<Presidential elections can be put into three categories: stay the course, turn the page and transformation. In 2004, President George W. Bush was prosecuting the War on Terror and Americans choose to stay the course. In 2008, voters wanted a change in course and enough voters saw then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as transformational to elect him.

In 2012, President Obama simply ran a better campaign than Mitt Romney and voters decided to stay the course. In 2016, Donald Trump became the voice of middle-class angst and won a surprising victory that transformed the Republican Party. In 2020, voters wanted to lower the volume and heal the nation, so they turned the page on Trump and elected Joe Biden.

Now we have a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump, but in an environment with very different trends that are driving the very different issues. Biden, in 2021, decided to be a transformational president and to mainly ignore healing the nation. This has cost him in the polls because other issues grew into crises and the perception was created that he was ignoring or mishandling them. As a result, parts of his 2020 coalition are fracturing.

Trump is trying to compare his record as president with Biden’s, but he is being hampered by court cases. Trump has an extremely loyal base of support. However, negative branding as an autocrat who is a threat to democracy is creating problems for him breaking through to independent and undecided Republican voters.

In a second term, with Democrats in control of the House and Senate, Biden would move to codify Roe v. Wade and to grant amnesty and a path to citizenship to migrants. Americans will see the “green agenda” accelerate as his imposed deadlines to end fossil fuels and eliminate many home appliances approach. Also, his economic policies would reflect the goals of the World Economic Forum as he pursues putting our economy on a post-capitalist footing and moving toward global governance. Not a recipe for unity.

A Trump victory would exacerbate fear and loathing among his enemies. They will challenge every executive action in court and parse every word he utters to define his motivations as rooted in racism, bigotry and malevolence. If they regained the House, Democrats would likely impeach him for the third time predicated on their belief that he is a threat to democracy and an aspiring dictator.

Protests, like those in 2020, will dominate the landscape, and the legacy media will frame the narrative as a fight to restore democracy. Blue state governors will disregard or refuse to enforce federal laws that they perceive will roll-back progress on core Democratic issues. This too is not a recipe for unity.

The 2024 election is a “lose-lose” for America. Biden’s agenda will continue to transform America without being granted permission by the voters. Trump will be blocked at every turn as he attempts to govern. American civilization, which is arguably in decline, will continue to have its foundations eroded and its institutions debased. Biden will likely use the force of government to force his opponents to comply with his plan to transform America. A second Trump presidency would demonstrate that our institutions and traditions do not function effectively when a sizable number of Americans refuse to accept an election result.

In 1945, President Harry Truman had to decide between two bad choices — drop atomic bombs on civilian populations or invade the Japanese mainland. In the context of his times, he made the right choice, albeit not a choice a president would be permitted to make today. In 2024, Americans are being asked to decide between two forms of division — one with policies that will divide and the other a person who personifies division in the minds of many.

The question for voters is whether we as a nation can afford to spend another four years divided.>

<Ukraine won. Trump lost.

The House vote to aid Ukraine renews hope that Ukraine can still win its war. It also showed how and why Donald Trump should lose the 2024 election.

For nine years, Trump has dominated the Republican Party. Senators might have loathed him, governors might have despised him, donors might have ridiculed him, college-educated Republican voters might have turned against him—but LOL, nothing mattered. Enough of the Republican base supported him. Everybody else either fell in line, retired from politics, or quit the party.

Trump did not win every fight. In 2019 and 2020, Senate Republicans rejected two of his more hair-raising Federal Reserve nominations, Stephen Moore and Judy Shelton.

But Trump won almost every fight that mattered. Even after January 6, 2021, Senate Republicans protected him from conviction at his impeachment trial. After Trump left office, party leaders still indulged his fantasy that he had “really” won the 2020 election. Attempts to substitute Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley as the 2024 nominee sputtered and failed.

On aid to Ukraine, Trump got his way for 16 months. When Democrats held the majority in the House of Representatives in 2022, they approved four separate aid requests for Ukraine, totaling $74 billion. As soon as Trump’s party took control of the House, in January 2023, the aid stopped. Every Republican officeholder understood: Those who wished to show loyalty to Trump must side against Ukraine.

At the beginning of this year, Trump was able even to blow up the toughest immigration bill seen in decades—simply to deny President Joe Biden a bipartisan win. Individual Senate Republicans might grumble, but with Trump opposed, the border-security deal disintegrated.

Three months later, Trump’s party in Congress has rebelled against him—and not on a personal payoff to some oddball Trump loyalist, but on one of Trump’s most cherished issues, his siding with Russia against Ukraine.

