all its efforts to first get Hamas to agree to a three-phase, cease-fire deal that would establish, immediately, at least a six-week pause in fighting in the Gaza Strip. 

But counter-proposals by Hamas have contributed to weeks of back and forth and are testing the hope and patience of mediators — and raising questions of what is Plan B. 

“I'm not sure how many more days I have of saying, 'Well, I'm still hoping' — within this framework,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said during a roundtable with reporters Tuesday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Biden has sought to bring international pressure to bear against Hamas, securing the support of the Israeli government; approval by the United Nations Security Council, and an endorsement by the Group of 7 nations and Arab and Gulf states on a proposal he laid out May 31. 

The first phase of the proposal includes a temporary cease-fire where Hamas would release in batches the 120 Israelis it kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7, while Israel is expected to commit to release Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Supporters of the cease-fire deal say it is imperative to surge humanitarian support to Palestinians and ease suffering marked by displacement, starvation, and critically needed medical care. 

A group of Israeli families of hostages held by Hamas have put their support behind Biden's cease-fire proposal. Andrey Kozlov, one of four Israelis rescued from Hamas captivity in early June in a daring and deadly operation, called for a cease-fire to secure the release of remaining hostages. 

"For the hostages still in Gaza, there is one decision, only one, it is the deal between Israel and Hamas," he said in a video message published last week.

Warner put the blame on Hamas’s leader hiding in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, describing him as holding a reputation as a cold, calculating leader and who reportedly views the tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties in the war as “necessary sacrifices.”  

“This is the kind of leader who's for the notion of the Palestinian people but doesn't give a hoot about how many Palestinians die in this conflict,” Warner said.

Biden’s priority plan is to use the initial weeks of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas to negotiate a permanent end to the war, establish new governance in Gaza and lay out a pathway to a Palestinian state. Those commitments would then allow Saudi Arabia to establish ties with Israel as a broader security grouping against Iran. 

Warner said that efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia “absolutely” depends on first getting to a cease-fire. 

Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, described Sinwar as a “psychopath” and “messianic,” but said mediators are in “intensive discussions” to bridge gaps between Hamas’s proposed changes to the cease-fire proposal. 

“We do believe ultimately, this proposal is the best roadway to get an end to the conflict now that would enable a multitude of things and that would ultimately be offered the prospect for an end to the conflict altogether,” she told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing on the Middle East on Tuesday.

‘Reality has a way of intruding’

Sinwar’s obstinance is only one challenge to the Biden administration’s grand plan. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, blamed by some Democrats in Congress as responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, lashed out in a video at the Biden administration for what he said was an “inconceivable” decision to hold back delivery of U.S. weapons and munitions.

Biden officials rejected Netanyahu’s characterization — the president has paused one shipment of heavy bombs to Israel — but the episode underscored the fraught tensions the U.S. is having with the Israeli leader over the course of the war. 

Netanyahu's critics have accused him of prioritizing the military operation against Hamas over diplomacy, and U.S. and Israeli officials have also criticized the prime minister as failing to talk about what authority can rule Gaza instead of Israeli military control. 

"We are potentially weeks, maybe a month or two away from the formal military operations coming to a close and it is extraordinary that we have no viable plan from the Israeli government as to what comes next," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), chair of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that oversees the Middle East, pressing Leaf on the administration's engagement with Israel. 

"There is still insufficient planning, to say the least, on the part of the Israeli government," Leaf responded.  

Netanyahu has shot down any talk of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority reasserting rule in Gaza, generally rejecting the idea of an independent Palestinian state that would link both territories. 

Still, Netanyahu has, at times, signaled openness to some sort of civil governing authority for Palestinians in Gaza. He has spoken about Israel maintaining freedom of military movement to address security threats, but he floated ideas about Arab countries taking responsibility for some security aspects of the territory. 

Leaf, responding to criticisms that Arab and Gulf countries are unlikely to step up responsibilities to help stabilize the situation with the Palestinians, said “there’s no magical thinking” on the part of the administration. 

“These get to the heart of politics for every one of these governments and for the Palestinians, and the Israelis as well. But I think reality has a way of pushing even those who can't imagine a concept such as the [Palestinian Authority] returning to Gaza, reality has a way of intruding,” she said.  

Leaf said she is likely headed to the Middle East this weekend to continue discussions with Israeli, Arab and Gulf partners on a day-after scenario. 

“There will have to be a political alternative and that's what we're in the process of putting together these concepts,” she said. 

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he is also engaged in discussions bringing regional partners onboard for a “day-after” scenario.  

“I've had individual discussions as well as collective discussions with the Saudis, with the Emirates, with the Jordanians, with the Egyptians, with the Qataris, all of them have been showing signs of an interest in participating … including the governance issues, including the economic issues and those types of issues,” he told a roundtable of reporters last week. 

“There's a lot of fill in the blanks that haven't been quite filled in, a lot of volunteers that are willing to step forward, provided that the conditions are met, that there's a real peace in the region and there's a commitment to move forward to two states,” he said. 

Saudi Arabia key ally in path to peace

Biden has cultivated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a key ally in pushing forward any prospect of a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians — given a cease-fire can be implemented to start.

The president has long-since abandoned his campaign promise of making Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state, recognizing along with Democrat and Republican lawmakers that closer ties with Riyadh are part of a bigger effort to counter Iran and weaken China and Russia’s influence in the region. 

Regional military cooperation to counter an Iranian missile attack on Israel in April served as a real-life demonstration of the defensive power linking together the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia, along with other partners. 

The Saudi crown prince is laser focused on securing a mutual defense treaty with the U.S. and assistance in building a civil, nuclear program. That deal is contingent on Saudi Arabia establishing ties with Israel, which Prince Mohammed said can only happen if there’s an Israeli commitment towards agreeing to recognizing a Palestinian state. 

“In meetings with MBS [Prince Mohammed], I saw someone that I think was prepared to make the decision — if we could get this defense alliance with the United States — would stop trying to play both sides against the middle, and I think that is in America's best interest,” Warner said.

