1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.Ngf3 c5 6.c3 Nc6 7.Bd3 cxd4 8.cxd4 Qb6 9.Qa4 Be7 10.0-0 0-0 11.Re1 f5 112.exf6 Nxf6 13.a3 e5 14.dxe5 Ng4 15.Rf1 Nxf2 16.Rxf2 Bc5 17.Qh4 Bxf2+ 18.Qxf2 Qxf2+ 19.Kxf2 Nxe5 20.Be2 Bd7 21.Nb3 Rac8 22.Nd4 Ng4+ 23.Kg1 Rfe8 24.Bd2 a6 25.Bd3 g6 26.Bc2 Ne3 27.Bb3 Nc4 28.Bh6 a5 29.Rf1 a4 30.Ba2 Re7 31.Nd2 b5 32.Nb1 Rb8 33.Nc3 Re5 34.Bf4 1-0>

<[Event "Fly By Knight"] [Site "Providence RI"]
[Date "1984.12.09"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "4.1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "De Andrade, Dino"]
[ECO "E16"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<How is this filthy hob not b& yet?>

<Each time Donald Trump refers to a Georgia prosecutor 's colleague as her “lover,” he's invoking a strikingly familiar turn of phrase.

After all, Trump as president repeatedly used the same word to mock two FBI officials, including an agent who helped lead the Russia election interference probe, after revelations that the pair had an extramarital relationship and had traded pejorative text messages about him.

Throughout years of scrutiny from prosecutors, culminating in 91 felony counts, Trump has repeatedly sought to deflect attention from himself by making the personal lives of investigators ripe for derision and ridicule. He's jumped on allegations of affairs and leveled claims of bias against agents, prosecutors and judges. He's also been quick to exploit the sometimes questionable decision-making, or occasional outright protocol breaches, by officials investigating him as a means to try to discredit entire inquiries.

The strategy underscores the extent to which Trump views his four criminal cases as battles to be won not just in a courtroom but in the court of public opinion, where attacks on officials — both for groundless reasons but also for actual judgment lapses and unforced errors — are capable of shaping perception of investigations and distracting from the underlying allegations of the probes.

“Prosecutors in the law enforcement apparatus generally are not built to respond to those types of attacks. The Department of Justice policy is: we do not try cases in the public domain. We don’t respond to every single thing that a defendant says,” said Reid Schar, a former federal prosecutor who led the corruption case against ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

He added: “The entire conceptual framework that Trump has moved to is not one that DOJ or frankly state-level prosecutors, for the most part, are used to playing in.”

Trump has most recently seized on revelations of a romantic relationship between Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and an outside lawyer, Nathan Wade, she hired to help manage the case.

Willis acknowledged the relationship in a court filing Friday but said there was no basis to dismiss the case or to remove her from the prosecution charging Trump and 18 others with plotting to subvert Georgia's 2020 election. On Sunday, responding to the filing, Trump posted on Truth Social about Willis and her “lover" and alleged that they had “perpetrated a conspiracy” to enrich themselves and cheat and interfere in the 2024 race.

“This case is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia (and all of the rest!), and everybody in America knows it,” he wrote.

Claims of an inappropriate relationship were first raised last month by a lawyer for a Trump co-defendant who said it created a conflict of interest. Even before Friday's filing, Trump sensed an avenue to attack. “The Lovers knew that I did nothing wrong,” he wrote in a Jan. 19 post, adding that "the Lovebirds should face appropriate consequences."

As president, Trump similarly exploited news that Peter Strzok, a lead agent in the investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign had coordinated with Russia, and FBI lawyer Lisa Page had sent each other negative text messages about Trump during the Russia probe and had an extramarital relationship....>

<.... One such text, referring to the prospect of a Trump victory, said, “We'll stop it.” (Strzok, who was fired over the texts, later said he was referring to the will of the American voters and not to any step the FBI would take to interfere in the election.)

The Justice Department inspector general called the texts troubling but also found no evidence that any investigative decisions were motivated by partisan bias. That didn't stop Trump from accusing Strzok and Page of “treason," or many of his supporters from agreeing with Trump that the entire investigation had been a “witch hunt.”

“Trump has shown the ability to affect public opinion in a way that may not get him out of the legal trouble he’s facing — it’s still going to be up to judges and juries — but it certainly seems to be enhancing his political viability, as unbelievable as that is,” said Greg Brower, a former assistant FBI director in the congressional affairs office.

Strzok has said he was the subject of more than 100 Trump tweets, telling The Associated Press in 2020 that “being subjected to outrageous attacks up to and including by the president himself, which are full of lies and mischaracterizations and just crude and cruel, is horrible.”

