USA
A weekend of ferocious winter weather could see low-temperature records set in the US heartland
A long weekend of ferocious winter weather loomed across the U.S. on Saturday, as a continuing wave of Arctic storms threatened to break low-temperature records in the nation's heartland, spread cold and snow from coast to coast and cast a chill over everything ranging from football playoffs to presidential campaigns.
As the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend began, the weather forecast for the U.S. was a crazy quilt of color-coded advisories, from an ice storm warning in Oregon to a blizzard warning in the northern Plains, high wind warnings in New Mexico and flood warnings in the mid-Atlantic.
Fallout from the storm included a 100-vehicle stall on Interstate 80 in Iowa, after semitrailers jackknifed on the slippery roadway and blocked traffic. Some cars were stuck in the same spot for five hours as blowing snow encircled the vehicles. Tow trucks had to be brought in to get them off the roadway.
“Many roads are drifted shut,” Sgt. Alex Dinkla of the Iowa State Patrol said. “They (road crews) are working the snow-blowers like crazy to get some roadways open, but they’re actually struggling. The minute they get them open, they’re actually blowing right back shut because of such high winds we’re seeing right now.”
Parts of Montana fell below minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 degrees Celsius) Saturday morning, and the National Weather Service said similar temperatures were expected as far as northern Kansas, with minus 50 F (minus 46 C) possible in the Dakotas.
Read: Winter weather kills 1, injures 8 in southern Germany
“Certainly, it's been very active across a large portion of the country. We've had, now, multiple back-to-back storms” parading across the country, weather service meteorologist Zach Taylor said. That typically happens at least a couple of times in the U.S. winter, he said, and “we're in the heart of it.”
Governors from New York to Louisiana warned residents to be prepared. Some states already had reported weather-related deaths earlier this week from avalanches in California and Idaho and cold exposure in Illinois' Chicago suburbs. In Wisconsin, a man died snow-blowing his driveway.
Power was out Saturday morning in hundreds of thousands of households and businesses, mainly in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to poweroutage.us. In Illinois, officials pleaded with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to stop sending migrants to Chicago, where city-run shelters were full and some new arrivals were staying in parked “warming buses.” Abbott refused, while urging Texans to get ready for a chill with ice on the way Monday.
In St. Louis, the National Weather Service warned of rare and “life-threatening” cold.
In Iowa, an electronic billboard read 3 degrees F( minus 16 degrees C) Saturday morning in the capital of Des Moines.
Des Moines residents Katy Becker, 26, and her fiance, Dalton Gustafson, 30, were hoping to fly to Florida for a trip to celebrate their engagement and Becker’s birthday on Jan. 16. They got snowed in, but will try again Sunday.
“We’ll trade the dusty snow for some sandy beaches,” Becker said.
“Negative 20 to 80 degrees — 100 degree flip in temperature,” Gustafson added.
The air temperature in parts of the state could dip as low as minus 14 F (minus 26 C) on Monday, when Iowa's caucuses kick off the U.S. presidential primary season. And that was to say nothing of the wind: Forecasters said it would be Wednesday before below-zero windchills go away.
Republican contenders Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and former President Donald Trump all canceled weekend campaign events because of the winter storm.
Iowa plow operators struggled Saturday to keep roads clear amid heavy snow and winds gusting up to 30 mph (48 km per hour), which blew snow back onto roads as soon as they were cleared. The Iowa Department of Transportation warned against travel across the state.
Read: Rain, snow fall as California braces for brunt of storm
Dinkla said troopers had handled 86 crashes and 535 motorist assists since Friday. Most of the assists were to help stalled cars and trucks get unstuck. Fifteen people have been hurt in accidents. In one wreck on an icy interstate highway, a semitrailer hit a state patrol car and virtually destroyed it. The trooper escaped injury.
Even snow-free roads aren’t safe.
“The thing that we’re seeing is that people think that roadways are clear in a lot of areas, but they’re not able to slow down because the roadways are a sheet of ice,” Dinkla said.
In South Dakota, the air temperature Saturday morning was minus 17 F (minus 27 C) at the Crow Creek Sioux Reservation, but a whipping wind of 30 mph (48 kph) made it feel like minus 48 F (minus 44 C). With a homeless shelter already at capacity, tribal leaders opened a gym for others needing shelter.
Near-record cold in Kansas City will make for a frigid NFL playoff game Saturday night, when the Chiefs host Miami. Fans will be allowed to bring in blankets and first-aid stations were set up at Arrowhead Stadium. The Buffalo Bills’ playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers was moved from Sunday to Monday because of dangerous weather conditions.
Coastal areas in southern Maine and New Hampshire were pounded by between 1 and 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm) of rain on Saturday morning, causing some roads to flood, said Justin Arnott, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Maine. He said Portland, Maine, was also bracing for flooding from a potentially record high tide in the early afternoon.
Read also: At 7.4 degrees, Tetulia records lowest temperature so far this winter
Biden condemns white supremacy in a campaign speech at a church where Black people were killed
Courting Black voters he needs to win reelection, President Joe Biden on Monday denounced the “poison” of white supremacy in America, declaring at the site of a deadly racist church shooting in South Carolina that such ideology has no place in America, “not today, tomorrow or ever.”
Biden spoke from the pulpit of Mother Emanuel AME Church, where in 2015 nine Black parishioners were shot to death by the white stranger they had invited to join their Bible study. The Democratic president’s speech followed his blunt remarks last Friday on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, in which he excoriated former President Donald Trump for “glorifying” rather than condemning political violence.
At Mother Emanuel, Biden said “the word of God was pierced by bullets of hate, of rage, propelled not just by gunpowder, but by a poison, a poison that has for too long haunted this nation."
That's "white supremacy,” he said, the view by some whites that they are superior to other races. “It is a poison, throughout our history, that's ripped this nation apart. This has no place in America. Not today, tomorrow or ever.”
