The closely-watched runoff contest was centered on the District 1’s Commission seat.

Businessman Miguel Gabela on Tuesday defeated the embattled incumbent, Alex Diaz de la Portilla, by a margin of 54% to 46%.

Diaz de la Portilla was recently charged with money laundering and bribery and was suspended by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“We never doubted it,” Meiner said. “I just kept hammering on the message, talking about what our residents care about.”

Out of more 10,000 ballots that were casted, Meiner won with 54% of the vote compared to his opponent, former Commissioner Michael Gongora, who received 46%.

The attorney ran on a law and order platform.

“Protecting our residents, reducing crime, a safer city,” he said.

Meiner also hopes to focus on infrastructure and development.

“Mitigating traffic, responsible development, not over-development,” he said. “Resiliency issues that we need to address.”

The election lead to this Thanksgiving week runoff after the top two candidates didn’t secure enough votes to win the seat earlier in November.

Gongora said some words for his opponent Tuesday night.

“I wish him my heartfelt congratulations and I look forward to continue to work with him, our residents, the Commission for the good of Miami Beach,” Gongora said.

But the race was not without controversy.

Days before this election, the Miami Herald withdrawing it’s endorsement of Meiner after reporting “…at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where Meiner has been an enforcement attorney in the Miami office since 2007, three former female colleagues told the Miami Herald that Meiner made unwanted advances toward them…..”

These were allegations which Meiner denied.

“It’s politics, unfortunately,” he said, ” things get thrown out there and I think our residents are smart enough to weed through the noise, and reflect on the person that I am, the person that I’ve been and the person I’ll continue to be.

Now, his focus is on the city he will serve.

“The first Commission meeting, I wanna hear from our police chief, our transportation director, our sanitation, code compliance,” he said.

Meiner said he has a plan for his first 30 days in office, which starts on day one by meeting with the city’s police chief to outline a public safety plan.

The Thanksgiving birds played their part Monday in annual White House tradition that this year coincided with President Joe Biden ‘s 81st birthday: a president issuing a pardon and sparing them from becoming someone’s holiday dinner.

First, Biden — the oldest president in U.S. history — wanted to make light of his age.

“By the way, it’s my birthday today,” the president said, adding that guests in the Oval Office sang “Happy Birthday” to him before the event. “I just want you to know, it’s difficult turning 60. Difficult.”

He also noted that the presentation of a National Thanksgiving Turkey to the White House has been a tradition for more than seven decades.

“This is the 76th anniversary of this event, and I want you to know I wasn’t there at the first one,” Biden said. The Democrat’s age has become an issue as he seeks reelection next year.

Before issuing the pardons, Biden said that although Liberty and Bell are Minnesota natives, they were named for the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

“These birds have a new appreciation for the word, ‘let freedom ring,’” he said, adding that they love Honeycrisp apples, ice hockey, a thousand lakes and the Mall of America — all things the Midwest state is famous for. Minnesota is known the “land of 10,000 lakes.”

They overcame “some tough odds” to get to the White House, Biden continued, saying “they had to work hard, show patience and be willing to travel over a thousand miles.” He suggested their feat probably was harder than getting a ticket to Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour or “Britney’s tour, she’s down in, it’s kind of warm in Brazil right now.” He apparently mixed up his female pop stars; Taylor Swift was in Brazil over the weekend for her Eras Tour; Britney Spears currently is not on tour.

“Look folks, based on their commitment to being productive members of society as they head to their new home at the University of Minnesota … I hereby pardon Liberty and Bell. Congratulations, birds!” Biden declared.

Hundreds of guests, including Cabinet secretaries and White House staff who brought children, watched from the South Lawn as Biden kicked off the unofficial start of Washington’s holiday season. His grandchildren Maisy Biden and Beau Biden watched from the sidelines, and Beau was led over to pet one of the turkeys after the ceremony.

Later Monday, military families joined Biden’s wife, first lady Jill Biden, as she accepted delivery of an 18.5-foot (5.6-meter) Fraser fir from the Cline Church Nursery in Fleetwood, North Carolina. It will go on display in the Blue Room as the official White House Christmas tree.

Steve Lykken, chairman of the National Turkey Federation and president of the Jennie-O Turkey Store, told The Associated Press in an interview last week that the pardons are a “great way to kick off the holiday season and really, really a fun honor.”

Lykken introduced Liberty and Bell on Sunday at the Willard Intercontinental, a luxury hotel near the White House. The gobblers checked into a suite there on Saturday following their red-carpet arrival in the U.S. capital after a dayslong road trip from Minnesota in a black Cadillac Escalade.

“They were raised like all of our turkeys, protected, of course, from weather extremes and predators, free to walk about with constant access to water and feed,” Lykken said Sunday as Liberty and Bell strutted around the Willard’s newly renovated Crystal Room on plastic sheeting laid over the carpet.

The male turkeys, both about 20 weeks old and about 42 pounds (19 kilograms), were hatched in July in Willmar, Minnesota — Jennie-O is headquartered there — as part of the “presidential flock,” Lykken said. They listened to music and other sounds to prepare them for Monday’s hoopla at the White House.

“They listened to all kinds of music to get ready for the crowds and people along the way. I can confirm they are, in fact, Swifties, and they do enjoy some Prince,” Lykken said, meaning Liberty and Bell are fans of Swift. “I think they’re absolutely ready for prime time.”

The tradition dates to 1947 when the National Turkey Federation, which represents turkey farmers and producers, first presented a National Thanksgiving Turkey to President Harry Truman.

Back then, and even earlier, the gobbler was given for the first family’s holiday consumption. But by the late 1980s, the tradition had evolved into an often humorous ceremony in which the birds are given a second chance at life.

In 1989, as animal rights activists picketed nearby, President George H.W. Bush offered a public assurance, saying, “this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table.”

Now spared from Thanksgiving dinner, Liberty and Bell will be cared for by the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.

Biden also paid tribute Sunday to former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died Sunday, and to President Jimmy Carter. “They brought so much grace to the office,” Biden said.

The president and first lady Jill Biden headed to a packed auditorium at Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads to introduce the new film centered around the early life of Roald Dahl’s fictional eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka. It will be officially released Dec. 15.

He joked to the many youngsters in the crowd: “I like kids more than adults” and added “I wish I could stay and watch Wonka with you.”

Instead, the Bidens helped serve dinner with service members from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS Gerald R. Ford at Norfolk Naval Station, the largest installation of its kind in the world, along with their families.

“You literally are the backbone, the spine, the spine of this nation,” the president said. “Only 1% of you, that’s all, that protects the 99% of us.”

The event featured around 400 service members and their relatives seated in folding chairs and around wooden, circular tables inside a concrete-floored hanger that included three display Blackhawk helicopters, a towering American flag and a screen with the image of the White House surrounded by falling leaves and the words “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“I mean from the bottom of my heart,” the president said. “Family members, you are the heart of this operation.” He said he would be passing out dressing and joked, “If you don’t like dressing, just come up and pretend you do and say hi to me.’’

But the president actually served up mashed potatoes while attendees lined up for the buffet-style meal. Jill Biden spooned out sweet potato casserole to attendees. They stood on either side of Chef Robert Irvine, whose foundation helped organize the meal, and both chatted up those going through the line, which included a lot of children.

At one point, a child asked Jill Biden something. She laughed and served a portion of casserole that contained all marshmallows, forgoing any sweet potatoes.

The menu also featured slow-roasted bourbon-brined turkey topped with giblet gravy and cranberry-orange compote, maple-mustard glazed spiral-cut smoked ham, brioche-cornbread stuffing, candied walnuts, roasted garlic and crème fraiche, and a toasted espresso mascarpone Chantilly cream.

As the event was wrapping up, attendees presented Biden with a birthday cake. He turns 81 on Monday.

Meanwhile, Biden’s 2024 Republican rival Donald Trump was scheduled for a military visit Sunday in Texas. The former president, who has a commanding early lead in the 2024 GOP primary, was in Edinburg after serving meals to National Guard soldiers, troopers and others who will be stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border over Thanksgiving.

Trump is promoting hard-line immigration proposals he argues will better secure the border. He and top Republicans have long criticized the Biden administration for failing to do more to crackdown on people entering the United States illegally.

For the Bidens, offering support to the nation’s military has a personal connection. Their son Beau served in Iraq as a member of the Delaware National Guard. He died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46, when Joe Biden was vice president.

Jill Biden talked about Beau’s deployment at the Wonka event, telling the crowd: “I know there are many here who miss their mom or dad or spouse.”

“While nothing can make up for that empty chair at the table, for us, the kindness of our community and finding moments of joy helps make it a little bit easier,” she said.

As he prepared to celebrate with the troops at home, the war between Israel and Hamas and the fate of hostages, including Americans, being held by the militants in Gaza, were front and center for the president. A reporter asked Biden upon his arrival in Norfolk when more hostages might go free, to which he replied, “I’m not in a position to tell you that” and added, “I want to make sure they’re out and then I’ll tell you.”

The Bidens learned of Rosalynn Carter’s death during their visit, announcing her passing just before serving the friendsgiving meal. Jill Biden asked diners to “include the Carter family in your prayers” during the holiday season. Carter, she said, “was well-known for her efforts on mental health and caregiving and women’s rights.”

Biden, speaking to reporters as he was boarding Air Force One to leave Norfolk, described the Carters as a couple of grace and integrity, and praised Jimmy Carter as a person who worked as hard for others after he left the White House as he did in office.

“Imagine, they were together for 77 years,” he added. “God bless them.”

Biden also talked at the dinner with service members about watching Beau Biden’s children while he was deployed, but then appeared too overcome with emotion to continue and said, “I don’t want to talk about this.” The sadness was fleeting. A moment later he lightheartedly bent down and joked with a 6-year-old, saying “What are you, 17?”

“Happy, happy Thanksgiving,” Biden said. “May God love you all.”

Friendsgiving with the military has become a tradition for the Bidens. Last year, they dished out mashed potatoes and other sides as part of the buffet-style meal in Cherry Point, North Carolina, home to more than 9,000 military personnel and roughly 8,000 military family members.

In 2021, the Bidens visited the Army’s Fort Bragg in North Carolina for an early Thanksgiving meal in a hangar for about 250 service members and their families. Troops got chocolate chip cookies bearing the presidential seal.

The president and first lady plan to spend this Thanksgiving on Nantucket, a Massachusetts island.

___

President Joe Biden said the Carters “brought grace” to the White House. “He had this great integrity, still does. And she did too,” Biden told reporters as he was boarding Air Force One to leave Norfolk, Virginia on Sunday night. “God bless them.” Biden said he spoke to the family and was told that Jimmy Carter was surrounded by his children and grandchildren.

Later the White House released an official joint statement from the president and first lady Jill Biden saying that Carter inspired the nation. “She was a champion for equal rights and opportunities for women and girls; an advocate for mental health and wellness for every person; and a supporter of the often unseen and uncompensated caregivers of our children, aging loved ones, and people with disabilities,” the statement said.

___

Former President George W. Bush called Carter a woman of dignity and strength. “There was no greater advocate of President Carter, and their partnership set a wonderful example of loyalty and fidelity. She leaves behind an important legacy in her work to destigmatize mental health. We join our fellow citizens in sending our condolences to President Carter and their family,” Bush said in a statement with former first lady Laura Bush.

___

U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia said Carter would be remembered for her compassionate nature and passion for women’s rights, human rights and mental health reform. “The State of Georgia and the United States are better places because of Rosalynn Carter,” Ossoff said in a statement. “I join all Georgians and Americans in mourning her loss. May Rosalynn Carter’s memory be a blessing.”

___

Vice President Kamala Harris said Rosalynn Carter redefined the role of first lady and lived a life of service, faith, compassion, and moral leadership. “As a humanitarian, a public servant, and a global leader, Mrs. Carter improved the lives of millions — and inspired countless more to dedicate their lives to service. Her legacy will be a beacon for generations to come,” Harris said in a statement.

___

Former President Donald Trump said Carter “earned the admiration and gratitude” of the nation. “From her days as a U.S. Navy spouse, to the Georgia Governor’s Mansion, to her tenure as First Lady of the United States, and her later work at the Carter Center and volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, she leaves behind a legacy of extraordinary accomplishment and national service,” Trump said on Truth Social.

In a separate statement, former first lady Melania Trump said Carter leaves behind a meaningful legacy. “We will always remember her servant’s heart and devotion to her husband, family, and country. May she rest in peace,” Melania Trump said on X, formerly Twitter.

___

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Carter was a “saintly and revered public servant” driven by faith, compassion and kindness. “On the world stage, First Lady Carter was a pioneer. Her historic, high-stakes diplomatic mission to Latin America in 1977 ushered in a new era of engagement in the region. Two years later, she became the first sitting First Lady to address the World Health Organization, where she argued that mental health was an aspect of physical health – and that health is a human right,” Pelosi said in a statement offering condolences to the Carter family.

___

Bill and Hillary Clinton called Carter a champion of human dignity. “Thanks to her mental health advocacy, more people live with better care and less stigma. Because of her early leadership on childhood immunization, millions of Americans have grown up healthier. And through her decades of work at the Carter Center and with Habitat for Humanity, she spread hope, health, and democracy across the globe,” the former president and former secretary of state said in a joint statement. “Rosalynn will be forever remembered as the embodiment of a life lived with purpose.”

___

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens called Carter “the model for the modern day First Lady” and praised her work promoting mental health awareness. “She never stopped advocating for mental health or the Equal Rights Amendment,” Dickens said in a statement. “The city of Atlanta joins all of Georgia — and mourners around the world — as we honor the memory of First Lady Rosalynn Carter.”

___

Former first lady Michelle Obama said Rosalynn Carter sometimes offered advice during their periodic lunches at the White House. “She reminded me to make the role of First Lady my own, just like she did. I’ll always remain grateful for her support and her generosity,” Obama said in a statement. “Today, Barack and I join the world in celebrating the remarkable legacy of a First Lady, philanthropist, and advocate who dedicated her life to lifting up others. Her life is a reminder that no matter who we are, our legacies are best measured not in awards or accolades, but in the lives we touch.”

___

Habitat For Humanity, the Georgia-based charity that the Carters worked for tirelessly, said its members were saddened by the former first lady’s passing. “She was a compassionate and committed champion of #HabitatforHumanity and worked fiercely to help families around the world,” the nonprofit said on X.

___

Carter’s legacy will be a source of pride for her home state, said U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, the chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia. “Georgia Democrats join our entire state, nation, and the world in mourning the loss of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter – an extraordinary humanitarian, fierce mental health advocate, and beloved daughter of Georgia,” Williams said.

___

The Carter Center said it was grieving the passing of its co-founder. “She was a partner in good deeds with her husband, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, as they traversed the globe to strengthen democracy, resolve conflicts, advance human rights, and eliminate debilitating diseases after their time in the White House,” the center said in a statement. In lieu of flowers, Carter requested that those wishing to honor her memory do so through contributions to the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program or the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, the statement said.

With 99.4% of votes tallied in the presidential runoff, Milei had 55.7% and Economy Minister Sergio Massa 44.3%, according to Argentina’s electoral authority. It is the widest victory margin in a presidential race since the South American country’s return to democracy in 1983.

In the streets of Buenos Aires, drivers honked their horns and many took to the streets to celebrate in several neighborhoods. Outside Milei’s party headquarters, a hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, a full-on party kicked off with supporters singing, buying beers from vendors and setting off colored smoke bombs. They waved Argentine flags and the yellow Gadsden flag, emblazoned with the words “Don’t Tread On Me,” which Milei’s movement has adopted.

Inside, the self-described anarcho-capitalist who has been compared to former U.S. President Donald Trump, delivered his victory speech, saying the “reconstruction of Argentina begins today.”

“Argentina’s situation is critical. The changes our country needs are drastic. There is no room for gradualism, no room for lukewarm measures,” Milei told supporters, who chanted “Liberty, liberty!” and “Let them all leave” in a reference to the country’s political class.

Massa of the ruling Peronist party had already conceded defeat, saying Argentines “chose another path.”

“Starting tomorrow … guaranteeing the political, social and economic functions is the responsibility of the new president. I hope he does,” Massa said.

With a Milei victory, the country will take an abrupt shift rightward and a freshman lawmaker who got his start as a television talking head blasting what he called the “political caste” will assume the presidency.

Inflation has soared above 140% and poverty has worsened while Massa has held his post. Milei has said he would slash the size of the government, dollarize the economy and eliminate the Central Bank as a way to tackle galloping inflation that he blames on successive governments printing money indiscriminately in order to fund public spending. He also espouses several conservative social policies, including an opposition to sex education in schools and abortion, which Argentina’s Congress legalized in 2020.

“This is a triumph that is less due to Milei and his peculiarities and particularities and more to the demand for change,” said Lucas Romero, the head of Synopsis, a local political consulting firm. “What is being expressed at the polls is the weariness, the fatigue, the protest vote of the majority of Argentines.”

Massa’s campaign cautioned Argentines that his libertarian opponent’s plan to eliminate key ministries and otherwise sharply curtail the state would threaten public services, including health and education, and welfare programs many rely on. Massa also drew attention to his opponent’s often aggressive rhetoric and openly questioned his mental acuity; ahead of the first round, Milei sometimes carried a revving chainsaw at rallies.

“There were lot of voters that weren’t convinced to vote Milei, who would vote null or blank. But come the day of the vote, they voted for Milei because they’re all pissed off,” Andrei Roman, CEO of Brazil-based pollster Atlas Intel, said by phone. “Everyone talked about the fear of Milei winning. I think this was a fear of Massa winning and economy continuing the way it is, inflation and all that.”

Milei accused Massa and his allies of running a “campaign of fear” and he walked back some of his most controversial proposals, such as loosening gun control. In his final campaign ad, Milei looks at the camera and assures voters he has no plans to privatize education or health care.

Milei’s screeds resonated widely with Argentines angered by their struggle to make ends meet, particularly young men.

“Incredibly happy, ecstatic, it’s a global historical phenomenon!” Luca Rodríguez, a 20-year-old law student, said outside Milei’s headquarters after spraying a bottle of champagne into the air onto those around him, who squealed with glee. “I want to break free from this ridiculous elite that takes away all our rights, all the tax money that pressures us and doesn’t let us live in peace.”

Two Milei supporters in the raucous crowd were 32-year-old identical twins, both dressed in matching grey tank tops with Argentine flags draped over their shoulders.

“We want a change, we want everything to improve,” Amilcar Rollo said beside his brother, Gabriel. “It’s the hope for something new from someone who hasn’t been there and has different ideas. Otherwise, it’s just the same as always.”

Most pre-election polls, which have been notoriously wrong at every step of this year’s campaign, showed a statistical tie between the two candidates or Milei slightly ahead.

Underscoring the bitter division this campaign has brought to the fore, Milei received both jeers and cheers on Friday night at the legendary Colón Theater in Buenos Aires.

The acrimony was also evident Sunday when Milei’s running mate, Victoria Villaruel, went to vote and was met by protesters angry at her claims that the number of victims from Argentina’s bloody 1976-1983 military dictatorship is far below what human rights organizations have long claimed, among other controversial positions.

The vote took place amid Milei’s allegations of possible electoral fraud, reminiscent of those from Trump and former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Without providing evidence, Milei claimed that the first round of the presidential election was plagued by irregularities that affected the result. Experts say such irregularities cannot swing an election, and that his assertions were partly aimed at firing up his base and motivating his supporters to become monitors of voting stations. Many have expressed concerns they undermine democratic norms.

Both Bolsonaro and Trump congratulated Milei on social media.

“The whole world was watching! I am very proud of you,” Trump wrote on his platform, Truth Social. “You will turn your Country around and truly Make Argentina Great Again!”

And posting on X, formerly Twitter, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also commended Milei.

“We look forward to continuing bilateral cooperation based on shared values and interests,” Blinken wrote.

The Carter Center said she died Sunday after living with dementia and suffering many months of declining health. The statement said she “died peacefully, with family by her side” at 2:10 p.m. at her rural Georgia home of Plains.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” the former president said in the statement. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

President Joe Biden called the Carters “an incredible family because they brought so much grace to the office.”

“He had this great integrity, still does. And she did too,” Biden told reporters as he was boarding Air Force One on Sunday night after an event in Norfolk, Virginia. “God bless them.” Biden said he spoke to the family and was told that Jimmy Carter was surrounded by his children and grandchildren.

Later, the White House released a joint statement from the president and first lady Jill Biden saying that Carter inspired the nation. “She was a champion for equal rights and opportunities for women and girls; an advocate for mental health and wellness for every person; and a supporter of the often unseen and uncompensated caregivers of our children, aging loved ones, and people with disabilities,” the statement added.

RELATED: Reactions to the death of Rosalynn Carter, former first lady and global humanitarian

Reaction from world leaders poured in throughout the day.

The Carters were married for more than 77 years, forging what they both described as a “full partnership.” Unlike many previous first ladies, Rosalynn sat in on Cabinet meetings, spoke out on controversial issues and represented her husband on foreign trips. Aides to President Carter sometimes referred to her — privately — as “co-president.”

“Rosalynn is my best friend … the perfect extension of me, probably the most influential person in my life,” Jimmy Carter told aides during their White House years, which spanned from 1977-1981.

The former president, now 99, remains at the couple’s home in Plains after entering hospice care himself in February.

Fiercely loyal and compassionate as well as politically astute, Rosalynn Carter prided herself on being an activist first lady, and no one doubted her behind-the-scenes influence. When her role in a highly publicized Cabinet shakeup became known, she was forced to declare publicly, “I am not running the government.”

Many presidential aides insisted that her political instincts were better than her husband’s — they often enlisted her support for a project before they discussed it with the president. Her iron will, contrasted with her outwardly shy demeanor and a soft Southern accent, inspired Washington reporters to call her “the Steel Magnolia.”

Both Carters said in their later years that Rosalynn had always been the more political of the two. After Jimmy Carter’s landslide defeat in 1980, it was she, not the former president, who contemplated an implausible comeback, and years later she confessed to missing their life in Washington.

Jimmy Carter trusted her so much that in 1977, only months into his term, he sent her on a mission to Latin America to tell dictators he meant what he said about denying military aid and other support to violators of human rights.