Other figures in the Russia probe provoked Trump's ire, including Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy who compiled a dossier of salacious and unproven rumors about Trump. He also fumed at the FBI, which among other things was faulted for submitting flawed applications to surveil an ex-Trump aide.

In 2017, days after being fired by Trump as director of the FBI, James Comey sent a friend a memo documenting a private Oval Office conversation he'd had with the president that unnerved him. The goal, Comey later admitted, was to have the content shared with the media so that Trump's actions could be exposed and because he thought it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.

The Comey memo revealed that Trump had asked him to end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The act laid bare Trump's determination to exert his will on the FBI and became part of special counsel Robert Mueller's broader investigation into whether he had obstructed justice.

But to Trump and his supporters, the disclosure became an opening to attack Comey as a “leaker." A Justice Department inspector general report concluded that Comey had violated FBI policy but said that, contrary to Trump's claims, he had not illegally disclosed classified material.

Mueller himself had his personal life picked over, with Trump seeking his termination over perceived conflicts — Mueller years earlier had sought a membership refund from a Trump golf club in Virginia — that aides told the president were frivolous.

Former Justice Department prosecutor Christopher Mattei, who prosecuted former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland and more recently represented families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in a lawsuit against Infowars host Alex Jones, said he was concerned Trump “had poisoned a significant part of the population” to believe public officials routinely act out of personal bias.

“To the extent he’s been successful in suggesting to people that our public officials and leadership who have taken an oath to perform their duty really aren’t doing that — yeah, that’s concerning,” he said.>

<[Event "National Chess Congress"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1999.11.26"]
[EventDate "1999"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Bauer, Richard N"]
[Black "Kaufman, Larry"]
[ECO "C47"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e5 Nfd7 6.Bxe7 Qxe7 7.f4 O-O 8.Nf3 c5 9.dxc5 Nc6 10.Bd3 f6 11.exf6 Qxf6 12.g3 Nxc5 13.O-O Bd7 14.Qd2 Nxd3 15.cxd3 e5 16.Rae1 Bh3 17.Rf2 d4 18.Ne4 Qf5 19.fxe5 Nxe5 20.Nxe5 Qxe5 21.Rxf8+ Rxf8 22.Nf2 Qf5 23.Nxh3 Qxh3 24.Qb4 Qh6 25.Qc4+ Kh8 26.Qxd4 Qd2 27.Rf1 Rxf1+ 28.Kxf1 h6 29.b4 Qd1+ 30.Kg2 Qe2+ 31.Kh3 Qe6+ 32.Qg4 Qxa2 33.Qc8+ Kh7 34.Qf5+ Kg8 35.Qc8+ Kh7 36.Qf5+ 1/2-1/2>

That dang source tag! It is as invisible as my persecutors hereabout and will remain so.

<[Event "National Chess Congress"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1999.11.28"]
[EventDate "1999"]
[Round "6"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Shapiro, Daniel E"]
[Black "Bauer, Richard N"]
[ECO "E15"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Fly By Knight"] [Site "Providence RI"]
[Date "1984.12.09"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "3.2"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Boutin, Charles"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "A00"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.b4 d5 2.Bb2 Qd6 3.b5 Qb4 4.Qc1 Qxb5 5.Nc3 Qd7 6.e3 e5 7.Nf3 f6 8.Be2 c6 9.Nd1 Bd6 10.c4 Ne7 11.Qc2 0-0 12.cxd5 cxd5 13.Qb3 Kh8 14.Nc3 Qe6 15.0-0 Nbc6 16.Rfc1 Bd7 17.Nb5 Bb8 18.Ba3 a6 19.Nc3 b5 20.Nxd5 Bd6 21.Bxd6 Qxd6 22.Nb6 Rab8 23.Nxd7 Qxd7 24.Rc5 e4 25.Ne1 Qxd2 26.Kf1 Qd6 27.Rh5 f5 28.Rd1 Qf6 29.g3 Ne5 30.Ng2 Rfd8 31.Nf4 Rxd1+ 32.Qxd1 Qc6 33.Qd4 Nf3 34.Ne6 Nxd4 35.Nxd4 Qc1+ 36.Kg2 g6 37.Rh4 Nd5 38.Nb3 Qb2 39.Bd1 Nxe3+ 40.Kh3 Nxd1 0-1>

I remember Pavel; we played only once (believe it was in 1989), and I was fortunate to scrape a draw.

I have a question; there is a game listed on 365chess as being played by you in Seattle 1983, but I never wanted to get it in because I suspected a misattribution. Did you play John Donaldson at the 6th Monadnock Marathon that year instead?