All or nothing

Biden officials and their allies in Congress say that all parts of this megadeal must move together or not move at all — cease-fire, the day-after plan, a pathway to a Palestinian state, and normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

Hamas has not made public its changes to the cease-fire proposal Biden laid out May 31, but the disagreement appears to be related to Hamas's demand for an Israeli commitment for a full end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops. Netanyahu has said a full end to the war can only happen through negotiation, the so-called Phase 2 of Biden's three-phase deal. 

Warner, while raising doubt about Sinwar’s commitment to negotiate, projected some optimism that a cease-fire can be reached based on experiences over the course of the war. But he also cautioned about how quickly talks can fall apart. 

He described a moment in early May where Hamas and Israel appeared poised to come to an agreement, but a Hamas rocket attack killing three Israeli soldiers triggered a collapse of talks. 

“We've gotten close so many times, but that moment when, this was only a blip in the news, it was probably the time we were closest when Israel's leaning, I think Hamas was ready, and there happened to be a random attack that killed three [Israeli military] soldiers,” he said.  

"As of these last few weeks, the blame lies with Hamas's leadership, Sinwar in particular," the chair said. 

The bitter race between Good, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, and his primary challenger, John McGuire — a state senator who won the coveted endorsement of former President Trump — remained too close to call as of Wednesday afternoon, with McGuire holding a razor-thin edge over Good.

McGuire is leading Good by just 307 votes — or 0.4 percent — with 95 percent of the vote in, according to results from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ. More than 62,000 voters cast ballots in the race to represent Virginia’s 5th Congressional District.

The contest is almost certainly headed to a recount: Virginia law allows candidates to request a recount if the margin is less than 1 percent.

Good expressed confidence Wednesday morning that he has a path to victory, but he warned that the final stretch of counting could take weeks.

“Provisional ballots and mail-in ballots are also still to be counted. We are asking for full transparency from the officials involved and patience from the people of the 5th District over the coming weeks as the certification of results is completed,” Good wrote on social platform X. “We believe we can still prevail.”

McGuire, meanwhile, encouraged by his late lead Tuesday night, went ahead and declared victory in a room full of supporters, taking a page from Trump’s 2020 election playbook.

“Ladies and gentleman, the votes are in and the people have spoken: It is an honor to be your Republican nominee for the 5th Congressional District,” McGuire declared, prompting cheers.

He echoed that sentiment overnight Wednesday, writing on X: “There are still a few votes left to count, but it’s clear that all paths end with a victory.”

Counting could be at least delayed until Thursday. Virginia observes the federal Juneteenth holiday, so ballots are not expected to be tallied Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.

Good, however, is optimistic that he will take the edge as more votes are counted.

A handful of counties in the Old Dominion had a fair portion of outstanding ballots as of Wednesday morning, with both Good and McGuire leading in some of the areas.

A source close to the Good campaign told The Hill that they are closely watching returns in Albemarle County and Lynchburg, both of which the incumbent has a leg up in.

In Albemarle, Good has a 523 vote — or 9.4 point — edge over McGuire with much of the county reporting. Over in Lynchburg, Good is hanging on to an 842 vote — or 16.4 percent — lead over McGuire.

“This race remains too close to call,” Good wrote on X Wednesday. “We are in a period where the law provides a process for evaluating the accuracy of all the vote totals from election day to ensure everyone can have full confidence in the certified results.”

The battle in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District — Tuesday’s marquee race — has drawn national headlines for months, both for its intense interest inside the Beltway and heavy spending.

Trump and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both endorsed McGuire after Good crossed them — Good initially backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the GOP presidential primary, and he voted to oust McCarthy from the top job — earning the incumbent the ire of two GOP heavyweights, their supporters, and their war chests.

Trump declared in a Truth Social post on the eve of the primary election that “Bob Good is BAD FOR VIRGINIA, AND BAD FOR THE USA,” and he participated in a tele-rally for McGuire, where he warned that if Good is elected the incumbent he “will stab Virginia in the back, sort of like he did with me.”

McCarthy’s Majority Committee PAC, meanwhile, funneled $10,000 to McGuire’s campaign, looking to knock off the first of eight Republicans who voted to remove him from the Speakership. He faced his first defeat last week after Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who voted to remove McCarthy, reigned supreme in her primary.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), another GOP firebrand, joined Trump and McCarthy in backing McGuire, while other Freedom Caucus members on Capitol Hill backed their chair, including Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

Good nodded to that opposition against him in an election night post on X, writing: “No matter the outcome, you’ve shown the DC Swamp that you won’t back down from standing for what’s right.”

“Keep the faith and don’t stop fighting now,” he added.

The independent candidate is determined to debate his Democratic and Republican rivals in Atlanta on June 27. But he’s running out of time to make the polling and delegate benchmarks that Biden and Trump have already surpassed before Thursday’s midnight deadline.

Failing to meet the eligibility criteria would be the first big blow for the third-party candidate struggling to remain relevant in the 2024 race.

"Though not impossible in Kennedy’s case, it is less likely that candidates other than Biden and Trump will meet those requirements,” CNN wrote in a memo over the weekend outlining logistics around opening statements and commercial breaks. 

CNN has not budged on their conditions. Candidates must still clear at least 15 percent of support in four polls and be viable on enough state ballots to earn 270 delegates to participate in the forum with moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.

Noting the time constraints, the cable news network has all but counted out a last-minute appearance from Kennedy, who has alleged without evidence that the candidates and journalists have manipulated the rules against him.

The 70-year-old environmental lawyer has had a bumpy path to ballot access, which will likely be the key factor that prevents him from meeting the deadline. The state-centric process has not been explored much during recent cycles because candidates registered with the two major parties don’t need to petition to get on ballots.

But as an independent, Kennedy’s path to the general election has meant learning individual state laws and nuances needed to secure ballots — and under intense deadlines. The debate has put additional time pressure on the process, making it nearly impossible for him to hit 270 delegates at this point.