She also had strong feelings about the style of the Carter White House. The Carters did not serve hard liquor at public functions, though Rosalynn did permit U.S. wine. There were fewer evenings of ballroom dancing and more square dancing and picnics.

Throughout her husband’s political career, she chose mental health and problems of the elderly as her signature policy emphasis. When the news media didn’t cover those efforts as much as she believed was warranted, she criticized reporters for writing only about “sexy subjects.”

As honorary chairwoman of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, she once testified before a Senate subcommittee, becoming the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to address a congressional panel. She was back in Washington in 2007 to push Congress for improved mental health coverage, saying, “We’ve been working on this for so long, it finally seems to be in reach.”

She said she developed her interest in mental health during her husband’s campaigns for Georgia governor.

“I used to come home and say to Jimmy, ‘Why are people telling me their problems?’ And he said, ‘Because you may be the only person they’ll ever see who may be close to someone who can help them,’” she explained.

After Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, Rosalynn Carter seemed more visibly devastated than her husband. She initially had little interest in returning to the small town of Plains, where they both were born, married and spent most of their lives.

“I was hesitant, not at all sure that I could be happy here after the dazzle of the White House and the years of stimulating political battles,” she wrote in her 1984 autobiography, “First Lady from Plains.” But “we slowly rediscovered the satisfaction of a life we had left long before.”

After leaving Washington, Jimmy and Rosalynn co-founded The Carter Center in Atlanta to continue their work. She chaired the center’s annual symposium on mental health issues and raised funds for efforts to aid the mentally ill and homeless. She also wrote “Helping Yourself Help Others,” about the challenges of caring for elderly or ailing relatives, and a sequel, “Helping Someone With Mental Illness.”

Frequently, the Carters left home on humanitarian missions, building houses with Habitat for Humanity and promoting public health and democracy across the developing world.

“I get tired,” she said of her travels. “But something so wonderful always happens. To go to a village where they have Guinea worm and go back a year or two later and there’s no Guinea worm, I mean the people dance and sing — it’s so wonderful.”

In 2015, Jimmy Carter’s doctors discovered four small tumors on his brain. The Carters feared he had weeks to live. He was treated with a drug to boost his immune system, and later announced that doctors found no remaining signs of cancer. But when they first received the news, she said she didn’t know what she was going to do.

“I depend on him when I have questions, when I’m writing speeches, anything, I consult with him,” she said.

She helped Carter recover several years later when he had hip replacement surgery at age 94 and had to learn to walk again. And she was with him earlier this year when he decided after a series of hospital stays that he would forgo further medical interventions and begin end-of-life care.

Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived U.S. president. Rosalynn Carter was the second longest-lived of the nation’s first ladies, trailing only Bess Truman, who died at age 97.

Eleanor Rosalynn Smith was born in Plains on Aug. 18, 1927, the eldest of four children. Her father died when she was young, so she took on much of the responsibility of caring for her siblings when her mother went to work part time.

She also contributed to the family income by working after school in a beauty parlor. “We were very poor and worked hard,” she once said, but she kept up her studies, graduating from high school as class valedictorian.

She soon fell in love with the brother of one of her best friends. Jimmy and Rosalynn had known each other all their lives — it was Jimmy’s mother, nurse Lillian Carter, who delivered baby Rosalynn — but he left for the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, when she was still in high school.

After a blind date, Jimmy told his mother: “That’s the girl I want to marry.” They wed in 1946, shortly after his graduation from Annapolis and Rosalynn’s graduation from Georgia Southwestern College.

Their sons were born where Jimmy Carter was stationed: John William (Jack) in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1947; James Earl III (Chip) in Honolulu in 1950; and Donnel Jeffery (Jeff) in New London, Connecticut, in 1952. Amy was born in Plains in 1967. By then, Carter was a state senator.

Navy life had provided Rosalynn her first chance to see the world. When Carter’s father, James Earl Sr., died in 1953, Jimmy Carter decided, without consulting his wife, to move the family back to Plains, where he took over the family farm. She joined him there in the day-to-day operations, keeping the books and weighing fertilizer trucks.

“We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business,” Rosalynn Carter recalled with pride in a 2021 interview with The Associated Press. “I knew more on paper about the business than he did. He would take my advice about things.”

At the height of the Carters’ political power, Lillian Carter said of her daughter-in-law: “She can do anything in the world with Jimmy, and she’s the only one. He listens to her.”

Ceremonies celebrating the life of Rosalynn Carter will take place after the Thanksgiving holiday in Atlanta and Sumter County, Georgia, the Carter Center announced Sunday evening.

The repose on Nov. 27, at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, is open to the public. A private funeral and interment will take place Nov. 29 but the services will be broadcast on TV and streamed online, the center said.

“You’ll be able to focus on other things in Texas,” Trump told Abbott as they each appeared before a crowd of about 150 at an airport hangar in Edinburg.

Abbott, a longtime ally and fellow border hawk, said he was proud to endorse the former president, who is the Republican Party’s front-runner for the 2024 nomination.

“We need a president who’s going to secure the border,” Abbott said, speaking in a town that is about 30 miles from the Hidalgo Port of Entry crossing with Mexico. “We need Donald J. Trump back as our president of the United States of America.”

Earlier, Trump served meals to Texas National Guard soldiers, troopers and others who will be stationed at the border over Thanksgiving. Trump and Abbott handed out tacos, and the former president shook hands and posed for pictures.

“What you do is incredible, and you want it to be done right,” Trump told them.

Abbott said about the Guard members and Texas troopers who are stationed at the border: “They should not be here at this time. They should be at home.” He said that ”the only reason why they are here is because we have a president of the United States of America who is not securing our border.”

Trump has been laying out immigration proposals that would mark a dramatic escalation of the approach he used in office and that drew alarms from civil rights activists and numerous court challenges. Though Trump has peppered campaign speeches with his immigration plans, he only made brief remarks in border country on Sunday. He spoke for only about 10 minutes against a backdrop of state police choppers, a plane and an armed patrol boat — all used by Texas at the border.

Trump did not get into the policies he would pursue if elected. He did complain about inflation, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and news media coverage. He said most technology outside of wheels and walls eventually becomes obsolete.

“We just need the walls. And it worked,” Trump said.

His plan calls for building more of the wall along the border.

He also wants to:

— revive and expand his controversial travel ban, which initially targeted seven Muslim-majority countries. Trump’s initial executive order was fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld what Trump complained was a “watered down” version that included travelers from North Korea and some Venezuelan officials.

— begin new “ideological screening” for all immigrants, aiming to bar “Christian-hating communists and Marxists” and “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs” from entering the United States. “Those who come to and join our country must love our country,” he has said.

— bar those who support Hamas. “If you empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified,” Trump says. “If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified. If you support Hamas or any ideology that’s having to do with that or any of the other really sick thoughts that go through people’s minds — very dangerous thoughts — you’re disqualified.”

— deport immigrants living in the country who harbor “jihadist sympathies” and send immigration agents to “pro-jihadist demonstrations” to identify violators. He would target foreign nationals on college campuses and revoke the student visas of those who express anti-American or antisemitic views.

— invoke the Alien Enemies Act to to remove from the United States all known or suspected gang members and drug dealers. That law was used to justify internment camps in World War II. It allows the president to unilaterally detain and deport people who are not U.S. citizens.

— end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship by signing an executive order his first day in office that would codify a legally untested reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. Under his order, only children with at least one U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident parent would be eligible for a passport, Social Security number and other benefits.

— terminate all work permits and cut off funding for shelter and transportation for people who are in the country illegally.

— crack down on legal asylum-seekers and reimplement measures such as Title 42, which allowed Trump to turn away immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

— press Congress to pass a law so anyone caught trafficking women or children would receive the death penalty.

— shift federal law enforcement agents, including FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration personnel, to immigration enforcement, and reposition at the southern border thousands of troops currently stationed overseas. “Before we defend the borders of foreign countries we must secure the border of our country,” he said said.

Trump has made frequent trips to the border as a candidate and president. During his 2016 campaign, he traveled to Laredo, Texas in July 2015 for a visit that highlighted how his views on immigration helped him win media attention and support from the GOP base.

The border has also become a centerpiece of Abbott’s agenda and the subject of an escalating fight with the Biden administration over immigration. The three-term governor has approved billions of dollars in new border wall construction, authorized razor wire on the banks of the Rio Grande and bused thousands of migrants to Democrat-led cities across the United States.

Abbott is expected to soon sign what would be one of Texas’ most aggressive measures to date: a law that allows police officers to arrest migrants suspected of entering the country illegally and empowers judges to effectively deport them. The measure is a dramatic challenge to the U.S. government’s authority over immigration. It already has already drawn rebuke from Mexico.

Still, the Texas GOP’s hard right has not always embraced Abbott. Trump posted on his social media platform earlier this year that the governor was “MISSING IN ACTION!” after Republicans voted to impeach Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump ally. Abbott was also booed at a 2022 Trump rally.

But Abbott’s navigation within the GOP has built him broad support in Texas, where he has outperformed more strident Republicans down-ballot and helped the GOP make crucial inroads with Hispanic voters.

Democrats tried to use the trip to portray Trump’s plans as extreme.

“Donald Trump is going after immigrants, our rights our safety and our democracy. And that is what really is on the ballot last year,” Biden reelection campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said on a conference call with reporters.

Pollings show many voters aren’t satisfied with the Biden administration’s handling of the border.

A Marquette Law School poll of registered voters conducted in late September gave Trump a 24-point advantage over Biden on handling immigration and border security issues — 52% to 28%.

“Unfortunately, we lost that first baby,” DeSantis said, describing how he and his wife, Casey, struggled to grow their family. “And it was a tough thing because this is something that we had so much hopes for. So much aspirations, but, you know, we just kept the faith.”

Both men, speaking to the gathering of evangelical Christians in Iowa two months ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation GOP caucuses, stressed the role of their religion in coping with their losses, which they had not previously shared on the campaign trail.

“We wanted to have a family and it didn’t happen at first,” DeSantis said, sitting at a table with Ramaswamy, fellow GOP primary rival Nikki Haley and Family Leader CEO and President Bob Vander Plaats, a longtime GOP powerbroker who is expected to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary soon.

“We eventually took a trip to Israel, when I was a US congressman,” DeSantis continued. “We literally went to Shiloh with Hannah’s Prayer. We went to Ruth’s Tomb and Hebron, Ruth, Chapter Four, Verse 13. And we prayed, we prayed a lot to have a family, and then lo and behold, we go back to the United States, and a lot of time later, we got pregnant.”

After the miscarriage, DeSantis said, he and his wife “just kept praying. We knew that there would be a path that God will lead us on. And lo and behold, you know, short time after we did it, and we had our first baby girl.”

DeSantis said that he and his wife are celebrating their eldest daughter Madison’s seventh birthday next week before Thanksgiving.

The Florida governor often hits the campaign trail with his wife and three children. While he has shared personal stories on the trail, such as meeting his wife, going through her battle with breast cancer, hearing his daughter’s heartbeat for the first time or baptizing his children with holy water from the Sea of Galilee, this was a story he had not previously shared.

It was a particularly touching moment during the forum – which was a mix of policy and personal – and not long after, Ramaswamy shared his own experience.

The tech entrepreneur revealed that his wife, Apoorva, had a miscarriage before getting pregnant with their eldest child, noting that it was the first time he’s shared the personal anecdote.

On stage at the forum, Ramaswamy recalled how his wife had nearly completed her medical residency when she got pregnant, a few years after they were married. He said they were “ecstatic” and “weren’t expecting the blessing, but we were grateful for it.”

“And about three and a half months in, you know, Apoorva, one day she woke up, she said ‘I’m bleeding.’ She had a miscarriage,” he said. “We lost our first child and that was the loss of a life. it was our family’s loss.”

Ramaswamy said his wife went through a state of depression following the miscarriage and that “our faith is what got us through it.”

She got pregnant again shortly afterward but “God wasn’t done testing us,” Ramaswamy recalled.

Apoorva experienced bleeding, leading them to worry about another miscarriage, but at a doctor’s appointment, “they found a heartbeat that was our son, that was our son Karthik.”

He then brought his eldest son on stage and kept him on his lap during the forum.

The two candidates, who were sitting next to each other, did not verbally acknowledge one another’s shared experiences.

A Colorado judge Friday rejected an effort to keep the GOP front-runner off the state’s primary ballot, concluding that Trump had engaged in insurrection during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol but that it was unclear whether a Civil War-era constitutional amendment barring insurrectionists from public office applied to the presidency. It was Trump’s latest win following rulings in similar cases in Minnesota and Michigan.

Trump, campaigning in west-central Iowa, called the decision “a gigantic court victory” as he panned what he called “an outrageous attempt to disenfranchise millions of voters by getting us thrown off the ballot.”

“Our opponents are showing every day that they hate democracy,” he charged before a crowd of about 2,000 people at a commit-to-caucus event at a high school in Fort Dodge, Iowa, where supporters decked out in Trump gear had lined up for hours to get a seat in the gymnasium.

Trump’s visit was part of his fall push to sign up supporters and volunteers before the state’s fast-approaching caucuses that will kick off the race for the Republican presidential nomination. It was the latest in a series of targeted regional stops aimed at seizing on the large crowds the former president draws to press attendees to commit to vote for him and serve as precinct leaders on Jan. 15.

While Trump boasted that polls show him far ahead of other contenders, he urged those in attendance Saturday to turn out on caucus day to “make sure we have a big victory” that would signal to other candidates that they should drop out.

“Will you please give me a good showing?” Trump asked the crowd to applause. “That’s the least you can do.”

While Trump has a comfortable edge over his top rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in early polls of likely caucus participants, Trump’s campaign has been more aggressive in Iowa than in any of the other early-voting states.

And he continued to attack both DeSantis and Haley during his appearance Saturday, slamming the Florida governor over his past opposition to federal ethanol mandates and for running against Trump.

Trump in a Thursday radio interview had mocked DeSantis for his standing in the polls even after receiving the endorsement of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who broke with the general practice of declining to support a candidate before the caucuses.

“I don’t think it’s made any difference,” he said of her backing.

DeSantis, who stopped by his campaign’s new office in Urbandale on Saturday, told reporters that Trump was making missteps by attacking Reynolds and focusing on larger rallies.

“I think it’s been a mistake how he’s not been willing to engage with Iowans outside of swooping in and doing, you know, a speech and then just leaving,” DeSantis said. “I think you got to get on the ground, you got to shake the hands, you got to answer their questions.”

DeSantis was campaigning across southern Iowa, moving closer to his goal of campaigning in all 99 counties. That’s a traditional marker some candidates have tried to reach to show their commitment to Iowa.

Despite DeSantis’ push, Dale Mason, a construction worker from Fort Dodge, is a solid Trump backer.

“Trump’s already proven himself to me. If it works, then why mess with it?” Mason said. “I feel like it worked when he was in office.”

The 31-year-old single father said he lives paycheck to paycheck and worries about being able to feed his 12-year-old daughter or put gas in the car. Trump “made it easier for us to get by,” Mason said, adding, “He supported us so I think it’s our turn to give back to him.”

Sue Hewett, who hadn’t seen Trump campaign in person before, agreed. “There’s isn’t anybody coming across like he does,” said Hewett, 68, who lives in Fort Dodge. “They don’t have the draw.” She said she was open to considering different candidates, but so far hasn’t been persuaded by any of the other contenders.

Trump, in his speech, continued to cast Biden as incompetent and weak as he looks toward a potential general election rematch. And he continued to air his grievances about the 2020 election, pressing conspiracies and falsely insisting he had won, even though top state and federal election officials, including his own attorney general, as well as numerous courts found no evidence of the widespread fraud he alleges.

“We can never forget. We can never let history go,” Trump said.

He also continued to rail against his legal challenges, including his civil fraud trial in New York, where a judge has already ruled that Trump committed years of fraud while building his real estate empire.

Trump earlier Saturday escalated his attacks on the judge, Arthur Engoron, his clerk and New York Attorney General Letitia James, saying on his social media site that the three “should be sanctioned and prosecuted over this complete and very obvious MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE!!!”

The attack came two days after an appeals court judge temporary lifted a gag order that had barred Trump from commenting on court personnel, including the clerk. James’ office declined comment on the attacks. Judges have broad immunity for judicial decisions.

Trump has also been indicted four times and faces a total of 91 felony counts.

In his remarks, Trump continued to lay out a second-term agenda that would be far more radical than his first, and announced that he planned to begin implementing his plans before returning to the Oval Office. He said he intended to sign “four or five different documents” on the steps of the Capitol during his inauguration ceremony.

“I may even have a very tiny little desk put on the 20th stair,” he said.

Trump has made regular stops in Iowa, appearing at eight events before audiences totaling more than 16,000, according to Trump’s Secret Service detail, in the past eight weeks.

It’s part of a 2024 strategy that stresses organization more than his campaign did in 2016, when he finished in second place.

Rivals, especially DeSantis, have visited Iowa more often as they hope to score a better-than-expected finish against Trump that they hope can catapult them into a one-on-one matchup against the front-runner in later contests.

A recent memo to donors from DeSantis’ campaign suggested that DeSantis’ all-in strategy in Iowa was in keeping with his hope to rob Trump of “a big win in Iowa.”

Santos easily survived an expulsion vote earlier this month as lawmakers in both parties stressed the need to allow due process, as Santos is also facing nearly two dozen charges in federal court. But the release of the committee’s findings has generated new momentum for ousting the scandal-plagued freshman. Shortly after the report was released, Santos announced he would not seek reelection.

“The evidence uncovered in the Ethics Committee’s Investigative Subcommittee investigation is more than sufficient to warrant punishment and the most appropriate punishment, is expulsion,” said Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss.

The Ethics Committee referred its findings to the Justice Department, serving up new evidence that could potentially play into the federal charges against Santos. Lawmakers opted to do their work without going through a lengthy formal process that would be used to make a recommendation to the House on the appropriate form of punishment.

Guest emphasized in his statement that he was filing the expulsion resolution separate from the committee process and was doing so in his personal capacity as a member of the House. Several other members of the Ethics panel have also come out in favor of expulsion now that the investigation is complete.

Expulsion from the House requires a two-thirds vote, a high bar. It’s the sternest form of punishment available to the House and has occurred just five times in the history of the chamber — three times during the Civil War for disloyalty to the union and twice after convictions on federal charges, most recently in 2002.

Santos assailed the committee’s report in a tweet on X as a “disgusting politicized smear.” He said he will have a press conference on the Capitol steps on Nov. 30. The vote on whether to expel him is likely to take place before then.

The Ethics panel appointed to investigate Santos met nine times over the course of its investigation, interviewed more than 40 witnesses and authorized 37 subpoenas. Among the most damaging of the allegations was that he used campaign donations to pay for stays in Atlantic City and the Hamptons and to pay for a Botox treatment at a local spa.

The panel also described Santos as uncooperative with their investigation, declining to voluntarily testify or provide a statement under oath.

The findings by the investigative panel may be the least of Santos’ worries. The congressman faces a 23-count federal indictment that alleges he stole the identities of campaign donors and then used their credit cards to make tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges. Federal prosecutors say Santos, who has pleaded not guilty, wired some of the money to his personal bank account and used the rest to pad his campaign coffers.

Santos, who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, is also accused of falsely reporting to the Federal Election Commission that he had loaned his campaign $500,000 when he actually hadn’t given anything and had less than $8,000 in the bank. The fake loan was an attempt to convince Republican Party officials that he was a serious candidate, worth their financial support, the indictment says.

The measure passed the House and Senate by wide bipartisan margins this week, ensuring the government remains open until after the holiday season, and potentially giving lawmakers more time to sort out their considerable differences over government spending levels for the current fiscal year. Biden signed the bill in San Francisco, where he is hosting the summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation economies.

News of the signing came late at night. The president signed the bill at the Legion of Honor Museum, where he held a dinner for APEC members.

The spending package keeps government funding at current levels for roughly two more months while a long-term package is negotiated. It splits the deadlines for passing full-year appropriations bills into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two dates when there will be a risk of a partial government shutdown.

The two-step approach was championed by new House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, and was not favored by many in the Senate, though all but one Democrat and 10 Republicans supported it because it ensured the government would not shut down for now.

Johnson has vowed that he will not support any further stopgap funding measures, known as continuing resolutions. He portrayed the temporary funding bill as setting the ground for a spending “fight” with the Senate next year.

The spending bill does not include the White House’s nearly $106 billion request for wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine. Nor does it provide humanitarian funding for Palestinians and other supplemental requests, including money for border security. Lawmakers are likely to turn their attention more fully to that request after the Thanksgiving holiday in hopes of negotiating a deal.

In the race for Commissioner in the City of Miami, District 1, incumbent Alex Diaz de la Portilla faces off against Miguel Angel Gabela.

Meanwhile, in District 2, Damian Pardo challenges incumbent Sabina Covo. Polling stations will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., extending weekend hours from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The official runoff election is scheduled for Tuesday.

Simultaneously, early voting is underway for the Mayor of Miami Beach.

City Commissioner Steven Meiner squares off against former Commissioner Michael Góngora. Residents can cast their votes from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Sunday.

Shortly after the panel’s report was released, Santos blasted it in a tweet on X as a “politicized smear” but said he would not be seeking reelection to a second term. He gave no indication, however, that he would step aside before his term ends next year, vowing to pursue his “conservative values in my remaining time in Congress.”

But a renewed effort to expel him from the House was quickly launched. The House could vote on his expulsion as soon as it returns from the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.

The panel said that Santos knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission, used campaign funds for personal purposes and violated the Ethics in Government Act with financial disclosure statements filed with the House.

“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” an investigative subcommittee said in a 56-page report detailing its findings to the full Ethics Committee.

The ethics panel also detailed Santos’ lack of cooperation with its investigation and said he “evaded” straightforward requests for information. “Particularly troubling was Representative Santos’ lack of candor during the investigation itself,” the committee determined.

The panel tasked with investigating the allegations against Santos provided him the chance to submit a signed, written statement, provide documents responsive to the panel’s request for information and to provide a statement under oath. But he did not do so, the report said. The information that he did provide, according to the committee, “included material misstatements that further advanced falsehoods he made during his 2022 campaign.”