The anti-Trump, pro-Ukraine rebellion started in the Senate. Twenty-two Republicans joined Democrats to approve aid to Ukraine in February. Dissident House Republicans then threatened to force a vote if the Republican speaker would not schedule one. Speaker Mike Johnson declared himself in favor of Ukraine aid. This weekend, House Republicans split between pro-Ukraine and anti-Ukraine factions. On Friday, the House voted 316–94 in favor of the rule on the aid vote. On Saturday, the aid to Ukraine measure passed the House by 311–112. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will adopt the House-approved aid measures unamended and speed them to President Biden for signature.

As defeat loomed for his anti-Ukraine allies, Trump shifted his message a little. On April 18, he posted on Truth Social claiming that he, too, favored helping Ukraine. “As everyone agrees, Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us!” But that was after-the-fact face-saving, jumping to the winning side after his side was about to lose.

Trump is still cruising to renomination, collecting endorsements even from Republican elected officials who strongly dislike him. But the cracks in unity are visible.

Some are symbolic. Even after Haley withdrew from the Republican presidential contest on March 6, some 13 to 19 percent of Republicans still showed up to cast protest votes for her in contests in Georgia and Washington State on March 12; Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio on March 19; and in New York and Connecticut on April 2....>

<....Other cracks are more substantial—and ominous for Trump. Trump’s fundraising has badly lagged President Biden’s, perhaps in part because of Trump’s habit of diverting donations to his own legal defense and other personal uses. In March, Biden had more than twice as much cash on hand as Trump did. Republican Senate candidates in the most competitive races and House candidates also lag behind their Democratic counterparts. CNBC reports that the Republican National Committee is facing “small-dollar donor fatigue” and “major donor hesitation.”

How much of this is traceable to Trump personally? The Ukraine vote gives the most significant clue. Here is the issue on which traditional Republican belief in U.S. global leadership clashes most directly with Trump’s peculiar and sinister enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. And on this issue, the traditional Republicans have now won and Trump’s peculiar enthusiasm got beat [sic].

To make an avalanche takes more than one tumbling rock. Still, the pro-Ukraine, anti-Trump vote in the House is a very, very big rock. On something that mattered intensely to him—that had become a badge of pro-Trump identity—Trump’s own party worked with Democrats in the House and Senate to hand him a stinging defeat. This example could become contagious.

Republicans lost the House in 2018 because they were beaten in districts once held by George H. W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Eric Cantor. They lost the presidency in 2020 in great part because their vote eroded among white suburban men. They lost the Senate in 2021 because Trump fatigue cost them two seats in Georgia. They lost Senate seats and governorships in 2022 because they put forward Trump-branded candidates such as Blake Masters and Kari Lake in Arizona and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania.

Republicans alienated too many of their own—and paid the political price. They alienated their own because of Trump’s hostility to Ukraine, and that price was paid in blood and suffering by Ukraine’s soldiers and civilians.

The issues that were supposed to keep the Trump show on the road have proved squibs and fizzles. Inflation is down. Crime is down. Republicans threw away the immigration issue by blowing up—at Trump’s order—the best immigration deal they’ve ever seen. The attempt to confect Biden scandals to equal Trump’s scandals turned into an embarrassing fiasco that relied on information from a suspected Russian spy indicted for lying to the FBI. And Trump himself now faces trial in New York State on one set of felony charges. He faces a federal trial, probably starting this fall, on the even graver criminal indictments arising from his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Each of these warnings and troubles has deflated Trump. He has deflated to the point where he could no longer thwart Ukraine aid in Congress. Ukraine won, Trump lost. That may be a repeating pattern in the year ahead.>

<Remarks made by Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, on Sunday crediting former President Donald Trump for Ukraine aid funding has raised eyebrows on social media.

During an interview appearance on Fox News Sunday, Graham stated his approval for the House of Representatives approving more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine to bolster its fight against Russia's invasion that began in February 2022. The bill designates approximately $10 billion of the Ukraine funding as repayable loans.

"There's a loan component to it. This would not have passed without President Trump. I want to thank the House Speaker [Mike Johnson] and [Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries working together in a bipartisan fashion to give weapons to Ukraine to fight a fight that matters to us," Graham said. "And President Trump has created a loan component to this package that gives us leverage down the road."

Earlier this month, Johnson visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago where the former president expressed support for structuring some Ukraine aid as a loan.