Side note: if there are games you want to send yourself, easy enough. All you need do is follow the PGN Upload Utility at the bottom right of the home page. Disregard what that page says about single-game submissions only; I was actually told by one of the other site admins that batches of game will be fine. (I usually send 5-8 at a time)

<Former President Donald Trump’s legal team on Monday filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to keep him on the Colorado ballot.

Trump’s lawyers argued that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars certain elected officials, including an “officer of the United States,” from holding office if they have “engaged in insurrection” does not apply to him because a president is not an “officer” of the United States.

Trump’s team also argued that Section 3 is a prohibition on “holding” office, not running for office, and claimed that “Congress can waive this prohibition between now and the end of the next presidential term” on Jan. 20, 2029.

“So no court or litigant can declare that President Trump is ‘presently’ disqualified from holding office without assuming or predicting that Congress will refuse to lift any section 3 disability that might apply,” the brief said, adding that neither the Colorado Supreme Court nor the U.S. Supreme Court “can declare a candidate ineligible for the presidency now based on a prediction of what Congress may or may not do in the future.”

Trump’s lawyers accused his challengers of pursuing an “anti-democratic case” against the “leading candidate” for president.

“At a time when the United States is threatening sanctions against the socialist dictatorship in Venezuela for excluding the leading opposition candidate for president from the ballot,” Trump’s lawyers claimed that the voters who challenged Trump’s candidacy are asking the Supreme Court to “impose that same anti-democratic measure at home.”

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Thursday. MSNBC legal analyst Jordan Rubin noted that Trump’s lawyers littered the filing with “arguments that have largely been picked apart by briefs already filed on the high court docket in this case, including the ahistorical notion that the president isn't an ‘officer’ who can be disqualified under the 14th Amendment.”

Conservative attorney and frequent Trump critic George Conway called the filing “bizarre” and a “sign of weakness.”

“This strikes me as a massive tactical blunder,” tweeted University of Texas Law Prof. Lee Kovarsky.

Georgia State Law Prof. Eric Segall said it is “true” that Section 3 does not explicitly mention the president.

“It’s also true it doesn’t mention horses, foreigners, or accountants. That’s because everyone knew POTUS was obviously covered,” he tweeted.

Former longtime conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig, who served as an adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, wrote that he “would not have made the revealing, fatuous, and politically and constitutionally cynical, concluding argument that the former president and his lawyers made to the Supreme Court.”

Luttig said the filing is “tantamount to an acknowledgment that the former president and his lawyers have all but concluded that their arguments have become so weakened by the briefing of respondents… that they believe the Supreme Court is likely to hold the former president is disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment.

“What else could possibly explain this eleventh-hour, Hail Mary argument that not even the Supreme Court of the United States can ever decide whether the former president is disqualified from the presidency,” he added. “Not now. Not ever.”

Still, most legal observers “think it’s unlikely” the Supreme Court will uphold the Colorado court’s ruling “despite the letter of the law” because it “feels undemocratic,” wrote former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.

“That's an odd view for a Court full of textualists to take, but there are some off ramps that would let them duck deciding the question head on,” she tweeted.

George Washington University Law Prof. Randall Eliason said that is the reason Trump’s filing “probably makes tactical sense.”

“Holding that the president is not an officer subject to the disqualification clause allows the Court to rule for Trump while avoiding taking any position on whether he engaged in an insurrection. It's their easiest off-ramp,” he wrote. “To be clear - I'm not saying I think that would be a good or reasonable ruling. Just that it's one this Court might bite at, so I can understand that focus on it in their brief.”>

<Afourth co-defendant in the Georgia case against former president Donald Trump has filed a motion for the court to disqualify embattled District Attorney Fani Willis.

Co-defendant David Schafer, who in 2020 served as the Georgia GOP Chairman and a GOP presidential elector for Georgia during the 2020 election, filed a motion in court Monday saying Willis has engaged in a "pattern of prosecutorial, forensic misconduct" which he says should disqualify not only her, but her entire office and prosecution staff.

Schafer’s motion follows co-defendant Michael Roman’s claims that Willis engaged in an "improper" relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade whom she hired to prosecute the sprawling racketeering case against Trump and asked the court to disqualify her from the case.

Willis on Friday responded to the allegations in a court filing and admitted to having a "personal" relationship with Wade but denied any conflict of interest. She also argued that according to Georgia law, in order for a district attorney to be forcibly removed from a case, the conflict of interest has to be harmful to a defendant's case.