The committee’s investigative panel said that without Santos’ cooperation it was unable to verify whether some expenses reported by his campaign were legitimate. But certain expenses on their face did not appear to have a campaign nexus. For example, it cited $2,281 spent at resorts in Atlantic City and $1,400 spent at a skin spa for what one spreadsheet described as “Botox.”

The panel also identified a $3,332 expense for a hotel stay, though the campaign’s calendar indicated he was “off at the Hampton’s for the weekend.” And there were tax and hotel charges on the campaign credit card from Las Vegas, during a time Santos told his campaign staff he was on his honeymoon and there were no corresponding campaign events on the calendar.

The report says that an investigative subcommittee decided to forgo taking steps that would have led to a lengthy sanctions hearing by the full Ethics Committee, after which recommendations about punishment could be submitted to the full House. Instead, it urged House members “to take any action they deem appropriate and necessary” based on the report.

The findings by the investigative panel may be the least of Santos’ worries. The congressman faces a 23-count federal indictment that alleges he stole the identities of campaign donors and then used their credit cards to make tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges. Federal prosecutors say Santos, who has pleaded not guilty, wired some of the money to his personal bank account and used the rest to pad his campaign coffers.

Santos, who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, is also accused of falsely reporting to the Federal Election Commission that he had loaned his campaign $500,000 when he actually hadn’t given anything and had less than $8,000 in the bank. The fake loan was an attempt to convince Republican Party officials that he was a serious candidate, worth their financial support, the indictment says.

The Justice Department declined to comment about the ethics report, as did the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, which is handling the case against Santos.

Earlier this week, a former fundraiser for Santos pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge, admitting he impersonated a high-ranking congressional aide while raising campaign cash for the embattled New York Republican.

Santos easily survived a vote earlier this month to expel him from the House as most Republicans and 31 Democrats opted to withhold punishment while both his criminal trial and the Ethics Committee investigation continued. But the committee’s report could prove to be a game-changer.

Rep. Susan Wild, for example, the ranking Democrat on the Ethics Committee, said she was no longer obligated to maintain neutrality because the committee’s work is now complete.

“I intend to vote yes on any privileged expulsion resolution that is brought forward,” Wild said.

And Rep. Jeff Jackson of North Carolina, one of the Democratic lawmakers who voted against expelling Santos earlier this month, said Santos has now received due process.

“This report is fully damning,” he tweeted on X. “I will vote to expel him.”

Expulsion, the sternest form of punishment, has occurred just five times in the history of the House — three times during the Civil War for disloyalty to the Union and twice after convictions on federal charges, most recently in 2002.

If Santos were to be expelled, it would narrow the GOP’s already thin majority in the House, which now stands at 221-213. But many of his Republican colleagues from New York support booting Santos from the House as they seek to distance themselves from his actions.

While Santos now says he won’t seek reelection, his campaign was already woefully short on resources and candidates from both parties were scrambling at the chance to challenge him. Campaign records show he had about $28,000 on hand at the end of the fundraising quarter ending Sept. 30, an incredibly small sum for an incumbent.

The most assuring takeaway from the meeting for Biden was that if either man had a concern, “we should pick up the phone and call one another and we’ll take the call. That’s important progress,” he said in a news conference following the talks.

The two leaders spent four hours together at a bucolic Northern California estate – in meetings, a working lunch and a garden stroll – intent on showing the world that while they are global economic competitors they’re not locked in a winner-take-all faceoff.

“Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed,” Xi told Biden.

The U.S. president told Xi: “I think it’s paramount that you and I understand each other clearly, leader-to-leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunications. We have to ensure competition does not veer into conflict.”

Their meeting, on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, has far-reaching implications for a world grappling with economic cross currents, conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, tensions in Taiwan and more

They reached expected agreements to curb illicit fentanyl production and to reopen military ties, Biden said. Many of the chemicals used to make synthetic fentanyl come from China to cartels that traffic the powerful narcotic into the U.S., which is facing an overdose crisis.

Top military leaders will resume talks, Biden said, an increasingly important move particularly as unsafe or unprofessional incidents between the two nations’ ships and aircraft have spiked.

Ultimately, the agreements rely on trust between the two leaders.

“I know the man I know his modus operandi,” Biden said of Xi. “We have disagreements but he’s been straight.”

But he still said Xi was a dictator … “in a sense.”

The two leaders had a significant back and forth over Taiwan, with Biden chiding China over its massive military build-up around Taiwan and Xi telling Biden he had no plans to invade the island, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail the private talks.

Biden, the official said, declared the U.S. was committed to continuing to help Taiwan defend itself and maintain deterrence against a potential Chinese attack, and also called on China to avoid meddling in the island’s elections next year. The official described the Taiwan portion of the talks as “clear-headed” and “not heated.”

Biden also called on Xi to use his influence with Iran to make clear that Tehran, and its proxies, should not take steps that would lead to an expansion of the Israel-Hamas war. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has assured the U.S. that the Chinese have communicated concerns to Iran on the matter. But the official said the U.S. has not been able to ascertain how seriously the Iranians are taking concerns raised by Beijing.

According to a statement released by China Central Television, the state broadcaster, Xi was most focused on Taiwan and the U.S. sanctions and restrictions against Chinese products and businesses.

Xi urged the U.S. to support China’s peaceful unification with the self-governed island, calling Taiwan “the most important and most sensitive issue” in the bilateral relations. He also raised Beijing’s concerns over export controls, investment screenings, and sanctions imposed by the U.S., which he said “have severely harmed China’s legitimate interests.”

He said, “We hope the U.S. side can seriously treat China’s concerns and take actions to remove unilateral sanctions and provide a fair, just, non-discriminatory environment for Chinese businesses.”

Xi said he and Biden also agreed to establish dialogues on artificial intelligence and stressed the urgency for the two countries to cope with the climate crisis, the state broadcaster reported.

Both leaders acknowledged the importance of their relationship and the need for better coordination. But their differences shone through: Xi indicated he wants better cooperation — but on China’s terms. And he sought to project strength to his domestic audience in the face of U.S. policies restricting imports from China and limiting technology transfers to Beijing.

Biden, meanwhile, will also spend time this week in California working to highlight new alliances in the Indo Pacific and efforts to boost trade with other regional leaders.

They sought to build back to a stable baseline after already tense relations took a nosedive following the U.S. downing of a Chinese spy balloon that had traversed the continental U.S., and amid differences over the self-ruled island of Taiwan, China’s hacking of a Biden official’s emails and other matters.

For Biden, Wednesday’s meeting was a chance for the president to do what he believes he does best: in-person diplomacy.

“As always, there’s no substitute for face-to-face discussions,” he told Xi. With his characteristic optimism, Biden sketched a vision of leaders who manage competition “responsibly,” adding, “that’s what the United States wants and what we intend to do.”

Xi, for his part, was gloomy about the state of the post-pandemic global economy. China’s economy remains in the doldrums, with prices falling due to slack demand from consumers and businesses.

“The global economy is recovering, but its momentum remains sluggish,” Xi said. “Industrial and supply chains are still under the threat of interruption and protectionism is rising. All these are grave problems.”

Biden and Xi held their talks at Filoli Estate, a country house and museum about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of San Francisco. The event was carefully staged, Biden first to arrive at the grand estate.

After a handshake and smiles, the presidents and their respective aides on trade, the economy, national security and regional diplomacy gathered across from one another at a single long table, the culmination of negotiations between the two leaders’ top aides over the past several months. It was Biden and Xi’s first conversation of any kind since they met last November in Bali.

Next came a working lunch with inner-circle members from both administrations. They ate ravioli, chicken and broccolini, with almond meringue cake and praline buttercream for dessert.

Before they parted, the two strolled the property along a red brick path through impressive topiary and knotted gothic trees. Asked by reporters how the meeting went, the president said “well” and flashed a thumbs up.

There were light moments between the two leaders who have logged much time together over the last decade. Biden asked Xi to extend his early birthday wishes to Xi’s wife, who will be celebrating next week. Xi thanked the president for reminding him. The Chinese leader said that he’s been so busy working he had forgotten the big day was nearing.

The relationship between China and the U.S. has never been smooth, Xi said. Still, it has kept moving forward. “For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option,” he said.

More pointedly, Xi also suggested it was not up to the U.S. to dictate how the Chinese manage their affairs, saying, “It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other, and conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.”

Robert Moritz, global chairman for the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, said business leaders are hoping for signs of more cooperation and a firmer commitment to free trade between the world’s two largest economies following the Biden-Xi talks.

“What we are looking for is a de-escalation and a bringing of the temperature down,” Mortiz said during a CEO summit being held in conjunction with the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that has brought together leaders from 21 member economies.

“Discussion isn’t good enough, it’s the execution on getting things done” that will matter, he said.

The Biden-Xi meeting and broader summit events attracted protests around San Francisco, but the demonstrations were kept at distance. A large crowd loudly condemning Xi marched from the Chinese Consulate toward the summit venue at the Moscone Center nearly two miles away. Speakers implored the Biden administration to stand up to Xi and China’s human rights violations.

Late Wednesday, Xi was to address American business executives at a $2,000-per-plate dinner that will be a rare opportunity for U.S. business leaders to hear directly from the Chinese leader as they seek clarification on Beijing’s expanding security rules that may choke foreign investment.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the chairman of the Senate panel that was holding the hearing, yelled at Mullin to sit down after he challenged O’Brien to a fight. Mullin had stood up from his seat at the dais and appeared to start taking his ring off.

“This is the time, this is the place,” Mullin told O’Brien after reading a series of critical tweets O’Brien had sent about him in the past. “If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.”

The two men never came face to face in the hearing room. But they hurled insults at each other for around six minutes as Sanders repeatedly banged his gavel and tried to cut them off. Sanders, a longtime union ally, pleaded with them to focus on the economic issues that were the focus of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, which Sanders was holding to review how unions help working families.

“You are a United States senator!” Sanders yelled at Mullin at one point.

Mullin, a frequent critic of union leadership, has sparred before with the union head. Earlier this year, O’Brien posted repeatedly about Mullin on X, formerly known as Twitter, calling him a “moron” and “full of s—” after Mullin criticized O’Brien at a hearing for what Mullin said were intimidation tactics.

In another social media post, which Mullin read aloud at Tuesday’s hearing, O’Brien appeared to challenge Mullin to a fight. “You know where to find me. Anyplace, Anytime cowboy,” O’Brien had posted.

The exchange escalated from there, with Mullin telling O’Brien that “this is the place” and asking if he wanted to do it right now.

“I’d love to do it right now,” O’Brien said.

Mullin replied: “Well, stand your butt up then.”

“You stand your butt up,” O’Brien shot back.

When Mullin got up from his chair, appearing ready for a fight, Sanders yelled at him to sit down, banged his gavel several times and told both of them to stop talking.

“This is a hearing, and God knows the American people have enough contempt for Congress, let’s not make it worse,” Sanders said.

As Mullin persisted, O’Brien retorted: “You challenged me to a cage match, acting like a twelve year old schoolyard bully.”

The two traded angry insults for several more minutes — each called the other a “thug” — with Mullin at one point suggesting they fight for charity at an event next spring, repeating an offer he made earlier this year on social media.

O’Brien declined, instead suggesting they meet for coffee and work out their differences. Mullin accepted, but the two kept shouting at each other until the next senator, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, started her questioning by talking over them.

After the hearing, Sanders called the exchange “absurd.”

“We were there to be talking about, and did talk about, the crisis facing working families in this country, the growing gap between the very rich and everybody else and the role that unions are playing in improving the standard of living of the American people,” Sanders said. “We’re not there to talk about cage fighting.”

Asked later about the skirmish, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell demurred. “It’s very difficult to control the behavior of everybody who is in the building,” McConnell said. “I don’t view that as my responsibility.”

Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said that references were made to the back-and-forth in a GOP conference meeting after the hearing. But he said that no one should take it too seriously.

“It’s a dynamic place,” Cramer said of the Senate. “We don’t wear the white wigs anymore.”

The joint announcement came on the eve of a summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping that is aimed at stabilizing the rocky U.S.-China relationship.

Cooperation between the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases is considered vital to the success of the U.N. climate talks opening in two weeks in Dubai. It wasn’t clear earlier this year whether the two governments would cooperate, given a sharp deterioration in ties over other issues including technology, Taiwan and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Both countries “are aware of the important role they play” and “will work together … to rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time,” they said in a statement released Wednesday in Beijing and Tuesday evening in Washington.

They reiterated a pledge made by the Group of 20 nations, of which both are members, to pursue efforts to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030.

The two countries agreed to restart talks on energy policies and launch a working group on enhancing climate action in what they called “the critical decade of the 2020s.” Experts say the world needs to act now to have any chance of achieving the agreed-upon goal of limiting the average increase in global temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).

A climate expert described the agreement by both countries to include methane in their next climate action plans as “a major step.”

“Methane has been notably absent from China’s previous commitment” under the 2015 climate treaty known as the Paris Agreement, said David Waskow, the international climate director at the World Resources Institute. He noted that China is the world’s largest emitter of methane and that “serious actions to curb this gas is essential for slowing global warming in the near-term.”

The Chinese government issued an action plan last week to control methane emissions, including the development of an accounting and reporting system for emissions. Major emitters include coal mines, oil and gas fields, farms, landfills and sewage treatment plants.

The U.S. and China also said that they and the United Arab Emirates would host a meeting on methane and other greenhouse gases during the upcoming U.N. talks in Dubai.

Waskow expressed disappointment that the joint statement didn’t pledge to phase out fossil fuels. That wasn’t a surprise — even as China has rapidly expanded in wind and solar power, it has encouraged the construction of coal power plants, which it sees as a more reliable source of power for periods of peak demand.

The government announced last week that it would begin making “capacity payments” next year to coal power plant operators to keep them open and available for use, even as revenues fall as their electricity production is increasingly replaced by renewable energy.

The U.S.-China joint statement welcomed climate cooperation between states, provinces and cities and said the two countries would hold a high-level event on such cooperation in the first half of 2024.

The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, made a weeklong visit to China last month to promote joint climate efforts in several cities and provinces.

Republican primary voters in the Granite State are shaking things up.

In an exclusive 7News/Emerson college poll, it showed that 49% of Republican voters in New Hampshire still favor former President Donald Trump. But former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has surged to second with 18%. She’s followed by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with 9%. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has dropped to 7% and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is polling at 5%. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson got less than 1%.

“For the last year, we’ve been looking at Ron DeSantis/Donald Trump race and now it looks like Nikki Haley is the alternative instead of Ron DeSantis at this point,” said Spencer Kimball, 7News/Emerson College pollster. “You know, about a year ago, Ron DeSantis was at 17%. Now he’s down to 7%. And when we look at a candidate like Nikki Haley, since August, she’s gone from 4% up to 18%.

New Hampshire voters in general also seem to prefer Haley over President Biden.

In a hypothetical presidential matchup, Haley beats Biden, 45% to 39%.

“Where she’s strong is with the independent vote,” Kimball said. “So, while Trump is very strong with Republican voters, Haley is actually competing very closely in the primary with the independent vote.”

Haley is the only Republican in our poll to beat Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head, which also includes Trump.

Forty-seven percent of New Hampshire voters said they would vote for Biden in a repeat of the 2020 matchup. Only 42% of voters would pick Trump.

“We have Nikki Haley and she’s actually beating Biden,” Kimball said. “What we’re really looking at is there potential in the future for more votes for Nikki Haley and there is.”

And then there is the wild card; Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

7News’ poll shows RFK Jr. surging since dropping out of the Democratic contest last month to run as an Independent.

Looking at a general race, which includes Independents, RFK and former Harvard University professor, Cornell West, 7News found that Biden’s lead among New Hampshire voters shrinks from 47% to 40%. Trump’s support drops from 42% to 37%. RFK Jr. pulls in 8% of New Hampshire voters. Cornell west grabs 1%.

“With RFK, what we see is he’s getting his vote from both candidates, an equal 6% come from Biden and 6% come from Trump,” Kimball said. “On the flip side, Cornell West is taking slightly more vote from Biden. So, when you add some of these third party candidates, it’s more of a negative for Biden at this time.”

While Trump is facing legal troubles, 7News’ poll found that GOP voters who currently support the former president, 80% said a criminal conviction won’t change their minds. Only 5% said it would.

The bipartisan tally — 336-95 with 93 Republicans voting no —showed Johnson’s willingness to leave his right-flank Republicans behind and work with Democrats to temporarily keep government running — the same political move that cost the last House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, his job just weeks ago.

This time, Johnson of Louisiana appeared on track for a temporarily better outcome. His approach, which the Senate is expected to approve by week’s end, effectively pushes a final showdown over government funding to the new year.

“Making sure that government stays in operation is a matter of conscience for all of us. We owe that to the American people,” Johnson said earlier Tuesday at a news conference at the Capitol.

The new Republican leader faced the same political problem that led to McCarthy’s ouster — angry, frustrated, hard-right GOP lawmakers rejected his approach, demanded budget cuts and voted against the plan. Rather than the applause and handshakes that usually follow passage of a bill, several hardline conservatives animatedly confronted the speaker as they exited the chamber.

Without enough support from his Republican majority, Johnson had little choice but to rely on Democrats to ensure passage to keep the federal government running. Shortly before the Tuesday evening vote, House Democratic leaders issued a joint statement saying that the package met all their requirements and they would support it.

Johnson’s proposal puts forward a unique — critics say bizarre — two-part process that temporarily funds some federal agencies to Jan. 19 and others to Feb. 2. It’s a continuing resolution, or CR, that comes without any of the deep cuts conservatives have demanded all year. It also fails to include President Joe Biden’s request for nearly $106 billion for Ukraine, Israel, border security and other supplemental funds.

“We’re not surrendering,” Johnson assured after a closed-door meeting of House Republicans Tuesday morning, vowing he would not support another stopgap. “But you have to choose fights you can win.”

Johnson, who announced his endorsement Tuesday of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president, hit the airwaves to sell his approach and met privately Monday night with the conservative Freedom Caucus.

Johnson says the innovative approach would position House Republicans to “go into the fight” for deeper spending cuts in the new year, but many Republicans are skeptical there will be any better outcome in January.

The House Freedom Caucus announced its opposition, ensuring dozens of votes against the plan.

“I think it’s a very big mistake,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the hard-right group of lawmakers.

“It’s wrong,” said Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn.

It left Johnson with few other options than to skip what’s typically a party-only procedural vote, and rely on another process that requires a two-thirds tally with Democrats for passage.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in a letter to colleagues noted that the GOP package met the Democratic demands to keep funding at current levels without steep reductions or divisive Republican policy priorities.

“Extreme MAGA Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated that they cannot govern without House Democrats,” Jeffries said on NPR. “That will be the case this week in the context of avoiding a government shutdown.”

Winning bipartisan approval of a continuing resolution is the same move that led McCarthy’s hard-right flank to oust him in October, days after the Sept. 30 vote to avert a federal shutdown. For now, Johnson appears to be benefiting from a political honeymoon in one of his first big tests on the job.

“Look, we’re going to trust the speaker’s move here,” said Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga.

But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a McCarthy ally who opposed his ouster, said Johnson should be held to the same standard. “What’s the point in throwing out one speaker if nothing changes? The only way to make sure that real changes happen is make the red line stay the same for every speaker.”

The Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority, has signaled its willingness to accept Johnson’s package ahead of Friday’s deadline to fund the government.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the House package “a solution” and said he expected it to pass Congress with bipartisan support.

“It’s nice to see us working together to avoid a government shutdown,” he said.

But McConnell, R-Ky., has noted that Congress still has work to do toward Biden’s request to provide U.S. military aid for Ukraine and Israel and for other needs. Senators are trying to devise a separate package to fund U.S. supplies for the overseas wars and to bolster border security, but it remains a work in progress.

If approved, passage of the continuing resolution would be a less-than-triumphant capstone to the House GOP’s first year in the majority. The Republicans have worked tirelessly to cut federal government spending only to find their own GOP colleagues unwilling to go along with the most conservative priorities. Two of the Republican bills collapsed last week as moderates revolted.

Instead, the Republicans are left funding the government essentially on autopilot at the levels that were set in bipartisan fashion at the end of 2022, when Democrats had control of Congress but the two parties came together to agree on budget terms.

All that could change in the new year when 1% cuts across the board to all departments would be triggered if Congress failed to agree to new budget terms and pass the traditional appropriation bills to fund the government by springtime.

The 1% automatic cuts, which would take hold in April, are despised by all sides — Republicans say they are not enough, Democrats say they are too steep and many lawmakers prefer to boost defense funds. But they are part of the debt deal McCarthy and Biden struck earlier this year. The idea was to push Congress to do better.

The legislation also extends farm bill programs through September, the end of the current fiscal year. That addition was an important win for some farm-state lawmakers. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., for example, warned that without the extension, milk prices would have soared and hurt producers back in his home state.

“The farm bill extension was the biggest sweetener for me,” said Pocan.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican from Georgia, forced a vote on impeaching Mayorkas to the floor through a rule that allows any single member to force a snap vote on resolutions, including constitutional matters such as impeachment. Eight Republicans joined with Democrats to vote 209-201 to send her resolution to committees for possible consideration, like any other bill. They are under no obligation to do anything.

Impeachment is usually reserved for grave misconduct in office but is instead being wielded in an extraordinary effort to remove Mayorkas for his handling of the southern border. The vote and its GOP support showed a growing appetite to reach for Congress’ most powerful weapons and redefine what the Constitution means by impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Impeaching a Cabinet official for their policy decisions would be unprecedented.

Greene in a floor speech Monday accused Mayorkas of a “pattern of conduct that is incompatible with the laws of the United States,” as she cited record numbers of illegal border crossings, an influx of drugs and his “open border policies.” The impeachment resolution accuses him of failing to adhere to his oath to “defend and secure our country and uphold the Constitution.”

After the vote, Greene said she may try again to push an impeachment vote to the floor and argued her colleagues would face pressure from voters to impeach Mayorkas.

“Many Republicans, I would argue, are really tone deaf to their constituents and to their voters,” she said.

Several prominent Republicans have become outspoken advocates of pushing forward on the GOP’s longstanding effort to impeach Mayorkas. House GOP whip Tom Emmer, the No. 3 House Republican, as well as Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican whose congressional district runs along the border with Mexico, voiced support for Greene’s resolution.

