<South Dakota's Republican Governor Kristi Noem, a potential Donald Trump vice president pick, dodged CNN host Dana Bash's question on Sunday over whether she would have certified President Joe Biden's 2020 election win.

Trump became the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee in March following a series of primary wins, sparking renewed speculation about who his vice-presidential pick could be. The business mogul turned politician had a public fall out with Mike Pence, who served as vice president during Trump's first term in the White House, over his refusal to back alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result. Pence said in March that he "cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign."

Meanwhile, Noem, a close ally to Trump, is widely speculated to be a potential vice president pick for Trump. The former president previously pointed towards the Republican governor as a possible choice in an interview with Fox News on February 20. He said Noem and six others were being considered as his potential running mate.

During Sunday's interview on CNN's State of the Union, Bash discussed Noem's position as a contender for vice president and asked whether or not she would have certified the 2020 election.

Pointing out that some of Trump's potential vice president picks have said that they would not have certified the results as Pence did, Bash asked: "would you have?"

"I think you can go back and keep talking about January 6, but the fact of the matter is that was the day we hope we never see again here in this country. We did not do justice by our country by showing and fighting over that day, we should focus on our freedoms and continue to uphold our constitution. So talking in hypotheticals is not something I do," Noem said.

However, Bash pressed Noem further by pointing towards Pence as she asked, "So when Mike Pence said that he talked to lawyers and he felt that he had absolutely no ability to reject the election on January 6th, do you think he was wrong when he did that?"

While Noem did not say whether or not she would certify the 2020 election she responded by stating that Pence had "failed Donald Trump".

"You know, I wasn't in Mike Pence's shoes. And the information that he had at that time, I don't know how he based his decisions. I think he's a nice man. I think that he's failed Donald Trump since that day because he certainly does not recognize that we need someone in the White House who needs him out on the trail advocating for him instead of constantly criticizing and going back and ripping him apart," Noem added.

Newsweek has reached out to Noem's office and Trump's spokesperson via email for comment.

This comes after an interview with Newsmax in March, in which Trump suggested he had ruled out "some people" as potential running mates because they hadn't "behaved properly." He also said he has some candidates in mind "that you may know very well."

The presumptive Republican nominee added: "We have a lot of great people in the Republican Party, and they'll do a terrific job, I think, but certainly I have people that I wouldn't want as a vice president."

Trump continues to face his D.C. election interference case related to the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

In August, the former president was indicted on four counts, accused of attempting to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss to Biden in the run-up to the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.>

Banished from a large percentage of the state she governs; jaysus, wot a dumbass.

<A man who died 17 years ago is making a significant impact on climate change, but not in a good way. Millions of dollars have been spent spreading misinformation and disinformation about the dangers of climate change, and a lot more money is about to be doled out over the next two years.

Billionaire Daniel C. Searle formed the Searle Freedom Trust in 1998. Searle's wealth came from his family's business, G.D. Searle & Company, a pharmaceutical company responsible for notable products like Ambien, Metamucil, Dramamine, and Envoid — the first commercial birth control pill.

Searle died in 2007, but the Trust has continued donating millions of dollars annually to non-profit organizations, many of which have advocated against policies to address climate change.

According to a CNN report, the Searle Freedom Trust has given out more than $8 million over the past decade to those groups, including the CO2 Coalition and the Heartland Institute.

"These organizations conduct 'research' that is designed to sow doubt about either the reality or the danger of the climate crisis, or about the viability of any of the most feasible solutions," said Galen Hall, a University of Michigan researcher who has studied financial donations to climate change denial groups.

According to CNN, the Heartland Institute mailed 350,000 copies of a book that claims climate change science is "deeply flawed" to public school science teachers in an effort to influence their teaching.

The reality is that 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that the planet is heating at an abnormal rate and that human actions — specifically burning dirty energy sources like coal, oil, and gas — are directly responsible.

Meanwhile, officials for the CO2 Coalition — whose executive director Caleb Rossiter said that the rising temperatures on our planet would be "more beneficial than harmful for humanity" this century — have briefed lawmakers and testified before Congress and state legislatures.