Schafer on Monday claimed that Willis has a "pattern of prejudicial public statements" about the case through various media interviews and public speeches, and claimed that in making such statements, she intended to "reject and infect the jury pool." Shafer and his lawyers argue that this is primarily what warrants her removal.

The court filing Monday references when Willis first addressed the affair allegations in January during remarks she made at Bethel AME Church in Atlanta.

"They only attacked one," she said. "First thing they say, ‘Oh, she’s gonna play the race card now.’

"But no God, isn’t it them that’s playing the race card when they only question one," Willis asked.

"You cannot expect Black women to be perfect and save the world," Willis said, adding that "we need to be allowed to stumble. We need grace."

Schafer argued in Monday’s court filing that, "The obvious intent of her remarks was to inject and infect the jury pool in Fulton County with unfounded allegations that anyone who dares question her or Mr. Wade’s conduct must have done so for racist purposes."....>

<...."As an attorney and, most importantly, a public prosecutor, her comments which directly affected the pending litigation were indefensible and reprehensible. These comments constitute prosecutorial, forensic misconduct and warrant her removal and that of her Office from the prosecution of this case," the filing states.

In legal filings last month, Roman alleged that Wade billed Fulton County for 24 hours of work on a single day in November 2021, shortly after being appointed as a special prosecutor, and that Willis financially benefited from her alleged lover’s padded taxpayer-funded salary by taking lavish vacations together on his dime.

According to the court documents, Wade, who has no RICO and felony prosecution experience, billed taxpayers $654,000 since January 2022.

Schafer also argues that Willis' employment of Wade "to investigate and prosecute the defendants and payments to Mr. Wade of over a half a million dollars from the Fulton County treasury while allowing Mr. Wade to pay for vacations for the District Attorney and other personal expenses constitutes a disqualifying conflict of interest as well as a violation of ethical rules applicable to attorneys and Fulton County employees, and potentially criminal law."

The motion also claims that Willis' "improper and inaccurate characterization" of Schaefer and the other 2020 nominee Republican Presidential Electors as "Fake Electors" to the national media "has been exceedingly prejudicial" to Schafer, noting that "at all times material" to her indictment, Schafer was qualified as a "lawful" Presidential Elector pursuant to Georgia law through his nomination as a Presidential Elector by the Georgia Republican Party.

Schafer asked the court to keep in place a Feb. 15 evidentiary hearing set by Judge Scott McAfee, in which the parties will present evidence to try and compel the court to remove Willis and her office from the case.

Schafer's lawyer, Craig A. Gillen, wrote Monday that he "understands and appreciates that an evidentiary hearing regarding the District Attorney’s forensic misconduct and the financial aspects of District Attorney Willis and Mr. Wade’s personal relationship that create these disqualifying conflicts of interest is unseemly and an uncomfortable experience for all involved," and that he "does not pursue these claims lightly."

"But, as noted," Gillen states, "District Attorney Willis and Mr. Wade are not victims here—these are all self-inflicted and completely avoidable errors in which the defense had no hand, but are of such significance that the defense has no choice but to put them before the Court."

Gillen said in the filing that Willis' discomfort "pales in comparison to what Mr. Shafer – a presumptively and actually innocent man – has endured."

"His life has been upended by unwarranted and meritless charges filed by District Attorney Willis (that she does not have the legal authority or jurisdiction to pursue)," the filing states.>

<Texas Governor Greg Abbott has responded with fury to a provision in the new bipartisan Senate border security bill that would block the state of Texas from challenging some of its provisions via the local federal court.

On X, formerly Twitter, Abbott shared a Newsweek article titled 'Texas Stripped of Powers in Border Security Bill,' adding: "This is unacceptable."

The bill sets out the circumstances under which suspected illegal immigrants can request a judicial review of their deportation orders, stating: "The United States District Court for the District of Columbia shall have sole and original jurisdiction to hear challenges, whether constitutional or otherwise, to the validity of this section or any written policy directive, written policy guideline, written procedure, or the implementation thereof."

Responding to this section on X Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor, wrote: "This would prevent plaintiffs - like the State of Texas - from filing suit in Texas federal courts. This is corrupt."

Newsweek has reached out to the White House press office for comment by email.

The proposed immigration reforms are part of the $118 billion Emergency National Security Supplemental Bill which was announced on Monday following cross-party Senate negotiations involving Republican Sen. James Lankford, Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

In addition to the immigration reform, designed to address a surge in illegal crossings across the southern border, the bill would provide an additional $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, along with assistance to Israel and Taiwan.

On immigration it includes a provision that illegal migrants can be removed with little legal recourse if the number detected rises above an average of 5,000 per week, or 8,500 in a single day. Another $20 billion is also made available for hiring additional border control officers and border security infrastructure.