Secretaries of state have the flexibility to decide when to count and certify candidates’ materials. While Kennedy claims to have made enough state ballots to clinch enough electoral votes to win in November — his campaign website shows 310 potential electoral votes — most states where he says he has gotten access won’t confirm his claims until later in the race.

Ballot experts say officials often prioritize accuracy over speed and aren’t up against the same time constraints as candidates.

“I don’t think anyone’s doing anything to handicap him,” said Scott Tranter, an analyst and adviser to Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), which tracks Kennedy’s 2024 ballot access with The Hill. “I think they're just trying to do everything by the book.”

Networks in charge of producing debates are also able to use their discretion over what they believe is fair to ask of candidates to be able to compete in front of televised audiences. 

“They decide their own rules,” Tranter said about CNN, who released its criteria in mid-May. “It is their determination who qualifies or not; it is their determination what the rules are today and whether those are the same rules tomorrow.”

A pro-Biden source in Democratic circles offered a blunter prediction for Kennedy’s chances of meeting the deadline in less than 24 hours: “He’s not making the stage,” the source said.

The antiestablishment candidate’s all-but-certain miss of the first showing isn’t great optics for him, and some Democrats say it’s indicative of a broader issue he faces with fundraising and public perception.

“It plays into a larger pattern re: visibility,” said the Democratic source helping to reelect the incumbent president. 

While the ballot access is the most obvious barrier, the fact that Kennedy hasn’t been able to clear the polling prerequisite is also a possible sign of wavering support. 

“Tanking poll numbers, cash blow, ballot access challenges — he’s going to have a hard time making a case for electability with all of this combined as people are finally tuning in,” the Democratic source added.

Polling isn’t always clear on how Kennedy may alter the final outcome in the fall — or even if he’ll even get to that point. If he does go up against Trump and Biden in November, a DDHQ/The Hill polling analysis shows that he helps boost Trump at the national level. But when broken down into key battlegrounds like New Hampshire and Michigan, some polls show him giving Biden an edge. 

Kennedy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from The Hill about whether he still believes he has a pathway to debate or if he’s planning counterprogramming that night.

For now, campaign officials are pursuing a legal track. His campaign filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission last month alleging that Kennedy was held to “different criteria” than his counterparts, which they contend is against the Federal Election Campaign Act. The status of the complaint is ongoing but could potentially be resolved by the next scheduled debate in September with ABC News.

With less than a full day to make the 12 a.m. deadline, however, Kennedy can only do so much. Some figures willing to entertain parts of his nontraditional candidacy say he should maximize being away from the stage as a way to show off his position as an outsider. 

“I definitely think he should,” said Cenk Uygur, a left-wing media personality who’s met privately with Kennedy and recently hosted him on his program, "The Young Turks."  

“It’s borderline cheating if they don’t allow him into the debates when he has been in double digits. What else does someone have to do to qualify?” Uygur said.

Uygur said he would be willing to offer up his own platform if Kennedy wanted to present an alternative show the same night. “I’m open to airing anything along those lines,” he said.

One Kennedy ally who recently advised him on a messaging issue added that he “definitely should do something” to make noise while Biden and Trump spar.

To others, the real test will come after the event wraps up, when candidates have a chance to prop up or potentially tweak the stories of their campaigns around what viewers saw in front of them. 

“The debate expectations have less to do with the performances and more to do with the narratives before and after the debate,” said Michael Ceraso, a Democratic strategist who has worked on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaigns. 

Democratic observers are waiting to gauge Biden’s sharpness and stamina, and whether Trump damages himself with an unrestrained performance, much like he did in the first debate against Biden in 2020. Trump sympathizers, meanwhile, are gearing up for a night against an incumbent they see as inherently weak.

That doesn't leave much bandwidth for Kennedy. 

“Win or lose, I don’t imagine any candidate seeing spikes in their approval ratings based on debate performances. It’ll be the narratives they drive online, on the trail, or through their networks before and after the debate,” Ceraso said.

If Kennedy, however, can turn his failure to qualify into a personal grievance, he might have a chance of resonating off stage. His best bet, some believe, is to win by losing. 

“RFK is betting on this, and the only way he wins is if his supporters believe he was denied entry to the debate due to unfair rules or the system working against him and he doesn’t perform,” Ceraso added.

The action is also drawing expected criticism from the right, with Republicans accusing Biden of playing electoral politics by protecting the spouses and children of U.S. citizens.

But the groups representing those families are ready to lean into that criticism: For months, they’ve pleaded with Biden to take an openly political approach to relief for long-term immigrants without permanent legal status and have been sharply critical of his moves on border security.

Biden formally introduced his new plan at a White House celebration for DACA’s 12th anniversary, surrounded and applauded by the legislators and advocates who most ardently panned his border security initiative two weeks ago.

Center stage behind Biden were Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) Chair Nanette Díaz Barragán (D-Calif.), Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) — a Biden-Harris campaign co-chair who’s been critical of the border security plan — and Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas).

But the president was also flanked by his top two allies in pushing the border security rule, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“Today is a good day,” said Biden, after he was introduced by Javier Quiroz Castro, a nurse and DACA recipient who is married to a U.S. citizen.

The rest of the White House stage was packed with legislators, including Sens. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), and community leaders, such as UnidosUS President Janet Murguía, United We Dream Executive Director Greisa Martínez Rosas and Mi Familia Vota President Héctor Sánchez Barba.

For the intersection of Latino politics and immigration advocacy, it was an all-star cast.

That turnout highlights the deep cultural significance of immigrant relief actions, particularly among Hispanics, a significance that is sometimes overlooked outside the U.S. Hispanic community.

“My mom and dad still talk to this day about amnistía de los ochentas, and how that is what gave them a pathway to citizenship, and that is what brought them out of the shadows,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), referring to the 1986 amnesty spearheaded by former President Reagan.

Ramirez, who attended the ceremony with her husband, a DACA enrollee, said people who benefit from this relief package will remember Biden as her parents remember Reagan.

