Morning Report — SCOTUS v. The 2024 Election
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In a matter of weeks, the Supreme Court has taken center stage in former President Trump’s legal battles, which are poised to dominate the 2024 stretch of the presidential race. The justices were already grappling with matters surrounding Trump’s criminal cases when a new headache appeared: the question of whether Trump can be barred from appearing on the ballot under the 14th Amendment.
Colorado’s top court kicked Trump off the state’s primary ballot Tuesday, a decision that is all but certain to be appealed at the Supreme Court. As The Hill’s Zach Schonfeld and Ella Lee report, the decision only further shoves the justices headfirst into issues that could upend the 2024 election.
“I’m not happy with the Supreme Court,” Trump said on Jan. 6, 2021, in a speech outside the White House during which he urged his supporters toward the Capitol. “They love to rule against me.”
His assessment of the court featured a substantial element of truth. The conservative court, with a six-justice majority of Republican appointees that includes three named by Trump himself, has not been particularly receptive to his arguments — raising the question of Trump’s fate in the hands of the justices next year (The New York Times).
“It seems strange to allow the process to continue to play out, so I do think it’s going to force the court’s hand,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame whom the judges cited in the Colorado ruling. “I don’t think the court likes its hand being forced. But I think it’s maybe just an inevitability in a case like this.”
The Colorado challenge to Trump’s candidacy is not the only case barreling toward the U.S. Supreme Court that could upheave the presidential race. In Trump’s federal case criminally charging him with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results, special counsel Jack Smith has asked the Supreme Court to skip over a lower court and immediately consider Trump’s immunity defense.
The move is aimed at keeping Trump’s March 4 trial date — the first scheduled of his criminal trials — on track. A federal district judge rejected the defense, but the case is effectively halted until the former president’s appeal is resolved (NPR).
AMONG TRUMP’S AIDES AND ALLIES, the Colorado court’s decision has been seen as a legal nuisance and a much larger political gift. Though the general expectation is that the ruling will be reversed or put on hold, the former president continues to face major challenges in criminal and civil cases across jurisdictions. His Republican rivals and critics have rallied to his defense in the aftermath of Tuesday’s decision, using it to play into an existing strategy to turn one of President Biden’s campaign attack lines — that Trump represents a threat to democracy — back on the incumbent president and his party (Politico).
▪ Politico: Chief Justice John Roberts, Trump and the ghosts of Bush v. Gore. The Supreme Court may become the decisive player in the 2024 election.
▪ NBC News: Colorado Supreme Court justices face a flood of threats after disqualifying Trump from the ballot.
▪ ABC News: Five things we don’t know heading into the 2024 election. A likely Trump-Biden rematch is set to rejigger many rules of campaigning.
NONPROFIT SPOTLIGHT: A Washington nonprofit that has filed numerous ethics complaints and launched in-depth investigations into Trump’s alleged indiscretions was a key player in the case that got him kicked off the Colorado ballot. The Hill’s Taylor Giorno profiles the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which was part of the team that brought the case on behalf of six Republican and independent Colorado voters including Norma Anderson, the former Republican majority leader of the state House and Senate.
CREW President Noah Bookbinder told The Hill that “we have drifted back towards normalizing what happened after the 2020 election, particularly on January 6,” and he hopes the Colorado court’s decision will help to ensure the “unprecedented attack on democracy [will] not be allowed to be normalized.”
“I think this decision shows that this is very much a living protection in the Constitution, and one that we need to use and can use and will use going forward,” said Bookbinder, former chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY
▪ American democracy is cracking. The problems with the U.S. political system can, at times, feel overwhelming and intractable. But solutions can become reality when ordinary citizens engage.
▪ A chartered 737 carrying about 120 migrants arrived Tuesday in Chicago. The Texas governor’s office took responsibility, saying it’s widening efforts to send asylum-seekers to the city.
▪ The Federal Trade Commission has proposed new limits to protect children from what it says are tech companies’ increasingly invasive surveillance tactics. The move is the FTC’s latest effort to rein in often lightly regulated tech companies, including YouTube owner Google and Meta, owner of Instagram.
LEADING THE DAY
© The Associated Press / J. Scott Applewhite | The Capitol in April.
CONGRESS
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) government funding strategy is threatening to stretch the U.S military as it responds to heightened tensions with Iran and its proxies in the Middle East. The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell reports Johnson’s proposal last month for a stopgap funding bill for the Defense Department, set to expire on Feb. 2, means Pentagon spending is frozen at the previous year’s levels.