It was a grim way to kick off a presidential campaign, particularly for someone known for his unfailing optimism and belief that American achievements are limitless. But it’s a reflection of the emphasis Biden and his campaign are placing on energizing Black voters amid deepening concerns among Democrats that the president could lose support from this critical constituency heading into the election.
Biden’s campaign advisers and aides hope the visit lays out the stakes of the race in unequivocal terms three years after the cultural saturation of Trump’s words and actions while he was president. It's a contrast they hope will be paramount to voters in 2024.
Biden also used his second major campaign event of the year to thank the state's Black voters. After an endorsement by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, one of the highest-ranking African Americans in the U.S. House, the state made Biden the winner of its Democratic presidential primary in 2020. That, in turn, set him on a path to become the party's nominee and defeat Trump to win the presidency.
“I owe you,” he said.
Biden was briefly interrupted when several people upset over by his staunch support for Israel in its war against Hamas called out that if he really cared about lives lost he would call for a cease-fire in Gaza to help innocent Palestinians who are being killed under Israel's bombardment. The chants of “cease-fire now” were drowned out by audience members chanting “four more years.”
The president also swiped at Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, and Trump, without naming either one.
Haley was governor at the time of the shooting and gained national attention for her response, which included signing legislation into law removing the Confederate flag from the state Capitol. But she has been on the defensive recently for not explicitly naming slavery as the root cause of the Civil War when the question was posed at a campaign event. Her campaign responded Monday with a list of comments attributed to Biden that it said showed he's racially insensitive.
Biden called it a “lie” that the war was about states' rights. “So let me be clear, for those who don't seem to know: Slavery was the cause of the Civil War. There's no negotiation about that.”
Haley, speaking at a Fox News town hall on Monday, pushed back that it was “offensive” for Biden to give a political speech at the church. She also raised Biden’s ties to Democratic segregationist senators early in his career.
During his successful 2020 run for the White House, Biden faced criticism from fellow Democratic contenders for alluding to his work with Sens. James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia while trying to make a point about lost civility in national politics.
“I don’t need someone who palled around with segregationists in the '70s and has said racist comments all the way through his career lecturing me or anyone in South Carolina about what it means to have racism, slavery, or anything related to the Civil War,” Haley said.
On more current events, Biden noted the scores of failed attempts by Trump in the courts to overturn the 2020 election in an attempt to hold onto power, as well as the former president's embrace of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
“Let me say what others cannot: We must reject political violence in America. Always, not sometimes. Always. It's never appropriate,” Biden said. He said “losers are taught to concede when they lose. And he's a loser,” meaning Trump.
It was June 17, 2015, when a 21-year-old white man walked into the church and, intending to ignite a race war, shot and killed nine Black parishioners and wounded one more. Biden was vice president when he attended the memorial service in Charleston.
Biden's aides and allies say the shootings are among the critical moments when the nation's political divide started to sharpen and crack. Though Trump, the current Republican presidential front-runner, was not in office at the time and has called the shooting “horrible,” Biden is seeking to tie Trump’s current rhetoric to such violence.
Two years after the attack, as the “Unite The Right" gathering of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, erupted in violent clashes with counterprotesters. Trump said merely that “there is blame on both sides."
Biden and his aides argue it’s all part of the same problem: Trump refused to condemn the actions of the white nationalists at that gathering. He’s repeatedly used rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” yet insisted he had no idea that one of the world’s most reviled and infamous figures had used similar words.
And Trump continues to repeat his false claims that he won the 2020 election, as well as his assertion that the Capitol rioters were patriotic and those serving prison time are “hostages.”
At Mother Emanuel, Biden revisited themes from the Jan. 6 anniversary speech he delivered Friday.
Biden has repeatedly suggested that democracy itself is on the ballot, asking whether it is still “America’s sacred cause.”
Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden and three other felony cases, argues that Biden and other top Democrats are themselves seeking to undermine democracy by using the legal system to thwart the campaign of Biden's chief rival.
South Carolina is the first official Democratic nominating contest where Biden wants another strong showing.
In an interview with The Associated Press before Biden's appearance, Malcolm Graham, a brother of Charleston church victim Cynthia Graham-Hurd, said the threat of racism and hate-fueled violence is part of a needed national conversation about race and American democracy.
“Racism, hatred and discrimination continue to be the Achilles' heel of America, of our nation,” said Graham, a city councilman in Charlotte, North Carolina. “Certainly, what happened to the Emanual Nine years ago is a visible example of that. What happened in Buffalo, years later, where people were killed under similar circumstances, shows that racism and discrimination are still real and it’s even in our politics.”
After the speech, Biden met privately with religious leaders and family members and survivors of the church shooting. He also dropped in at Hannibal's Kitchen, a soul food restaurant, to shake hands.
Later Monday, Biden flew to Dallas to make a brief stop at a memorial service for Eddie Bernice Johnson, the influential former Texas congresswoman who died on New Year's Eve. Johnson was 89.
Biden said in a statement last week that he and Johnson had worked together during her 30 years in Congress and he was grateful for her friendship and partnership.
The Supreme Court will decide if Donald Trump can be kept off 2024 presidential ballots
The Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether former President Donald Trump can be kept off the ballot because of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, inserting the court squarely in the 2024 presidential campaign.
The justices acknowledged the need to reach a decision quickly, as voters will soon begin casting presidential primary ballots across the country. The court agreed to take up Trump’s appeal of a case from Colorado stemming from his role in the events that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Read: An election that could determine fate of American democracy: Biden starting campaign year
Underscoring the urgency, arguments will be held on Feb. 8, during what is normally a nearly monthlong winter break for the justices. The compressed timeframe could allow the court to produce a decision before Super Tuesday on March 5, when the largest number of delegates are up for grabs in a single day, including in Colorado.
Trump, speaking at a campaign event in Iowa, said: “All I want is fair. I just hope that they’re going to be fair.”