During congressional testimony, Mayorkas has insisted that he is focused on securing the border and enforcing the law.

“While the House Majority has wasted months trying to score points with baseless attacks, Secretary Mayorkas has been doing his job and working to keep Americans safe,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement.

Greene’s resolution also calls the influx of migrants an “invasion.” Immigration advocates denounced her use of the term, saying it showed she was acting based on the racist “great replacement theory,” which purports that there is a plot to diminish the influence of white people in society.

“Rep. Greene’s impeachment articles are a dangerous and racist political stunt and should be voted down by all of her colleagues in the House, regardless of their opinions on the policy actions of the Biden administration,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, in a statement.

Republicans have closely scrutinized the Biden administration’s handling of the border with Mexico for months and sought to build an impeachment case against Mayorkas. But Greene voiced frustration with the progress of those inquiries and pointed to a car crash in Texas that killed eight people after a driver suspected of smuggling people tried to flee the police and crashed into another vehicle.

The renewed push to impeach Mayorkas is yet another headache for new House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is already juggling both a potential impeachment vote and delicate negotiations over government funding legislation to avert a federal shutdown at the end of the week.

Johnson earlier this month said in a Fox News interview that he believed Mayorkas has committed “impeachable offenses,” but also warned that the House has “limited time and resources.” The speaker, who is just three weeks into his job, has also been supportive of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Only one U.S. cabinet official has ever been impeached: Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876. A House investigation found evidence that he had received kickback payments while administering government contracts.

The policy, agreed to by all nine justices, does not appear to impose any significant new requirements and leaves compliance entirely to each justice.

Indeed, the justices said they have long adhered to ethics standards and suggested that criticism of the court over ethics was the product of misunderstanding, rather than any missteps by the justices.

“The absence of a Code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules,” the justices wrote in an unsigned statement that accompanied the code. “To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.”

The ethics issue has vexed the court for several months, over a series of stories questioning the ethical practices of the justices. Many of those stories focused on Justice Clarence Thomas and his failure to disclose travel, other hospitality and additional financial ties with wealthy conservative donors including Harlan Crow and the Koch brothers. But Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor also have been under scrutiny.

In September, Justice Elena Kagan acknowledged that there were disagreements among the justices over the contents of an ethics code, but did not specify what they were. The justices achieved unanimity Monday, but predictably offered no explanation for how they got there.

Liberal critics of the court were not satisfied, with one group saying the code “reads a lot more like a friendly suggestion than a binding, enforceable guideline.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., one of the loudest voices complaining about the court’s ethical shortcomings, was among several leading Democrats who mixed praise for the court with a call to do more.

“This is a long-overdue step by the justices, but a code of ethics is not binding unless there is a mechanism to investigate possible violations and enforce the rules. The honor system has not worked for members of the Roberts Court,” Whitehouse said.

A court ethics code proposed by Whitehouse that cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee without any Republican support would allow for complaints and investigation by lower-court judges.Three justices, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Kagan have voiced support for an ethics code in recent months. In May, Chief Justice John Roberts said there was more the court could do to “adhere to the highest ethical standards,” without providing any specifics.

Public trust in and approval of the court is hovering near record lows, according to a Gallup Poll released just before the court’s new term began on Oct. 2.

As recently as last week, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the justices could quiet some of the criticism and a Democratic push to impose an ethics code on the court by putting in place their own policy.

Durbin said Monday that the code appears to fall short of what is needed.

Durbin’s panel, which has been investigating the court’s ethics, has been planning to subpoena Crow and conservative activist Leonard Leo about their roles in organizing and paying for justices’ luxury travel. The committee has scheduled a vote on the subpoenas for Thursday.

Republicans complained that Democrats were mostly reacting to decisions they didn’t like from the conservative-dominated court, including overturning the nationwide right to an abortion.

The Democratic-backed ethics bill also would require that justices provide more information about potential conflicts of interest and written explanations about their decisions not to recuse. It would also seek to improve transparency around gifts received by justices. The Democratic bill had little prospect of becoming law in the Republican-controlled House, much less the closely divided Senate.

The push for an ethics code was jump-started by a series of stories by the investigative news site ProPublica detailing the relationship between Crow and Thomas. Crow has for more than two decades paid for nearly annual vacations, purchased from Thomas and others the Georgia home in which the justice’s mother still lives and helped pay for the private schooling for a relative.

ProPublica also reported on Alito’s Alaskan fishing trip with a GOP donor, travel that Leo helped arrange. The Associated Press reported that Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade. The AP also reported that universities have used trips by justices as a lure for financial contributions by placing them in event rooms with wealthy donors.

The court’s initial step on ethics, in the spring, also did not mollify critics. Roberts declined an invitation from Durbin to testify before the Judiciary panel, but the chief justice provided a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” signed by all nine justices that described the ethical rules they follow about travel, gifts and outside income.

The statement provided by Roberts said that the nine justices “reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices to which they subscribe in carrying out their responsibilities as Members of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

The statement promised at least some small additional disclosure when one or more among them opts not to take part in a case. But the justices have been inconsistent in doing so since.

This time, new Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., appears on track for a better outcome Tuesday as the House prepares to vote on a stopgap package to keep the government running into the new year. If approved, the Senate would act next, ahead of Friday’s shutdown deadline.

The new Republican leader faces the same political problem that led to McCarthy’s ouster, and is unlikely to win enough support from his Republican majority to pass the bill on its own. Instead, Johnson will be forced to rely on Democrats to ensure passage to keep the federal government running.

Johnson has called it a “necessary bill” that he hoped would put House Republicans “in the best position to fight” for their conservative priorities in the new year.

Under his proposal, Johnson is putting forward a unique — critics say bizarre — two-part process that temporarily funds some federal agencies to Jan. 19 and others to Feb. 2. It’s a continuing resolution, or CR, that comes without any of the deep cuts conservatives are demanding. It also fails to include President Joe Biden’s request for nearly $106 billion for Ukraine, Israel, border security and other supplemental funds.

“I think it’s a very big mistake,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus.

Roy said there’s “a whole lot of opposition” among House Republicans to partnering with Democrats to pass the bill.

The Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said his party is “carefully evaluating” the proposal from the Republican leadership before giving approval.

“We remain concerned,” he said about the two-part approach. Veteran lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called it cumbersome, unusual and unworkable.

But Jeffries in a letter to Democratic colleagues noted that the GOP package met the Democratic demands to keep funding at current levels without steep reductions or divisive Republican policy priorities.

“We have articulated that we will not accept any extreme right-wing policy provisions in connection with funding the government,” Jeffries wrote.

With the House narrowly divided, Johnson cannot afford many defections from Republicans, which is forcing him into the arms of Democrats.

Winning bipartisan approval of a continuing resolution is the same move that led McCarthy’s hard-right flank to oust him in October, days after the Sept. 30 vote to avert a federal shutdown. For now, Johnson appears to be benefiting from a political honeymoon in one of his first big tests on the job.

“Look, we’re going to trust the speaker’s move here,” said Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga.

The Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority, has also signaled its willingness to accept Johnson’s package ahead of Friday’s deadline to fund the government.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the House GOP package “will keep the lights on,” and he will support it.

But McConnell, R-Ky., noted that Congress still has work to do toward Biden’s request to provide U.S. military aid for Ukraine, Israel and other needs. Senators are trying to devise a separate package to fund U.S. supplies for the overseas wars and bolster border security, but it remains a work in progress.

If approved, passage of another continuing resolution would be a stunning capstone to the House GOP’s first year in the majority. The Republicans have worked tirelessly to cut federal government spending only to find their own GOP colleagues are unwilling to go along with the most conservative priorities. Two of the Republican bills collapsed last week as moderates revolted.

Instead, the Republicans are left funding the government essentially on autopilot at the levels that were set in bipartisan fashion at the end of 2022, when Democrats had control of Congress but two parties came together to agree on budget terms.

All that could change in the new year when 1% cuts across the board to all departments would be triggered if Congress fails to agree to new budget terms and pass the traditional appropriation bills to fund the government by springtime.

The 1% automatic cuts, which would take hold in April, are despised by all sides — Republicans say they are not enough, Democrats say they are too steep and many lawmakers prefer to boost defense funds. But they are part of the debt deal McCarthy and Biden struck earlier this year. The idea was to push Congress to do better.

Biden’s highly anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday is the main event of his four-day visit to San Francisco, where leaders from the 21 economies that make up the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum are gathering for their annual summit. The talks with Xi are of enormous importance as the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies try to find a measure of stability after what’s been a difficult year for U.S.-China relations.

But the White House also wants to demonstrate to APEC’s leaders that Biden can remain focused on the Pacific while also trying to keep the Israel-Hamas war from exploding into a broader regional conflict and to persuade Republican lawmakers to continue to spend billions more on the costly Ukrainian effort to repel Russia’s nearly 21-month old invasion.

“President Biden this coming week will be doing a lot more than just meeting with President Xi,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters in Washington on Monday. He added that Biden would put forward his economic vision for the region, make the case that the U.S. is “the very eminent driver” for sustainable economic growth in the Asia-Pacific, and hold the region out as critical to U.S. economic growth.

White House officials say they are cognizant that fellow APEC nations want to see better dialogue between the U.S. and China because it reduces the risk of regional conflict. At the same time, they also know that others in the region are concerned that the Pacific is too often seen through a prism in which the dominant power centers in Washington and Beijing make decisions for the region without engagement from less powerful nations.

To that end, the White House is expected to unveil new initiatives to advance clean economy investments and develop anti-corruption and taxation policies through its Indo-Pacific Economic Forum, an economic strategy announced last year aimed at countering Beijing’s commercial strength in the region.

The strategy, known by the acronym IPEF, was designed to foster trade and demonstrate American commitment to the region, after then-President Donald Trump announced in 2017 that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, an Obama-era trade deal with 12 countries.

“The U.S. is really aiming to use APEC as a way to demonstrate its lasting economic commitment to the region overall,” said Neils Graham, associate director for the Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center.

Much of the APEC’s membership is “tepid, at best” on IPEF, said Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. While TPP fell apart under Trump, the region has seen major trade deals sealed in recent years involving China, Japan, South Korea and other major regional economies. APEC members have some interest in aspects of IPEF, such as efforts aimed at bolstering supply chain resilience and the clean energy economy, but want to see Biden create further access to U.S. markets.

Biden during his presidency has declined to pursue new comprehensive free-trade agreements with other countries. Administration officials quietly argue that while such pacts promote global commerce they are viewed suspiciously by Americans and some in Congress as a vehicle for sending factory jobs overseas.

Biden on Monday welcomed Indonesian President Joko Widodo, a fellow APEC leader, to the White House for talks before both travel to San Francisco. The Oval Office visit came at a somewhat awkward moment as Widodo, the leader of the world’s most populous Muslim country, has been fiercely critical of Israel’s operations in the Gaza Strip.

Biden, meanwhile, has been unapologetic in standing staunchly by Israel and backing its right to defend itself following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas militants that left 1,200 dead. Israel’s retaliatory operations in Gaza have killed more than 11,000, sparking outrage from a slew of world leaders. The Indonesian president, in a speech at Georgetown University on Monday, lamented that “human life seems meaningless” as Israel prosecutes its operations.

Their differences on the Israel-Hamas war notwithstanding, Biden made clear during his sit-down with Widodo that he’s looking to improve ties with the Southeast Asian power on combating the climate crisis and other issues.

The White House effort to herd APEC members to sign on to a summit-concluding joint declaration, a fixture at most international summits, could be complicated by diverging views among members on the Israel-Hamas and Ukraine wars.

“We’re certainly working for having a strong consensus statement in APEC, for the leaders to be able to release at the end of the week,” said Ambassador Matt Murray, the senior U.S. official for APEC.

Among close allies expected to be in San Francisco are Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.

Historically frosty relations between South Korea and Japan have rapidly thawed over the last year as they share concerns about China’s assertiveness in the Pacific and North Korea’s persistent nuclear threats.

Biden is expected to remind Xi about the U.S. commitment to the Philippines, following a recent episode in which Chinese ships blocked and collided with two Philippine vessels off a contested shoal in the South China Sea, according to a senior administration who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview some of Biden’s agenda.

The Philippines and other neighbors of China are resisting Beijing’s sweeping territorial claims over virtually the entire sea.

The potential for a government shutdown is also looming over the summit, with the current stopgap spending measure set to expire Friday. House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a proposal Saturday that would extend funding for some agencies and programs until Jan. 19. The stopgap measure excludes the roughly $106 billion funding requested by Biden for Israel, Ukraine and the U.S. border with Mexico.

Sullivan warned that a government shutdown would be a “devastating blow” to U.S. standing around the globe.

“It would send a signal to the world that the United States cannot pull together on a bipartisan basis to sustain government funding, and to show a united face to the world at a moment when you see this turbulence around the world,” Sullivan said.

The South Carolina senator, who entered the race in May with high hopes, made the surprise announcement on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Night in America” with Trey Gowdy. The news was so abrupt that one campaign worker told The Associated Press that campaign staff found out Scott was dropping out by watching the show. The worker was not authorized to discuss the internal deliberations publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I love America more today than I did on May 22,” Scott said Sunday. “But when I go back to Iowa, it will not be as a presidential candidate. I am suspending my campaign. I think the voters who are the most remarkable people on the planet have been really clear that they’re telling me, ‘Not now, Tim.’”

Scott’s impending departure comes as he and the rest of the GOP field have struggled in a race that has been dominated by former President Donald Trump. Despite four criminal indictments and a slew of other legal challenges, Trump continues to poll far ahead of his rivals, leading many in the party to conclude the race is effectively over, barring some stunning change of fortune.

Scott, in particular, has had trouble gaining traction in the polls, despite millions spent on his behalf by high-profile donors. In his efforts to run a positive campaign, he was often overshadowed by other candidates — particularly on the debate stage, where he seemed to disappear as others sparred. It was unclear whether Scott would qualify for the fourth debate, which will require higher polling numbers and more unique donors.

He was the second high-profile Republican to depart from the race in the last couple of weeks, coming after former Vice President Mike Pence, who was still dealing with fallout from his decision to reject a scheme by Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden, and avoid a constitutional crisis.

Scott said he wouldn’t be making an endorsement of his remaining Republican rivals.

“The voters are really smart,” Scott said. “The best way for me to be helpful is to not weigh in on who they should endorse.”

He also appeared to rule out serving as vice president, saying the No. 2 slot “has never been on my to-do list for this campaign, and it’s certainly not there now.”

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to news of Scott’s exit. But Trump has been careful not to criticize the senator, leading some in his orbit to consider Scott a potential vice presidential pick.

The former president and his team had welcomed a large field of rivals, believing they would splinter the anti-Trump vote and prevent a clear challenger from emerging.

Scott, a deeply religious former insurance broker, made his grandfather’s work in the cotton fields of the Deep South a bedrock of his political identity and of his presidential campaign. But he also refused to frame his own life story around the country’s racial inequities, insisting that those who disagree with his views on the issue are trying to “weaponize race to divide us,” and that “the truth of my life disproves their lies.”

He sought to focus on hopeful themes and avoid divisive language to distinguish himself from the grievance-based politics favored by rivals including Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis responded to Scott’s announced departure by commending him as a “strong conservative with bold ideas about how to get our country back on track.

“I respect his courage to run this campaign and thank him for his service to America and the U.S. Senate,” he wrote on social media.

Harris was joined in the state capital by South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, one of the leading Black voices in Congress. Then-candidate Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign was floundering after big losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, but rebounded with a decisive South Carolina win that was solidified by Clyburn’s late endorsement.

That 2020 boost gave Biden enough momentum to romp through Super Tuesday, clinch his party’s primary and later the White House. Since announcing his reelection bid in April, Biden has made far more frequent official visits to Pennsylvania — a key battleground in the general election — than states that will decide Democrats’ 2024 primary.

But Harris’ visit follows the vice president spending recent months traveling the country, including a college tour that has taken her to leading Historically Black Colleges and Universities. She’s looking to build excitement among young people and voters of color at a time when polls show that even a majority of Democrats, believe Biden is too old to handle the rigors of a second term.

“It was South Carolina that created the path to the White House for Joe Biden and me,” Harris said.

“I’m here to say thank you,” she said. “Let’s do it again.”

Iowa’s 2020 caucus was marred by technical glitches, and Biden asked last year that the Democratic National Party replace it in the leadoff spot with South Carolina. He said Black and other minority voters need to play a larger, earlier role in determining the Democratic presidential nominee.

The DNC approved a new 2024 calendar where South Carolina’s primary will on Feb. 3 will be followed three days later by Nevada. The schedule also moves Michigan into the group of early states voting before Super Tuesday on March 5, when most of the rest of the country holds primaries.

DNC chair Jaime Harrison joined Clyburn at the airport for Harris’ arrival in Columbia.

“The Biden-Harris coalition will be out in full force in South Carolina and will be how we defeat MAGA extremism once again in 2024,” Biden reelection campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said in a statement, referring to former President Donald Trump, who has built a commanding early lead in next year’s Republican presidential primary, and his ”Make American Great Again” slogan.

Harris spoke in a crowded room at state party headquarters, flanked by cheering supporters holding Biden-Harris and South Carolina Democratic Party signs. Asked to predict how Biden would do in February’s primary, Harris responded, “We’re going to win.”

Referring to this week’s elections, when Democrats won in key races across the country, Harris said, “We are here with the wind at our back, because, did anyone notice what happened on Tuesday?”

She turned the Biden campaign papers over to Christale Spain, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party who said, “I am proud of the role that the Palmetto State played in ensuring that they would go on to win the White House, and I am completely honored to accept their filing today”

Clyburn held up a brochure of the Biden administration’s accomplishments and highlighted efforts to reduce student loan debt around the country — efforts that have been limited by court challenges. He told the crowd of the vice president, “For her to come back here today and be a part of this says a whole lot.”

“This is really, really an incredible demonstration of what South Carolina is all about,” Clyburn said. Later, he and Harris stopped by the Vietnam War Memorial in downtown Columbia to help mark Veterans Day.

Republicans are leading off their 2024 primary with the Iowa caucus on Jan. 15, and the state’s Democrats will caucus then, too, but not release the presidential results immediately to comply with party rules. New Hampshire, however, has rejected the new calendar and is planning to hold its primary in January, arguing that it has held the nation’s first primary for more than a century, a rule that Iowa was able to circumvent only because it had a caucus.

Biden won’t appear on the New Hampshire ballot and isn’t planning to campaign there, though some of the state’s top Democrats are organizing a write-in campaign backing his reelection bid. Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, the only elected Democrat to challenge Biden in 2024, has already filed to appear on both the New Hampshire and South Carolina ballots.

The approach is unusual for a stopgap spending bill. Usually, lawmakers extend funding until a certain date for all programs. Johnson decided to go with the combination approach, addressing concerns from GOP lawmakers seeking to avoid being presented with a massive spending bill just before the holidays.

“This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories,” Johnson said in a statement after speaking with GOP lawmakers in an afternoon conference call. “The bill will stop the absurd holiday-season omnibus tradition of massive, loaded up spending bills introduced right before the Christmas recess.”

The bill excludes funding requested by President Joe Biden for Israel, Ukraine and the U.S. border with Mexico. Johnson said separating Biden’s request for an emergency supplemental bill from the temporary, stopgap measure “places our conference in the best position to fight for fiscal responsibility, oversight over Ukraine aid, and meaningful policy changes at our Southern border.”

Hardline conservatives, usually loathe to support temporary spending measures of any sort, had indicated they would give Johnson some leeway to pass legislation, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, to give Congress more time to negotiate a long-term agreement.

But some were critical in their reactions following the conference call.

“My opposition to the clean CR just announced by the Speaker to the @HouseGOP cannot be overstated,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, tweeted on X. “Funding Pelosi level spending & policies for 75 days – for future ‘promises.’”

The White House, meanwhile, panned the plan as “unserious,” unworkable and a threat to national security and domestic programs.

“This proposal is just a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns—full stop,” said press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pointing to opposition from members of both parties. “House Republicans need to stop wasting time on their own political divisions, do their jobs, and work in a bipartisan way to prevent a shutdown.”

The federal government is operating under funding levels approved last year by a Democratic-led House and Senate. Facing a government shutdown when the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Congress passed a 47-day continuing resolution, but the fallout was severe. Kevin McCarthy was booted from the speakership days later, and the House was effectively paralyzed for most of the month while Republicans tried to elect a replacement.

Republicans eventually were unanimous in electing Johnson speaker, but his elevation has hardly eased the dynamic that led to McCarthy’s removal — a conference torn on policy as well as how much to spend on federal programs. This past week, Republicans had to pull two spending bills from the floor — one to fund transportation and housing programs and the other to fund the Treasury Department, Small Business Administration and other agencies — because they didn’t have the votes in their own party to push them through the House.

A document explaining Johnson’s proposal to House Republicans, obtained by The Associated Press, said funding for four spending bills would be extended until Jan. 19. Veterans programs, and bills dealing with transportation, housing, agriculture and energy, would be part of that extension.

Funding for the eight other spending bills, which include defense, the State Department, Homeland Security and other government agencies would be extended until Feb. 2.

The document sent to GOP lawmakers and key staff states that Johnson inherited a budget mess. He took office less than three weeks ago and immediately began considering appropriations bills through regular order. Still, with just days remaining before a shutdown, a continuing resolution is now required.

Underscoring the concerns about the possibility of a shutdown, the credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service lowered its outlook on the U.S. government’s debt on Friday to “negative” from “stable,” citing the cost of rising interest rates and political polarization in Congress.

House Republicans pointed to the national debt, now exceeding $33 trillion, for Moody’s decision. Analysts have warned that with interest rates heading higher, interest costs on the national debt will eat up a rising share of tax revenue.

Johnson said in reaction to the Moody’s announcement that House Republicans are committed to working in a bipartisan fashion for fiscal restraint, beginning with the introduction of a debt commission.

In remarks at the Memorial Amphitheater, the commander in chief recounted famous battles fought by U.S. troops and said those deployments of soldiers are “linked in a chain of honor that stretches back to our founding days. Each one bound by a sacred oath to support and defend. Not a place, not a person, not a president, but an idea, to defend an idea unlike any other in human history. That idea is the United States of America.”

Nov. 11, once known as Armistice Day, is the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I in 1918. Biden said that was “unlike any war the world had ever seen before.”