“They don't think of him as a Republican. They don't think of him as a Democrat. They think of him as a president that did a thing for them that no one else had done. And I think that there are many folks that are right now thinking and wondering, you know, ‘demócrata, republicano — Democrat, Republican, none of them have done anything for us,’” she said.

“They'll be able to say, ‘I don't care if he's a Democrat or Republican, Joe Biden is taking care of my family.’”

Democrats are also upbeat on how they’ll talk about immigrant relief to voters nationwide.

“I just think that it’s great policy, and I think it's going to turn out to be pretty impossible for Republicans to argue about, you know — they'll just scream ‘border.’ But, you know, I think the American people are going to understand that it is just as common sense as it gets,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas).

The new plan streamlines the process for spouses and children who don't have permanent legal status of U.S. citizens to apply for permanent residency and grants three-year work permits and deferral from deportation for those applicants.

Biden's plan will also make it easier for college graduates with permanent legal status to apply for work visas with significantly reduced risk of getting stuck abroad in the process.

Immigrant advocates, with a fresh win in hand, are rearing to take that message to Latinos in battleground states including Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“We know that Pennsylvania is going to make or break the election, and we're here as CASA in Action because we are getting ready for a major electoral voter mobilization program, and the Latino community needs to know that Biden's promise to keep families together — he is actively working on that and moving forward with this executive order that's going to affect so many people around the country,” said Jossie Flor Sapunar, national communications director for CASA in Action, the political wing of an immigration advocacy group in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland.

Though Biden’s action came as no surprise, there was a night-and-day quality to advocates’ tone before and after the news.

“This is actually the kind of policy we need from Biden, a policy that's uplifting, that it is positive, that is affirmative, that recognizes the important role immigrants have in our country, and that is consistent with the vision that he laid out when he first ran for office,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a progressive immigration group.

“I absolutely believe it’s his DACA moment. It is very generous. It protects a large number of people, and I think to those voters that have been asking, ‘What has this administration done positively for our community?’ This provides a specific answer at a moment where we really need to show the contrast between what this administration wants to do on immigration versus what [former President] Trump is wants to do.”

For the Biden administration, full-throated praise from a key constituency is refreshing, but advocates have long made clear their holy grail is full legalization for all 11 million long-term immigrants who don't have permanent legal status.

In a letter to Biden on Monday, 127 organizations led by United We Dream and Community Change Action called for the actions announced Tuesday, plus expansion of Temporary Protected Status and relief for family caregivers lacking permanent legal status.

“These policies are well within your executive power, which has been consistently utilized by both Republican and Democratic administrations alike to grant life-saving relief to individuals and families,” they wrote.

“Moreover, these types of policies enjoy overwhelming support from the American people, who are eager to see action toward fixing our failed immigration system. This is an opportunity to draw a clear contrast to former President Trump and his allies’ xenophobic demagoguery and hateful anti-immigrant fear-mongering.”

And while the immigration advocacy world is on a high, concerns remain about how a decade of culture wars has redrawn perceptions on the issue.

“What our nation’s history and current polling suggests is that there is certainly a symbiotic relationship amongst the words of our community leaders, policies enacted by our elected officials, media headlines, and public perception. One has the power to feed, reinforce, and perpetuate another –– a power that can be used to advance or regress immigrant rights in the U.S.,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer at RAÍCES.

“As such, we believe that policies reaffirming our nation’s commitment to protecting families, regardless of citizenship, can positively influence the hearts and minds of the American public. With humanitarian rather than punitive and criminalizing policies, our elected officials can shape public understanding about our community and activate urgent support in favor of fixing our nation’s broken immigration system.”

Observers had been closely monitoring the GOP primary for Rep. Bob Good’s seat in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. The contest had boiled over into one of the most tumultuous primaries of the cycle so far, as former President Trump and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sought to make Good the first incumbent to lose to an outside challenger. But as of Tuesday night, the race was still too close to call, with Good and his rival separated by hundreds of votes.

Meanwhile, Democrats grappled with their own fraught primary in Virginia, while Rep. Tom Cole (R) fended off several primary challengers for the GOP nod in Oklahoma.

Here are five takeaways from Tuesday night’s primaries:

Trump’s bid for revenge ends in a nail-biter

Good, the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was seen by many as a dead man walking heading into his primary against Virginia state Sen. John McGuire on Tuesday night, especially because Good had run afoul of Trump.

But as midnight approached, the candidates were neck and neck, with the race too close to call. If Good ultimately wins, it would be a major upset and an embarrassing defeat for Trump and McCarthy.

The incumbent angered Trump when he backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the Republican presidential nomination last year. While Good later endorsed Trump when DeSantis left the race, the former president argued the backing came too late.

As a result, Trump threw his support behind McGuire, who also won the backing of McCarthy’s Majority Committee PAC after Good voted to oust the former Speaker last year.

It’s unclear who will ultimately prevail, with some late mail ballots and a possible recount later this week adding to the uncertainty. The results of the race might not be known for days.

What is clear, however, is that Good’s primary has turned into one of the most fraught and memorable contests of the cycle so far.

An under-the-radar Senate matchup is set

Retired Navy Capt. Hung Cao sailed to victory in Virginia’s GOP Senate primary, easily defeating four other Republicans.

Cao will go on to face incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in November, a race seen as an uphill battle for Republicans. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the seat as “solid Democrat.”

Still, Republicans are heartened by signs of weakness for President Biden in the commonwealth, raising the possibility of a down-ballot upset as well.

Defeating Kaine will be no easy feat, however. In addition to serving in the Senate since 2013, Kaine also has Virginia governor, lieutenant governor and mayor of Richmond on his resume. On top of that, he served as chair of the Democratic National Committee and was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 presidential election.

But Republicans are optimistic for Cao, a familiar face in Virginia politics. He challenged Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District in 2022, but he lost after the district became even more blue-leaning following redistricting.