Again, almost all climate scientists agree that rising temperatures are exceedingly harmful to humanity, as they are causing the extreme weather events that many of us are experiencing. Raging wildfires, devastating floods, severe droughts, and intense storms are wreaking havoc around the world, and they're all a result of our warming climate.

"The fact that our political system works in a way where wealthy people who died years ago can continue to have such profound influence over our politics and our beliefs about science and the world is just incredibly damaging," Hall added. "It's one of the key aspects of American politics that makes positive change on issues like climate change so difficult."

The Searle Freedom Trust is closing down in 2025 at the request of Daniel himself, which means about $59 million will be given out over the next two years to influence politicians and public policies.

The best thing you can do to push back against this kind of financial influence is to vote for pro-climate candidates, support eco-friendly initiatives by brands, and donate money to climate causes — even if it's not millions of dollars.>

One man's opinion:

<Conventional political wisdom suggests the first criminal trial of Donald Trump, which got underway in Manhattan last week, will have a minimal effect on the 2024 election. Many political observers see the allegations — covering up hush money payments ahead of the 2016 election — as relatively trifling, and certainly not comparable to the other three indictments Trump faces in Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C. Even a guilty verdict in the trial would “be unlikely to have a big influence come November,” declared an analyst for ABC News.

Perhaps that’s true. But in the meantime, the contrast between Biden and Trump could not be more stark — and that will have enduring, potentially decisive political influence.

This week, Joe Biden was in Pennsylvania campaigning for re-election. He called for new tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from China before a union crowd in Pittsburgh. And in his hometown of Scranton, he attacked Trump for supporting tax policies that favor the wealthy. Meanwhile, Trump was stuck in a Manhattan courtroom, as jurors were selected for his trial.

Make no mistake, this is a serious political problem for Trump — and one that’s only going to get worse. Opening statements in the trial begin on Monday. As things stand, Trump will likely spend much of May in court. While Biden will be out on the campaign trail, meeting with and talking to voters about why he deserves another term in office, Trump will be in Manhattan trying to convince 12 jurors not to find him guilty of falsifying business records in order to hide a hush money payment to a former porn star.

Every day spent in court is a day that Trump can’t be out on the hustings talking to supporters or raising money for a fall campaign in which he already trails Biden badly in fundraising. Candidate appearances usually give a modest boost to a presidential campaign. Losing that opportunity for more than a month cannot be a positive development.

Merely from an image-making standpoint, what’s better: a candidate sitting at a defense table several hours a day or a candidate shaking hands with his supporters?

For Trump’s MAGA base, the New York City trial will likely only increase their support for the former president. For them, any attempt to hold Trump accountable for his actions is “election interference” and a plot by Democrats to ensure Biden’s re-election.

But what about the rest of the country? It’s easy to imagine that images of Trump in a courtroom will remind Americans of the never-ending drama that defined his four years in office — and not in a good way.

And what if Trump is found guilty? Then, things will only get worse. According to a recent YouGov poll, 57% of Americans say that if Trump is convicted of a serious crime, he shouldn’t “be allowed to serve as president again in the future.” Of course, it’s also true that a YouGov poll in January found that 56% of respondents ranked the New York case as the least important of Trump’s multiple indictments. But that’s easy to say before a possible felony conviction.

A majority of Americans see jury duty as an integral part of being a good citizen, and most have confidence in the jury system. Is non-MAGA America likely to see a Trump conviction as a partisan exercise or rather an example of the criminal justice system working as it should? It’s quite possible that a great many political pundits are playing down the confidence and respect that Americans have for the jury system and the deliberations of their fellow citizens.

Considering Trump’s tenuous political position — and the narrowness of the 2024 polls — if just a small percentage of voters are swayed by a guilty verdict, it could have a seismic political impact. And that’s not even taking into account the other criminal trials that Trump is still facing.

From an optics and resources standpoint, Trump’s trial represents a rough several weeks for his campaign. And if he’s convicted, it could prove fatal. To those pundits who believe Trump’s legal odyssey is much ado about nothing — think again.>

<Donald Trump’s legal fees are taking a chunk out of his campaign funds – with one of the groups that has underwritten many of those costs having spent nearly $3.7m last month.