The ceremony was personal for Biden and first lady Jill Biden.

Biden’s son Beau enlisted in 2003 in the Delaware Army National Guard and deployed to Iraq in 2008 for a year as a member of the 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade. A captain, he earned the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star. Beau Biden later served two terms as the state’s attorney general. He died in 2015 of brain cancer.

“We miss him,” the president told the crowd, recounting how he pinned the bars on his son on the day he joined the National Guard.

“We come together today to once again honor the generations of Americans who stood on the front lines of freedom. To once again bear witness to the great deeds of a noble few who risked everything, everything, to give us a better future,” he said, paying tribute to “those who have always, always kept the light of shining bright across the world.”

Biden said that as commander in chief, “I have no higher honor. As the father of a son who served, I have no greater privilege.’’

He said that “our veterans are the steel spine of this nation and their families, like so many of you, are the courageous heart.”

The White House has said for weeks that it anticipated Biden and Xi would meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, but negotiations went down to the eve of the gathering, which kicks off Saturday.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement the leaders would discuss the “continued importance of maintaining open lines of communication” and how the they “can continue to responsibly manage competition and work together where our interests align, particularly on transnational challenges that affect the international community.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that Xi would attend APEC from Tuesday to Friday at Biden’s invitation and would take part in the U.S.-China summit.

Two senior Biden administration officials, who earlier briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said the leaders would meet in the San Francisco Bay area but declined to offer further details because of security concerns. Thousands of protesters are expected to descend on San Francisco during the summit.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng met for a second day of talks on Friday in San Francisco, the latest in a string of senior level engagements between the nations in recent months aimed at easing tensions.

Yellen said that during the talks she emphasized that the U.S. seeks a healthy economic relationship with China. She called on China to crack down on private Chinese firms and financial institutions that the U.S. believes are skirting international sanction to do business with Russia and she raised concerns about Chinese export controls on graphite in other critical minerals. Graphite is a key raw material in electric vehicle batteries.

Yellen, who visited China in July, said she accepted an invitation to make a return trip to Beijing next year.

“There is no substitute for in-person diplomacy,” said Yellen, who added that she believed the two laid the groundwork for a productive meeting between Biden and Xi. “During our discussions, we agreed in-depth and frank discussions matter, particularly when we disagree.”

The Biden-Xi meeting is not expected to lead to many, if any, major announcements, and differences between the two powers certainly won’t be resolved. Instead, one official said, Biden is looking toward “managing the competition, preventing the downside risk of conflict and ensuring channels of communication are open.” The officials said they believed it would be Xi’s first visit to San Francisco since he was a young Communist Party leader.

The agenda includes no shortage of difficult issues.

Differences in the already complicated U.S.-Chinese relationship have only sharpened in the last year, with Beijing bristling over new U.S. export controls on advanced technology; Biden ordering the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon after it traversed the continental United States; and Chinese anger over a stopover in the U.S. by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen earlier this year, among other issues. China claims the island as its territory.

Biden will also likely press Xi on using China’s influence on North Korea, during heightened anxiety over an increased pace of ballistic missile tests by North Korea as well as Pyongyang providing munitions to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

The Democratic president is also expected to let Xi know that he would like China to use its burgeoning sway over Iran to make clear that Tehran or its proxies should not take action that could lead to expansion of the Israel-Hamas war. His administration believes the Chinese, a big buyer of Iranian oil, have considerable leverage with Iran, which is a major backer of Hamas.

Biden and Xi last met nearly a year ago on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. In the nearly three-hour meeting, Biden objected directly to China’s ”coercive and increasingly aggressive actions” toward Taiwan and discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other issues. Xi stressed that “the Taiwan question is at the very core of China’s core interests, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations.”

The Chinese foreign ministry said this time Biden and Xi would focus on “in-depth communications on the strategic, overall and directional issues of the China-US relations as well as major issues concerning world peace and development.”

Next week’s meeting comes as the United States braces for a potentially bumpy year for U.S.-Chinese relations, with Taiwan set to hold a presidential election in January and the U.S. holding its own presidential election next November.

Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make the island’s decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step U.S. leaders say they don’t support. Under the “One China” policy, the U.S. recognizes Beijing as the government of China and doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but it has maintained that Taipei is an important partner in the Indo-Pacific. Biden intends to reaffirm the U.S. wants no change in the status quo, one official said.

Disinformation experts testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee have warned that Beijing could aim to target the U.S., sowing discord that might influence election results at the local level, especially in districts with large numbers of Chinese-American voters.

The Biden administration has sought to make clear to the Chinese that any actions or interference in the 2024 election “would raise extremely strong concerns from our side,” according to one official.

The officials also noted that Biden is determined to restore military-to-military communications that Beijing largely withdrew from after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022.

All the while, the number of unsafe or provocative encounters involving the two nations’ ships and aircraft have spiked.

Last month, the U.S. military released a video of a Chinese fighter jet flying within 10 feet (3 meters) of an American B-52 bomber over the South China Sea, nearly causing an accident. Earlier that month, the Pentagon released footage of some of the more than 180 intercepts of U.S. warplanes by Chinese aircraft that occurred in the last two years, part of a trend U.S. military officials call concerning.

Gen. CQ Brown Jr., the top U.S. military commander, told reporters in Tokyo on Friday that restoration of military-to-military contacts is “hugely important” to “ensure there is no miscalculation” between the sides. He said he conveyed his desire to restart the dialogue in a letter to his Chinese counterpart.

The officials also said Biden would underscore U.S. commitment to the Philippines, following a recent episode in which Chinese ships blocked and collided with two Filipino vessels off a contested shoal in the South China Sea.

The Philippines and other neighbors of China are resisting Beijing’s sweeping territorial claims over virtually the entire sea.

“I want to be very clear,” Biden said in October. “The United States’ defense commitment to the Philippines is iron clad.”

Both sides appeared to be carefully considering security for the meeting, declining to publicize the venue of the much-anticipated talks.

Thousands of people protesting climate destruction, corporate practices, the Israel-Hamas war and other issues are expected to descend on San Francisco during the summit.

San Francisco Police Department Chief Bill Scott said his department expects several protests a day but doesn’t know which ones will materialize where and when. He said the city respects people’s right to mobilize peacefully but will not tolerate property destruction, violence or any other crime.

The communications are part of the standard procedure laying out the steps toward bringing non-essential government functions to a halt.

“One week prior to the expiration of appropriations bills, regardless of whether the enactment of appropriations appears imminent, OMB will communicate with agency senior officials to remind agencies of their responsibilities to review and update orderly shutdown plans, and will share a draft communication template to notify employees of the status of appropriations,” a budget circular document from the Office of Management and Budget states.

Every department and agency has its own set of plans and procedures. Those plans include information on how many employees would get furloughed; which employees are essential and would work without pay (for example, air traffic controllers, Secret Service agents, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory staff); how long it would take to wind down operations in the hours before a shutdown; and which activities would come to a halt.

The guidance comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson has yet to outline a path forward for avoiding a government shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday took the first procedural step to put a government funding bill on the floor that the chamber could pass to avoid a shutdown. It amounts to a backstop measure that could be used if the GOP-controlled House isn’t able to pass a continuing resolution free of controversial measures that Democrats oppose. If the Senate were to pass it, the House would still have to approve it to avert a shutdown.

Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to Illinois, President Joe Biden called on the House of Representatives to “get to work” as a shutdown draws closer.

“I wish the House would just get to work. I’m not being facetious … that’s not just a political statement. The idea that we’re playing games with a shutdown at this moment in history is bizarre,” Biden said.

White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton framed what could transpire next week as an “extreme Republican shutdown.”

“The clock is ticking.  We’re just eight days from a shutdown that would undermine our economy and national security, hurting families and businesses across our country in the process,” Dalton said. “An extreme Republican shutdown would force service members and law enforcement officers to work without pay, risk significant delays for travelers, undermine public health, and cut off funding for small businesses. That is unacceptable.”

This will be the second time in as many months that the government has started preparations for a possible shutdown. Departments and agencies began winding down operations in the final week of September as Congress barreled toward a shutdown, which was averted just hours before the deadline when then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy put a stopgap measure on the floor – a move that ended up costing him the speakership.

The government shutdown for a record 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019 amid a congressional stalemate over funding for then-President Donald Trump’s border wall. The also government shut down for three days over a deadlock during the Trump administration in January 2018. And in 2013, then-President Barack Obama presided over a 16-day partial government shutdown caused by a dispute over the Affordable Care Act and other budget disagreements.

In honor of Veterans Day, he’s expected to make all World War II veterans eligible for no-cost health care under the Department of Veteran Affairs, as well as expanding coverage for costs associated with Parkinson’s disease.

Biden will also unveil new steps to protect veterans and their families from fraud scams.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon means that the trial, for now at least, remains scheduled to begin on May 20, 2024 despite efforts by the Trump team to postpone it until after next November’s presidential election.

Trump’s lawyers had argued that they needed more time to review the large trove of evidence with which they’d been presented and also cited scheduling challenges resulting from the other legal cases against Trump, including three additional criminal prosecutions for which he is awaiting trial. Special counsel Jack Smith’s team had vigorously opposed that position in urging the judge to leave the trial date intact.

Cannon signaled during a hearing this month, and again in her written order on Friday, that she was sympathetic to the defense arguments. She noted the “unusually high volume of classified and unclassified evidence” involved in the case, as well as the fact that Trump is currently scheduled next March to face both a federal trial in Washington and a trial on state charges in New York.

“Although the Special Counsel is correct that the trajectory of these matters potentially remains in flux, the schedules as they currently stand overlap substantially with the deadlines in this case, presenting additional challenges to ensuring Defendant Trump has adequate time to prepare for trial and to assist in his defense,” Cannon wrote.

She pushed back several deadlines for filing and responding to pretrial motions but kept the trial date in place, though she said she would consider the defense request again at a scheduling conference next March.

The case in Florida includes dozens of felony charges accusing the Republican former president of illegally retaining classified documents at his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, and hiding them from government investigators. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

Trump is currently set for trial on March 4, 2024, in Washington on federal charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. He also faces charges in Georgia accusing him of trying to subvert that state’s vote, as well as another state case in New York accusing him of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.

In addition, Trump has been sued in a business fraud case in New York, where a trial is taking place. Trump has denied wrongdoing in all of the cases, claiming without evidence that they are part of a politically motivated effort to prevent him from returning to the White House.

Manchin, 76, said he made the decision “after months of deliberation and long conversations” with his family.

“I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia,” he said in a statement. “I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”

His decision to step down, while not totally unexpected, severely hampers Democratic hopes of holding on to the coal country seat and marks the end of an era for West Virginia, which voted reliably blue for decades before flipping red and becoming one of former President Donald Trump’s most loyal states. For the last few years, Manchin has been the only Democrat elected to statewide office in West Virginia.

But his statement also fuels growing speculation that Manchin harbors national political ambitions. In recent months, he has teased a 2024 presidential campaign, possibly as an independent candidate, although it’s unclear what his voter base would be. Along those lines, a group pushing for Manchin to partner with retiring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney to seek a third-party presidential bid filed paperwork to form a formal draft committee with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday.

Manchin’s announcement also reinforces the challenges Democrats will have in keeping their 51-49 Senate majority. Even before Manchin said he was stepping down, 2024 was shaping up to be a tough election cycle for Senate Democrats. The party will be forced to defend 23 seats, including three held by independents and three held by Democrats in states won by Trump in 2020, compared to just 10 seats for Republicans.

Republican challengers have long been clamoring for Manchin’s seat. GOP Rep. Alex Mooney jumped into the race less than two weeks after winning his fifth term in the House in November 2022. Hugely popular two-term Republican Gov. Jim Justice joined the Senate race earlier this year and was endorsed by Trump, only increasing the challenges for Manchin as he considered whether to seek reelection.

Justice noted in a statement Thursday that he and the senator “have not always agreed on policy and politics.”

“But we’re both lifelong West Virginians who love this state beyond belief, and I respect and thank him for his many years of public service,” the governor said.

The draft committee pushing a Manchin-Romney ticket is planning to launch publicly next week along with a new website titled “America Back on Track,” according to a person with direct knowledge of the committee who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal planning ahead of the launch.

Initially, the draft effort plans to raise $1 million for a budget to commission polling to show that there is a path to victory for a Romney-Manchin ticket as part of the No Labels movement, according to the person.

Romney and Manchin have not signed onto this effort, the person said. But the group expects to build out presidential campaign infrastructure for Romney and Manchin and ultimately court No Labels delegates to win the nomination at its March 2024 convention in Dallas.

No Labels praised Manchin as a “tireless voice for America’s commonsense majority” in a statement Thursday.

“We will make a decision by early 2024 about whether we will nominate a Unity presidential ticket, and who will be on it,” the organization said.

Manchin, a conservative Democrat, was both a critical vote and a constant headache for his party in the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term. When the Senate was split 50-50 and Democrats controlled it by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote, Manchin leveraged his political power to shape legislation to his liking.

Along with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a Democrat who switched to an independent after last year’s midterms, he helped water down much of Biden’s social spending agenda. He has frequently clashed with members of his own party over his strong support for coal and other fossil fuels.

Days before last year’s midterms, he blasted Biden for being “cavalier” and “divorced from reality” after vowing to shutter coal-fired power plants and rely more heavily on wind and solar energy in the future. He demanded a public apology from Biden, and the White House acquiesced by issuing a statement saying the president “regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense.”

Biden issued a statement Thursday praising Manchin for his decades of public service.

“For more than forty years — as a state legislator, a Secretary of State, a Governor, and a Senator — Joe Manchin has dedicated himself to serving the people of his beloved West Virginia. During my time as Vice President and now as President, Joe and I have worked together to get things done for hardworking families,” Biden said.

Manchin’s announcement comes just a year after Democrats increased their Senate majority to 51-49 by flipping a Republican-held seat in Pennsylvania. The practical effect of that victory was giving Democrats the ability to pass bills while losing one vote within their caucus — zapping Manchin’s power to singlehandedly thwart some of his party’s priorities.

Manchin regained some of that influence after Sinema switched parties, though she made clear that she would not caucus with Republicans. Sinema is also up for reelection in 2024 but has not yet announced her plans.

Manchin entered the Senate after winning a special election in 2010 following the death of Robert C. Byrd. He won reelection in both 2012 and 2018, with the latter campaign his toughest in his three-plus decades in West Virginia politics. He defeated Republican state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey by just over 3 percentage points.

Registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans during Manchin’s first two Senate campaigns, but things have changed since then. Now, about 40% of registered voters are Republicans, compared with 31% for Democrats and about 24% with no party affiliation.

Both chambers of the Legislature have Republican supermajorities, and Trump overwhelmingly won the state in 2016 and 2020.

Manchin’s penchant for not following fellow Democrats on some key votes was a cause of angst and bruised relationships within his own party. It even prompted independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to suggest that he would support a 2024 primary challenger to Manchin.

Manchin’s split with the White House prompted Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to publicly invite him to join the GOP. Manchin held firm there, too, insisting that he saw himself as a Democrat.

During Manchin’s first two terms in the Senate, West Virginia lost thousands of coal jobs as companies and utilities explored using other energy sources such as natural gas, solar and wind. Manchin later promoted the Biden administration’s plans to involve the state in the development of clean energy. But his push to speed permits for natural gas pipelines and other energy projects — including a planned pipeline in his home state — failed.

Under Trump, Manchin was the only Democrat to vote for the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and among three Democrats to support nominee Neil Gorsuch in 2017. But he voted with Democrats on other key issues, including a failed 2017 effort by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act passed under President Barack Obama.

In a statement Thursday, Manchin’s West Virginia colleague Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito thanked him for his years of service.

“I’ve enjoyed serving alongside you — our senior senator,” she said. “And as you said, we still have much work ahead of us. Thank you for your friendship, Joe. I look forward to that continuing.”

West Virginia Democratic Party Chair Mike Pushkin called Manchin “a larger-than-life figure in the United States Senate” and said his “name has been synonymous with West Virginia politics and government” for 41 years.

Christie, who has made US leadership on the world stage a focal point of his campaign, confirmed the trip, which was first reported by CNN, at a New Hampshire town hall Thursday.

The former New Jersey governor said he would meet with families of people kidnapped by Hamas, as well as Israel Defense Force soldiers and Israeli government officials.

He’s also scheduled to visit so-called Gaza envelope region in southern Israel, according to an itinerary of the trip shared with CNN.

In what might have been a preview of his discussions this weekend with Israeli officials, Christie urged Israel from the debate stage Wednesday night in Miami to protect both its territorial integrity and the safety of its civilians and to ensure that “Hamas can never do this again.”

“The fact is that Israel and their intelligence community failed. They failed here, and they failed the people of the State of Israel,” he argued, saying the US needs to work closely with Israel to improve intelligence-gathering in the region.

He also encouraged Israeli leaders to “keep your eye on the ball,” in terms of working with “reasonable” Arab nations and isolating Iran in the Middle East.

Christie told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday he believes conversations about a two-state solution in the region “had to have stopped definitively” in the wake of the Hamas attacks, though he previously has expressed support for that ultimate outcome.

“I think there can’t be any discussion right now about a two-state solution until you dispose with Hamas’ ability to be able to bring that kind of terrorist attack again,” he said on “AC360.”

This will not be Christie’s first time in Israel – he visited the country in 2012 in his first foreign trip is governor.

Christie, who met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv just months after launching his 2024 presidential bid, has made standing up to US adversaries abroad central to his vision for America and has distanced himself from rivals who are reluctant to provide aid to allies in wartime.

“This is the price we pay for being the leaders of the free world,” he said Wednesday, accusing China, Iran and North Korea of working to support Russia because “dictators work together.”

After he returns from Israel, Christie is expected to deliver a foreign policy address at the Hudson Institute on Wednesday and to further lay out his worldview.

President Joe Biden visited Israel last month in an extraordinary wartime trip to Tel Aviv, where he expressed his support for the country’s right to defend itself, as well as advocated easing civilian suffering in Gaza.

At the time, Christie said he thought it was “the right thing” for Biden to go to Israel and show “physical solidarity” with the US ally.

Since then, Israel has expanded its ground operations in Gaza, and growing political divides have erupted in the US and around the world over whether a ceasefire should be implemented.

The White House announced Thursday that Israel had agreed to move forward with daily four-hour pauses of military operations in areas of northern Gaza.

Christie previously told CNN he didn’t think a humanitarian pause in Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza would ultimately lead to American hostages being able to get out of the region.

“Look, I would think if we could get Americans out that would be a goal for us to reach, but I don’t think that would happen. I think what Hamas would want is not a pause. They would want a guarantee that Israel would not invade Gaza at all. And we can’t give them that guarantee because of the attack they perpetrated on October 7,” he said late last month.

Manchin, 75, said in a statement that he had made the decision “after months of deliberation and long conversations” with his family.

“I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia,” he said. “I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”

His decision to retire severely hampers Democratic hopes of holding on to the coal-country seat. For the last few years, Manchin has been the only Democrat elected to statewide office in West Virginia, a longtime politician who has served as governor, secretary of state and state legislator.

Republican challengers began clamoring for the Senate seat even before Manchin’s announcement, with GOP Rep. Alex Mooney jumping in the race less than two weeks after winning his fifth term in the House in November.

Already, 2024 was shaping up to be a tough election cycle for Senate Democrats. The party will be forced to defend 23 seats, including three held by independents, compared to just 10 seats for Republicans. Manchin is one of just three Democratic senators up for reelection in 2024 who represent a state won by President Donald Trump, a Republican, in the 2020 election.

Manchin, a conservative Democrat, was both a critical vote and a constant headache for his party in the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term. In a 50-50 chamber that Democrats controlled by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote, Manchin leveraged his political power to shape legislation to his liking.

Along with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a Democrat who switched to an independent after last year’s midterms, he helped water down much of Biden’s social spending agenda. He has frequently clashed with members of his own party over his strong support for coal and other fossil fuels.

Days before last year’s midterms, he blasted Biden for being “cavalier” and “divorced from reality” after vowing to shutter coal-fired power plants and rely more heavily on wind and solar energy in the future. He demanded a public apology from Biden, and the White House acquiesced by issuing a statement saying the president “regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense.”

Trump’s Wednesday night event was part of a practice he has pursued through the GOP debates: He has cited his commanding lead in the polls in skipping the stage but has also drawn attention to himself with distinctive, simultaneous events.

At the rally, Trump referenced the debate happening across town, claiming no one was watching it. Later, he compared his rally to the debate: “I’m standing in front of tens of thousands of people right now and it’s on television. That’s a lot harder to do than a debate.” The stadium where he was speaking has a capacity of roughly 5,200 people.

Wednesday’s rally was also an opportunity to showcase support among Latino voters in the Miami suburb of Hialeah, a community with a strong Cuban American population where Trump remains popular enough that a City Council candidate used his image on campaign signs.

Trump was introduced by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former White House press secretary, who endorsed him at an event earlier this week. She praised him as her former boss, a friend and a mentor.

Trump began speaking about 20 minutes after the debate began, launching into a speech tailored for the largely Cuban American audience before him. He criticized President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, notably on Cuba, and said: “We are not the ones endangering American democracy. We are the ones saving American democracy from these terrible people.”

Trump also said Biden and the Democrats were “after Catholics,” adding: “Any Catholic or Christian that votes for a Democrat, I have to say, they’re fools.” He did not mention that Biden is Catholic.

Some Trump supporters had camped out more than a day in advance outside the venue, waving at honking commuters passing by. But when the event began, sections of the outdoor football stadium remained empty. As Trump spoke, some supporters opted to sit or stand on the field instead of sitting on nearby bleachers. Trump was joined at the rally by mixed martial arts fighter Jorge Masvidal and comedian Roseanne Barr.

Cuban voters in this region have helped deliver blowout victories for Trump and other Republicans in recent elections, helping drive Florida’s realignment from a traditional swing state to one that’s far more conservative. Democrats working toward Biden’s reelection want to win back Latino voters who turned away in 2020.

“All we want is to get ahead in life. It seems a lot of politicians, all they do is set obstacles in our way,” said Marcel Perez, a Hialeah resident who went with his wife, mother, uncle and father-in-law to vote in local races Tuesday. “Trump is the right person for the job because he opens the door for us.”