However, the deal has been rejected outright by many Republicans who argue it doesn't go far enough in addressing illegal immigration, including Speaker Mike Johnson who warned it would be "dead on arrival" in the House.

Posting on his Truth Social website, Donald Trump, by some margin the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican Party nomination, commented: "Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill."

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has argued moving the bill forward would be "entirely foolish" in the face of fierce GOP opposition. He said: "It is clear that there is no path for this bill to pass. The Speaker of the House has been unequivocal that the Senate bill is dead on arrival in the House. So I asked my colleagues why on Earth would they be pushing a bill that divides the Republican conference, that unites all the Senate Democrats and has zero chance of ever passing into law?"

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday urged Republicans to back the bill, commenting: "Everyone agrees the border is a mess. For years our Republican colleagues have demanded we fix the border, and all along they said it should be done through legislation... Well, we are producing legislation in a bipartisan way, and now, unfortunately, many on the hard-right are turning their back on this package."

Some Republicans have suggested they could pass the additional aid to Israel in a separate bill, but this has been rejected by the Biden administration.>

<The fate of former President Donald Trump’s attempt to return to the White House is in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Thursday, the justices will hear arguments in Trump’s appeal of a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that he is not eligible to run again for president because he violated a provision in the 14th Amendment preventing those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.

Many legal observers expect the nation’s highest court will reverse the Colorado ruling rather than remove the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination from the ballot. But it’s always tricky to try to predict a Supreme Court ruling, and the case against Trump has already broken new legal ground.

WHAT DID TRUMP POTENTIALLY VIOLATE?

It’s called Section 3 and it’s pretty brief. It 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.”

Nice and simple, right?

Not so fast, Trump’s lawyers say.

TRUMP’S DEFENSE

Trump’s lawyers say this part of the Constitution wasn’t meant to apply to the president. Notice how it specifically mentions electors, senators and representatives, but not the presidency.

It also says those who take an oath to “support” the United States, but the presidential oath doesn’t use that word. Instead, the Constitution requires presidents to say they will “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution. And finally, Section 3 talks about any other “officer” of the United States, but Trump’s lawyers argue that language is meant to apply to presidential appointees, not the president.

That was enough to convince the Colorado district court judge who initially heard the case. She found that Trump had engaged in insurrection, but also agreed that it wasn’t clear that Section 3 applied to the president. That part of her decision was reversed by the Colorado Supreme Court.

The majority of the state’s highest court wrote: “President Trump asks us to hold that Section 3 disqualifies every oath-breaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath-breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land.”

OTHER TRUMP ARGUMENTS

Trump's lawyers contend that the question of who is covered by a rarely used, once obscure clause is political and cannot be decided by unelected judges. They contend that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol wasn’t an insurrection. They say the attack wasn’t widespread, didn’t involve large amounts of firearms or include other markers of sedition. They say Trump didn’t “engage” in anything that day other than in exercising his protected free speech rights.

Others who have been skeptical of applying Section 3 to Trump have made an argument that the dissenting Colorado Supreme Court justices also found persuasive: The way the court went about finding that Trump violated Section 3 violated the former president’s due process rights. They contend he was entitled to a structured legal process rather than a court in Colorado trying to figure out if the Constitution applied to him.

That gets at the unprecedented nature of the cases. Section 3 has rarely been used after an 1872 congressional amnesty excluded most former Confederates from it. The U.S. Supreme Court has never heard such a case.

Arguments about legal precedents go back to a lone 1869 opinion from Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who was hearing an appeal as a circuit judge rather than for the high court.

The Trump case is historic and is expected to create new law.

ISN’T THIS JUST A PARTISAN CASE?

Not really. A lot of Democrats are rooting for Trump to get kicked off the ballot and a lot of Republicans are angry about the campaign against him. The case was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning group.

But some of the most vocal proponents of removing Trump from the ballot are conservative legal scholars who believe in following the strict words of the Constitution. There’s no way around the insurrection disqualification for Trump, they argue, adding it's there in the plain text and was intended by the authors. The plaintiffs in Colorado are all Republicans or unaffiliated voters.....>

<....All seven of the justices on Colorado’s Supreme Court were appointed by Democrats. But they split 4-3 on the decision, a stark demonstration that this case doesn’t divide neatly along partisan lines.

The majority quoted a ruling from Neil Gorsuch, one of Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominees, from when he was a federal judge in Colorado. He ruled then that the state properly kept a naturalized citizen born in Guyana off the presidential ballot because the he didn’t meet the constitutional qualifications.