The court will be considering for the first time the meaning and reach of a provision of the 14th Amendment barring some people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office. The amendment was adopted in 1868, following the Civil War. It has been so rarely used that the nation’s highest court had no previous occasion to interpret it.
Colorado’s Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, ruled last month that Trump should not be on the Republican primary ballot. The decision was the first time the 14th Amendment was used to bar a presidential contender from the ballot.
Trump is separately appealing to state court a ruling by Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, that he was ineligible to appear on that state’s ballot over his role in the Capitol attack. Both the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state’s rulings are on hold until the appeals play out.
The high court’s decision to intervene, which both sides called for, is the most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore in 2000, when a conservative majority effectively decided the election for Republican George W. Bush. Only Justice Clarence Thomas remains from that court.
Three of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Trump, though they have repeatedly ruled against him in 2020 election-related lawsuits, as well as his efforts to keep documents related to Jan. 6 and his tax returns from being turned over to congressional committees.
At the same time, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have been in the majority of conservative-driven decisions that overturned the five-decade-old constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights and struck down affirmative action in college admissions.
Some Democratic lawmakers have called on Thomas to step aside from the case because of his wife’s support for Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Thomas is unlikely to agree, and there was every indication Friday that all the justices are participating. Thomas has recused himself from only one other case related to the 2020 election, involving former law clerk John Eastman, and so far the people trying to disqualify Trump haven’t asked him to recuse.
The 4-3 Colorado decision cites a ruling by Gorsuch when he was a federal judge in that state. That Gorsuch decision upheld Colorado’s move to strike a naturalized citizen from the state’s presidential ballot because he was born in Guyana and didn’t meet the constitutional requirements to run for office. The court found that Trump likewise doesn’t meet the qualifications due to his role in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. That day, the Republican president had held a rally outside the White House and exhorted his supporters to “fight like hell” before they walked to the Capitol.
Read: Biden, Trump poised for a potential rematch that could shake American politics
The two-sentence provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that anyone who swore an oath to uphold the constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it is no longer eligible for state or federal office. After Congress passed an amnesty for most of the former confederates the measure targeted in 1872, the provision fell into disuse until dozens of suits were filed to keep Trump off the ballot this year. Only the one in Colorado was successful.
Trump had asked the court to overturn the Colorado ruling without even hearing arguments. “The Colorado Supreme Court decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and likely be used as a template to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
They argue that Trump should win on many grounds, including that the events of Jan. 6 did not constitute an insurrection. Even if it did, they wrote, Trump himself had not engaged in insurrection. They also contend that the insurrection clause does not apply to the president and that Congress must act, not individual states.
Critics of the former president who sued in Colorado agreed that the justices should step in now and resolve the issue, as do many election law experts.
“This case is of utmost national importance. And given the upcoming presidential primary schedule, there is no time to wait for the issues to percolate further. The Court should resolve this case on an expedited timetable, so that voters in Colorado and elsewhere will know whether Trump is indeed constitutionally ineligible when they cast their primary ballots,” lawyers for the Colorado plaintiffs told the Supreme Court.
The issue of whether Trump can be on the ballot is not the only matter related to the former president or Jan. 6 that has reached the high court. The justices last month declined a request from special counsel Jack Smith to swiftly take up and rule on Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, though the issue could be back before the court soon depending on the ruling of a Washington-based appeals court.
And the court has said that it intends to hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against Trump.
An election that could determine fate of American democracy: Biden starting campaign year
President Joe Biden is starting the campaign year by evoking the Revolutionary War to mark the third anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and visiting the South Carolina church where a white gunman massacred Black parishioners — seeking to present in the starkest possible terms an election he argues could determine the fate of American democracy.
On Friday, Biden will travel to near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington and the Continental Army spent a bleak winter nearly 250 years ago. There, he'll decry former President Donald Trump for the riot by a mob of his supporters who overran the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Biden, Trump poised for a potential rematch that could shake American politics
Three days later, the president will visit Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where nine people were shot and killed in a June 2015 white supremacist attack.
Biden's kicking off 2024 by delving into some of the country’s darkest moments rather than an upbeat affirmation of his record is meant to clarify for voters what his team sees as the stakes of November's election. During both events, he will characterize his predecessor as a serious threat to the nation's founding principles, arguing that Trump — who has built a commanding early lead in the Republican presidential primary — will seek to undermine U.S. democracy should he win a second term.
Hunter Biden defies congressional subpoena, says will only testify in public
“We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it, because it does,” Biden reelection campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said on a conference call with reporters.
Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden and three other felony cases, argues that Biden and top Democrats are themselves seeking to undermine democracy by using the legal system to thwart the campaign of his chief rival.
Biden takes a tougher stance on Israel's 'indiscriminate bombing' of Gaza
“Joe Biden and his allies are a real and compelling threat to our Democracy,” Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote in a memo this week. “In fact, in a way never seen before in our history, they are waging a war against it.”
Biden's channeling of personal grief and national traumas, often into calls for action, has become his political calling card. Tragedies have defined the president's own life, from the 1972 car crash that killed his first wife and infant daughter to his son Beau's death from brain cancer at age 46 in 2015.
In 2020, Biden won the White House by promising to heal the “soul of the nation” after he said that seeing hate groups marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, with torches and swastikas in 2017 propelled him to run.
Rather than promising to bridge the nation’s partisan divide as he did four years ago, Biden will instead stress how Trump and top supporters of his “Make America Great Again” movement pose existential threats.
The president’s reelection campaign has publicized Trump’s repeating rhetoric used by Adolf Hitler when he suggested that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” as well as the former president joking that he’d only seek to serve as a dictator on the first day of his second term.
“The leading candidate of a major party in the United States is running for president so that he can systematically dismantle and destroy our democracy," said Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler.
Even if another Republican beats Trump in the GOP primary, Biden's reelection team argues the victor would be similar enough to the former president that the campaign's themes would change little.