Trump’s campaign is using his event to demonstrate his strength heading into 2024 and to hammer the message that the five candidates debating in Miami are irrelevant.

Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser, said the campaign would try to win an increasing percentage of the Hispanic vote in 2024. Trump did better among Hispanics in 2020 than he did in 2016, even as Biden captured a majority nationwide.

For Biden, LaCivita argued, what “was emerging as a problem” has now become “a full-blown crisis … which gives President Trump, I think, an opportunity to really increase his standing and vote share in the Hispanic community.”

Trump’s campaign is planning primary ads on Hispanic TV and radio along with targeted mail. In a general election and likely rematch with Biden, Trump’s advisers think his messages about the economy, the U.S.-Mexico border and cultural issues will resonate with Latinos.

“From the standpoint of the Trump campaign in the general election, we’re going to aggressively pursue votes everywhere. We’re going to compete everywhere for votes,” he said. “We’re extremely bullish on the fact that we have a receptive audience.”

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, held a news conference Tuesday in downtown Miami to promote the reelection effort’s work with Latinos. The Biden campaign has run ads in English, Spanish and Spanglish, combining words of both languages the way many Hispanics do in the United States.

“Latinos continue to support Democrats overwhelmingly,” Chavez Rodriguez said. “That being said, we are not taking any of this for granted.”

More than 95% of Hialeah’s 220,000 residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to the most recent census numbers. Most are Cuban or Cuban American and speak Spanish at home.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year became the first Republican in 20 years to win Miami-Dade County, which includes Hialeah, on his way to a blowout reelection victory.

Data from AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the national electorate, found that more than half of Latino voters in the state backed DeSantis for governor in 2022, and a similar number supported Republican incumbent Marco Rubio in that year’s Senate race. Each candidate’s total was higher than the 45% of Latinos who supported Trump for president in 2020.

Voting with his family in Hialeah, Perez credited DeSantis for pushing against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and lockdowns, a stand that is a key part of the governor’s presidential campaign pitch. But the 41-year-old suggested DeSantis had “sacado las uñas,” a Spanish expression that means someone has “taken out their fingernails,” or become overly aggressive.

Trump has long courted the Cuban community, which skews more Republican than other Hispanics. According to Pew, a majority of Cuban American voters, 58%, identified as Republican or Republican-leaning before the 2020 election.

In the White House, Trump worked to undo President Barack Obama’s Cuba engagement policy and he sanctioned socialist governments in Latin America. As he runs once more, Trump has ramped up his efforts to cast Democrats as Marxists, socialists and communists — language that may resonate with Cuban and Venezuelan exiles who fled poverty and political persecution.

After Trump appeared at a federal courthouse in Miami in June to plead not guilty to dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding classified documents and refusing government demands to give them back, he headed to Versailles, an iconic Cuban restaurant, coffee shop and bakery in the city’s Little Havana neighborhood that is a popular stop for politicians visiting Miami.

Trump, at the time, was cheered on by waiting supporters and later serenaded with “Happy Birthday” one day before his 77th birthday, and was prayed over by a rabbi.

Kevin Marino Cabrera, a Miami-Dade County commissioner who is scheduled to speak at Wednesday’s rally, said Trump “is taking his message directly to the voters while the other candidates are debating in a room full of campaign staff and media for a possible VP nomination or a job in a Trump administration.”

Unlike a debate crowd with loyalties split among candidates, Trump is expected to draw a boisterous audience that uniformly supports him.

“It’s not a polite crowd. It’s vociferous and festive,” said Dario Moreno, a political science professor at Florida International University. “He’s going to outshine those guys at the debate.”

Sparring over several issues were Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who has appeared competitive with DeSantis’ distant second-place position in some national polls. Much of the debate focused on policy — especially foreign policy issues — rather than Trump and his record.

Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, declared she would end trade relations with China “until they stop murdering Americans from fentanyl — something Ron has yet to say that he’s going to do.” In return, the Florida governor said Haley “welcomed” Chinese investment to her state, referencing a land deal with a Chinese manufacturer while she led South Carolina.

All five candidates face growing urgency, with the leadoff Iowa caucuses just a little more than two months away, to cut into Trump’s huge margins in the 2024 primary and establish themselves as a clear alternative. But it’s not clear many Republican primary voters want a Trump alternative. And given his dominance in early state and national polls, Trump again skipped the debate to deprive his rivals of attention.

Trump was the subject of the debate’s first question, when moderators asked each candidate to explain why they were the right person to beat him.

DeSantis said, “He owes it to you to be on this stage and explain why he should get another chance.” He suggested Trump had lost a step since winning the White House in 2016, saying he failed to follow through on his “America First” policies.

Haley, who is pulling some voter and donor curiosity from DeSantis, said Trump “used to be right” on supporting Ukraine but “now he’s getting weak in the knees.”

But the conversation moved on to policy issues with relatively few head-to-head confrontations. The moderators often declined to call on candidates who were mentioned by others onstage, as is normally the custom.

The DeSantis and Haley campaigns for months have attacked each other on China, long a topic of scorn in GOP primaries. Their allied super PACs have run ads in early primary states alleging the other side is soft on Beijing.

Haley also accused DeSantis of being a “liberal” on the environment for opposing the extraction of fossil fuels off Florida’s coast — a process known as fracking — and dared him to “just own it.”

“We are absolutely going to frack, but I disagree with Nikki Haley. I don’t think it’s a good idea to drill in the Florida Everglades and I know most Floridians agree with me,” he responded.

Abortion was also a topic of the debate after Democrats and abortion rights supporters won several statewide races in Tuesday’s elections.

DeSantis, who signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, said anti-abortion activists were “flat-footed” in mobilizing and noted that people who voted for the measures included Republicans who have previously supported GOP candidates.

Haley, long credited by anti-abortion group leaders for how she talks about the issue, called abortion “a personal issue for every woman and every man” and said she doesn’t “judge anyone for being pro-choice.”

She said Republicans need to acknowledge they don’t have the votes in Congress to pass a national abortion ban but should instead work to find some consensus to “ban late-term abortions,” make contraception available and ensure that states don’t pass laws that punish women for getting abortions.

Also appearing onstage Wednesday were South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Scott frequently referenced the Bible and appealed to the Christian faith of many Republican primary voters, echoing his campaign themes and his singular focus on Iowa, where white evangelical voters are an influential bloc.

Christie defended U.S. support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion, saying that for the U.S.: “This is not a choice. This is the price we pay for being the leaders of the free world.”

Ramaswamy tried several times to push his way into the center of the debate. Having long styled himself as someone willing to challenge his rivals, Ramaswamy repeatedly went after other candidates, notably Haley, who tussled with him in the first two debates.

Haley seemed to ignore his first barbs, but snapped during a discussion about the social media app TikTok, which many Republicans want banned in the U.S. due to its parent company’s ties to China.

Ramaswamy accused Haley’s daughter of having had her own TikTok account until recently. Responded Haley, “Leave my daughter out of your voice!” She then told him, “You’re just scum.”

All the candidates said they were staunchly behind Israel as it mounts an offensive in Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that killed more than 1,400 people. The candidates did not discuss humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza as the number of Palestinians killed in the war passed 10,500, including more than 4,300 children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.

Several also said they would pressure college campuses to crack down on antisemitism.

Trump has retained huge leads despite his efforts to try to overturn his 2020 election loss, his embrace of those jailed for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and his four criminal indictments and a civil fraud case against his businesses, for which he testified in New York this week.

His campaign has worked to overpower DeSantis in their shared home state and publicly said it wants to score blowout wins in early primary states to seal the nomination.

Trump held a rally for several thousand people at a stadium in the Cuban American hub of Hialeah that his campaign designed to demonstrate his strength with Latino voters. He was endorsed by his former White House press secretary, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Also speaking at the rally were comedian Roseanne Barr and mixed martial arts fighter Jorge Masvidal.

Trump claimed no one was watching the debate and said holding a rally was much harder than going on a debate stage.

One attendee, Paul Rodriguez, said: “I go to all Trump events. I hope common sense returns to America. Donald Trump speaks for us, while Democrats do it for corporations and other countries.”

Senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita issued a statement at the end of the debate calling it a “complete waste of time and money.”

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told reporters after the debate that she’s discussed the upcoming debates with Trump but doesn’t expect him to join.

“I don’t think he’s going to get on the debate stage. He’s made that clear,” she said. “He feels as a former president, he shouldn’t have to be on the debate stage, that he’s going to earn the nomination a different way. We’re going to let the process play out and whoever wins the nomination, we’re all going to get behind.”

The subpoenas were expected to be issued later Wednesday afternoon. The long-awaited move by Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to subpoena the president’s son Hunter and his brother James comes as Republicans look to gain ground in their nearly yearlong investigation. So far, they have failed to uncover evidence directly implicating the president in any wrongdoing.

But Republicans say the evidence trail they have uncovered paints a troubling picture of “influence peddling” by Biden’s family in their business dealings, particularly with clients overseas.

“Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence,” Comer, of Kentucky, said in a statement.

The stakes are exceedingly high, as the inquiry could result in Republicans bringing impeachment charges against Biden, the ultimate penalty for what the U.S. Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The subpoenas demand that Hunter Biden and James Biden as well as former business associate Rob Walker appear before the Oversight Committee for a deposition. Lawmakers also requested that James Biden’s wife, Sara Biden, and Hallie Biden, the wife of the president’s deceased son Beau, appear voluntarily for transcribed interviews.

Requests for comment from Hunter Biden, who lives in California, and James Biden, who’s from Royal Oak, Maryland, were not immediately returned.

Both the White House and the Biden family’s personal lawyers have dismissed the investigation as a political ploy aimed at hurting the Democratic president. They say the probe is a blatant attempt to help former President Donald Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, as he runs again for the White House.

Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said the investigation has been full of “worn-out, false, baseless, or debunked claims.” In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday morning, Lowell urged the new speaker to rein in the “partisan political games.”

Johnson, now settling into the speakership after replacing Kevin McCarthy as the top Republican in the House, has given his blessing to the inquiry and has hinted that a decision could come soon on whether to pursue articles of impeachment against Biden.

“I think we have a constitutional responsibility to follow this truth where it leads,” Johnson told Fox News Channel recently. He also said in a separate Fox interview that he would support Comer’s decision to subpoena the president’s son, saying “desperate times call for desperate measures, and that perhaps is overdue.”

Since January, Republicans have been investigating the Biden family for what they claim is a pattern of “influence peddling” spanning back to when Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president. Comer claims the committee had “uncovered a mountain of evidence” that he said would show how Biden abused his power and repeatedly lied about a “wall” between his political position and his son’s private business dealings.

While questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family’s international business, no evidence has emerged to prove that Joe Biden, in his current or previous office, abused his role or accepted bribes.

Trump’s event was intended to upstage the other candidates, continuing a practice he has pursued now through three GOP debates. He has cited his commanding lead in the polls for skipping the stage but has also drawn attention to himself with distinctive, simultaneous events.

At the rally, Trump referenced the debate happening across town, claiming no one was watching it. Later, he compared his rally to the debate: “I’m standing in front of tens of thousands of people right now and it’s on television. That’s a lot harder to do than a debate.” The stadium where he was speaking has a capacity of roughly 5,200 people.

Wednesday’s rally was also an opportunity to showcase support among Latino voters in the Miami suburb of Hialeah, a community with a strong Cuban American population where Trump remains popular enough that a City Council candidate used his image on campaign signs.

Trump was introduced by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former White House press secretary, who endorsed him at an event earlier this week. She praised him as her former boss, a friend and a mentor.

Trump began speaking about 20 minutes after the debate began, launching into a speech tailored for the largely Cuban American audience before him. He criticized President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, notably on Cuba, and said: “We are not the ones endangering American democracy. We are the ones saving American democracy from these terrible people.”

Trump also said Biden and the Democrats were “after Catholics,” adding: “Any Catholic or Christian that votes for a Democrat, I have to say, they’re fools.” He did not mention that Biden is Catholic.

Some Trump supporters had camped out more than a day in advance outside the venue, waving at honking commuters passing by. But when the event began, sections of the outdoor football stadium remained empty. As Trump spoke, some supporters opted to sit or stand on the field instead of sitting on nearby bleachers. Trump was joined at the rally by mixed martial arts fighter Jorge Masvidal and comedian Roseanne Barr.

Cuban voters in this region have helped deliver blowout victories for Trump and other Republicans in recent elections, helping drive Florida’s realignment from a traditional swing state to one that’s far more conservative. Democrats working toward Biden’s reelection want to win back Latino voters who turned away in 2020.

“All we want is to get ahead in life. It seems a lot of politicians, all they do is set obstacles in our way,” said Marcel Perez, a Hialeah resident who went with his wife, mother, uncle and father-in-law to vote in local races Tuesday. “Trump is the right person for the job because he opens the door for us.”

Trump’s campaign is using his event to demonstrate his strength heading into 2024 and to hammer the message that the five candidates debating in Miami are irrelevant.

Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser, said the campaign would try to win an increasing percentage of the Hispanic vote in 2024. Trump did better among Hispanics in 2020 than he did in 2016, even as Biden captured a majority nationwide.

For Biden, LaCivita argued, what “was emerging as a problem” has now become “a full-blown crisis … which gives President Trump, I think, an opportunity to really increase his standing and vote share in the Hispanic community.”

Trump’s campaign is planning primary ads on Hispanic TV and radio along with targeted mail. In a general election and likely rematch with Biden, Trump’s advisers think his messages about the economy, the U.S.-Mexico border and cultural issues will resonate with Latinos.

“From the standpoint of the Trump campaign in the general election, we’re going to aggressively pursue votes everywhere. We’re going to compete everywhere for votes,” he said. “We’re extremely bullish on the fact that we have a receptive audience.”

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, held a news conference Tuesday in downtown Miami to promote the reelection effort’s work with Latinos. The Biden campaign has run ads in English, Spanish and Spanglish, combining words of both languages the way many Hispanics do in the United States.

“Latinos continue to support Democrats overwhelmingly,” Chavez Rodriguez said. “That being said, we are not taking any of this for granted.”

More than 95% of Hialeah’s 220,000 residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to the most recent census numbers. Most are Cuban or Cuban American and speak Spanish at home.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year became the first Republican in 20 years to win Miami-Dade County, which includes Hialeah, on his way to a blowout reelection victory.

Data from AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the national electorate, found that more than half of Latino voters in the state backed DeSantis for governor in 2022, and a similar number supported Republican incumbent Marco Rubio in that year’s Senate race. Each candidate’s total was higher than the 45% of Latinos who supported Trump for president in 2020.

Voting with his family in Hialeah, Perez credited DeSantis for pushing against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and lockdowns, a stand that is a key part of the governor’s presidential campaign pitch. But the 41-year-old suggested DeSantis had “sacado las uñas,” a Spanish expression that means someone has “taken out their fingernails,” or become overly aggressive.

Trump has long courted the Cuban community, which skews more Republican than other Hispanics. According to Pew, a majority of Cuban American voters, 58%, identified as Republican or Republican-leaning before the 2020 election.

In the White House, Trump worked to undo President Barack Obama’s Cuba engagement policy and he sanctioned socialist governments in Latin America. As he runs once more, Trump has ramped up his efforts to cast Democrats as Marxists, socialists and communists — language that may resonate with Cuban and Venezuelan exiles who fled poverty and political persecution.

After Trump appeared at a federal courthouse in Miami in June to plead not guilty to dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding classified documents and refusing government demands to give them back, he headed to Versailles, an iconic Cuban restaurant, coffee shop and bakery in the city’s Little Havana neighborhood that is a popular stop for politicians visiting Miami.

Trump, at the time, was cheered on by waiting supporters and later serenaded with “Happy Birthday” one day before his 77th birthday, and was prayed over by a rabbi.

Kevin Marino Cabrera, a Miami-Dade County commissioner who is scheduled to speak at Wednesday’s rally, said Trump “is taking his message directly to the voters while the other candidates are debating in a room full of campaign staff and media for a possible VP nomination or a job in a Trump administration.”

Unlike a debate crowd with loyalties split among candidates, Trump is expected to draw a boisterous audience that uniformly supports him.

“It’s not a polite crowd. It’s vociferous and festive,” said Dario Moreno, a political science professor at Florida International University. “He’s going to outshine those guys at the debate.”

Parker, 51, who has held office at the state and local level after first becoming involved in politics as a teenager, emerged from a crowded field in the May party primary as the only leading Black candidate and was heavily favored over Republican David Oh in the Democratic stronghold city. She will replace Democrat Jim Kenney, who was ineligible for reelection due to term limits.

Across the state in Allegheny County, Innamorato, 37, defeated Republican Joe Rockey, a political newcomer. The former state legislator who campaigned on progressive models to modernize county government will replace Democrat Rich Fitzgerald, who has served in the role since 2012 and was ineligible for reelection due to term limits.

The races will set the electoral stage for 2024, when Pennsylvania will be a presidential battleground state, with candidates taking lessons about how Democrats see crime and the strength of progressives in local races.

Also in Allegheny County, longtime incumbent Steve Zappala won reelection as district attorney over progressive Democrat Matt Dugan, with Zappala running as a Republican this time after he lost a primary challenge to Dugan.

To the tune of “Ladies First,” an emotional Parker appeared and addressed supporters at her election night watch party, repeating campaign promises to address struggles with crime, education, jobs and poverty. She vowed to work with Philadelphia’s state legislative delegation and City Council to move the city forward.

“Who is Cherelle Parker going to be? A get-it-done Philadelphian. A get-it-done mayor who won’t ever forget her deep roots,” she said. “I’m Philly-born, I’m Philly-bred and I’ll be Philadelphian ’til I’m dead.”

Having served for 10 years as a state representative for northwest Philadelphia before her election to the City Council in 2015, she touted herself on the campaign trail as a leader whose government experience would allow her to address gaping problems in the city.

Parker’s moderate message resonated with voters who are increasingly worried about public safety as well as quality-of-life issues, from faulty streetlights to potholes to trash collection. She also promised a well-trained police force that is engaged with the community along with mental health and behavioral support.

Supporters at the watch party hugged in celebration. Among them was Carolyn Mosley, 57, who said her main concerns going into the election were crime and taxes.

After meeting Parker at a church event earlier this year, she was “100% sold,” she said: “I believe that she can effectively change Philadelphia.”

“Her story reminds me of my story,” said Mosley, who is also a Black woman. “And I can see girls can emulate her.”

Innamorato’s victory is a win for a progressive movement that has sought to win local elections in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles after setbacks on the national level. Our Revolution, born during Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential race and now one of the largest progressive organizations in the country, endorsed her in the primary.

Speaking to supporters Tuesday night, Innamorato emphasized policies envisioning a green, sustainable city that is “union-made and union-run,” while compassionately tackling issues of poverty, crime and addiction.

“I stand here as the first woman Allegheny County executive, and I stand here because of the passion, faith and support of people who are around me, a lot of them women,” she said.

Innamorato also campaigned on improving policies at the Allegheny County Jail and opposes mandatory minimums, solitary confinement and high fines and fees for minor offenses. She also advocates for affordable housing and economic growth.

Zappala’s victory over Dugan was a rematch of the May Democratic primary, which he lost. Zappala received enough write-in votes in the Republican primary to run as its nominee in the general election.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan on going away,” Dugan told supporters Tuesday after the result was in, vowing to “fight the good fight.”

Zappala said previously that political partisanship was not important to him and defended his record as DA. He also dismissed Dugan as having out-of-state financial support.

“Quite frankly he’s given assurances and he’s done things that every one of these prosecutors that fit the same mold all across this country have said to their constituents, they get into office and they destroy the city,” Zappala said during a debate. “They destroy a region. I’m not gonna let this guy do that.”

Salaam, a Democrat, will represent a central Harlem district on the City Council, having run unopposed for the seat in one of many local elections held across New York state Tuesday. He won his primary election in a landslide.

The victory comes more than two decades after DNA evidence was used to overturn the convictions of Salaam and four other Black and Latino men in the 1989 rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park. Salaam was arrested at age 15 and imprisoned for almost seven years.

“For me, this means that we can really become our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” Salaam said in an interview before the election.

Elsewhere in New York City, voters were deciding whether to reelect the Queens district attorney and cast ballots in other City Council races. The council, which passes legislation and has some oversight powers over city agencies, has long been dominated by Democrats and the party was certain to retain firm control after the election.

Local elections on Long Island could offer clues about how the city’s suburbs could vote in next year’s congressional elections, though low turnout was expected because there weren’t federal or statewide candidates on the ballot this election.

One of the more prominent races was in Suffolk County, where Republican Ed Romaine defeated Democrat David Calone to become county executive, giving the GOP control of an office that had long been controlled by a Democrat.

Democrats lost in all four of Long Island’s congressional districts last year and have dedicated significant resources to the region for 2024. Republicans, bolstering campaigns with a focus on local issues such as crime and migrants, are aiming to hold onto the seats next year.

“Keeping an eye on Long Island, which has been a little counterintuitive in its election outcomes the last few years with a mix of national and local issues, gives you a chance to see what’s playing in a typical suburb that’s not unlike the ones in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, Arizona, Nevada and other places that both parties believe are at play,” said Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University on Long Island.

In the city meanwhile, Salaam’s candidacy was a reminder of what the war on crime can look like when it goes too far.

Salaam was arrested along with Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise and accused of attacking a woman running in Central Park.

The crime dominated headlines in the city, inflaming racial tensions as police rounded up Black and Latino men and boys for interrogation. Former President Donald Trump, then just a brash real estate executive in the city, took out large ads in newspapers that implored New York to bring back the death penalty.

The teens convicted in the attack served between five and 12 years in prison before the case was reexamined.

A serial rapist and murderer was eventually linked to the crime through DNA evidence and a confession. The convictions of the Central Park Five were vacated in 2002 and they received a combined $41 million settlement from the city.

Salaam campaigned on easing poverty and combatting gentrification in Harlem. He often mentioned his conviction and imprisonment on the trail — his place as a symbol of injustice helping to animate the overwhelmingly Black district and propel him to victory.

“I am really the ambassador for everyone’s pain,” he said. “In many ways, I went through that for our people so I can now lead them.”