But with the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, a conflict that brought unplanned U.S. troop movements in the Middle East, the Pentagon has had to scramble to find money from elsewhere in the building. That means dollars for troop training, exercises and deployments has taken a hit, Pentagon officials say. Before DOD can see some relief, however, lawmakers still must contend with the annual defense appropriations bill, something they don’t plan to take up until January.
The Defense Department has not yet released an estimate of the total cost of the U.S. support for Israel, but the price tag is expected to be high, and there’s only so many places defense officials can pull that money from.
“Only so many accounts are liquid, meaning where you can get cash fast,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a former congressional adviser on defense issues who is now with the American Enterprise Institute. She said liquid accounts included training and readiness, munitions, flying hours and weapons systems sustainment. “If you’re comptroller and you need money in a pinch, those are the piggy banks you raid in the hope that you’ll get paid back later. I’m sure it’s very chaotic in the comptroller’s office right now.”
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told the Biden administration in mid-October that border security reforms would need to be part of any Ukraine funding package. McConnell spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Oct. 8 and Oct. 19, and on Nov. 3 delivered the message directly to White House chief of staff Jeff Zients.
The White House, however, tried to wait out McConnell and Republicans, betting they would cave on the Ukraine money — and didn’t send staff and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to begin the negotiations in earnest until Dec. 13. The Hill’s Alexander Bolton has a detailed breakdown of the talks between the Senate GOP leader and the White House and State Department from early October to late December. Some Democratic senators are worried that if Biden gets into a room with McConnell or other Senate GOP negotiators, he might end up cutting a deal on border and asylum policy that will enrage their party’s base.
“A totally legitimate concern is if you’re not reasonably close [to a deal], there’s no reason to put him in a room … He could be dragged anywhere,” said one Democratic senator who requested anonymity to talk about the leeriness fellow Democrats feel about making Biden the point person in the talks.
▪ The New York Times: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), breaking with the left on Israel, rejects the “progressive” label. The Pennsylvania senator, who has angered liberal Democrats with his staunchly pro-Israel stance and position on immigration, assailed the left and said he no longer considers himself a progressive.
▪ The Hill: Speaker Johnson urges Biden to take executive action on the border.
WHERE AND WHEN
? Happy holidays! Morning Report will be back in your inboxes Tuesday, Dec. 26.
The House will meet for a pro forma session at 9 a.m.
The Senate will convene for a pro forma session at 8 a.m.
The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10 a.m. At 3:45 p.m., the president and first lady Jill Biden will visit patients and families at Children’s National Hospital in Washington.
Vice President Harris has no public events scheduled.
ZOOM IN
© The Associated Press / Adel Hana | After 11 weeks of war in Gaza, the Israeli military campaign against Hamas now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history.
INTERNATIONAL
THE PALESTINIAN DEATH TOLL IN GAZA surpassed 20,000, health officials said, the latest indication of the staggering cost of the war caused by Israel’s bombardment and siege on the territory in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The deaths, amounting to nearly 1 percent of the territory’s prewar population, are just one measure of the devastation wrought by the conflict that over 11 weeks has displaced nearly 85 percent of Gaza’s people and leveled wide swaths of the enclave.
More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a report Thursday from the United Nations and other agencies. Israel, meanwhile, has expanded its ground offensive and ordered tens of thousands more people to leave their homes (The Associated Press).
After nearly a week of negotiations, the U.S. said late Thursday that it was ready to support a United Nations Security Council resolution that would call for more desperately needed aid to enter Gaza. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told reporters that the U.S. had “worked hard and diligently over the course of the past week” with the countries that had proposed the resolution, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, to ensure that “we put a mechanism on the ground that will support humanitarian assistance and we’re ready to vote for it.”
Thomas-Greenfield’s comments come after the Security Council has repeatedly delayed a vote on a resolution the U.S. would likely veto among concerns that allowing the U.N. to inspect aid into Gaza would leave Israel with no role in the process (The New York Times).
▪ The Washington Post: The case of al-Shifa: Investigating the assault on Gaza’s largest hospital.
▪ Reuters: Gaza death toll: why counting the dead has become a daily struggle.
▪ The Washington Post: Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are heading for a collision on their postwar agendas.
▪ The New York Times: A Times investigation tracked Israel’s use of one of its most destructive bombs in south Gaza.