Figures released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show this is what the Save America political action committee (PAC) spent in March, amounting to nearly three in every four dollars it raised during the same period. It comes as Trump faces a number of legal cases – with his trial over allegations he tried to cover up a $130,000 hush-money payment to adult star Stormy Daniels to begin hearing evidence on Monday. Trump denies all the charges against him.

The money Save America spent on legal expenses rivals the $3.7 million Trump’s campaign committee spent altogether in March. It comes after President Joe Biden’s campaign spent $29.2 million on his campaign in March, including a barrage of media buys in swing states.

Save America, which is separate from Trump's campaign but was his biggest fundraising group before he announced his candidacy, reported taking in just over $10,000 from donors in March. It was able to cover spending by taking a $5 million refund of money it had previously given to a super PAC backing Trump's campaign known as MAGA Inc.

Save America has now clawed back more than $52 million of $60 million it had previously given MAGA Inc, reducing considerably the amount of money MAGA Inc has available for television ads backing Trump.

While Save America has not disclosed the details of how much it has spent on each of Trump's legal cases, its filings show that since the start of 2023 it has spent more than $59 million on lawyer fees.

But the former president may still struggle to keep up with Mr Biden, who has increased his spending sharply in the run-up to November, having spent $45.2 million on media advertising since the beginning of the year, compared with Trump’s $6 million. Mr Biden’s principal campaign committee entered April with $85.5 million stockpiled in its war chest, while Trump’s main campaign account had $45.1 million.

But while Trump's money raising among small donors has appeared to flag, Trump in recent weeks has held fundraising events to court big donors, helping the Republican Party raise more than $20 million in March, nearly double what it collected a month earlier, the party reported on Saturday.>

<In the 118th Congress, House Republicans have been riddled with party infighting and chaos since being sworn into office earlier in 2023.

After 15 different votes to elect former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, disagreements over sending aid to Ukraine during Russia’s war, and a failed bipartisan border bill, this Congress is set to be the most unproductive in decades. According to a recent poll, this Congress has the lowest approval rating since 2015, with just 12% of those polled approving of how Congress is handling its job.

All-or-nothing politics have cost House Republicans, forcing them to give concessions to Democrats.

Last year, some House Republicans voted to oust Speaker McCarthy, the first time in U.S. history a speaker has been ousted.

The move came after McCarthy relied on Democratic votes to avoid a partial government shutdown, angering Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who filed a motion to oust him.

McCarthy was not voted into the position easily. The House engaged in 15 rounds of votes as his appointment to the position was stalled by hard-right Republicans.

Removing McCarthy left the House in shambles as there was no clear replacement. Republicans put up multiple other congressmen for a vote, including Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Tom Emmer (R-MN). Ultimately, the relatively unknown Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) was voted into the position after four rounds of voting.

Democrats originally looked to save McCarthy, but ultimately voted against him after McCarthy brought forth an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

"Let them wallow in their pigsty of incompetence," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said.

Prior to McCarthy holding the position, previous Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner retired from Congress after fighting with hard-right Republicans.

On Saturday, President Joe Biden signed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act into law after the House approved the measure last week. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the section was “one of the United States’s most vital intelligence collection tools.”

House Republicans were critical of the legislation as former President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social “Kill FISA.” The House passed a two-year authorization of the law, which could allow Trump to do away with it should he win the 2024 general election.

The final vote for FISA was 273 to 147, with support split among parties. Over 100 Republicans voted alongside Democrats in favor of the law, while 88 Republicans and 59 Democrats opposed.

“Speaker Johnson was incredibly wrong,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said in a Fox News Sunday interview. “He broke the tie. He voted with the Democrats. Here we have the leader of the Republicans in the House votes with the Democrats against a warrant requirement.”

“We also have Speaker Johnson voting for the spending package once again with a majority of the Democrats. As I see it now, I’m not so sure there’s a difference between Mike Johnson being in charge and the Democrats being in charge,” Paul said.

Speaker Johnson and Trump essentially killed a bipartisan border deal after months of debate about the crisis unfolding at the southern border.

