Morning Report — Supreme Court, Super Tuesday voters tip the scales    

Former President Trump exulted in a favorable ruling from a unanimous Supreme Court on Monday and projections of triumph in today’s Super Tuesday contests in 15 states amid evident Republican Party divisions.

All nine justices agreed that Colorado, which holds its primary today, can’t knock Trump off ballots based on a clause in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The upshot was not a surprise. The high court had expressed worries about a patchwork of states determining which national candidates could appear on ballots. The justices united behind a historic conclusion that Congress, not states, commands such election-related turf, although their reasoning varied.

“Former President Trump challenges that decision on several grounds. Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the unsigned opinion said.

Trump celebrated online and during a Fox News interview, calling the result a “great win for America.” But he immediately turned his attention to a pending Supreme Court verdict considered less predictable and more personally consequential for a candidate who has pleaded not guilty to 91 criminal charges, some stemming from his time in the Oval Office.

Does a president have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, as Trump claims, for decisions made and actions taken while in office? The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in that federal elections case on April 22.

The Justice Department is prepared to prosecute Trump at trial before Election Day in two jurisdictions. But Trump’s legal challenges and the Supreme Court’s deliberate pace may mean government prosecutors do not get near federal courtrooms this year.

“I hope that the justices, because they’ll be working on some other cases, but one in particular, presidents have to be given total immunity,” Trump saidin remarks from his Mar-a-Lago club. “They have to be allowed to do their job. If they’re not allowed to do their job, it’s not what the founders wanted, but perhaps even more importantly it will be terrible for the country.”

GOP presidential challenger Nikki Haley, who last week said she hoped Trump’s legal cases would be “dealt with” before November, applauded the high court’s verdict Monday in the Colorado ballot case. She has suggested she’ll gauge whether to remain in the race based on voters’ decisions in today’s primaries and caucuses, when more delegates are at stake than on any other single date during the primary season.

Trump is ahead in that count, but Haley may stretch out the season into mid-March before the former president can lock in an indisputable delegate lead and lock out any remaining suspense about the GOP nominee. Tonight’s returns in portions of states where traditional Republican voters don’t favor Trump may train a spotlight on vulnerabilities for the front-runner in key battleground states later this year. 

President Biden, who gives his State of the Union address Thursday night, will, like Haley, pore over tonight’s returns. For more on Super Tuesday and the president’s big speech, read below.   

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LEADING THE DAY

MORE IN POLITICS 

Trump is poised to tighten his grip on the GOP nomination with a potential sweep tonight, writes The Hill’s Niall Stanage in his latest Memo. Twice impeached, defeated in 2020’s election, now facing criminal charges in New York, Washington, Georgia and Florida, Trump keeps on keeping on. Stanage outlines a remarkable turnaround to date.

Adding to his surge, Trump learned Monday that he won the North Dakota GOP caucus. 

The Hill’s Caroline Vakil reminds us that there’s more to Super Tuesday’s outcomes than just the presidential sweepstakes. Check out her five things to watch. 

CBS News: Here’s a Super Tuesday primer.

The White House and the Biden campaign, eager to exploit the persuasive potential of the traditional State of the Union speech and its reach with voters, will dispatch the president later this week to Philadelphia and then Atlanta to reinforce his domestic policy and economic messages. He has ground to make up with non-college-educated white men and young Black voters, according to polls and focus groups.

Members of Biden’s Cabinet and Vice President Harris also will travel for events in at least 13 states this month to champion policy strides they believe benefit families, workers, consumers, students, communities and the environment, the White House announced.

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ZOOM IN

ADMINISTRATION 

CALLS FOR A CEASE-FIRE: The vice president on Monday urged Israel to craft a “credible” humanitarian plan before conducting major military activities in Rafah during a meeting with Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz. She also pressed Israel to take more measures to get aid into Gaza, reiterating a Sunday message that called conditions in the enclave “inhumane.”

Israel last month intensified its bombardment of Rafah in Gaza’s south, where about 1.5 million people are estimated to be located, most of them having fled their homes further north. The meeting came as Biden and the White House face increasing pressure from his Democratic Party to back a permanent cease-fire, and to push Israel to reduce the loss of civilian life in Gaza and allow aid to flow through in greater amounts. 

Gantz will meet today with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, much to the consternation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Punchbowl News reports he is also slated to meet privately with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). Johnson (R-La.) will not meet with Gantz, while the Israeli war cabinet member met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday.

The urgency around a temporary cease-fire comes after voters in Michigan sent Biden a clear message of discontent last week, with more than 100,000 voters casting a ballot for “uncommitted” to protest his pro-Israel stance. There are similar efforts underway to cast protest votes against Biden on Super Tuesday, and activists see Harris’s remarks as a signal to organizers and progressives that the administration is paying attention (The Hill). 

“I think what we’re seeing here is at least a political recognition from the administration — a recognition that they have a political problem with core constituencies,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive political organizing group Our Revolution. “They’re paying attention. If anything, the vice president’s speech signals that they understand the problem with their base and they have to address it.”

IN THE FIRST REPORT in a three-part series about the Air Force’s nuclear missile modernization project called Sentinel, The Hill’s Brad Dress reportson the skyrocketing cost of the program and the reckoning it sparked in Washington. In the last years of the Obama administration, a debate rippled across Washington. The United States could continue life-extending the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which had been deployed for close to 50 years at the time, or modernize the system in a major overhaul. Facing pressure from lawmakers, then-President Obama in 2016 elected to pour trillions of dollars into modernizing the entire nuclear triad: land-based ICBMs, submarines and bomber planes. 

