Morning Report — Ballots, courts collide for Trump  

Off with a 2024 bang rather than a whimper, Morning Report looks at who’s up in Iowa and why (answer: former President Trump less than two weeks before caucusing), plus the pressure on the Supreme Court to rule whether states can keep Trump off ballots. The former president is capitalizing on that controversy, to the distress of Democrats, The Hill’s Niall Stanage explains.  

“The actions of Colorado and Maine, and other states that follow suit, are not only doomed to legal failure, they also embolden and empower the former president,” added Bill Barr, once Trump’s attorney general and now a critic of his former boss (The Hill). 

The Hill: Trump appeals Maine 14th Amendment ballot ban.  

The new year kicks off with a high-profile resignation (Harvard University President Claudine Gay stepped down Tuesday under a plagiarism cloud), plus unresolved fights in Congress over just about everything and more than 22,000 casualties in Gaza (and a Tuesday drone killing of a Hamas leader in Beirut).  

There’s also a GOP impeachment inquiry aimed at President Biden. One California Democrat calls it the “Donald Trump revenge show.” 

The president, by the way, is back at the White House this morning after a sunny respite in St. Croix.  

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Jewish Americans appear to back Biden in his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to recent polling (The Hill). The president, however, faces criticism among other important voting blocs, which shows up as disapproval of the job he’s doing. Those assessments undercut his efforts to assemble a winning reelection coalition in some key battleground states. 

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LEADING THE DAY 

MORE IN POLITICS 

Candidate endorsements may not make that much difference to prospective voters, but to presidential candidates who win the nominations of their respective parties, early endorsements in key states are highly prized. Holdouts who wait too long can suffer the consequences. Holdouts who never endorse can find themselves in political Siberia.  

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Tuesday endorsed Trump (Fox News), adding to a surge of lawmakers who say they back the former president to return to the White House in 2025. GOP skeptics are falling in line, Politico reports.   

Part of the reasoning is that Trump is widely seen in the Capitol as the GOP nominee-in-waiting — and Trump, without a doubt, keeps score.  

There’s also public opinion: The former president’s GOP primary base, which hovers between 30 percent and 40 percent, backs him through state and federal criminal charges, impeachments, broken promises, disinformation and proven lies. Republicans are more sympathetic today toward those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2001, and say they’re willing to absolve Trump of responsibility, according to a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released Tuesday. 

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ZOOM IN 

CONGRESS 

WHEN LAWMAKERS RETURN next week, they confront the drama of impending deadlines.  

The stopgap spending bills that are keeping the government’s lights on are set to expire in the next few weeks, with the initial measure — with a Jan. 19 deadline — covering funding for the departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Energy and Veterans Affairs, as well as assorted other agencies. Then, on Feb. 2, funding for everything else, including the Pentagon, shuts off. 

BEYOND GOVERNMENT FUNDING, a border policy deal that’s crucial to unlock Republican support for aid to Ukraine is looming large in 2024. As The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports, Trump is going to exert more influence over the talks, raising the question of whether Republicans will be able to pass any measure that Trump does not favor. Border security is Trump’s signature issue, and he may be reluctant to let Biden have a border win. Republican senators have remarked that they’ll do a political favor for Biden by getting his administration to reduce migrant flows, which they see as a major issue in the 2024 White House and Senate races.  

Senate negotiators have been seeking a deal on border security that could be tied to aid for Ukraine and Israel, among other priorities, as Republicans insist that an aid package be paired with major border security policy changes, and as border security talks have continued during the holiday break. Senators involved in the discussions have been in conversation since the chamber adjourned for the recess — and lawmakers and staff have been meeting remotely, CNN reports. 

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is set to lead a group of about 60 House Republican lawmakers to Eagle Pass, Texas, tomorrow as the House zeroes in its legislative focus on the southern border. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said he won’t be attending the trip, calling instead for Congress to focus on new legislation and vowing to fight fellow Republicans to do it, if necessary. 

“Our people — law enforcement, ranchers, local leaders — are tired of meetings, speeches, and press conferences,” Roy said in a letter obtained by The Hill. “It’s time to act with urgency,” he added, noting a “historical failure” of Republicans to properly address border security in the past. 

Upon returning to the White House on Tuesday evening, Biden told reporters, “We gotta do something, they gotta give me the money I need to protect the border.” 

IMPEACHMENT WATCH: The House Homeland Security Committee is formally moving ahead with impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The first hearing will likely take place on Jan. 10, Punchbowl news reports, with a possible second hearing the following week. 

NEW MATH: Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) said Tuesday he will leave Congress Jan. 21, earlier than initially planned in March, to become president of Youngstown State University. The lawmaker’s resignation will leave the House with 219 Republicans, 213 Democrats and three vacancies — meaning Republicans later this month can afford to lose only two votes on any party-line measure, assuming full attendance (The Hill). 

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TRUMP WORLD 

COLLISION COURSE: The presidential election is about to become inextricably tied up with Trump’s criminal turmoil as his exhaustive calendar of legal obligations collides with the impending Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, just six days after a D.C. Circuit hears oral arguments in Trump’s presidential immunity appeal. A few months later, Trump’s D.C. election interference trial is scheduled to start March 4, just one day ahead of Super Tuesday. 