Republicans point to recent polling coming out of Virginia showing a tighter-than-expected race between Biden and Trump. A Fox News survey released earlier this month showed the two tied at 48 percent. Additionally, The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ polling average has Trump narrowly leading Biden by 0.2 percent.

The polling should be alarming for Democrats, who have carried Virginia at the presidential level since former President Obama won the state in 2008. But Republicans say the polls show there is opportunity for Trump, and by extension Cao, in the state.

An ugly Dem primary comes to an end

Virginia state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam (D) beat out 11 other candidates in the Democratic primary to replace Wexton in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District.

Wexton backed Subramanyam, giving him momentum going into the crowded primary. The intraparty contest featured a number of well-known Virginia Democrats, including former House of Delegates Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D), state Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D) and former Virginia Secretary of Education Atif Qarni.

But on Tuesday, the race came down to Subramanyam and Del. Dan Helmer (D), with Subramanyam defeating Helmer 30.3 percent to 26.7 percent.

The race became particularly ugly in its final days after sexual harassment allegations emerged against Helmer. He has denied the allegations.

Subramanyam will go on to face Republican Mike Clancy in November. Democrats have an advantage in the district, which includes various Washington, D.C., suburbs and exurbs. Wexton won reelection in the district by over 6 points in 2022 and Biden carried the district by 19 points in 2020.

Another Jan. 6 candidate goes down

A candidate convicted of a misdemeanor related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol went down in a Georgia runoff seen as the latest test of voters’ willingness to support a candidate linked to the insurrection.

Chuck Hand, who pleaded guilty to illegally demonstrating in the Capitol on Jan. 6, came in second place in last month’s initial primary alongside fellow Republican Wayne Johnson, a former Trump administration official.

But Johnson pulled off a comfortable double-digit win in Tuesday’s top-two contest and will go head-to-head with 16-term Democrat incumbent Rep. Sanford Bishop in November.

Hand is one of a handful of candidates linked to Jan. 6 who have tried for seats in Congress this cycle, more than three years after the Capitol riots — though they’ve lost out in the primary races so far this cycle.

Still, political experts say support for their bids — like the 35 percent Hand pulled in Tuesday — signal some in the GOP are shrugging off Jan. 6 convictions, especially as Trump lauds “J6 warriors” along the campaign trail and dismisses his own legal battles as politically motivated.

Both parties are grappling with divisions

Tuesday’s primaries laid bare the divisions that exist within both the Republican and Democratic parties.

In Virginia’s 5th District, conservatives and Republicans were split over their support of Good and McGuire. While Trump and McCarthy were united in their quest for revenge against Good, the incumbent congressman received support from other lawmakers, including Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and even Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Virginia Democrats also had their own contentious primary in the 10th District, which pitted Democratic figures in the state against each other. Former Gov. Ralph Northam (D) backed Filler-Corn in the race, while Wexton threw her support behind Subramanyam.  

But Virginia was not the only state to see intraparty divisions. In Oklahoma, Rep. Tom Cole (R) easily defeated businessman Paul Bondar by double digits. Bondar ran to Cole’s right, campaigning on impeaching Biden, tougher immigration policy and cutting financial support for Ukraine. Bondar outraised Cole during the primary, thanks to a $5 million loan he gave his campaign. Cole has held the seat for more than 20 years.

Trump and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) were both aligned with McGuire, and many expected Good to be easily defeated. But the race has turned out far closer than expected, with the two candidates separated by a fraction of a point in their fight for the 5th Congressional District seat.  

With more than 90 percent of votes reported at the time of publication, Good was trailing McGuire by roughly 500 votes, according to Decision Desk HQ. 

Good drew Trump’s fury when he backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in the Republican presidential primary, and though the conservative lawmaker quickly moved to endorse Trump after DeSantis exited, the former president has argued the support came too late.       

Good also got on McCarthy’s bad side when he joined seven other Republicans and all Democrats in the historic vote to remove the California lawmaker from his House leadership role last year.  McCarthy’s Majority Committee PAC has contributed to McGuire.

The closely-watched race could end House incumbents’ winning streak so far this cycle, with the exception of a rare incumbent-on-incumbent race in Alabama, which was prompted by redistricting.  

Over in Oklahoma, incumbent Rep. Tom Cole (R) fought off several primary challengers on Tuesday night to win the GOP nomination for his House seat in the Sooner State's 4th Congressional District.

Should McGuire ultimately prevail, the race would be the first big win for McCarthy as he targets the Republicans who voted to oust him. His revenge tour got off to a rough start last week when South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace (R) easily won her primary against a challenger supported by McCarthy’s PAC.  

Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), a member of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus that Good chairs, backed McGuire earlier this week, underscoring tensions in the party around the deep-red, central Virginia seat.

But Good has the support of other Freedom Caucus members, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.). 

"Right now, we’re still waiting on the final election results of today’s Primary," Good said in a post on X around 11 p.m. Eastern, thanking his supporters.

He noted that the district is still waiting on mail-in and provisional ballots, and said his team is working to "ensure all the votes are properly counted in the coming days."

McGuire declared victory on Tuesday night, though the race call is still up in the air. 

"There are still a few votes left to count, but it’s clear that all paths end with a victory," he said in a post on X just after midnight Eastern, adding "Trump & McGuire will Make America Great Again!"

There are no automatic recounts in Virginia, though defeated candidates can request one when there’s a difference of no more than one percentage point.  

Updated: 8:58 a.m.

Cole, who has held his House seat for more than 20 years, held off a few primary challengers in the contest, most notably businessman Paul Bondar. Cole is the chair of the House Appropriations Committee. 

Bondar had outraised Cole in the primary thanks to a $5 million loan that he gave his own campaign, accounting for most of the money he took in. He ran in the primary to the right as a strong supporter of former President Trump, calling for tough immigration policy, ending additional financial support for Ukraine and impeaching President Biden. 

Cole, who has been a supporter of additional support for Ukraine, emphasized his strong ties to his state and experience compared to Bondar, who only moved to Oklahoma from Texas relatively recently.  

Cole will be the favorite to prevail in the November general election in a solidly conservative district.