Republicans previously made it clear they would not support Ukraine aid should the border not be addressed by Congress. The legislation was negotiated for four months but quickly lost support from Republicans as Trump expressed his distaste toward the law.

“We had a bipartisan deal to fix the border, a very strong bill,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said. “Now, the only reason we didn’t pass it is that former President Trump wanted this to be a campaign issue rather than allowing us to get a major bill done, giving the resources to the people at the border to protect our border. Congress has the responsibility to act.”....>

<....The Senate struck down the deal and Johnson vowed that the legislation would be “dead on arrival” if it should come to a vote in the House.

“I’ve seen enough. This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, 'the border never closes.' If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival,” Johnson said in a statement on X.

“Let me be clear: The Senate Border Bill will NOT receive a vote in the House. Here’s what the people pushing this “deal” aren’t telling you: It accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day and gives automatic work permits to asylum recipients — a magnet for more illegal immigration,” Scalise said on X.

Democrats ultimately won as Ukraine aid was eventually passed and border legislation has yet to hit Biden's desk.

This weekend, the House passed long-awaited aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Johnson refused to bring the legislation to the House floor for a vote as he faced opposition from within the GOP not to fund Ukraine.

Aid to Ukraine passed 311 to 112, with all Democrats voting in favor and half of Republicans against the measure. It forced Johnson, who was once a harsh critic of funding Ukraine in the early days of Russia’s war, to change his mindset.

“The world is destabilized and it is a tinderbox,” Johnson said. “I think we did our work here, and history will judge it well. Let the chips fall where they may.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) threatened to oust Johnson from his position if he brought a Ukraine vote to the floor. Some House Republicans have said they have heard Russian propaganda being uttered on the House floor.

The funding measures, alongside a TikTok ban if the owner does not sell, will be bundled and sent to the Senate.>

<Former President Donald Trump and his minions throughout the Republican Party would have you believe that his criminal trial for falsifying business records to cover up an affair with a porn star, which is starting in earnest this week, is a political benefit to him. In their telling, the trial, which they say is nothing more than "political persecution" and "election interference," is a political gift that will propel Trump to a second term.

Like most things that come from Trumpworld, this could not be further from the truth. Of course, a criminal trial does not help Trump. And anyone who tries to sell you otherwise should have their head examined. It is simply an absurd and asinine argument.

Because despite what Trump might believe, he does not have mythical political powers, he does not defy the laws of political gravity, and he's not made of Teflon. In fact, he is a politician who has never once gotten more votes than his political opponent. Ever. And under his stewardship, the Republican Party has had historic electoral defeats in 2018, 2020, and 2022.

The simple truth is Donald Trump is deeply unpopular and politically weak, and a criminal trial is not going to help that.

Elections are a simple math equation; it is about addition, not subtraction. To win in November, Trump not only needs to keep every single vote he won last time but has to add to his vote tally. Without question, a criminal trial will fire up the MAGA base. They are conditioned to eat up the grievance politics that Trump serves them daily whole-hog without asking questions or applying logic. But as has been demonstrated in election cycle after election cycle, the MAGA base is not enough to win elections.

And while a trial may fire up his base, it turns off the very voters Trump needs to win.

According to the most recent New York Times/Siena poll, nearly 6 in 10 voters believe the charges of hush money payments made to a porn star are serious, including 54 percent of Independents. And the bad news for Trump doesn't end there.

Exit polls during the Republican primary showed that around 30 percent of Republican primary voters would not believe Trump was fit for the presidency if he were convicted of a crime. Even if you assume that 95 percent of those Republican voters eventually come home to Trump—a safe assumption—the 5 percent who may not are more than enough to deliver a second term to President Joe Biden.

In other words, a trial won't help Trump attract any new voters, which he needs, and may cost him a small, but decisive, number of voters that he had in 2020. And that math doesn't add up for Trump and Republicans.