In a more competitive City Council race, Democrat Justin Brannan defeated Republican Ari Kagan in an ethnically diverse south Brooklyn district. The race became heated as Election Day approached, with the candidates sparring over the Israel-Hamas war and New York’s migrant crisis.

In a slight that symbolized the tension between the men, Brannan recently tweeted a photo of a ribbon cutting ceremony that he and Kagan attended, but the image had Kagan’s face blurred out.

Also in Brooklyn, City Council member Inna Vernikov, a vocal supporter of Israel, won reelection weeks after she was arrested for bringing a gun to a pro-Palestinian demonstration.

Vernikov was seen in photos and videos with the butt of a pistol poking out of her waistband while she was counterprotesting at the pro-Palestinian rally at Brooklyn College in October. She was arraigned last week on a charge of possessing a gun at a sensitive location.

Vernikov has a concealed carry license, but New York law forbids gun owners from bringing firearms to sensitive locations such as protests and school grounds, and requires people with licenses to keep their handguns concealed.

She has surrendered her gun and she’s next due in court Jan. 24.

Statewide, New Yorkers approved two ballot measures — one to remove the debt limit placed on small city school districts and the other to extend an exclusion from the debt limit for sewage projects.

Former President Donald Trump’s elder daughter capped a major stretch in the lawsuit that could reshape his real estate empire. She followed her father and her brothers Eric and Donald Trump Jr. to the witness stand, and the New York attorney general’s office rested its case after her testimony. The defense gets its turn now.

Ivanka Trump has been in her father’s inner circle in both business and politics, as an executive vice president at the family’s Trump Organization and then as a senior White House adviser. But she testified that she had no role in his personal financial statements, which New York Attorney General Letitia James claims were fraudulently inflated and deceived banks and lenders.

“Those were not things that I was privy to,” beyond having seen “a few documents and correspondence” that referred to them, Ivanka Trump said.

The ex-president and Republican 2024 front-runner denies any wrongdoing. He insisted in court Monday that his financial statements actually greatly underestimated his net worth, that any discrepancies were minor, that a disclaimer absolved him of liability anyway and that “this case is a disgrace.”

In even-tempered testimony that provided a counterpoint to her father’s caustic turn on the stand, Ivanka Trump touched on some of the same notes that the ex-president has hammered inside court and out — portraying the Trump Organization as a successful developer of big-dollar projects that satisfied its lenders.

The Doral golf resort in Florida? A “Herculean” renovation undertaken to refurbish a faded treasure that Donald Trump had visited in childhood, his daughter testified.

The company’s historic Old Post Office building-turned-hotel in Washington? “A labor of love” to turn a dilapidated building into a super-luxury hotel, while navigating approvals from a raft of different government agencies.

“They were complicated projects, and I believe we overdelivered on every metric,” she said.

But when questions about the post office project turned to questions that its government owners raised about some aspects of her father’s financial statements, she said she didn’t recall that.

The agency overseeing the bidding flagged those concerns in a December 2011 letter to her, and Trump Organization executives looped her in as they prepared a response ahead of a presentation to officials in Washington. An agency document showed the company addressed the issues in its presentation, which she attended.

But Ivanka Trump said she didn’t recall “that they discussed financial statements specifically.” Rather, she remembered talk of “our vision for the project” and the company’s experience, with her father mentioning his renovation of New York’s famous Plaza Hotel.

She retained a stake in the Washington hotel lease until its 2022 sale, which netted her $4 million.

Unlike her father and his adult sons, Ivanka Trump is no longer a defendant in the case, and her lawyers had tried to prevent her from having to testify.

Ordered to do so, she said she largely didn’t recall the documents and details she was asked about. During about four hours of polite answers punctuated by broad smiles, she once thanked a lawyer in Attorney General James’ office for bringing up the Old Post Office proposal because it “brought back a lot of memories.”

“Ivanka Trump was cordial, she was disciplined, she was controlled, and she was very courteous,” James, a Democrat, said outside court. But, she added: “This case is about fraudulent statements of financial condition that she benefited from. She was enriched. And clearly, you cannot distance yourself from that fact.”

James’ legal team and Trump defense lawyers repeatedly tangled Wednesday over the scope of Ivanka Trump’s questioning, including whether she could be asked about 2013 emails that included her husband, Jared Kushner, in discussions about potential Trump company loans.

Kushner — a real estate executive himself — didn’t work for the Trump Organization. But he had introduced his wife to a Deutsche Bank banker as the Trumps were seeking financing to buy and overhaul Doral, Ivanka Trump testified. Because he also worked in real estate, they would sometimes exchange ideas and advice, she said.

She became the point person in establishing a lending relationship with Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management arm. It eventually extended the Trump Organization hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, with terms that required Donald Trump to submit his financial statements each year.

Amid such assets as Trump Tower, the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and Doral, the financial statements included a Trump-owned building on New York’s Park Avenue. Ivanka Trump leased and had options to buy two apartments there, and the state’s lawyers contend that her father offered her a steep discount while claiming on his financial statements that the apartments were worth far more.

She testified that she invested over $7.5 million in one of the apartments, a penthouse, but never made it her permanent home because she and her family moved to Washington.

She stepped away from her Trump Organization job as her father’s 2017 inauguration neared, and she became an unpaid senior adviser. After the Trump administration ended, she and her family moved to Florida.

The non-jury trial will decide allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records — but Judge Arthur Engoron already has resolved the lawsuit’s top claim by ruling that Trump engaged in fraud. That decision came with provisions that could strip the ex-president of oversight of such marquee properties as Trump Tower, though an appeals court is allowing him continued control of his holdings for now.

James, a Democrat, is seeking over $300 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.

With the case now turning to the defense, the Trumps’ attorneys plan to argue Thursday that the judge should find in their favor immediately.

“The attorney general rested their case, and it is very clear that they have failed to prove the essential elements of the case,” Trump attorney Alina Habba said outside court.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., who are still Trump Organization EVPs, also have professed minimal knowledge of their father’s annual financial statements. Donald Trump Jr. testified that he dealt with the documents only in passing; Eric Trump said he relied completely on accountants and lawyers to ensure the documents’ accuracy.

In their first guns case since last year’s expansion of gun rights, the justices suggested that they will reverse a ruling from an appeals court in New Orleans that struck down the 1994 ban on firearms for people under court order to stay away from their spouses or partners.

The court’s decision could affect other cases in which other gun laws have been called into question, including in the high-profile prosecution of Hunter Biden. President Joe Biden’s son has been charged with buying a firearm while he was addicted to drugs, but his lawyers have indicated they will challenge the indictment.

Liberal and conservative justices sounded persuaded by arguments from the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer that the prohibition is in line with the longstanding practice of disarming dangerous people.

The case before the court involves a Texas man, Zackey Rahimi, who was accused of hitting his girlfriend during an argument in a parking lot and later threatening to shoot her.

The justices peppered Rahimi’s lawyer, J. Matthew Wright, with skeptical questions that seemed to foretell the outcome.

“You don’t have any doubt that your client is a dangerous person, do you?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked Wright. When Wright said it depends on what Roberts meant by dangerous, the chief justice shot back, “Well, it means someone who’s shooting, you know, at people. That’s a good start.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh voiced concern that a ruling for Rahimi could also jeopardize the background check system that the Democratic administration said has stopped more than 75,000 gun sales in the past 25 years based on domestic violence protective orders.

The federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down the domestic violence law, following the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June 2022. That high court ruling not only expanded Americans’ gun rights under the Constitution but also changed the way courts are supposed to evaluate restrictions on firearms.

Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion for the court tossed out the balancing test judges had long used to decide whether gun laws were constitutional. Rather than consider whether a law enhances public safety, judges should only weigh whether it fits into the nation’s history of gun regulation, Thomas wrote for the six conservative justices on the nine-member court.

The Bruen decision has resulted in lower court rulings striking down more than a dozen laws. Those include age restrictions; bans on homemade ghost guns, which don’t have serial numbers; and prohibitions on gun ownership for people convicted of nonviolent felonies or using illegal drugs.

Justice Elena Kagan noted that “there seems to be a fair bit of division and a fair bit of confusion about what Bruen means and what Bruen requires in the lower courts.”

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, defending the domestic violence law, urged the justices to use this case to correct lower courts’ “profound misreading” of the decision.

It was unclear how far the high court would go in this case, and some of the justices sounded interested in a limited ruling that might leave open other challenges to the same law. “Do we need to get into any of that?” Justice Neil Gorsuch asked Prelogar.

Rahimi, who lived near Fort Worth, Texas, hit his girlfriend during an argument in a parking lot and then fired a gun at a witness in December 2019, according to court papers. Later, Rahimi called the girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone about the assault, the Justice Department wrote in its Supreme Court brief.

The girlfriend obtained a protective order against him in Tarrant County in February 2020.

Eleven months later, Rahimi was a suspect in shootings when police searched his apartment and found guns. He eventually pleaded guilty to violating federal law. The appeals court overturned that conviction when it struck down the law. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the Biden administration’s appeal.

Rahimi remains jailed in Texas, where he faces other criminal charges. In a letter he wrote from jail last summer, after the Supreme Court agreed to hear his case, Rahimi said he would “stay away from all firearms and weapons” once he’s released. The New York Times first reported the existence of the letter.

Guns were used in 57% of killings of spouses, intimate partners, children or relatives in 2020, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Seventy women a month, on average, are shot and killed by intimate partners, according to the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.

“Guns and domestic are a deadly combination,” Prelogar said in court Tuesday.

A decision in U.S. v. Rahimi, 22-915, is expected by early summer.

New House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Tuesday that Republicans do not want to close things down, but he is well aware that his predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was ousted as speaker after compromising with Democrats in September to keep federal offices open.

“We certainly want to avoid a government shutdown,” Johnson said at a news conference alongside families with loved ones kidnapped in the Israel-Hamas war.

“It’s a dangerous time around the world right now,” he said. “We recognize that, and we’re doing our job.”

Johnson is facing one of his most difficult tests yet, just two weeks into the job. Rather than lead the House Republicans into a strategy, Johnson appears to be crowd-sourcing a way out of the government funding dilemma with his GOP colleagues.

At a closed-door meeting, House Republicans discussed stopgap measures, including a new idea gaining traction: a “laddered” approach that would fund parts of the government until early December and the rest until mid-January, according to Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the private gathering.

The Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, has been working to devise a more comprehensive spending plan that would fund the government at current levels while also considering President Joe Biden’s nearly $106 billion request for supplemental money for Ukraine, Israel, the Asia-Pacific region and border security.

“None of this will be easy to do, none of this,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

“The outcome of the next two weeks will hang on the same thing I’ve emphasized all year — bipartisan cooperation,” he said.

Congress is in this budget-shutdown loop because the House and Senate have failed, as they often do, to pass the dozen individual bills needed to fund the various agencies in the federal government. When the new budget year began Oct. 1, lawmakers agreed to approve funding at the current levels until Nov. 17, to allow time to finish up the work.

To complicate matters this time, Republicans are refusing Biden’s request to support Ukraine in battling Russia unless the president agrees to their demands to bolster security along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he spoke Monday with Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and did “make it clear to both of them: We have to have a credible solution” to the border.

McConnell said he is aligned with Biden’s “comprehensive approach” to funding Ukraine, Israel and other regions, but Republicans are “very serious” about including the border changes. Given that Senate is slimly divided between Democrats and Republicans, “the border needs to be a part of it, if it’s going to clear the Senate,” he said.

Biden is seeking nearly $14 billion in border money for holding facilities, asylum officers and other needs, including efforts to stop the flow of deadly fentanyl. Republicans say that does not go far enough and they are demanding policy changes that would make it more difficult for immigrants to claim asylum at the border. They also want to revive building the border wall.

The White House has been discussing some border policy changes, but dismissed the Senate Republican proposal and said it lacked policy provisions that would be important to Democrats, such as a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who came as children. “What we saw from Senate Republicans is not a serious piece of legislation,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Democrats decried the Republican proposal as a return to Donald Trump-era border policies. They said that the Ukraine money should not be held up as Congress tries to resolve border issues that have been a difficult policy problem for years.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said Congress cannot leave Ukraine behind as it confronts Russian President Vladimir Putin. She had blocked a Republican attempt Tuesday to pass the House’s Israel aid bill alone, without other aid.

“Ukraine is at a critical point in a brutal war. We must not give Putin a win and throw Ukraine to the wolves,” she said.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Ukraine’s military could soon have “empty rifles.” He said the decisions being made now in Congress could determine whether Kyiv, the capital, remains a city in Ukraine or falls to Russia in the next year.

While Biden had requested $61 billion for Ukraine as part of his package, Republican support is waning. Some Republicans are eying a smaller amount that focuses on military hardware rather than humanitarian and government aid in Kyiv.

Unable to finish their annual government funding work in the two weeks ahead, Congress will almost certainly have no other choice than a stopgap solution to avoid a government shutdown.

While the House and Senate have both approved packages of bills to fund the government, they take different approaches. House Republicans are veering dramatically from the agreement Biden and McCarthy struck earlier this year to set spending levels.

House Republicans are cutting money for most departments except the Pentagon, while the Senate also boosts defense and has shifted some resources. Without compromise, the final products have not been sent to Biden to become law.

Johnson presented several plans to Republican lawmakers at a closed-door meeting, according to lawmakers in the room.

The House’s hard-line conservatives, including many in the Freedom Caucus, mostly favored the two-step “laddered” approach because it would put a tight deadline on Congress to finish up the work and negotiate with the Senate.

But senior Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee warned that it would likely take far longer than to reach an agreement with the Senate on spending levels, especially when an agreement on topline spending that Biden and McCarthy struck is no longer being met.

Lawmakers do not expect any voting until early next week. That puts Congress on a tight deadline to avoid a shutdown.

But House Republicans noted that there is greater consensus around passing a stopgap funding measure than in September, when former McCarthy had to turn to Democrats for support to keep the government open, and then faced the vote to oust him.

The House Republicans spent most of last month struggling to elect a new speaker before settling on Johnson.

“After the last month, if we walk into a shutdown right now, we deserve what we get,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong, a Republican from North Dakota. “So we got to figure this out.”

The 234-188 tally came after enough Democrats joined with Republicans to censure Tlaib, a punishment one step below expulsion from the House. The three-term congresswoman has long been a target of criticism for her views on the decades-long conflict in the Middle East.

The debate on the censure resolution on Tuesday afternoon was emotional and intense. Republican Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia pushed the measure in response to what he called Tlaib’s promotion of antisemitic rhetoric. He said she has “levied unbelievable falsehoods about our greatest ally, Israel, and the attack on October 7.”

With other Democrats standing by her side, Tlaib defended her stance, saying she “will not be silenced and I will not let you distort my words.” She added that her criticism of Israel has always been directed toward its government and its leadership under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It is important to separate people and government,” she said. “The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent. And it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation.”

That criticism reached new heights after the Oct. 7 attack by the terrorist group Hamas left hundreds of Israelis dead and scores injured. Tlaib, who has family in the West Bank, came under heavy reproval after she failed to immediately condemn Hamas after the attack.

All Democrats initially stood by Tlaib and helped defeat the first censure resolution against her last week. But since then, many of her colleagues, including prominent Jewish members, have become more conflicted about her rhetoric about the war, especially because of a slogan she has used frequently that is widely seen as calling for the eradication of Israel.

Ultimately, more than 20 of them joined Republicans on Tuesday night to censure her after an effort to shelve the measure failed earlier in the day.

The latest censure push resulted in a dramatic vote on the House floor amid political tensions over the ongoing, deadly Israel-Hamas war. While the majority of both parties have historically stood firmly on the side of Israel, divisions have emerged in the Democratic Party about the American response.

Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., the lone Democrat to vote with Republicans on Tuesday to advance the censure resolution, said he believed it was important to debate the slogan “from the river to the sea.”

“It is nothing else but the call for the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews,” the Jewish Democrat said. “I will always defend the right to free speech. Tlaib has the right to say whatever she wants.”

He added, “But it cannot go unanswered.”

While the censure of a lawmaker carries no practical effect, it amounts to severe reproach from colleagues, as lawmakers who are censured are usually asked to stand in the well of the House as the censure resolution against them is read aloud. But the resolution against Tlaib did not call for the public admonishment.

With the vote, Tlaib will become the second Muslim-American woman in Congress to be formally admonished this year for her criticism of Israel. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was removed in February from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for similar comments she made about Israel.

Some on the left have criticized President Joe Biden’s stance and urged him to put conditions on U.S. support for Israel as its aggressive military campaign drives the Palestinian death toll higher.

While the vote against Tlaib will take place against the extraordinary backdrop of the war, the push to censure her is part of a growing pattern in the House.

Censure had long been viewed as a punishment of last resort, just one step below expulsion and to be triggered only for the most egregious wrongdoing. But censure resolutions are quickly becoming routine in the chamber, often wielded in strikingly partisan ways.

Many Democrats and some Republicans who opposed censuring Tlaib cited free speech and warned of the precedent it would set.

“This resolution not only degrades our Constitution, but it cheapens the meaning of discipline in this body for people who actually commit wrongful actions like bribery, fraud, violent assault and so on,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who defended Tlaib against the resolution on the floor late Tuesday.

A second resolution by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to censure Tlaib had also been scheduled for a procedural vote late Tuesday night. But that measure was put on hold after the censure resolution from McCormick advanced to a final vote.

Tlaib is now the 26th person to ever be censured by the chamber, and the second just this year. In June, Republicans voted to censure Democrat Adam Schiff of California for comments he made several years ago about investigations into then-President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

When the House was under Democratic control, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona was censured in 2021 for tweeting an animated video that depicted him striking Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York with a sword. And Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York was censured in 2010 over serious financial and campaign misconduct.

Trump will again skip the debate in Miami, instead holding a rally in Hialeah. He says he won’t participate due to his large lead in national and early state polls.

With voting set to start in leadoff Iowa in January, no one has thus far been able to shake Trump’s dominance of the Republican primary. Many of the candidates have gone after each other hoping to break out as a viable alternative to the former president, emphasizing their differences on foreign policy but also ripping Trump for his criticisms of the Israeli prime minister and claims that a group attacking Israel was “very smart.”

Republican strategist David Kochel, who has advised several past presidential campaigns, said despite Trump’s absence from the stage, the debate offers a chance for someone like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to try to emerge.

“Even if he’s not on the stage and basically all these candidates are all kind of fighting for second, I think it’s worth it,” Kochel said. “Because if this race does get much more quickly down to a two-person race, who knows what the dynamic will be?”

Kochel said though Trump has a lot of strength, “You still have a lot of voters in Iowa and New Hampshire open to somebody else.”

So far, however, Trump has retained huge leads despite facing four criminal indictments and a civil fraud case against his businesses for which he testified in New York this week.

His campaign has worked to overpower DeSantis in their shared home state and publicly said it wants to score blowout wins in early primary states to seal the nomination.

The rivalry between DeSantis and Haley has ramped up in recent weeks, with Haley rising in a prominent Iowa poll and gaining new interest from donors and voters. Both campaigns and allied super PACs have hit each other over the war in Israel and the U.S. relationship with China as Republicans take an increasingly antagonistic view of Beijing.

Both candidates have also diverged on abortion rights, a political challenge for Republicans since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Supporters of abortion rights claimed new momentum Tuesday after elections in several states went in their favor.

In a memo the DeSantis campaign distributed this week to donors, the Florida governor’s top advisers argued that their candidate is best situated to deny Trump a runaway win in leadoff Iowa and that the other Republican rivals, including Haley, are at best, spoilers in that effort who could hand Trump the nomination.

Haley’s campaign, however, contended in a memo that DeSantis and Haley are in “a dead heat” in Iowa, without acknowledging Trump’s lead.

In addition to DeSantis and Haley, also appearing on stage Wednesday will be South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

The Republican candidates have been staunchly supportive of Israel in its offensive after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack killing more than 1,400 people.

DeSantis has used his official role as governor to show support for Israel, winning praise from some of the state’s Democrats. He authorized the state to fly hundreds of Americans evacuated from Israel to the U.S., ordered state universities to disband chapters of a pro-Palestinian group, and arranged to help send weapons, ammunition and other supplies to Israel.

Haley, also the former governor of South Carolina, has leaned into her experience as Trump’s U.N. ambassador arguing in support of the Israeli government. She has forcefully scolded Ramaswamy, a first-time candidate who has challenged some traditional GOP foreign policy positions, as lacking experience and expertise.

Haley and DeSantis have also become more frequent and vocal critics of Trump in recent weeks.

Haley, in a speech last month to the Republican Jewish Coalition, slammed Trump’s compliments of foreign strongmen and described his style of “chaos, vendettas and drama” as dangerous.

DeSantis, who has more directly embraced many of Trump’s policies and sought to win over some of his key supporters, has in recent days been questioning if Trump “can summon the balls to show up to the debate.” His campaign quickly starting selling sets of two golf balls for $18 in a box that declares, “Ron DeSantis has a pair” and “He shows up.”

The three remaining candidates — Christie, Scott, and Ramaswamy — are all taking different paths.

Ramaswamy has run as a potential inheritor to Trump’s “America First” mantle. He said he wants the U.S. to avoid so-called “forever wars” and focus on China, while also telling the Republican Jewish Coalition that he would “love nothing more” than for Israel “to put the heads of the top 100 Hamas leaders on stakes and line them up on the Israel-Gaza border.”

Christie, the former New Jersey governor, has focused almost exclusively on New Hampshire’s primary and become the race’s most vocal critic of Trump.

And Scott is hoping for a strong finish in Iowa, where he’s courting the state’s white evangelical voters and spending millions on ads leading up to the Jan. 15 caucuses.

The two-hour debate will be moderated by NBC News anchors Lester Holt and Kristen Welker and conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt, who hosts a morning talk show for the Salem Radio Network.

The race’s overwhelming front-runner, meanwhile, will be in a stadium about 10 miles away from the debate in the heavily Latino city of Hialeah.

Trump’s campaign has suggested the Republican National Committee should stop having debates and instead focus on supporting his campaign.

Top advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita raised Trump’s debunked claims of election fraud and said that if the party does not cancel debates, it is “an admission to the grassroots that their concerns about voter integrity are not taken seriously and national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden than ensuring a safe and secure election.”

The RNC did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Fiercely fought contests in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio could offer a 2024 roadmap for both parties.