Subramanyam beat 11 other candidates in the race to win the Democratic nomination for Virginia’s 10th Congressional District. Wexton announced last year she would not be seeking reelection, saying she had received a recent change in diagnosis around her health to progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). 

Subramanyam was one of the top fundraisers in the field, raking in more than $1 million, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, and received Wexton’s endorsement in the primary.  

A report from Virginia Mercury noted last month that several of Subramanyam’s campaign staffers also worked for the state senator in his official capacity but that federal campaign finance filings did not show several of those campaign staffers’ reported pay.  

His campaign told the Virginia news outlet that the campaign manager’s consulting firm had received money that would be used to compensate several of those staffers. The campaign noted it had complied with federal campaign election laws.  

President Biden won the district in 2020 by 18 points. 

Johnson beat out Chuck Hand for the GOP nod in the race for Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop’s seat in the Peach State’s 2nd Congressional District. 

Johnson had won a plurality of votes in last month’s primary, but his 45 percent support fell short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff. He had the edge heading into Tuesday’s contest, but Hand’s support was nevertheless looked at as a signal that some in the GOP are ready to welcome a Jan. 6 convict into Congress more than three years after the riots.  

Hand pleaded guilty in 2022 to illegally demonstrating inside the Capitol and was sentenced to 20 days incarceration, according to documents with the Justice Department. 

Wayne served during the Trump administration as the chief strategy and transformation officer and chief operating office for the Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid. Chris West, the Republican nominee for Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District in 2022, endorsed Johnson a week ahead of the runoff, lauding Johnson as the best candidate “to help Donald Trump get back in the White House.”

The race came as former President Trump praises “J6 warriors” along the campaign trail. Political observers say Trump, who has dismissed his own legal battles as politically motivated, is opening the door for voters to shrug off Jan. 6 convictions. 

But Johnson emerged victorious from Tuesday’s runoff and is now set to face off in November against 16-term incumbent Bishop in the longtime blue district.

Vindman came out on top of a crowded Democratic field to try to succeed retiring Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who chose not to seek reelection to instead run for governor of Virginia next year. He had the support of a handful of House Democrats in the primary and had well outraised the rest of the field, taking in about $5 million. 

Vindman was serving as an ethics lawyer to the National Security Council in 2019 when his identical twin brother, veteran Alexander Vindman, alerted him of a phone call he heard between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. 

The Trump administration delayed hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Ukraine at the same time. 

Both Vindmans passed along what they heard to their superiors, resulting in the eventual first impeachment of Trump, who was acquitted on the counts of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress that he faced. 

After the impeachment trial, Eugene Vindman was later given a poor review by a superior, which the Defense Department’s inspector general determined was likely a response to his involvement in reporting Trump’s phone call. 

Vindman will be a slight favorite to win the seat in the November election. The district is a battleground but leans somewhat in Democrats’ favor. 

The nonpartisan election handicapper Cook Political Report rates the seat as “lean Democrat.”

Cao, who received former President Trump’s endorsement in May, fended off a small handful of Republican challengers in the Republican contest.  

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Republicans' campaign arm, said in a statement following Cao's win in the primary that Virginia was a "real pickup opportunity" with Cao as their nominee.

"Hung Cao graduated from the Naval Academy and served our country honorably for decades. In Washington, Hung will fight to secure our border, improve education, and get prices under control," Daines said. 

Cao, a retired Navy captain, is a familiar face given he ran against Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) in 2022 in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, though he lost to the Democrat by more than 6 points that cycle. 

Cao’s fight for the seat against Kaine is an uphill battle, though, as the nonpartisan election handicapper Cook Political Report rates Kaine’s seat “solid Democrat.” 

At the same time, Cao benefits from polling in the state that’s shown President Biden and Trump in a tighter-than-expected match-up. An average of Virginia polls compiled by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ shows Trump and Biden tied at 44 percent support.  

Updated on June 19 at 8:41 a.m. EDT

Former President Trump, who said he would reverse the Biden order if elected, said that Biden was just “using” the migrants.

“But he’s going to let everybody come in, because you know what they’re trying to do, they’re trying to sign these people up and register them,” Trump said during a rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday afternoon.

The cynical response to the relief action announced Tuesday, which would apply to an estimated 550,000 individuals, has plenty of inaccuracies. 

The order streamlines paths to regularize their migratory status, including through work visa applications, and eliminates the need for certain migrants to leave the country to apply for permanent residency from abroad — a process subject to years-long waiting periods.

But it does not create an influx of hundreds of thousands of new citizens and would certainly not add to the rolls of eligible voters before the 2024 election.

Still, the fear of an influx of Democratic voters now or in the future is a core part of the GOP resistance to the Biden action.

Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt similarly said in a statement earlier in the day that Biden was “giving mass amnesty and citizenship to hundreds of thousands of illegals who he knows will ultimately vote for him and the Open Border Democrat Party.”

“That’s their game plan. Get as many registered to vote as they can,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). “They don’t care about citizens, they don’t care about these people. They’re just looking for voters, and they’re trying [to] do as much as they can before the next election because they’re seeing the writing on the wall.”

In response to Tuberville’s comment, one House Democrat made a quip about the famously slow speed of the federal immigration bureaucracy.

"If only USCIS worked this fast," said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), referring to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that processes immigration applications.

For Republicans on Capitol Hill who had rejected a Biden-backed border compromise plan earlier this year, the order also serves as validation of their distrust of him on border and immigration policy.

Biden earlier this month implemented another executive action intended to crack down on border crossings, turning away migrants seeking asylum on the border during days with a high number of daily encounters. Republicans had largely rejected a similar measure in a failed border bill compromise earlier this year.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Biden is trying to “trying to play both sides” with the pair of executive actions.

“The President may think our homeland security is some kind of game that he can try to use for political points, but Americans know this amnesty plan will only incentivize more illegal immigration and endanger Americans,” Johnson said in a statement.