“Anybody who wins the MAGA Republican nomination is going to have done so by hard-tacking to the most extreme positions that we have seen in recent American history,” Tyler said.
The Jan. 5 address at Montgomery County Community College was initially scheduled to be delivered a day later, on the three-year anniversary of the Capitol attack, but was moved due to inclement weather forecast for the area.
A majority of Americans are concerned about the future of democracy in the upcoming election — though they differ along party lines on whom poses the threat.
The White House said that Biden had lunch Wednesday with historians and scholars to discuss “ongoing threats to democracy and democratic institutions both here in America and around the world.”
The Biden campaign also promised it would be “out in full force” to mark the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide for nearly 50 years, before the high court overturned the ruling in June 2022.
Biden's team has argued that abortion access and democracy are intertwined in the upcoming election — building on the president's warnings about Trump and “MAGA extremists” that helped Democrats defy historical precedent by retaining control of the Senate and only narrowly losing the House majority to Republicans in the 2022 midterms.
Harvard president Claudine Gay resigns amid plagiarism claims, backlash from antisemitism testimony
Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say unequivocally that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school's conduct policy.
Gay is the second Ivy League president to resign in the past month following the congressional testimony — Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned Dec. 9.
Gay, Harvard's first Black president, announced her departure just months into her tenure in a letter to the Harvard community.
Following the congressional hearing, Gay's academic career came under intense scrutiny by conservative activists who unearthed several instances of alleged plagiarism in her 1997 doctoral dissertation. The Harvard Corporation, Harvard's governing board, initially rallied behind Gay, saying a review of her scholarly work turned up "a few instances of inadequate citation" but no evidence of research misconduct.
Social media companies made over $11 billion in US ad revenue from minors: Harvard study
Days later, the Harvard Corporation said it found two additional examples of "duplicative language without appropriate attribution." The board said Gay would update her dissertation and request corrections.
The Harvard Corporation said the resignation came "with great sadness" and thanked Gay for her "deep and unwavering commitment to Harvard and to the pursuit of academic excellence."
Alan M. Garber, provost and chief academic officer, will serve as interim president until Harvard finds a replacement, the board said in a statement. Garber, an economist and physician, has served as provost for 12 years.
Gay's resignation was celebrated by the conservatives who put her alleged plagiarism in the national spotlight — with additional plagiarism accusations surfacing as recently as Monday in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication.
Christopher Rufo, an activist who has helped rally the GOP against higher education, said he's "glad she's gone."
"Rather than take responsibility for minimizing antisemitism, committing serial plagiarism, intimidating the free press, and damaging the institution, she calls her critics racist," Rufo said on X, formerly Twitter. "This is the poison" of diversity, equity and inclusion ideology, said Rufo, who has led conservative attacks on DEI both in business and in education.
Gay, in her letter, said it has been "distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus."
But Gay, who is returning to the school's faculty, added "it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge."
Yoel Zimmermann, a visiting research undergrad from Munich, Germany, studying physics at Harvard, said that as a Jewish student he's noticed fellow members of the Jewish community have felt uncomfortable with the climate on campus.
Whistleblower allegation: Harvard muzzled disinfo team after $500 million Zuckerberg donation
"I think it was about time that Claudine Gay resigned," Zimmerman said. "She just did too many things wrong, especially with her testimony in Congress. I think that was just the kind of final tipping point that should have led to her removal immediately."
Supporters of Gay lamented her resignation.
"Racist mobs won't stop until they topple all Black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism," award-winning author Ibram X. Kendi, who survived scrutiny of an antiracist research center he founded at Boston University, said in an Instagram post.
The Rev. Al Sharpton in a statement called pressure for Gay to resign "an attack on every Black woman in this country who's put a crack in the glass ceiling" and an "assault on the health, strength, and future of diversity, equity, and inclusion."
Critics welcomed her decision.
House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx called Gay's resignation welcome news but said the problems at Harvard are much larger than one leader.
"Postsecondary education is in a tailspin," the North Carolina Republican said in a statement. "There has been a hostile takeover of postsecondary education by political activists, woke faculty, and partisan administrators."
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, in a statement on X, also weighed in on Gay's resignation.
"A little context. A failure in leadership and denial of antisemitism have a price. I hope that the esteemed Harvard University will learn from this dismal conduct," he wrote.
Gay, Magill and MIT's president, Sally Kornbluth, came under fire last month for their lawyerly answers to a line of questioning from New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who asked whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" would violate the colleges' codes of conduct.
The three presidents had been called before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce to answer accusations that universities were failing to protect Jewish students amid rising fears of antisemitism worldwide and fallout from Israel's intensifying war in Gaza, which faces heightened criticism for the mounting Palestinian death toll.
Gay said it depended on the context, adding that when "speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies." The answer faced swift backlash from Republican and some Democratic lawmakers as well as the White House. The hearing was parodied in the opening skit on "Saturday Night Live."
1 in 2 individuals likely to develop mental disorder by age 75: University of Queensland and Harvard Medical School study
Gay later apologized, telling The Crimson student newspaper that she got caught up in a heated exchange at the House committee hearing and failed to properly denounce threats of violence against Jewish students.
"What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged," Gay said.
The episode marred Gay's tenure at Harvard — she became president in July — and sowed discord at the Ivy League campus. Rabbi David Wolpe later resigned from a new committee on antisemitism created by Gay, saying in a post on X that "events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped."
The House committee announced days after the hearing that it would investigate the policies and disciplinary procedures at Harvard, MIT and Penn. Separate federal civil rights investigations were previously opened at Harvard, Penn and several other universities in response to complaints submitted to the U.S. Education Department.
Biden, Trump poised for a potential rematch that could shake American politics
U.S. presidential elections have been rocked in recent years by economic disaster, stunning gaffes, secret video and a pandemic. But for all the tumult that defined those campaigns, the volatility surrounding this year’s presidential contest has few modern parallels, posing profound challenges to the future of American democracy.