In Maine, the Democratic secretary of state also removed Trump from the ballot. But in Illinois, a Republican retired judge serving as a hearing officer for the state Board of Election suggested keeping Trump on, but only because he thought courts should decide on eligibility. The retired judge found it was likely Trump was disqualified due to Section 3, making him a notable Republican to side with those trying to remove the former president.

The U.S. Supreme Court is comprised of six justices nominating by Republican presidents, including three by Trump. Partly because this is completely new legal ground, it’s hard to predict how individual justices will rule based on their ideology.

WHAT COULD THE COURT DO?

Several outcomes are possible but they generally fall into three areas.

The first is the court could uphold Colorado’s ruling. That would require wins for the plaintiffs on the whole array of Trump's defenses.

The second is the court could rule that Trump cannot be disqualified under Section 3, period. There are a lot of ways the court could do this, but the result would be to end the case against him, as well as dozens of similar challenges filed across the country.

The third possibility unnerves a lot of legal experts. The court could effectively punt and not make a final decision on whether Trump is qualified to serve as president. That could kick the question down the road to Jan. 6, 2025, if he wins the election and Congress has to decide whether to certify his victory.

It also would keep alive many of the challenges across the country. A number of them are on hold because state courts are waiting to see what the U.S. Supreme Court will do. Places where a Trump challenge could be rekindled if the high court doesn’t squelch it include Illinois, Minnesota and Oregon. It could add further pressure to challenge Trump’s position on the ballot in other Democratic strongholds such as California and New York, where there have been pushes to invalidate his candidacy that have been comparatively muted.

While the Trump campaign says more than 60 Section 3 cases have been filed nationally, most are by low-profile figures and have generally been dismissed for procedural issues. Uncertainty from the nation's highest court could encourage a new wave of cases in those states, too.

The lack of a clear ruling also could create counter-challenges. Republicans have warned that Section 3 also can be applied to Democrats.

Some already have proposed filing against Biden under the theory that his inability to stem the flow of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border amounts to providing “aid and comfort” to the country’s enemies. Vice President Kamala Harris also could be targeted under the theory that her raising bail money for people arrested during the protests over George Floyd’s 2020 murder by Minneapolis police amounts to “engaging in insurrection.”

Unless the high court shuts this down, they warn, Trump's case might only be the start.>

<Events in the Middle East may be about to spiral out of control. With Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen all targeting Israel and the West, the hand of Iran looms large. But is Tehran in danger of losing control of the escalation it started?

Early yesterday morning, British and US vessels were again targeted by the Houthis, after the third round of retaliatory strikes against the terrorist group’s military infrastructure deep in the northern Yemeni deserts. Elsewhere, the US has carried out strikes against militia groups in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the shocking drone attack in Jordan last week, which killed three US service members and injured more than 40.

There is little doubt that Iran has an interest in using its proxy forces to conduct military operations against the West. For one thing, it is not strong enough to win a direct confrontation.

So Iranian military and advisers are embedded with the Houthis, providing the targeting coordinates for the terrorists’ Tehran-supplied ballistic missiles targeting vessels in the Red Sea. The Iraqi and Syrian militias – which have conducted almost 200 attacks against US forces since last October – host Iranian military personnel and infrastructure across their terror camps. This network provides Tehran will a degree of strategic deniability.

This so-called “axis of resistance” was previously coordinated by Qasem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, until his assassination by the United States when Donald Trump was president. One of the aims of his killing is thought to have been to disrupt the links between the regime in Tehran and its surrogates across the Middle East, so as to lessen their ability to cause chaos across the region.

There is now speculation in defence circles, however, that this strategy might have been rather too successful. Indeed, the danger might be that the new head of the Quds Force, Esmail Qaani – a rather different figure to Soleimani – has unleashed forces that he is no longer able to direct.

This would make it all the more important for the West to put a final end to attacks by groups such as the Houthis and restore a meaningful deterrent. It is clear that US and British strikes in Yemen have not managed to permanently degrade that group’s ability to disrupt Western shipping, for example. While Hezbollah has not launched a full-scale assault on Israel yet, far more could be done to show the terrorists that the response by the West would be devastating should they choose to do so.

And Iran itself has not been given sufficient incentive to rein in the groups it has long supported. The West needs to push back, hard. America has to stand firm and strike against targets – meaningful ones, not empty camps – in order to force Iran to back down and abandon these groups entirely, before the terrorists cause a wider escalation.