The trial will also put Trump back at the center of the news cycle, sucking up all the other news oxygen. Even without cameras in the courtroom, Trump's trial is going to bring wall-to-wall coverage. And while Trump certainly enjoys being at the center of the media universe, being so now will hurt him....>

<....For the voters who are going to decide the election, seeing Trump's grievance show every day from the courthouse will serve as nothing more than a reminder of why they voted Trump out of office in the first place. Trump saw his poll numbers steadily increase from 2021 to 2023, mostly because the majority of voters were not thinking about him. He was not omnipresent in their lives. Unless you were a religious watcher of cable news, you could go days, if not weeks, without hearing about Trump during that time. A trial will change that. For the first time since he left office, he will dominate the news, providing a constant reminder to voters of how chaotic, dangerous and self-serving the next four years could be.

In addition, standing outside the courthouse ranting about himself makes the election a choice between him and Biden and not a referendum on Biden—something that I'm sure brings a huge smile to the faces of everyone working in the Biden reelection offices in Wilmington.

And the trial comes at a huge opportunity cost for Trump. It takes away the biggest advantage any campaign has—the candidate's time. While Trump has never been an aggressive campaigner and spends more days on the golf course than in battleground states, being trapped in a courtroom four days a week for weeks on end will mean less time in the states that will decide the election.

The contrast and opportunity this hands the Biden campaign could not have been any clearer than it was last week. While Trump was confined in court like a common criminal, Biden spent the week barnstorming across Pennsylvania talking about lowering taxes and bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. It's a movie we're likely to see play out over and over again: Trump in court and Biden in battleground states. And since Trump has funneled the vast majority of his campaign resources into his legal defense, he will struggle to make up for his lack of ability to travel with TV ads and other ways to reach voters in the states that will decide the election.

So, no. Up is not down. Bad is not good. The laws of political gravity have not been bent by Donald Trump. And sitting for a criminal trial in the middle of a presidential campaign is not a good thing.>

<Joe Biden taunted Lauren Boebert with a two-word response after being asked why the Republican lawmaker switched congressional seats following his visit to her district last year.

Boebert, a far-right Republican, announced in December that she would be switching districts in Colorado to run in what is considered to be a safer, more conservative seat after a string of scandals over the past year.

The decision came shortly after the president, who she has heavily criticized, visited her district.

“Just a few weeks after you were in Pueblo, Colorado, Congresswoman Boebert left her district. Is that a coincidence or Dark Brandon at work?” a reporter from media outlet, MeidasTouch, asked Mr Biden last week.

“That’s classified,” he quipped in response.

In 2022, Rep Boebert heckled the president during his State of the Union address over the 13 US service members who died in an attack during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. This happened while Mr Biden was speaking about battlefield conditions that may contribute to veterans’ developing cancer.

Her remark came just before Mr Biden spoke about his son Beau Biden, who served in Iraq and died of brain cancer in 2015.

In 2023, Boebert slammed Biden for his so-called “war on on fossil fuels and his Green New Deal agenda which have cost the great people of Colorado’s 3rd District dearly.”

Her remarks came after Mr Biden referred to her as “one of the leaders of (the) extreme MAGA movement” during a speech in her district.

Ms Boebert previously held what was considered a safe Republican seat in Colorado’s third district, with pollsters FiveThirtyEight predicting that she would win in 2022 by nearly 14 percentage points.

However, she failed to win over voters and defeated Democratic challenger Adam Frisch by only a narrow margin.

Ms Boebert then switched her campaign to an even safer seat in Colorado’s fourth district for the 2024 election, avoiding a likely rematch with Mr Frisch.

In a bizarre interview in January, Ms Boebert blamed “Hollywood elites” including singer Barbra Streisand and actor Ryan Reynolds for her decision to switch districts after the celebs donated $1,000 and $500 to Mr Frisch’s campaign respectively.

Those sums made up approximately 0.03 per cent of Mr Frisch’s $7.7m campaign fund.

Despite Ms Boebert’s move, early polls suggest she may be struggling in the fourth district, with one putting her in fifth place.

Ms Boebert has been dogged by personal scandals over the past year. In September, she was ejected from a performance of the musical Beetlejuice due to inappropriate behavior after she was seen vaping and groping her date during the performance.