Not since the Supreme Court effectively decided the 2000 campaign in favor of Republican George W. Bush has the judiciary been so intertwined with presidential politics.
In the coming weeks, the high court is expected to weigh whether states can ban former President Donald Trump from the ballot for his role in leading the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court is weighing Trump’s argument that he’s immune from prosecution.
The maneuvers are unfolding as prosecutors from New York to Washington and Atlanta move forward with 91 indictments across four criminal cases involving everything from Trump’s part in the insurrection to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his hush money paid to a porn actress.
Depending on how Trump’s appeals play out, he could be due in court as early as March 4, the day before Super Tuesday, raising the unprecedented prospect that he could close in on the GOP nomination from a courtroom.
On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden is seeking reelection as the high inflation that defined much of his first term appears to be easing. But that has done little to assuage restless voters or ease widespread concerns in both parties that, at 81, he’s simply too old for the job.
And at least three serious candidates who have launched outsider presidential bids threaten to scramble the campaign and eat into the support from independent voters who were critical to Biden’s success in 2020.
Facing such uncertainty, few expect the traditional rules of politics to apply in 2024. Jim Messina, who managed former President Barack Obama’s reelection, said Trump could very well defeat Biden in the fall, even if the former president is in prison.
“We just don’t know,” Messina said. “Everyone in the world knows, especially me, that this election is going to be really, really close.”
Implications for abortion, immigration and U.S. role in the world
The results will have long-term implications on everything from the future of abortion rights and immigration policy to the role of the U.S. in the world. A Trump victory would raise the possibility of the U.S. largely abandoning Ukraine as it seeks to repel Russia’s invasion. Domestic politics could also test Biden’s commitment to Israel, a policy that threatens to erode his standing with young voters and people of color who are critical elements of his coalition.
One of the few certainties at this point is that Biden is a virtual lock to be the Democratic nominee again, facing only token opposition in this year’s primary despite overwhelming concerns within his own party about his physical and mental fitness. And though a few rivals are fighting furiously to stop Trump, he is well positioned to win the GOP nomination for the third consecutive election.
The strength of the GOP opposition to Trump will become more clear on Jan. 15 when the Iowa caucuses launch the nomination process. Trump holds a commanding lead in most national polls, although former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are fighting to stop him.
That hasn’t been easy, however, as DeSantis has struggled to connect with voters and has embraced culture war topics that often left him competing for the same base of support as Trump. And Haley’s pitch as a more sensible, moderate candidate was threatened last week when she was pressed on the cause of the Civil War and didn’t mention slavery.
Allies of DeSantis and Haley privately concede that their best chance to wrestle the nomination away from Trump would come in a long-shot push for a contested convention in Wisconsin in July.
Many leaders in both parties are already convinced that Trump will be the GOP nominee. More than 90 House Republicans, 18 senators and seven governors have endorsed Trump. Haley and DeSantis have secured the endorsements of just six House Republicans, no senators and two governors combined.
“This will be one of the earliest primaries wrapped up in my lifetime,” Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who endorsed Trump back in November 2022, said in an interview. “I’m already focused on the general election. ... There is going to be a political earthquake next November.”
Biden vs. Trump
Public polling strongly suggests that voters do not want a rematch between Trump and Biden.
Most U.S. adults overall (56%) would be “very” or “somewhat” dissatisfied with Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024, according to a poll conducted last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. A similar majority (58%) said they would be very or somewhat dissatisfied with Trump as the GOP’s pick.
Perhaps because of such apathy, some voters simply don’t believe Biden and Trump will end up on the general election ballot, despite strong evidence to the contrary. That’s an idea that conservative strategist Sarah Longwell, who founded the Republican Accountability Project, says she hears regularly during weekly focus groups with voters across the political spectrum.
“Voters really aren’t thinking about it, so they don’t see the thing that’s coming right at us — the most likely scenario, which is Trump vs. Biden,” Longwell said. “But Trump is so dangerous. ... I wish the level of urgency from everybody matched the reality of where we are headed.”
Threats to democracy
While concerns about Biden are centered on his age, Trump has increasingly embraced authoritarian messages that serve as clear warnings of his plans to dismantle democratic norms if he returns to the White House.
Echoing strongmen leaders throughout history, Trump has framed his campaign as one of retribution and has spoken openly about using the power of government to pursue his political enemies. He has repeatedly harnessed rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He said on Fox News last month that he would not be a dictator “ except for day one. ” And he shared a word cloud last week to his social media account highlighting words like, “revenge,” “power” and “dictatorship.”
Biden, like his party more broadly, has leaned into concerns about the future of democracy should Trump return to the White House, but that has done little to improve his standing. Early polls reveal weakness among core segments of his coalition, including voters of color and young people.
People on Biden’s team do not fear that his base will defect to Trump in the general election, but they privately worry some of the Democratic president’s supporters may not vote at all. They’re betting that Biden’s achievements, which include landmark legislation on gun control, climate change and infrastructure, will eventually help overcome pervasive concerns about his age.
Ultimately, however, Biden’s campaign believes that voters will rally behind the president once they fully understand that Trump could realistically return to the White House.
‘This election will be a choice’
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who sits on Biden’s advisory council, said the president’s reelection campaign “knows it can’t take any vote for granted,” which is why the campaign has already invested heavily in efforts to mobilize Biden’s diverse coalition.
“This election will be a choice — a choice between a president who has delivered historic results for the American people and someone who poses an existential threat to our democracy and freedoms,” Dickens said. “We will win in November once we fully make the case, explain the stakes and make the choice clear.”
Meanwhile, there is a sense of deep uncertainty on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Republican presidential candidates in particular have been showering primary voters with attention for much of the last year.