If Iran fails to de-escalate its proxies, then the targets of US cruise missiles must be ratcheted up. We need to be bold when dealing with Iran. As Winston Churchill remarked, “You cannot reason with a tiger, when your head is in his mouth.”>

<Lingo Telecom and Life Corporation are linked to a robocall campaign that used an AI voice clone of President Joe Biden to persuade New Hampshire voters not to vote, said New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella during a press conference on Tuesday. Authorities have issued cease-and-desist orders as well as subpoenas to both companies. The two companies are both based in Texas and have been accused of illegal robocall investigations in the past, the FCC noted in the document.

In its cease-and-desist order to Lingo Telecom, the FCC accused the company of “originating illegal robocall traffic.” According to the document, the robocalls began on January 21st of this year, two days before the New Hampshire presidential primary. Voters in the state received calls that played an “apparently deepfake prerecorded message” of the president advising potential Democratic voters not to vote in the upcoming primary election. The calls were spoofed to appear to come from the spouse of former New Hampshire Democratic Party official Kathy Sullivan. Investigators from the Industry Traceback Group discovered that Lingo Telecom was the originating provider for the robocalls. After being informed of this, Lingo then told investigators that Life Corporation was the initiating party behind the calls and subsequently suspended service to the company.

Media reports that ElevenLabs was likely the creator of the software used to make the voice clone of Biden could not be confirmed, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office stated in its press release. The company makes a popular AI voice generator that can clone real voices or create synthetic ones. Bloomberg earlier reported that ElevenLabs suspended the account of the creator of the fake AI calls of Biden.

New Hampshire is continuing to investigate whether the robocall campaign violated election and consumer protection laws. Anywhere between 5,000 and 25,000 calls were made, estimated the call monitoring service Nomorobo.>

<Former President Donald Trump has turned his anger on the state of Indiana, accusing officials there of conspiring to rig the election to help former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley defeat him — and state officials there are unnerved by it, reported Politico.

Moreover, said the report, they fear this could morph from a "bizarre subplot" of the primary season into a test run for Trump to once again try to obstruct election results — something he did in 2020, which led to multiple criminal indictments.

Essentially, Trump — relying on claims by his close ally in the state, Rep. Jim Banks — has been claiming that Haley does not qualify for the Indiana ballot because she missed the deadline to collect enough signatures. However, he appears to be confused; while the signatures deadline has already passed, the deadline to file the collected signatures comes later, and Haley is reportedly still on track to make that deadline with the required amount of signatures.

But Trump continues to claim that the only way Haley makes the ballot is if there is funny business with state officials intervening or breaking the law on her behalf. He's even challenging the validity of the signatures, said the report: "Over the weekend, an attorney for Trump sent a letter, obtained by POLITICO, to Marion County’s Democratic clerk, Kate Sweeney Bell, accusing her of improperly accepting petition signatures for Haley and demanding she preserve all evidence during the certification process."

"The complaints are baseless, elections officials say," reported Adam Wren. "Worse, they and Trump’s opponents warn, with the former president raising alarms even in a state like deep-red Indiana, they look like a test run by Trump and his allies to undermine confidence in the election in November."

“Trump is reinforcing a narrative where the only acceptable outcome is his victory, thus preemptively delegitimizing any electoral defeat,” said Evansville attorney Joshua Claybourn, who has previously served as a delegate to the GOP convention from the state. “It sets the stage for yet another crisis of legitimacy in the November general election.”

“Why put out the effort to challenge the Haley effort ahead of time when the ex-president knows he’s going to win Indiana no matter what?” former state Rep. Mike Murphy told Politico. “The bottom line is he’s completely unhinged. He is literally off his rocker.”>

<There is no more painful pang than that felt by those who enter the arena as the favorite only to leave it shell-shocked.

Remember the looks on everyone’s faces at Hillary Clinton’s election-night extravaganza back in 2016?

Eight years later, it looks increasingly likely Republicans may experience the same sort of unhappy surprise come November.

Former President Donald Trump is seemingly on a glide path to reprise his role as the GOP standard-bearer, and Trump’s supporters are bullish on his chances of reprising his role as commander in chief.

A surface-level analysis might give only more reasons for such optimism.

After all, Trump has built up a healthy lead over President Biden in the bulk of national and swing-state polls conducted over the last few months.

But make no mistake: The Trump train’s check-engine light is on.

Not because it’s beset by just one small defect — it’s plagued by irreparable ones.

At the root of all of these problems are Trump’s legal issues.

An NBC poll released over the weekend suggests Trump boasts a 5-point national lead over Biden.

But there’s a fist concealed by the velvet glove of this topline result.

If Trump is convicted of a felony this year, his lead would turn into a 2-point deficit.

The former president is staring down the barrel of four separate trials after the DC Circuit Court of Appeals struck down his outlandish claim to immunity Tuesday morning, so such a conviction is a distinct possibility.