Democrats have largely succeeded in running on the issue in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade, which effectively punted abortion law to the states. For the most part, they have done so by framing the debate as one of personal freedom – and leaving Republicans to haggle over the politically painful particulars.

A victory for abortion rights advocates in Ohio – where voters could enshrine a constitutional amendment protecting abortion access – along with success in high-stakes races for governor, the state Supreme Court and control of the state legislature in other states, could further demonstrate the potency of the issue.

Meanwhile, the gubernatorial election in Mississippi asks a different question: Is it still possible for a Democrat to win a statewide race in the deepest of deep-red states?

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who is seeking a second term, is knee-deep in a corruption scandal as the state faces another health-care crisis. Democrat Brandon Presley is banking on Reeves’ foibles, a famous name – Elvis Presley was a second cousin – and a promise to expand Medicaid while cutting regressive grocery taxes. (Both oppose abortion rights.)

Other intense – and expensive – campaigns will be decided in Pennsylvania, where abortion is again top of mind with a seat on the state Supreme Court in the balance, and in New Jersey and New York, where Democrats’ strength will be tested.

Philadelphia and Houston will also go to the polls to elect new mayors. Former City Councilmember Cherelle Parker is poised to become Philadelphia’s first female mayor, while Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is running neck-and-neck with state Sen. John Whitmire in Houston. That race could go to a run-off.

And in Rhode Island, favored Democrat Gabe Amo and Republican Gerry Leonard square off in a special election to complete the term of Democratic former Rep. David Cicilline.

Here are six things to watch for during Tuesday’s elections:

Can Youngkin turn Virginia red?

All 140 seats in the state’s Senate and House of Delegates are being contested in Virginia’s legislative elections Tuesday, but the biggest name in the race is one that won’t appear on the ballot.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has pulled out all the stops to help Republicans flip control of the Senate, where Democrats hold a narrow majority, and hold on to the House of Delegates, where Republicans hold a similar advantage. He endorsed in key primaries, launched a bus tour to promote early voting and raised a stunning $18.7 million through his leadership PAC, Spirit of Virginia, thanks in large part to speculation that he could launch a last-minute entry into the Republican presidential primary if he has a good Tuesday.

Youngkin has emphasized education, public safety and the economy in his ads, urging Virginians to send Republicans to Richmond to help him further his agenda. He’s also pitched a 15-week abortion limit, with exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the patient, which he says is a consensus opinion. Democrats have focused on abortion as well, calling the 15-week limit a ban, as well as arguing Republicans will roll back progressive policies on voting rights and climate change that they passed when they briefly held control after the 2019 elections.

As for Youngkin’s future? He has said that he’s focused on Virginia’s elections, but that hasn’t slowed speculation about what’s next. Still, should Republicans win full control of the state government on Tuesday, don’t automatically expect that to mean the state has fully flipped red – it hasn’t voted for a Republican in the last four presidential cycles.

Abortion (literally) on the ballot in Ohio

The 2022 midterm elections showed that when abortion rights are on the ballot, voters overwhelmingly favored protecting or expanding access. Ohio could upend that narrative.

Voter will either pass Issue 1 – an initiative that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution – or hand abortion rights advocates one of their biggest defeats since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

Abortion rights groups have argued Issue 1 is the only way to stop the state’s six-week abortion ban, which includes no exceptions for rape or incest, from being enforced. The law was blocked in court last year but is now being considered by the state Supreme Court.

Abortion opponents — including Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who signed the six-week ban into law — have argued that Issue 1 goes too far and would prevent Republicans from passing a compromise bill.

This is the only abortion rights ballot initiative before voters this year. If Issue 1’s backers win, it would further suggest that abortion access is popular, even in red states, and motivate advocates looking to get similar measures on the ballot in 2024. If voters reject Issue 1, it would signal to abortion opponents that there’s a path to blocking these measures after all.

Historic clash in Kentucky

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, one of the few remaining red-state Democratic leaders, is running for a second term against GOP state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Trump-backed conservative.

Though not explicitly on the ballot, abortion has featured prominently in the campaign, with Beshear arguing that Cameron will double down on the commonwealth’s already harsh restrictions.

Beshear has good reason to hammer away at the issue. A year ago, Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure that would have denied constitutional protections for abortion.

Cameron has said he would support legislation broadening exceptions to the current ban – one of the strictest in the country – if lawmakers brought it his desk, but Beshear in a debate noted that Cameron had signed a Kentucky Right to Life survey saying he opposed them.

If Cameron does pull out a victory over Beshear, he will become the state’s first Black governor – and the first elected Black Republican governor in US history.

Battle for the bench in Pennsylvania

A year after Democrat John Fetterman made abortion rights a focus of his winning Senate campaign over GOP nominee Mehmet Oz, Pennsylvania Democrats are going all-in for state Supreme Court candidate Daniel McCaffery.

The seat, which opened after the death last year of Democratic Chief Justice Max Baer, could be crucial to determining the future of abortion rights in the commonwealth, where the issue is poised to come before the court.

Democrats hold a 4-2 advantage on the bench, but a win Tuesday for Republican nominee Carolyn Carluccio would narrow the margin ahead of elections in 2025, when three Democratic incumbents are up for reelection.

Mississippi politics all shook up?

From the start of this gubernatorial election, long-standing dynamics of Mississippi have been at play. Incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, has had to run under the cloud of a scandal involving former NFL quarterback Brett Favre and concerning the misappropriation of millions of dollars of public funds meant for welfare recipients around the state.

Tate faces Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, second cousin of Elvis Presley who has framed his candidacy around a populist emphasis on kitchen-table issues. Presley is hoping that focusing on building a coalition of Black voters, disaffected Republicans and Southern Democrats can propel him to the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion. If Presley wins, it would be the first time in over two decades that a Democrat was elected governor in the Southern state.

Still, it’s an uphill battle for Presley. Mississippi consistently trends Republican, and even an anti-abortion Democrat with a marquee surname in the state is not ensured an easy path to victory. Most polling has shown Reeves in the lead.

The underlying theme of this race is whether a battered incumbent Republican incumbent could lose to a Democrat playing the old Southern Democrat approach to Mississippi politics.

Democratic dry run in NY and NJ

Democrats in the Northeast have shown signs of weakness over the past two elections, with the governors of New York and New Jersey both winning their races by narrower-than-expected margins and the New York GOP making major gains in the Gotham suburbs.

That nudge to the right was largely driven by strong Republican messaging on crime and the economy – strategies that will again be tested on Tuesday, when every seat in the New Jersey Legislature and New York City Council, respectively, will be up for grabs.

Democrats control all those bodies and, barring a major shock, will retain their power. The question: Can Republicans narrow the margins and send a message to the country ahead of the 2024 campaign?

One of the most closely monitored contests is for the City of Miami Commission District 1 seat, which has garnered attention due to its former occupant, Alex Díaz de la Portilla, who is facing corruption charges, including money laundering and bribery, related to campaign payments.

Díaz de la Portilla’s arrest and suspension by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis left his seat vacant. Now, four candidates, including Miguel Angel Gabela, Francisco “Frank” Pichel, Mercedes “Merci” Rodriguez, and Marvin Tapia, are vying for Díaz de la Portilla’s role.

Despite facing criminal charges, Díaz de la Portilla has maintained his innocence, claiming that the accusations are politically motivated.

“this is a work of fiction,” said Díaz de la Portilla after he bonded out on Sept. 14. “I’ll repeat it again: This is a work of fiction by democrat state attorney targeting a republican city commissioner. Period.”

In Miami’s District 4, incumbent Manolo Reyes, who recently revealed he is undergoing treatment for leukemia, faces a challenge from Andres Vallina.

Meanwhile, Miami Beach is gearing up for the first mayoral election in six years, as current mayor Dan Gelber has reached his term limit. The candidates for Miami Beach mayor include Michael Gongora, Mike Grieco, Commissioner Steven Meiner, and Bill Roedy.

In Surfside, where several heated commission meetings have occurred, voters will decide whether to extend term lengths for commissioners, the mayor, and vice mayor, and stagger the years each seat is voted on rather than all at once.

Homestead residents will be selecting candidates for four City Council seats.

In the special election for Seat 1 (Northwest District) voters have three choices: Thomas B. Davis, Amy Spadaro, and James Wyatt. This special election aims to fill the seat vacated by Vice Mayor Julio Guzman, who ran for mayor and lost to incumbent Steve Losner last month. The candidate with the most votes in the Seat 1 race wins.

In Seat 2 (Keys Gate), incumbent Sean L. Fletcher faces challenger Ana San Roman. Seat 3 (Villages) sees incumbent Larry Roth up against William R. Rea. Lastly, in Seat 6 (Oasis), Clemente Canabal and Toshiba Mitchell vie for this seat.

In Hialeah, four candidates are competing for two City Council seats. In Group 1, voters must choose between incumbent Monica Nicole Perez and Elias D. Montes de Oca. In Group 6, incumbent Vivian Casáls-Muñoz and Angelica Pacheco vie for support.

These elections in Homestead and Hialeah are pivotal moments for these cities, with voters making choices that will shape their local leadership.

Voters across Miami-Dade have the opportunity to make their voices heard on critical issues, and each vote will shape the future of their respective communities. If needed, a runoff election for the Miami City Commission race is scheduled for Nov. 21.

The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m, and vote-by-mail ballots must be received by the Elections Department by 7 p.m. on Election Day.

Five hopefuls will participate in Wednesday night’s debate at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, according to the Republican National Committee.

To have qualified for the third debate, candidates needed at least 4% support in two national polls or 4% in one national poll as well as two polls from four of the early-voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. All the polls used for qualification must have been approved by the RNC.

The White House hopefuls also needed at least 70,000 unique donors, with at least 200 of those coming from 20 states or territories. Additionally, they had to sign an RNC pledge promising to support the party’s eventual nominee.

The escalating qualification markers have become increasingly difficult for candidates to satisfy. One candidate, former Vice President Mike Pence, suspended his campaign last month, avoiding the ignominy of failing to qualify.

A look at where the candidates stand:

WHO’S IN
RON DESANTIS

Early on, the Florida governor was seen as the top rival for Donald Trump, finishing a distant second to the current GOP front-runner in both early-voting state and national polls but raising an impressive amount of money.

DeSantis has recently shifted some of his Florida-based staff to Iowa, pinning his chances of emerging as an alternative to Trump alternative squarely on the leadoff state. This week he picked up the sought-after endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds.

TIM SCOTT

The senator from South Carolina has been hoping that the debates could give his campaign a needed boost after his struggles to catch fire compared to his rivals. But there had even been some question of whether he would make the Miami stage, given its elevated polling requirements.

In a pre-debate memo shared with The Associated Press on Monday, Scott’s campaign manager sought to contrast his candidate with DeSantis and Haley, saying Scott planned to ask how either could “present a contrast with Donald Trump when he made each of their political careers.”

NIKKI HALEY

The only Republican woman onstage — and in the field — Haley has benefited from a bounce in attention following each of the previous debates, as well as the campaign’s shift toward foreign policy after Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

As she and DeSantis have escalated their barbs over issues including the Israel-Hamas war and China’s influence, Wednesday night’s debate offers a chance for them to duke it out in person.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY

The political newcomer and youngest GOP hopeful has been a debate-stage target of attacks on his lack of experience — jabs that have previously helped boost both Ramaswamy’s campaign coffers and his name ID in the broad Republican field.

After the second debate in September, Ramaswamy asked the RNC to change its rules for the third, requesting that participation be limited to four candidates, with a unique donor requirement of 100,000. The party kept its rules as is.

CHRIS CHRISTIE

As many of his GOP rivals have gone all in on Iowa ahead of the state’s leadoff caucuses, the former New Jersey governor often has New Hampshire all to himself.

Christie has charted a path there as the race’s most vocal critic of Trump, casting himself as the only Republican willing to directly take him on, and arguing that Trump will lose to President Joe Biden next November if he’s the party’s nominee.

Without Trump at the debates, Christie has been left without his intended target but has brought him up nonetheless. In September, Christie looked directly into the camera and declared that if Trump keeps skipping debates, he would deserve a new nickname: “Donald Duck.”

WHO DECIDED NOT TO PARTICIPATE (AGAIN)
DONALD TRUMP

The current GOP front-runner is skipping his third straight debate, this time opting to hold a competing event of his own a half-hour away in Hialeah, Florida.

Trump says he is forgoing the debates because he does not want to elevate his lower-polling opponents by being on stage with them.

WHO QUALIFIED FOR PREVIOUS DEBATES BUT NOT THIS ONE
DOUG BURGUM

Burgum, a former software entrepreneur now in his second term as North Dakota’s governor, will miss his first debate of the cycle after coming up short on the polling requirements.

ASA HUTCHINSON

The former two-term Arkansas governor participated in the first debate but failed to qualify for the second. He said in a statement after missing out on the second debate that his goal was to increase his polling numbers to 4% in an early state before Thanksgiving.

“If that goal is met, then I remain competitive and in contention for either Caucus Day or Primary Day,” he wrote back in September.

The former president’s barbed testimony spurred the judge to admonish: “This is not a political rally.”

Trump’s long-awaited testimony about property valuations and financial statements was punctuated by personal jabs at state Judge Arthur Engoron, whom he said was biased against him, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, whom he derided as a “political hack.” He proudly boasted of his real estate business — “I’m worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements” — and disputed claims that he had deceived banks and insurers.

“This is the opposite of fraud,” he declared. Referring to James, a Democrat whose office brought the lawsuit, he said, “The fraud is her.”

The testy exchanges and frequent rebukes from the judge underscored Trump’s unwillingness to adapt his famously freewheeling rhetorical style to a formal courtroom setting governed by rules of evidence and legal protocol. His presence on the stand was a vivid reminder of the legal troubles he faces as he vies to reclaim the White House in 2024.

It also functioned as a campaign platform for the former president and leading Republican presidential candidate to raise anew to supporters his claims of political persecution at the hands of government lawyers and judges.

“People are sick and tired of what’s happening. I think it is a very sad day for America,” Trump told reporters outside the courtroom after roughly three-and-a-half hours on the stand.

The fraud case doesn’t carry the prospect of prison as Trump’s upcoming criminal cases do. But its allegations of financial impropriety cut to the very heart of the brand he spent decades crafting. Engoron has already ruled that Trump committed fraud by inflating his financial statements, putting the the ex-president’s future control of Trump Tower and his other marquee properties into question.

The non-jury trial addresses other claims in the lawsuit brought by James against Trump, his company and top executives, including his eldest sons. She wants the defendants to fork over what she claims is more than $300 million in ill-gotten gains and to be banned from doing business in New York.

The civil trial is one of numerous legal proceedings facing Trump as he runs for a second term, including federal and state charges accusing him of crimes including illegally hoarding classified documents and scheming to overturn the 2020 presidential election. His legal and political strategies have now become completely intertwined as he hopscotches between campaign events and court hearings, a schedule that will only intensify once his criminal trials begin.

Trump has been particularly engaged in his fraud trial, aggrieved by the suggestion that he’s worth less than he’s claimed.

“I’m worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements,” he said Monday on the stand, telling a state lawyer, “You go around and try and demean me and try and hurt me, probably for political reasons.”

His testimony had gotten off to a contentious start, with the judge turning to Trump’s attorney at one point and saying, “I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will.”

The courtroom at 60 Centre St. had already become a familiar destination for Trump, who spent days over the past month voluntarily seated at the defense table, observing the proceedings. He took the stand once before — unexpectedly and briefly — after he was accused of violating a partial gag order. He denied violating the rules, but Engoron disagreed and fined him anyway.

His turn as a witness gave him the biggest opportunity yet to respond to allegations against him.

Summoned by lawyers for the state, Trump repeatedly bristled at the suggestion that he had ever intended to defraud financial institutions. He said that he’d been misquoted or taken too literally in past public comments about his business dealings and his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, and that disclaimers in his financial statements covered any missteps. He returned to a familiar position that no one had been victimized, though state lawyers contend that Trump was able to get lower interest rates and other benefits because of the wealth reflected on his financial statements.

“Not one bank lost money. Not one insurance company lost money,” he declared.

Tensions between Engoron and Trump, already on display in recent weeks, when the judge fined him a total of $15,000 for incendiary outside-of-court comments, were evident early on Monday when the ex-president was repeatedly scolded about the length and content of his answers.

Engoron, who determined in a ruling earlier that Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame, will decide the non-jury case. He cautioned at one point that he was prepared to draw “negative inferences” against the former president if he failed to rein in his answers.

“I do not want to hear everything this witness has to say. He has a lot to say that has nothing to do with the case or the questions,” the judge said.

Despite the testy back-and-forth early in the day, Trump was later able to veer into expansive answers without anyone cutting him off, using the opportunity to rail against James, the judge and the proceedings in general.

“I think that she’s a political hack, and I think she used this case to try and become governor, and she used it successfully to become attorney general. I think it’s a disgrace that this case is going on,” Trump said.

Of Engoron, Trump said, “He ruled against me, and he said I was a fraud before he knew anything about me.”

James, who was in the courtroom, stared straight ahead at Trump as he spoke and was seen chuckling when Trump suggested she didn’t know anything about one of his properties, which is located across the street from her office. Afterward, she told reporters, “He rambled. He hurled insults. But we expected that.”

Monday’s testimony centered on the core of the allegations by the state attorney general: that Trump and his company intentionally inflated property values and deceived banks and insurers in the pursuit of business deals and loans.

Echoing the stance taken by two of his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric, in their own testimony last week, Trump sought to downplay his direct involvement in preparing and assessing financial statements that the attorney general claims were grossly inflated and fraudulent.

“All I did was authorize and tell people to give whatever is necessary for the accountants to do the statements,” he said. As for the results, “I would look at them, I would see them and maybe on some occasions, I would have some suggestions.”

He also played down the significance of the statements, which went to banks and others to secure financing and deals.

“Banks didn’t find them very relevant, and they had a disclaimer clause — you would call it a worthless statement clause,” he said, insisting that after decades in real estate, “I probably know banks as well as anybody … I know what they look at. They look at the deal, they look at the location.”

He complained that his 2014 financial statements shouldn’t be a subject of the lawsuit at all.

“First of all it’s so long ago, it’s well beyond the statute of limitations,” Trump said before turning on Engoron, saying he allowed state lawyers to pursue claims involving such years-old documents “because he always rules against me.”

Engoron said: “You can attack me in whichever way you want, but please answer the questions.”

Conditioned by decades of trials and legal disputes, Trump is now poised to reprise his role as witness under extraordinary circumstances: as a former Republican president fighting to save the real estate empire that vaulted him to stardom and the White House.

Trump is set to testify Monday at his New York civil fraud trial, taking the stand in a deeply personal matter that is central his image as a successful businessman and threatens to cost him control of marquee properties such as Trump Tower. His highly anticipated testimony in the trial of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit follows that of his eldest sons, Trump Organization executives Eric and Donald Trump Jr., who testified last week. His eldest daughter, Ivanka, is set to testify on Wednesday.

Trump has testified in court in at least eight trials since 1986, according to an Associated Press review of court records and news coverage. He also has been questioned under oath in more than a dozen depositions and regulatory hearings.

In 1985, he was called to testify before Congress as owner of the USFL’s New Jersey Generals and he testified on behalf of lawyer and friend Roy Cohn at a state disciplinary hearing that led to Cohn’s disbarment. In an early flash of his firebrand persona, in 1986, Trump told New Jersey’s casino commission that plans for highway overpasses near one of his casinos “would be a disaster. It would be a catastrophe.”

Those testimonies, captured in thousands of pages of transcripts and some on videotape, offer clues to the approach Trump is likely to take when he testifies Monday. They show clear parallels between Trump as a witness and Trump as a president and current candidate for the office. His rhetorical style in legal proceedings over the years bears echoes of his political verve: a mix of ego, charm, defensiveness, aggressiveness, sharp language and deflection. He has been combative and boastful, but sometimes vague and prone to hedging or being dismissive.

Testifying in the USFL’s antitrust lawsuit against the NFL in 1986, Trump denounced allegations that he had spied on NFL officials at one of his hotels, calling the claim “such a false interpretation it’s disgusting.”

In 1988, as he sought to buy Eastern Air Lines’ Northeast shuttle service, Trump turned on the charisma, flashing a wide smile at the judge’s female law clerks and shaking hands with the bailiff during a break in his testimony at a federal court hearing in Washington. Trump testified that his $365 million purchase, later approved, would be a “major boost in morale” for employees.

On the stand in a boxing-related case in 1990, Trump described a Mike Tyson fight he planned for one of his casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as “one of the greatest rematches you could have.” Accused by two men of cutting them out of a riverboat gambling project, Trump professed ignorance, testifying in 1999: “I was shocked by this whole case. I had no idea who these people were.”

Trump was briefly called to the witness stand in the New York case last month to explain comments outside of court that the judge said violated a limited gag order.

Before that, he last testified in a courtroom in 2013, two years before launching his winning presidential campaign. An 87-year-old suburban Chicago widower had sued him over changes to contract terms for a hotel and condominium tower she had bought units in as an investment. Trump grew increasingly agitated as his testimony wore on, at one point raising his arms and bellowing: “And then she sued me. It’s unbelievable!”

In 1990, Trump testified in a losing effort in a lawsuit over his company’s failure to make pension contributions on behalf of about 200 undocumented Polish workers hired to tear down a building to make way for Trump Tower. A year later, he was in court again in Manhattan, testifying against a man who claimed he had a contract to develop Trump’s board game and was owed 25% of profits from “Trump: The Game.”

Trump won that one and another lawsuit in 2005, where he testified that a construction company had “fleeced” him by overcharging him by $1.5 million for work at a golf course in New York’s Westchester County.

When questioned in the past about his business and financial dealings, Trump has sometimes deflected responsibility and blame. In a 2013 deposition over a failed Florida condo project, Trump blamed an employee for paperwork that said he was developing a project when, in reality, he wasn’t.

Another refrain in Trump’s depositions is his incredulity that he would be taken so seriously for hyping up his real estate projects.

“You always want to put the best possible spin on a property that you can,” Trump said in a December 2007 deposition in his lawsuit against a journalist he had accused of downplaying his wealth. “No different than any other real estate developer, no different than any other businessman, no different than any politician.”