She has also faced several family issues, including divorce and the arrest of her adult son on trespass and theft charges earlier this year.>

<The Supreme Court has scheduled a special session to hear arguments over whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted over his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

The case, to be argued Thursday, stems from Trump's attempts to have charges against him dismissed. Lower courts have found he cannot claim immunity for actions that, prosecutors say, illegally sought to interfere with the election results.

The Republican ex-president has been charged in federal court in Washington with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, one of four criminal cases he is facing. A trial has begun in New York over hush money payments to a porn star to cover up an alleged sexual encounter.

The Supreme Court is moving faster than usual in taking up the case, though not as quickly as special counsel Jack Smith wanted, raising questions about whether there will be time to hold a trial before the November election, if the justices agree with lower courts that Trump can be prosecuted.

The justices ruled earlier this term in another case that arose from Trump's actions following the election, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The court unanimously held that states could not invoke a provision of the 14th Amendment known as the insurrection clause to prevent Trump from appearing on presidential ballots.

When the justices agreed on Feb. 28 to hear the case, they put the issue this way: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

That's a question the Supreme Court has never had to answer. Never before has a former president faced criminal charges so the court hasn't had occasion to take up the question of whether the president's unique role means he should be shielded from prosecution, even after he has left office.

Both sides point to the absence of previous prosecutions to undergird their arguments. Trump's lawyers told the court that presidents would lose their independence and be unable to function in office if they knew their actions in office could lead to criminal charges once their terms were over. Smith's team wrote that the lack of previous criminal charges “underscores the unprecedented nature” of what Trump is accused of.

There are multiple different potential outcomes of these arguments....>

<....Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace nearly 50 years ago rather than face impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal from office by the Senate in the Watergate scandal.

Both Trump's lawyers and Smith's team are invoking Nixon at the Supreme Court.

Trump's team cites Nixon v. Fitzgerald, a 1982 case in which the Supreme Court held by a 5-4 vote that former presidents cannot be sued in civil cases for their actions while in office. The case grew out of the firing of a civilian Air Force analyst who testified before Congress about cost overruns in the production of the C-5A transport plane.

“In view of the special nature of the President's constitutional office and functions, we think it appropriate to recognize absolute Presidential immunity from damages liability for acts within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility,” Justice Lewis Powell wrote for the court.

But that decision recognized a difference between civil lawsuits and “the far weightier" enforcement of federal criminal laws, Smith's team told the court. They also invoked the high court decision that forced Nixon to turn over incriminating White House tapes for use in the prosecutions of his top aides.

And prosecutors also pointed to President Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon, and Nixon's acceptance of it, as resting “on the understanding that the former President faced potential criminal liability.”

The subtext of the immunity fight is about timing. Trump has sought to push back the trial until after the election, when, if he were to regain the presidency, he could order the Justice Department to drop the case. Prosecutors have been pressing for a quick decision from the Supreme Court so that the clock can restart on trial preparations. It could take three months once the court acts before a trial actually starts.

If the court hands down its decision in late June, which would be the typical timeframe for a case argued so late in the court's term, there might not be enough time to start the trial before the election.

Trump is represented by D. John Sauer, a former Rhodes Scholar and Supreme Court clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia. While serving as Missouri’s solicitor general, Sauer won the only Supreme Court case he has argued until now, a 5-4 decision in an execution case. Sauer also filed legal briefs asking the Supreme Court to repudiate Biden's victory in 2020.

In addition to working for Scalia early in his legal career, Sauer also served as a law clerk to Michael Luttig when he was a Republican-appointed judge on the Richmond, Virginia-based federal appeals court. Luttig joined with other former government officials on a brief urging the Supreme Court to allow the prosecution to proceed. Luttig also advised Vice President Mike Pence not to succumb to pressure from Trump to reject some electoral votes, part of Trump's last-ditch plan to remain in office.

The justices are quite familiar with Sauer’s opponent, Michael Dreeben. As a longtime Justice Department official, Dreeben argued more than 100 cases at the court, many of them related to criminal law. Dreeben was part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and joined Smith's team last year after a stint in private practice.

In Dreeben's very first Supreme Court case 35 years ago, he faced off against Chief Justice John Roberts, then a lawyer in private practice.