Johnson, too, said Biden’s action “is proof-positive of the Democrats’ plan to turn illegal aliens into voters,” and that he expects it to be challenged in court and struck down.

In an event announcing the new measure and marking the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program Tuesday, Biden said that the relief action was not a political move.

"Folks, I'm not interested in playing politics on the border or immigration. I'm interested in fixing it. I've said it before and I’ll say it again today, I will work with anyone to solve these problems. That's my responsibility as president. That's our responsibility as Americans,” Biden said.

And the White House has stressed that those eligible for the relief action are limited to a certain group.

“The eligible population is limited,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of Biden’s relief action in a press briefing Tuesday. 

“Individuals who arrive now are not eligible — so we did try to give this a scope, if you will,” Jean-Pierre said.

Though Republicans widely portrayed the Biden order as a political calculation, some made a distinction between exactly what kind of voters would be affected by it in the upcoming election. Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) said in a post on the social platform X that Biden’s action was “an effort to appease their family members hoping to garnish their votes for the upcoming election.”

The direct beneficiaries of Biden’s new plan will all be unable to vote in the 2024 election, though their U.S. citizen spouses will.

Even in a best-case scenario, voting in the 2028 presidential election would be a long shot for undocumented beneficiaries who begin their permanent residency application immediately under the new policy.

It takes spouses of U.S. citizens at least 10 months to receive their green card, and then they must wait three years — and remain married — to be eligible to apply for naturalization, a process that takes on average eight months from the time of application.

Accounting for a 90-day early naturalization allowance, that means the quickest a beneficiary would become a U.S. citizen is about 50 months — and the 2028 election is 52 months and 20 days away.

One Republican who has advocated for immigration reform avoided the misleading claims of new voters when responding to Biden’s order — but nonetheless assessed that it was a political move.

“President Biden’s latest Executive Order on immigration is a blatantly political move, of questionable constitutionality, in an election year,” Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said in a statement.

“These Executive Orders are counterproductive and will do nothing to alleviate the ongoing chaos at our southern border. [Department of Homeland Security] personnel are overwhelmed, and Border Patrol agents can barely keep up with the influx of people, including dangerous individuals, crossing into our country.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) argued that the Biden order contributes to policies that incentivize illegal migration.

“People realize that if you make it here, President Biden’s going to let you stay, and you’ll be able to get on a pathway to citizenship,” Cornyn said. “That’s been a huge magnet, and it’s going to attract even more people.” 

Al Weaver, Brett Samuels, and Alex Gangitano contributed reporting.

The vote was 88-2. Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) opposed the measure.

While a White House spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether Biden will sign the bill, national climate adviser Ali Zaidi appeared to post on the social platform X in support of the legislation Tuesday.

“Really appreciate the bipartisan efforts on advanced nuclear,” he wrote, along with a video of a speech by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) in favor of the bill. 

The nuclear package was combined with another bill that reauthorizes the U.S. Fire Administration and grant programs for firefighters, which will also go to the president's desk. 

“We benefit from more tools in the toolbox as we take on the climate crisis — with the urgency the moment demands,” Zaidi added. 

The legislation is expected to speed up the timeline for licensing new nuclear reactors and cut fees that companies have to pay to do so. 

It also requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to put together a report that considers ways to simplify and shorten the environmental review process. 

“Hopefully it will be history-making in terms of small modular reactors, which is the future of nuclear,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told reporters Tuesday ahead of the vote. 

Supporters of the bill say it’s a big deal for the nation’s nuclear power sector. 

“It's a facilitator of the process by which industry has to get approvals for building these projects,” said Lesley Jantarasami, managing director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s energy program. 

Jantarasami added that this is likely to lead to more nuclear projects being built. 

However, the legislation also has critics. 

Edwin Lyman, nuclear power safety director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, believes a provision changing the mission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to prevent it from “unnecessarily” limiting nuclear power will make the nation’s nuclear fleet less safe. 

“I just see this as inviting the industry to challenge every decision that the commission tries to make that has the potential to impose more than this minimum amount of regulation and could essentially paralyze it from actually working to improve nuclear safety and security,” he told The Hill this week.  

The combined fire-nuclear package passed the House in a 393-13-1  vote, with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) voting present in support of the fire provisions but in protest of the nuclear ones. 

“I voted present in objection to the ridiculous decision to tie the reauthorization of vital firefighting programs for our communities together with poison pills that undermine nuclear safety and were strongly opposed by leading grassroots environmental organizations,” she told The Hill in a written statement.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the author of the BUMP Act, brought his proposal up for unanimous consent, but Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) blocked it.

The move came days after the court overturned a policy enacted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2018 after a mass shooting in Las Vegas killed 60 people and wounded hundreds. The shooter used guns equipped with bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic weapons to fire off hundreds of rounds per minute.

"Welcome to another day in the Democrat summer of show votes," Ricketts said Tuesday, likening the move by Democrats to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) decision to hold votes on reproductive rights in recent weeks.

Ricketts also said the Supreme Court ruled correctly last week.

"This bill may be called the BUMP Act, but it's not really about bump stocks," Ricketts said. "This bill is about banning as many firearm accessories as possible and giving ATF broad authority to ban most semiautomatic firearms."

Heinrich, who rolled out the bill a year ago alongside Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), tore into the idea that bump stocks will once again be available.

"There is no legitimate use for a bump stock. Not for self-defense. Not for law enforcement. Not even in military applications as they are less accurate than a standard fully automatic military platform," Heinrich said. "What they are tailor-made for is a mass shooting."

Where the legislative effort goes from here, though, is unclear. 

Schumer declined to say whether he would bring it up for a full vote on the floor, saying only that he hoped Republicans would "see the light" and not block Heinrich's bill. 

"Donald Trump is hardly a friend of gun safety, but I'm just shocked that the Supreme Court would be even to the right of him," Schumer said in floor remarks earlier in the day. "If Republicans get in the way today, if they decide to side with the gun lobby instead of parents and teachers and law enforcement, they are asking for another tragedy to strike sooner or later."