UKRAINE HAS RECEIVED THE LAST $1.65 billion tranche of aid from the European Union for 2023. The country’s economy depends heavily on financial support from partners, and Kyiv has been concerned whether that support will continue, as new packages have been blocked so far both in the EU and in the United States. While the country’s economy can weather the next few months until foreign aid arrives, 2024 is certain to be tougher and Kyiv will need to rely more heavily on its own resources (Reuters).
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said he has accepted an invitation from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to hold a bilateral meeting, a potential first between the two leaders since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Relations between the nations have been fraught as Hungary has repeatedly blocked EU efforts to provide financial aid to Ukraine and refused to provide its neighbor with arms support (The Associated Press).
ELSEWHERE
© The Associated Press / Chris Carlson | Holiday travel is expected to be busy this year across the country.
HOLIDAY TRAVEL
It’s beginning to look a lot like a hectic holiday travel season, but if the weather cooperates, airlines and federal officials are optimistic it might go relatively smoothly. Travel over Christmas and New Year’s tends to spread out over many days, so the peaks in the U.S. are likely to be lower than they were during Thanksgiving.
The Transportation Security Administration expects the busiest days for air travel will be Thursday, Friday and New Year’s Day. TSA expects to screen more than 2.5 million travelers each of those days — which is still far short of the record 2.9 million that agents screened on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Flying in the U.S. is already surpassing pre-pandemic levels. The TSA has screened 12.3 percent more travelers than it had by this time last year and 1.4 percent more than in 2019 (The Associated Press).
“I don’t want to jinx us, but so far 2023 has seen the lowest cancellation rate in the last five years,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday. He added, however, that winter weather “will certainly be a challenge in the next few weeks.”
▪ The Washington Post: Instead of a white Christmas, record warmth is set to blanket the Midwest. Santa Claus may want iced tea instead of hot chocolate this year.
▪ CBS News: Travelers are facing one of the busiest travel days of the year Thursday as parts of California prepare for more rain following overnight flooding.
TRUMP WORLD
Former Trump ally Rudy Giuliani must immediately pay $146 million in damages he owes for defaming two Georgia election workers, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The judge’s order doubles down on the multimillion-dollar penalty Giuliani will have to pay in a case related to lies about the 2020 election, as he faces financial troubles including mounting legal fees from other cases (Axios).
Following the ruling, Giuliani on Thursday filed for bankruptcy. The filing lists his assets as being between $1 million and $10 million and puts his current total debt at $151 million, including close to $1 million owed in back taxes. It also noted that he has a number of other lawsuits pending against him, and put his total estimated liabilities at between $100 million and $500 million. Michael Gottlieb, an attorney for the mother-and-daughter former election workers, said, “This maneuver is unsurprising, and it will not succeed in discharging Mr. Giuliani’s debt to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss” (The Hill and NBC News).
The New York Times: Why do people file for bankruptcy?
OPINION
■ Christmas is canceled in the land of Jesus’ birth, by Queen Rania Al Abdullah, queen of Jordan and guest essayist, The Washington Post.
■ Congress’s college financial aid fiasco, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board.
THE CLOSER
© The Associated Press / Frank Franklin II | Coco Gauff won the women’s singles championship at the U.S. Open in September.
And finally … ??? Congratulations to this week’s Morning Report Quiz winners! They had an excellent memory for the ups and downs of 2023.
Here’s who went 4/4: Ki Harvey, Patrick Kavanagh, Richard Baznik, Ned Sauthoff, Phil Kirstein, Tyler Schwinn, Mary Anne McEnery, Eric Lanter, Stan Wasser, Harry Strulovici, Nina Koenigsberg, Jeff Gelski, Ellison Thompson, Susan Reeves, Jerry Leonard, Jeremy R. Serwer, Pam Manges, Jay Rockey, Randall S. Patrick, Charles Daniel, Randy Lucas, Francisco Brocatto, Art Shelton, Jaina Mehta Buck, Laura Rettaliata, Frank Garza, Bob Hickerson, David Tapley, John Scanlan, Robert Bradley, Mark Roeddiger, JA Ramos, Terry Pflaumer, Steve James, Lou Tisler and John Trombetti.
They knew it took former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) 15 ballots to win the Speaker’s gavel back in January.
The Tennessee House of Representatives in April expelled three members for protesting for gun control.
In June, we all spent days trackingthe fate of OceanGate’s Titan submersible, which imploded in the Atlantic Ocean while descending to the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
They knew 19-year-old Coco Gauff’s U.S. Open win in September made her the first American tennis player to win the competition as a teenager since Serena Williams captured the title at 17.
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