Rodney Martell, a 65-year-old Republican from Loudon, New Hampshire, said he’s ready for the voting to begin. He’s supporting Haley’s primary bid, but said he’d support Trump in the general election if he had no other choice — even if Trump is a convicted felon.
Martell said he doubts the 2024 election will ultimately be a rematch of Trump and Biden, however: “Honestly, if it comes to that kind of race again, I think it could get pretty ugly.”
More than 1,000 miles to the west, Susie Fortuna offered a similar assessment during a recent Haley campaign event in Coralville, Iowa. Fortuna lives in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, but she was in Iowa to visit family.
She isn’t convinced that Biden and Trump will emerge as their party’s nominees, either. The political year ahead, she said, feels “unsettling.”
“I feel like there are things out there that we don’t know yet, to be honest,” Fortuna said.
3 killed and several wounded in separate shootings early New Year's Day in Los Angeles area
Two people were killed and eight others were wounded in a shooting early New Year's Day at a party in a commercial neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, authorities said.
Officers responding to reports of a shooting around 1 a.m. Monday heard gunfire and found a crowd fleeing the area and several wounded people lying on the street and sidewalk, police said in a news release.
A man and woman died at the scene, police said. Officials initially said three people had been hospitalized but an afternoon update reported eight wounded. Their conditions weren't known Monday evening.
Investigators believe the shooting stemmed from a dispute at the party, held in an industrial area with warehouses and commercial buildings. No information on any suspects was immediately available.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was investigating a separate shooting that killed a woman and wounded four other people early Monday in the city of Hawthorne.
One of the victims was hospitalized in critical condition and the three others were listed as stable, KABC-TV reported.
There were no arrests and no information about suspects.
World Insights: After 45 years, closer China-U.S. ties still depend on people
As the world counts down to a new year, the China-U.S. diplomatic relationship is set to welcome its 45th anniversary.
Back in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, held a historic meeting in San Francisco. Many, not just Chinese and Americans, are now hoping that the summit is a new starting point for bilateral relations."It is the convergence of many streams of goodwill and friendship that has created a strong current surging across the vast Pacific Ocean; it is the reaching out to each other by our peoples that has time and again brought China-U.S. relations from a low ebb back onto the right track," Xi said at the welcome dinner during his visit to California in November for the China-U.S. summit meeting and the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting.
FROM BUDDING TO BLOOMINGFifty-two years ago, a tiny ping-pong ball played a vital part in the budding rapprochement between China and America after more than two decades of estrangement.The real breakthrough in ties came with a public encounter between a pair of ping-pong players during the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Japan. Footage caught their friendly exchange, and the unexpected goodwill between the American and Chinese teams soon became the talk of the tournament and preluded a milestone visit leading to the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations."That seemingly small gesture had a huge symbolic significance," Gene Sykes, chairman of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, told Xinhua, adding, "The impact of this event went far beyond the realm of sports. It was the opening for a wide range of collaborations which spanned the scientific, cultural, artistic and educational domains."Today, this chapter in China-U.S. relations, known as "Ping-Pong Diplomacy," still resonates over half a century later. The goodwill, which thawed relations between the two countries, dispelled the specter of the Cold War and brought the two countries together, serving as a vivid example of cooperation trumping estrangement."History has demonstrated that building bridges is a much better strategy than building walls or digging moats" between the United States and China, said Tom Watkins, a former advisor to the Michigan-China Innovation Center."I still remember what 'Ping-Pong Diplomacy' was like between the United States and China in the early 1970s and I think we should try it again," said Stephen Mull, former U.S. acting undersecretary of state for political affairs.
STORYTELLERS, BRIDGE BUILDERSFriendship between people holds the key to sound relations between states, and people from both sides as storytellers and bridge builders can play their part.Their bond has laid the groundwork for bilateral ties, helped navigate the relationship through choppy waters, and will continue to work wonders in the years to come.Despite the tumultuous years in their relations, the Chinese and American peoples at the grassroots level are telling their own stories about each other and emphasize how critical it is to deepen their exchanges, no matter from the business, academic or cultural communities.U.S. opinion polls have shown that the younger generation has a different attitude towards China compared to the older generation, said Warwick Powell, adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology."The youths experienced the benefits of exchanges with people from all walks of life and understand that there is no reason why people from different parts of the world cannot find common ground and achieve things together in the interests of everybody," he said.Brooke Leonard, a 32-year-old ping-pong aficionado from Los Angeles, said he has gained so much fun from learning, playing and appreciating the sport. Besides making friends with many Chinese through this sport, he is now recommending it to his American friends and family.In southwest China's megacity Chongqing, a museum dedicated to the Flying Tigers stands to tell a touching tale of Americans and Chinese fighting side by side during wartime and of how grateful the Chinese people are for their bravery and sacrifice.In November, an over 30-member delegation of the Flying Tigers veterans and their descendants visited Kunming, the starting point of "the Hump," a vital airlift route over the Himalayas and the primary way the Allies supplied China between 1942 and 1945 in World War II.Today, memorials, exhibitions and events to honor that chapter in history epitomize the deep friendship between the two peoples that withstood the test of blood and fire. And more than 1,000 Flying Tigers veterans and their families have been invited to visit China.Americans, for their part, always remember the Chinese who risked their lives to save American pilots. Offspring of those American pilots often visit the Doolittle Raid Memorial Hall in east China's Zhejiang Province to pay tribute to the Chinese for their heroic efforts.From U.S. entrepreneurs visiting China, to "Bond with Kuliang: 2023 China-U.S. People-to-People Friendship Forum," and from the delegation of U.S. Flying Tigers visiting China, to the fifth China-U.S. Sister Cities Conference, the Chinese and American peoples have demonstrated good will and a firm friendship, injecting impetus into bilateral ties and cooperation.These heartening stories can help improve the ailing China-U.S. relationship. That is probably the best way to carry on the legacy in the new era.
"THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT"Martin Luther King, a leading figure of the American civil rights movement in the 1950s, once said, "The time is always right to do what is right."The whole world is watching the two major countries, hoping they will continue the positive momentum in their relations from the San Francisco summit and engage in more "maintenance work" regarding their relationship.There are numerous reasons to make the China-U.S. relationship work. Ordinary people on both sides want this. The world also wants this."As a planet, we are facing multiple challenges -- the need to nourish the hungry, manage climate change, sustain economic growth and job creation, and maintain global stability. We hope there will be a positive reset and improved relations between the two major countries," said Grant Kimberley, a sixth-generation soybean farmer and marketing director of the Iowa Soybean Association.The future depends on joint efforts from both peoples, particularly from the younger generation. For China-U.S. relations, the hope lies in the people, the foundation rests on the people, and the future lies with the youth.To increase bilateral exchanges, particularly between the youth, China has announced a plan to invite 50,000 young Americans to China on exchange and study programs in the next five years. Meanwhile, a growing number of young Americans have joined the Flying Tigers Friendship Schools and Youth Leadership Program, launched by the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation in 2022.These tangible efforts, step by step, have helped nurture the seeds of friendship, mutual understanding, and cooperation on both sides."The more exchanges, whether they're educational, sports or music, or any kind of exchange between our two countries ... if we can learn to do that, I think we can break down barriers and open up communication that is just phenomenal," said Connie Sweeris, the American table tennis champion who took part in the ice-breaking trip to China in 1971."We have been partners in war, now let us always be partners in peace," said Mel McMullen, a Flying Tigers veteran.
Airstrikes hit camps in central Gaza as Biden administration approves new weapons sales to Israel
Israeli warplanes struck two urban refugee camps in central Gaza on Saturday, as the Biden administration approved a new emergency weapons sale to Israel despite persistent international cease-fire calls over mounting civilian deaths, hunger and mass displacement in the enclave.
Israel says it is determined to pursue its unprecedented air and ground offensive until it has dismantled Hamas, a goal viewed by some as unattainable because of the militant group's deep roots in Palestinian society. The United States has shielded Israel diplomatically and has continued to supply weapons.
Israel argues that ending the war now would mean victory for Hamas, a stance shared by the Biden administration which at the same time urged Israel to do more to avoid harm to Palestinian civilians.
The war, triggered by the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, has displaced some 85% of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless also bombed. That has left Palestinians with a harrowing sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.
Residents in the urban refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij, two recent hot spots of combat, reported Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Saturday.
Nuseirat resident Mustafa Abu Wawee said a strike hit the home of one of his relatives, killing two people.
“The (Israeli) occupation is doing everything to force people to leave,” he said over the phone while searching along with others for four people missing under the rubble. “They want to break our spirit and will but they will fail. We are here to stay.”
A second strike late Friday in Nuseirat targeted the home of a journalist for Al-Quds TV, a channel linked to the group Islamic Jihad whose militants also participated in the Oct. 7 attack. The channel said the journalist, Jaber Abu Hadros and six members of his family were killed.
Bureij resident Rami Abu Mosab said sounds of gunfire echoed across the camp overnight, followed by heavy airstrikes Saturday.
With Israeli forces pushing deeper into Khan Younis and the camps of central Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed into the already crowded city of Rafah at the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days.
Drone footage showed a vast camp of thousands of tents and makeshift shacks set up on what had been empty land on Rafah’s western outskirts next to U.N. warehouses. People arrived in Rafah in trucks, in carts and on foot. Those who did not find space in the already overwhelmed shelters put up tents on roadsides slick with mud from winter rains.
MORE U.S. WEAPONS FOR ISRAEL
The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress he approved a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed for 155 mm shells Israel bought previously.
It marked the second time this month that the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel.
The department cited the “urgency of Israel's defensive needs” as a reason for the approval, and argued that “it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces.”
The emergency determination means the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement for foreign military sales. Such determinations are rare, but not unprecedented, when administrations see an urgent need for weapons to be delivered without waiting for lawmakers’ approval.
Blinken made a similar decision on Dec. 9 to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million.
Both moves have come as President Joe Biden’s request for a nearly $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs remains stalled in Congress, caught up in a debate over U.S. immigration policy and border security. Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken of making the proposed $14.3 billion in American assistance to its Mideast ally contingent on concrete steps by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza during the war with Hamas.
DISEASE AND HUNGER ARE SPREADING
More than a week after a U.N. Security Council resolution called for the unhindered delivery of aid at scale across besieged Gaza, conditions have only worsened, U.N. agencies warned.
Aid officials said the aid entering Gaza remains woefully inadequate. Distributing goods is hampered by long delays at two border crossings, ongoing fighting, Israeli airstrikes, repeated cuts in internet and phone services and a breakdown of law and order that makes it difficult to secure aid convoys, they said.
Nearly the entire population is fully dependent on outside humanitarian aid, said Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. A quarter of the population is starving because too few trucks enter with food, medicine, fuel and other supplies — sometimes fewer than 100 trucks a day, according to U.N. daily reports.
U.N. monitors said operations at the Israeli-run Kerem Shalom crossing halted for four days this week because of security incidents, such as a drone strike and the seizing of aid by desperate Gaza residents.
They said the crossing reopened Friday, and that a total of 81 aid trucks entered Gaza through Kerem Shalom and the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border — a fraction of the typical prewar volume of 500 trucks a day.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization warned that the spread of disease is accelerating, particularly in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands have crammed into an ever-shrinking area to flee airstrikes and advancing Israeli ground forces. The agency reported more cases of upper respiratory infections, diarrhea, lice, scabies, chickenpox, skin rashes and meningitis.
RISING DEATH TOLL
The war has already killed over 21,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Its count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian deaths and injuries, saying the militants embed themselves within civilian infrastructure.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, have vowed to bring back more than 100 hostages still held by the militants after their Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war. The assault killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
The military says 168 of its soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive began.