The latest alarm rang when the Air Force exceeded its projection budget by 37 percent in January, triggering a critical breach that required the Pentagon to step in and review Sentinel — and sparked a debate in Congress about the future of ICBMs.

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CONGRESS 

A PACKAGE OF SIX SPENDING BILLS that needs to pass by Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown is drawing intense fire from conservatives in both chambers who are zeroing in on 600 pages of earmarks buried in the package. 

The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports that Senate conservatives are trying to elevate the handling of the package as an issue in the Senate leadership race to replace McConnell, the outgoing Republican Leader. The move puts McConnell’s top deputy, Senate GOP Whip John Thune (S.D.) in a tough spot. If Thune helps push the bill across the finish line, it will hurt his support among Senate conservatives — a key swing block. But getting the bill passed without Thune’s help will be a heavy lift given the whip’s central role in running GOP floor operations. 

The Hill: Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) met with Trump among rumors of a possible Senate GOP leader run.

OVER IN THE HOUSE, hard-line conservatives are up in arms over the deal, which has been endorsed by Johnson, but they’ve been forced to acknowledge they’re all but powerless to block it. Members of the House Freedom Caucus have urged Johnson to demand deep cuts in spending and scores of conservative policy changes as part of the two 2024 funding packages moving through Congress this month — but the bipartisan funding deal falls short on those demands.

But while the conservatives are fuming, The Hill’s Mychael Schnell and Mike Lillis write they don’t seem ready to use the last tool at their disposal: The motion to oust the Speaker, which threw the GOP conference into chaos for three weeks and prevented the House from conducting any legislative business after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel.

“Speaker Johnson inherited a bad situation,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.). “With the former Speaker leaving early he’s really put us in a very bad spot. So this Speaker’s just having to maintain. … That’s about all he can do.”

What is in Congress’s new 1,050-page funding plan? The Hill’s Aris Folley breaks down the sweeping package that includes more than $450 billion in funding for fiscal 2024, which started in September. The bills include dollars for a slew of offices including the departments of Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, Justice, Commerce and Energy.

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ELSEWHERE

INTERNATIONAL

HAMAS IS WILLING to decrease the number of Palestinian prisoners it wants to see released as part of a hostage deal if Israel agrees to allow more Palestinian civilians to return to northern Gaza, mediators from Qatar and Egypt told Israeli negotiators during talks last week, Axios reports. The Biden administration wants the Qataris and the Egyptians to persuade Hamas to agree to an accord before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins Sunday.

An Israeli government official told CNN that Gantz, the war cabinet minister and centrist political rival of Netanyahu, does not represent the Israeli government during his visit to Washington. The Israeli official insisted that Netanyahu has an “open line” to Biden and said the two have spoken dozens of times since the Oct. 7 attacks, implying an intervention by Gantz is unnecessary. 

The Wall Street Journal: Netanyahu’s war cabinet is at war with itself.

BIDEN RAISED THE MARITIME OPTION in recent days as the U.S. began airdropping food into Gaza, a process that allows for only limited deliveries at a time. On Monday, top U.S. officials discussed what will likely be a challenging effort to establish a corridor via water to increase distribution of humanitarian aid to Palestinians. The maritime option is effectively what Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides proposed last year. He confirmed Sunday that his country, which sits about 230 miles from Gaza by sea, was in talks with the U.S. about setting up the route (Politico).

“We are discussing this with the U.S. and I hope that we will soon be able to announce something concrete,” Christodoulides said.

A UNITED NATIONS REPORT released on Monday said that there were grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred against women during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks and evidence that hostages being held in Gaza were also assaulted. It called for a full investigation. There are also “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing,” said Pramila Patten, who visited Israel and the West Bank from Jan. 29 to Feb. 14 with a nine-member team (The New York Times).

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees on Monday accused Israel of detaining and torturing some of its staffers, coercing them into making false confessions about the agency’s ties to Hamas. The false confessions elicited “under torture” were being used “to further spread misinformation about the Agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA,” said Juliette Touma, the spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. She did not tie those confessions to the allegations against the 12 staffers accused of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks (CNN).

Reuters: Israeli forces raided the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank overnight, killing a 16-year-old in a refugee camp during their biggest such operation into the city in years.

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THE CLOSER

And finally … 🐈 A purring cat. A dog wagging its tail. A hiss, or a growl. To pet owners, those behaviors can be surefire signals of feline and canine happiness and unhappiness. But don’t pat yourself on the back just yet.

A new study by French researchers, published in January in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science, found that people were significantly worse at reading the cues of an unhappy cat than those of a contented cat. As The New York Times reports, the study also suggested that a cat’s meows and other noises are greatly misinterpreted and that people should consider both vocal and visual cues to try to determine what’s going on with their pets.

“We often take for granted our ability to understand the people and the animals that we’re close to, and that we live with,” said Monique Udell, director of the Human-Animal Interaction Laboratory at Oregon State University, who was not involved in this study. “It’s worth doing these investigations because it’s showing us that we’re not always accurate, and it helps us understand where our blind spots are, that we really do benefit from having multiple sources of information.”

Even some of the most common cues may be misunderstood. Purring, for example, is not always a sign of comfort. Nor is a dog’s wagging tail. Situational cues matter, and scientists urge pet owners to take into account as many factors as possible to determine how their furry friend may be feeling.

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