The juxtaposition of the courtroom and campaign trail will set the tone for an unprecedented White House race overshadowed by the ex-president’s four looming criminal trials. As CNN reports, this primary and election season will prove a test for the country and its institutions, as Trump is leaving no doubt that he would use a second term to punish his political enemies and would likely attempt to use official presidential powers to evade accountability for his attempts at subverting the results of the 2020 election. The election could even see Trump run as a convicted felon in November, depending on the timing of his trials and if he wins the nomination. 

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ELSEWHERE 

INTERNATIONAL 

? Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau and the commander of the group’s military wing in the West Bank, was killed in a drone attack in a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Hamas confirmed Tuesday. While Israel hasn’t claimed responsibility for the attack, one Israeli and two U.S. officials told Axios that Israel was behind the strike — a serious blow to Hamas that could push the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group to escalate its attacks against Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill Arouri even before Hamas carried out its deadly surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, sparking the ongoing brutal war in Gaza.  

The Washington Post: Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, is expected to make a speech Wednesday that could signal how the group may respond to the killing of a senior Hamas leader. 

Meanwhile, The Hill’s Laura Kelly reports on Israel’s major shift in its military operation in the Gaza Strip almost three months into the conflict. U.S. officials say the decision to withdraw some troops signals both the strain Israel feels on the home front and pressure from the U.S. to scale back a war campaign that has devastated the Palestinian enclave. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said operations around Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s main city, concentrated on areas above the tunnel network where Hamas leaders were believed to be hiding. 

“We are reaching them all ways. There already is engagement and there are [Israeli] hostages there too, sadly,” he told troops in Gaza in footage shown on Israeli television. “This will continue as high-intensity efforts in the heart of Khan Younis.” 

The change in strategy comes as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 20,000 and its 2.3 million residents have been engulfed in a humanitarian disaster in which thousands have been left destitute and threatened by famine due to a lack of food supplies (CNBC). 

The New York Times: Netanyahu’s coalition signaled on Tuesday that for the sake of national unity with Israel at war, it was not planning any immediate countermove against a Supreme Court decision striking down the government’s signature campaign to rein in the court’s powers. 

DEADLY ATTACKS HIT UKRAINE’S two largest cities Tuesday after Russian President Vladimir Putin began the new year with a vow to intensify the most aggressive campaign of strikes since the war began almost two years ago. The Russian assaults over the winter holiday period are likely to further strain Ukrainian defenses, which are already depleted and facing doubts about continued supplies of military aid from its Western allies. Russia’s own border areas have faced shelling that the Kremlin blames on Ukraine, with Putin vowing revenge Monday for an unprecedented strike on the city of Belgorod (Politico EU and NBC News). 

Reuters: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces are suffering heavy losses and the notion that Moscow is winning the nearly two-year-old war is only a “feeling” not based on reality. 

RESCUERS IN JAPAN RACED TUESDAY to save residents trapped in the rubble of a 7.5 magnitude quake on the western coast that triggered multiple aftershocks and killed dozens of people. The quake shook the Noto Peninsula in the central prefecture of Ishikawa on Monday afternoon, collapsing buildings, sparking fires and triggering tsunami alerts as far away as eastern Russia. At least 62 people have been killed, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK (The Guardian, CNN and Reuters). 

Reuters: All 379 people aboard a Japan Airlines plane escaped the burning aircraft after a collision with a Coast Guard plane at Tokyo’s Haneda airport that killed five crew on the smaller craft.  

HIGHER EDUCATION 

Harvard University President Claudine Gay, who began her post in July, resigned Tuesday following plagiarism accusations that first emerged last fall. She is the second prominent university leader to resign in recent weeks amid a firestorm intensified by their respective answers during congressional testimony about antisemitism on campuses. Support for Gay’s presidency began eroding after what some saw as the university’s initial failure to forcefully condemn the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and student responses on campus that blamed Israel for violence in Gaza.  

The December congressional hearing also led to the ouster of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, whose support had already been shaken in recent months over her refusal to cancel a Palestinian writers conference (The New York Times). 

Four months ago, six of eight Ivy league universities were led by women. Controversies forced two to step down. 

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THE CLOSER 

And finally … “Virtuous subtraction” is the art of doing less. As the new year dawns, more businesses are getting into it, more authors are behind it and parents are receiving that advice. The practice involves mindfully identifying opportunities to create value by eliminating certain activities and goals. 

Executives now spend 230 percent more time in meetings than they did in the 1960s, and research has shown that this increased level of collaboration often causes employees stress. Meanwhile, the average house size has increased by almost 1,000 square feet over the past 40 years, and researchers have found that the time that parents spend with their children has increased exponentially over the past five decades, despite more parents working outside the home (Psychology Today). 

Yes, we can improve well-being by adding joy to our lives. But we can also achieve the same aim by subtracting misery. And in a world that is stretching many of us thin, less may quite literally be more. 

Inc: These are the eight most common ways people make themselves miserable, according to a philosopher. Want to be happier? Rather than looking for more joy, maybe you should aim for less misery. 

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Stay Engaged 

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