Trump is blocked from the GOP primary ballot in two states. Can he still run for president?
First, Colorado's Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump wasn't eligible to run for his old job in that state. Then, Maine's Democratic secretary of state ruled the same for her state. Who's next?
Both decisions are historic. The Colorado court was the first court to apply to a presidential candidate a rarely used constitutional ban against those who "engaged in insurrection." Maine's secretary of state was the first top election official to unilaterally strike a presidential candidate from the ballot under that provision.
But both decisions are on hold while the legal process plays out.
Also read: Maine bars Trump from ballot as US Supreme Court weighs states' authority to block former president
That means that Trump remains on the ballot in Colorado and Maine and that his political fate is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Maine ruling will likely never take effect on its own. Its central impact is increasing pressure on the nation's highest court to say clearly: Can Trump still run for president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol?
WHAT'S THE LEGAL ISSUE?
After the Civil War, the U.S. ratified the 14th Amendment to guarantee rights to former slaves and more. It also included a two-sentence clause called Section 3, designed to keep former Confederates from regaining government power after the war.
The measure reads:
"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
Congress did remove that disability from most Confederates in 1872, and the provision fell into disuse. But it was rediscovered after Jan. 6.
HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO TRUMP?
Trump is already being prosecuted for the attempt to overturn his 2020 loss that culminated with Jan. 6, but Section 3 doesn't require a criminal conviction to take effect. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed to disqualify Trump, claiming he engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6 and is no longer qualified to run for office.
Also read: Donald Trump banned from Colorado ballot in historic ruling by state's Supreme Court
All the suits failed until the Colorado ruling. And dozens of secretaries of state have been asked to remove him from the ballot. All said they didn't have the authority to do so without a court order — until Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows' decision.
The Supreme Court has never ruled on Section 3. It's likely to do so in considering appeals of the Colorado decision — the state Republican Party has already appealed, and Trump is expected to file his own shortly. Bellows' ruling cannot be appealed straight to the U.S. Supreme Court — it has to be appealed up the judicial chain first, starting with a trial court in Maine.
The Maine decision does force the high court's hand, though. It was already highly likely the justices would hear the Colorado case, but Maine removes any doubt.
Trump lost Colorado in 2020, and he doesn't need to win it again to garner an Electoral College majority next year. But he won one of Maine's four Electoral College votes in 2020 by winning the state's 2nd Congressional District, so Bellows' decision would have a direct impact on his odds next November.
Until the high court rules, any state could adopt its own standard on whether Trump, or anyone else, can be on the ballot. That's the sort of legal chaos the court is supposed to prevent.
WHAT ARE THE ARGUMENTS IN THE CASE?
Trump's lawyers have several arguments against the push to disqualify him. First, it's not clear Section 3 applies to the president — an early draft mentioned the office, but it was taken out, and the language "an officer of the United States" elsewhere in the Constitution doesn't mean the president, they contend.
Also read: Trump calls Biden the ‘destroyer’ of democracy
Second, even if it does apply to the presidency, they say, this is a "political" question best decided by voters, not unelected judges. Third, if judges do want to get involved, the lawyers assert, they're violating Trump's rights to a fair legal procedure by flatly ruling he's ineligible without some sort of fact-finding process like a lengthy criminal trial. Fourth, they argue, Jan. 6 wasn't an insurrection under the meaning of Section 3 — it was more like a riot. Finally, even if it was an insurrection, they say, Trump wasn't involved in it — he was merely using his free speech rights.
Of course, the lawyers who want to disqualify Trump have arguments, too. The main one is that the case is actually very simple: Jan. 6 was an insurrection, Trump incited it, and he's disqualified.
WHAT'S TAKEN SO LONG?
The attack was three years ago, but the challenges weren't "ripe," to use the legal term, until Trump petitioned to get onto state ballots this fall.
But the length of time also gets at another issue — no one has really wanted to rule on the merits of the case. Most judges have dismissed the lawsuits because of technical issues, including that courts don't have the authority to tell parties whom to put on their primary ballots. Secretaries of state have dodged, too, usually telling those who ask them to ban Trump that they don't have the authority to do so unless ordered by a court.
No one can dodge anymore. Legal experts have cautioned that, if the Supreme Court doesn't clearly resolve the issue, it could lead to chaos in November — or in January 2025, if Trump wins the election. Imagine, they say, if the high court ducks the issue or says it's not a decision for the courts to make, and Democrats win a narrow majority in Congress. Would they seat Trump or declare he's ineligible under Section 3?
WHY DID MAINE DO THIS?
Maine has an unusual process in which a secretary of state is required to hold a public hearing on challenges to politicians' spots on the ballot and then issue a ruling. Multiple groups of Maine voters, including a bipartisan clutch of former state lawmakers, filed such a challenge, triggering Bellows' decision.
Bellows is a Democrat, the former head of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and has a long trail of criticism of Trump on social media. Trump's attorneys asked her to recuse herself from the case, citing posts calling Jan. 6 an "insurrection" and bemoaning Trump's acquittal in his impeachment trial over the attack.
She refused, saying she wasn't ruling based on personal opinions. But the precedent she sets is notable, critics say. In theory, election officials in every state could decide a candidate is ineligible based on a novel legal theory about Section 3 and end their candidacies.
Conservatives argue that Section 3 could apply to Vice President Kamala Harris, for example — it was used to block from office even those who donated small sums to individual Confederates. Couldn't it be used against Harris, they say, because she raised money for those arrested in the unrest after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020?
IS THIS A PARTISAN ISSUE?
Well, of course it is. Bellows is a Democrat, and all the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democrats. Six of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans, three by Trump himself.
But courts don't always split on predictable partisan lines. The Colorado ruling was 4-3 — so three Democratic appointees disagreed with barring Trump. Several prominent legal conservatives have championed the use of Section 3 against the former president.
Now we'll see how the high court handles it.