Of the nine justices hearing the case, three were nominated by Trump — Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. But it's the presence of a justice confirmed decades before Trump's presidency, Justice Clarence Thomas, that's generated the most controversy.

Thomas's wife, Ginni Thomas, urged the reversal of the 2020 election results and then attended the rally that preceded the Capitol riot. That has prompted calls for the justice to step aside from several court cases involving Trump and Jan. 6.

But Thomas has ignored the calls, taking part in the unanimous court decision that found states cannot kick Trump off the ballot as well as last week's arguments over whether prosecutors can use a particular obstruction charge against Capitol riot defendants. Trump faces the same charge in special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution in Washington.>

<Jon Stewart led Monday’s episode of The Daily Show with Donald Trump’s hush money trial and dinged news networks for how they cover it.

“This trial will obviously be a test of the fairness of the American legal system, but it’s also a test of the media’s ability to cover Donald Trump in a responsible way. A task they have acknowledged they’ve performed poorly in the past,” Stewart said before a supercut of the media claiming they had learned their lesson on how to cover Trump.

The supercut included clips from all major cable news networks like CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Stewart mocked the network’s personalities, adding, “I think from this trial we will see the seeds of that introspection bear fruit, or we will learn that learning curves are for pussies.”

Another supercut of the major news networks was introduced, with many claiming that Trump’s trial was “the trial of the century.”

“Perhaps if we limit the coverage to the issues at hand and try not to create an all-encompassing spectacle of the most banal of details, perhaps that would help,” Stewart added.

Stewart introduced a supercut of the media’s coverage of Trump arriving at the courthouse and having cameras follow his motorcade as he made his way through NYC traffic.

“Seriously, are we going to follow this guy to court every f***ing day? Are you trying to make this OJ? It’s not a chase. He’s commuting,” Stewart said.

Stewart then made fun of a moment on CNN where Jake Tapper interrupted one of his commentators to inform viewers that a new photo of Trump inside the courtroom was on screen. In another moment, Tapper showed one of the courtroom sketches and tried to figure out what was happening.

“Why are you showing it to us? It’s a sketch,” Stewart said. “Why would anyone analyze a sketch? It’d be like looking at The Last Supper and going, ‘Why do you think Jesus looks so sad here?'”

CNN would later have the sketch artist and host Erin Burnett asked [sic] her if Trump was sleeping in one of the sketches.

“My apologies. I was sitting 50 feet away. I was having such a struggle to try and get those eyeballs in,” the sketch artist said.>

<If last week is any guide, somewhere north of 2 million people tuned in to Jesse Watters’s prime-time show on Fox News on Monday night to hear him moan that Donald Trump was being tortured. That the treatment the former president was experiencing during his criminal trial in New York was equivalent to — or perhaps worse than? — that experienced by detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

“Donald Trump, been on the move his whole life,” Watters told viewers after describing the purported leniency Democrats had offered those detainees. “Golf. Rallies. Movement. Action. Sunlight. Fresh air. Freedom. This isn’t lawfare. It’s torture.”

He played a clip of a podcast hosted by Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen — expected to testify against Trump in the Manhattan hush money case — and whimpered about how unfair it was.

“The star witness, who went to prison for lying,” Watters said, “is torturing Trump and bossing the judge around.”

Both of those things are, in fact, happening in equal measure when Cohen says things on his podcast. Which is to say that neither is happening at all, for obvious reasons.

But Watters was simply building to his central point: that the Manhattan case was simply a function of a personal vendetta against Trump and not, per his own interpretation of state statutes, a violation of the law.

“There’s nothing wrong with the nondisclosure agreement,” Watters told the camera. Then: “Can you believe the Democrats still can’t get over the 2016 election? It’s now a crime to beat Hillary.”

That was the text on the lower third of the screen, too: “IT’S NOW A CRIME TO BEAT HILLARY.”