"We're looking at it right now, and they're talking about it, and we're thinking about making it in the form of a loan instead of just a gift," Trump said during the media event with the House speaker. "We keep handing out gifts of billions and billions of dollars, and we'll take a look at it."

Earlier this year on the campaign trail and on his Truth Social social media platform, Trump advocated for loans as Ukraine's primary form of foreign aid.

"They want to give like almost $100 billion to a few countries," the former president said about the U.S. Senate at a February campaign event in South Carolina. "I said why do we do this? If you do, you give them not $100 billion, you give it to them as a loan."

Polish President Andrzej Duda told reporters in February that he believes Trump would keep his previous promise to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours if reelected. Last month, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Trump will not give money to help Ukraine fight Russia if he's reelected after meeting with him.

"He will not give a penny into the Ukraine-Russia war and therefore the war will end," Orbán told state television at the time. "As it is obvious that Ukraine on its own cannot stand on its feet."

Newsweek has reached out to Trump's office via email on Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Graham's comments on Sunday drew immediate reactions on X, formerly Twitter.

The "Republicans against Trump" X account posted, "Lindsey Graham on the passage of Ukraine aid: This wouldn't have passed without Donald Trump. WT*?"

Political analyst Sarah Reese Jones wrote on X, "Propaganda Alert: Lindsey Graham gives Trump credit for House passage of Ukraine aid, 'Ukrainians are fighting like tigers. This aid package has a loan component to it and this would not have passed without Donald Trump.' *Trump has promised to end all aid to Ukraine."

Ron Filipkowski, a former federal prosecutor and vocal Trump critic, posted, "Just embarrassing what these people have become. Not a shred of self-respect left."

Newsweek has also reached out to Graham's office via email Sunday afternoon. This story will be updated with any provided statements.

The loans included in the foreign aid bill offer approximately $7.9 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine and $1.57 billion in assistance for Europe, Eurasia and Central Asia. The legislation also "mandates agreement on repayment for economic support by the government of Ukraine."

The text also that stipulates that the president can cancel up to 50 percent of the loan after November 15, 2024, with congressional review. After January 1, 2026, any remaining debt can also be canceled.

Some House GOP members are skeptical about the loans ever being repaid.

Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania called the loan all "smoke and mirrors" in a post on X on Wednesday. He also took aim at the president's ability to cancel 50 percent of the loan by the end of this year.

"No bank would allow this," he added.

Lawmakers also approved billions more in aid for other U.S. allies like Taiwan and Israel. The Senate will now vote on the package before it heads to President Joe Biden for sign-off.

Of four separate bills passed Saturday, the military aid package for Ukraine was the most contentious, passing 311-112. In total, 210 Democrats and 101 Republicans voted in favor of the bill, while 112 Republicans voted against it.>

<A growing number of House Republicans are accusing their conservative colleagues of enabling Democratic wins, especially after this weekend's foreign aid votes.

Multiple members believe they could have gotten concessions from Democrats on border policy in exchange for Ukraine funding, only to be blown up by backlash from conservatives.

GOP leadership brought up border security provisions alongside their foreign aid package — but the package was blocked by Republicans from reaching the House floor under normal rules.

It ultimately failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to pass the House under suspension of the rules.

"If you were a true conservative, you would actually advance border security, but what they want to do is they want to blow up border security," Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) told Axios.

"[T]he members who scream the loudest about border security were actively and knowingly preventing us from getting it done," another member said.

"They're making us the most bipartisan Congress ever," a third member told Axios. "Because they are unwilling to compromise just a little bit in a divided government, they force us to make bigger concessions and deals with the Dems."

The other side: Conservatives who advocate for blocking procedural motions argue it's necessary to light a fire under GOP leadership to demand more.

Multiple conservatives said they expected more out of Johnson than former Speaker Kevin McCarthy due to his record as a rank-and-file member.

"Republicans have control of the House and we should be leveraging it to secure our border, unfortunately the Uniparty is working to secure the borders of Ukraine instead of our own border," Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) tweeted. "[T]he problem is [Johnson's] gotten nothing on anything. Right? They roll him every time," Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — who is pushing the motion to vacate — told reporters on Saturday.

Republicans left town yesterday without Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) pulling the trigger on her motion to vacate.

Johnson "needs to do the right thing, to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process. If he doesn't do so, he will be vacated," Greene said on Fox News.

Johnson has faced some of the most tumultuous weeks of his speakership, with his longevity in the role remaining in question.

But the Louisiana Republican has asserted that he won't cave to threats to his speakership and feels rules changes should be made in the next Congress to tamp down on the unprecedented level of chaos.>