In a concurring decision last week, Justice Samuel Alito suggested that congressional action is a “simple remedy” for this issue, yet that appears unlikely at this point. 

A number of members said Monday that they did not see a pathway for a bipartisan item to emerge given the winds of election season. 

Heinrich, however, was quick to note that the upper chamber acted two years ago in the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. That resulted in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which is the most notable gun safety legislation to become law in nearly three decades. 

"There’s some skepticism out there about whether Congress can get this done — about whether all of us coming together to ban bump stocks is impossible. But just two years ago, we proved that type of thinking is flat wrong," he said. "By passing [the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act], we proved that Congress can take concrete action to protect our communities from gun violence. Now it’s time we take similar bipartisan action to ban bump stocks."

A Trump campaign spokesperson denied reporting from ABC7 in Chicago that Trump was planning to stay at Trump Tower in the Windy City. That report cited a “high-ranking law enforcement source” and two other sources who confirmed Trump was making plans to stay in Chicago.

“President Trump will be staying in Milwaukee for the convention,” Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for the Trump campaign, told The Hill.

The New York Times separately reported Trump had intended to stay in Chicago, but those plans changed after reporters inquired with the campaign about them.

A Republican National Committee spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Republican National Convention is scheduled to take place July 15-18.

Reports that Trump had planned to stay in Chicago came days after the former president disparaged Milwaukee during a closed-door meeting with House Republicans while in Washington, D.C.

Punchbowl News reported Trump referred to Milwaukee, the most populous city in Wisconsin, as a “horrible city.” Trump and his allies sought to tamp down outrage over the comment, insisting he was talking about crime and voter fraud specifically.

“I picked Milwaukee, I know it well,” Trump posted on Truth Social over the weekend. “It should therefore lead to my winning Wisconsin. But the Dems come out with this fake story, just like all of the others. It never ends. Don’t be duped. Who would say such a thing with that important State in the balance?”

Trump held a campaign rally Tuesday in Racine, Wis., located 30 miles south of Milwaukee. He opened his remarks by telling supporters, "You know, I love Milwaukee."

Trump is known to prefer staying at his own properties when possible, spending much of his time since leaving office at his clubs in Palm Beach, Fla., or Bedminster, N.J., as well as at Trump Tower in New York City.

But opting to stay outside the state of Wisconsin next month while Republicans gather in Milwaukee would give ample fodder to Democrats to attack Trump and question his commitment to a vital swing state in the upcoming election. In fact, the Biden campaign and Wisconsin Democrats wasted little time seizing on reports Trump had planned to stay in Chicago.

“Nothing is more on-brand for Donald Trump than the fact that he’d rather stay in a failing Trump-branded hotel in Chicago than spend a single night in beautiful Wisconsin,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler said in a statement. “Only after he got caught did Trump make an embarrassing about-face and commit to spending the night in the city he called ‘horrible’ just last week.”

Garren Randolph, who is working in Wisconsin for the Biden campaign, said in a statement that “Wisconsinites rejected him four years ago and we will again this November.”

Wisconsin is poised to play a major role in November’s election between Trump and President Biden. Trump narrowly won the state in 2016, then lost it to Biden in 2020 by roughly 20,000 votes. A Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls shows Biden leading in Wisconsin by 1 percentage point.

Jordan, acting in his capacity as chair of the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee of Weaponization of the Federal Government, sent a letter to the legal counsel for YouTube parent company Alphabet on Tuesday asking for communications and records relating to the company’s “interactions with the Executive Branch and other entities regarding changes to its firearms content policy,” adding that the request would be responsive to an already issued subpoena that is “continuing in nature.”

Earlier this month, the Google-owned platform announced that it would age restrict “content showing the use of homemade firearms, automatic firearms, and certain firearm accessories,” and outright prohibit content “showing how to remove safety devices.”

“Recent reporting and other publicly available information suggests that YouTube’s decision to change its firearms policy may have been influenced by government officials and third parties interested in suppressing certain Second Amendment-related content,” Jordan wrote in the letter, first shared with The Hill.

He specifically cited Bragg — who brought the case in which former President Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in relation to a hush money payment in 2016 — previously writing to YouTube to revise its content moderation policies relating to firearms.

Bragg sent a letter to YouTube in April expressing concern about YouTube videos instructing how to make "ghost guns" — firearms that are assembled by private individuals and therefore do not have serial numbers. Bragg said that those videos should be removed and prevented from being uploaded, and that YouTube should also "stop recommending videos with violent content, including those modeling ghost guns, to children.”

After YouTube’s content moderation policy change announcement, Bragg applauded the change and thanked the platform for its “responsiveness and willingness to work with our office,” and his office said in a release that the policy change was in response to his request.

“Given that YouTube has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past, these revelations raise serious concerns about whether and to what extent the Executive Branch is working with third parties and other intermediaries to coerce and/or collude with YouTube to censor lawful speech regarding the Second Amendment and firearms,” Jordan said in the letter.

Bragg, Jordan also noted in the letter, had “hired the third highest-ranking Department of Justice official to assist in his partisan prosecution of President Trump,” alleging a connection between the state-level prosecutor and federal executive branch.

Republicans have previously also sought to connect Bragg's state-level prosecution of Trump to the Department of Justice, which Attorney General Merrick Garland called a "conspiracy theory."

The request for documents would be part of a “continuing” subpoena already issued by Jordan’s panel in February 2023, Jordan said.

Jordan has previously revealed records obtained as part of that subpoena, which he dubbed the “YouTube Files,” that included communications between the White House and YouTube officials about content moderation and algorithm recommendation policies.

A spokesperson from YouTube pointed to a previous statement in response to Jordan's letter.

“These updates to our firearms policy are part of our continued efforts to maintain policies that reflect the current state of content on YouTube. For example, 3D printing has become more readily available in recent years so we’re expanding our restrictions on content involving homemade firearms. We regularly review our guidelines and consult with outside experts to make sure we are drawing the line at the right place," the spokesperson said.

Updated at 3:46 p.m.