And realistically, the political consequences of Trump having criminal penalties imposed on him are likely to be even more sweeping than those captured by the NBC survey.

The media will cover it ceaselessly, to the exclusion of the issues Republicans hope the election hinges on.

Some voters will consider this unfair, the trials politically motivated, and exactly the scenario for which Democrats have pushed. Nevertheless, it is the reality.

The result will be a freefall in the polls for not just Trump but the Republicans up and down the ballot who feel compelled to march in lockstep with him.

Right now, the public trusts Trump to handle a wide range of issues — from immigration to crime to the economy to international affairs — better than Biden can.

This is the result not of unshakable trust in Trump but anger at Biden for replacing his predecessor’s personality-based chaos with policy-induced disorder reflected in prices at the grocery store, induced by an unserious approach to the border crisis and invited by his self-evident weakness abroad.

Nominating Trump risks limiting the upside of and potentially even forfeiting this key advantage Republicans have over Biden.

At the end of 2023, the Republican National Committee had just $8 million in cash on hand (it had $72 million heading into 2020).

It turns out losing elections and spending party money on Trump’s legal bills is a quick and effective way to persuade donors to close their checkbooks.

And speaking of those bills, Federal Election Commission reports indicate Trump’s own political operation has spent around $60 million raised ostensibly to help elect him president on defending him in court.

His Save America PAC has only $5 million on hand with the election just nine months away, and his legal bills show no sign of coming down.

Put it all together and what do you have?

A candidate who is accused of serious crimes and more worried about staving off jail time than winning the White House.

If Biden ultimately prevails, he’ll have his opponents’ foolishness, not his allies’ genius, to thank.

Nikki Haley is a capable conservative leader running an energetic campaign, telling voters the truth about Trump’s defects and lapping Biden (whereas Trump only edges him out and even then conditionally) in the polls.

Those who understand the election’s stakes ought to reconsider casting her aside to coronate a walking, talking political liability

Because for Republicans, the worst part about falling in November would be they willingly chose to do so.>

<There is speculation over whether prosecutors in Donald Trump's classified documents case will attempt to have presiding Judge Aileen Cannon removed from the trial after she granted the defense access to certain unredacted classified papers.

Trump's team filed a discovery asking to see a number of classified documents related to the case in their entirety which was opposed by Special Counsel Jack Smith on the grounds it could impede ongoing investigations.

On Tuesday, Cannon ruled in favor of Trump, stating the filing from the special counsel "fails to identify the information at issue, provide any explanation about the nature of the investigation, or explain how disclosure of the code name would prejudice or jeopardize the integrity of the separate investigation (assuming it remains ongoing)."

Cannon, a Republican, was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida by Trump and assumed office in November 2020. She had already sparked anger, and talk of removal, by delaying the case's pre-trial schedule in a move that could significantly slow down the case.

Speaking to Newsweek before Cannon gave her ruling, Ted Spaulding, an Atlanta-based trial attorney and founder of Spaulding Injury Law, said granting Trump's request could spark a move against the judge but added it was unlikely to be successful.

He said: "Certainly, it could lead to a motion by the prosecution to have the judge removed from the case since it appears the prosecution has already hinted at such a potential filing.

"In my opinion, it would be surprising if the judge is actually removed based on a delay-of-case argument. Usually, judges are only removed for conflicts of interest or other egregious behaviors in the case. Most state's [sic] procedural rules build in quite a bit of discretion in how the sitting judge handles discovery and deadlines in a case."

Newsweek reached out to Special Counsel Jack Smith, via the Department of Justice, and Judge Aileen Cannon using email and voicemail messages outside of usual working hours. This article will be updated if either wishes to comment.

Before the decision was announced, Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff suggested a ruling in Trump's favor could spark an interlocutory appeal from prosecutors, based on the perception that Cannon has been too favorable to the defense.

On X, formerly Twitter, Parloff referenced section four of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) which allows "the United States to delete specified items of classified information from documents to be made available to the defendant through discovery" or to "substitute a summary of the information for such classified documents."

Posting on Monday, before Cannon's ruling, he said it would be "highly controversial" for her to grant the defense's request over document access and that if she did so it could trigger an interlocutory appeal from prosecutors.

Trump is facing 40 federal charges over allegations he retained classified papers after leaving the White House in January 2021 and then obstructed efforts by the relevant authorities to have them returned.

In August 2022, Trump's Mar-a-Lago private members club was raided by federal agents who recovered several classified papers. Trump has pled not guilty to all charges and strongly denies any wrongdoing.>