We cannot assess in real time whether Watters believes the things he says or not. It seems hard to believe that an adult human might think that Trump’s having to spend a few hours in court a day as a result of a grand jury indicting him on criminal charges is akin to the torture with which “Democrats used to be obsessed,” in Watters’s telling. But Watters’s track record on comporting with reality is, to put it mildly, mixed. It is safe to assume, though, that he thinks this angle is the most effective one for both defending Trump and putting the left on its heels.

He’s not the only one to elevate this idea that Trump’s indictments derive solely from a desire for retribution among Democrats or from an interest in sidelining Trump during the campaign. (This complaint from Trump and others is itself greatly exaggerated, given Trump’s approach to campaigning.) But it (usually intentionally) conflates two things: Democratic dislike of Trump and things Trump actually did.

Trump, Watters and Republicans generally are heavily invested in either ignoring or downplaying that second part, but it’s the most important element here. Consider the first Trump impeachment, the one rooted in his efforts to leverage his office to pressure Ukraine into aiding his reelection bid. As soon as rumblings about his actions began to emerge, House Democrats seized on them, as they had with a number of other probes that ultimately didn’t go anywhere. But this one did — because there was lots of evidence Trump had done what he was accused of doing.

Contrast that with the effort by House Republicans to impeach President Biden. They, too, have a partisan desire to embarrass or hobble the president. What they don’t have is any significant evidence to prove their case (and not for lack of trying). They had the dislike, but not the goods. So that was that.

Or consider the observation offered by an unnamed Trump administration official whose interview with the FBI was made public Monday. In November 2021, the official met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to discuss the request from the government that the former president return documents he’d taken with him when he left the White House.

“Whatever you have, give everything back,” the official told Trump, according to a redacted summary of his interview with the Bureau. “Let them come here and get everything. Don’t give them a noble reason to indict you, because they will.”

In other words: They are looking for reasons to get you. Don’t give them one. (Trump offered a “weird ‘you’re the man’ type of response” to that advice, the official said.)....>

<....So are there reasons for Trump’s indictments? Sure. Trump’s attorney did pay $130,000 to an adult-film actress to keep her story quiet before the election, getting paid back in 2017. Trump did have documents marked as classified at Mar-a-Lago. He did try to block Joe Biden’s election victory. He did try to get officials in Georgia to overturn the election results in that state. Were those things criminal? Juries will decide — but he did them.

Trump is aided by another dynamic here: the willingness of his allies to reframe his dubious actions as innocent. Watters spent a healthy chunk of time trying to explain campaign finance law in a way that was favorable to Trump; it was not terribly convincing. What it came down to, though, was that paying off adult-film actresses to bury stories of alleged affairs is simply par for the course for prominent individuals. A legal defense perhaps, but certainly not a moral one.

A few hours before Watters’s show, “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt dug a little deeper on this idea.

“Does this set a precedent for other people who want to run for president?” she fretted. “What if they’ve done something like this in the past?” She offered a slippery-slope example: If someone “paid off a girl when they were 30 years old, then that was election interference.”

The short answer is no, of course: If you’re not actively a candidate, you’re not subject to campaign finance rules. But also, is Earhardt — who positions her Christian faith as a central element of her identity — really worried that guys who tried to cover up allegations of extramarital affairs with porn stars might be dissuaded from running for president? That’s the concern? That this unacceptably narrows the field of possible leaders of the country?

Trump has long benefited from his allies excusing or downplaying his behavior and comments. Tuesday is the fourth anniversary of his wondering during a news conference whether we couldn’t inject light or disinfectant into people to combat the coronavirus — comments incorrectly distilled as his saying that people should inject bleach but fairly dismissed as unworkable and bizarre. Watters, like many others, has waved those comments away not by defending them but by criticizing the exaggerated criticisms of it.

For nearly nine years now, Trump has been the driving figure on the political right. Over that time, he and his allies have developed robust tactics for dismissing or sidelining criticism. We see them now deployed in a much more challenging context: against a criminal justice system that is predicated on distilling truth from fiction.

Watters’s tortured analogies might convince viewers to stick with Trump politically, but — thanks to Trump’s own actions — the criminal process will move forward regardless.>

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) is making herself almost as universally reviled by her fellow Republicans as she is by Democrats.

Conservative publications and websites are starting to turn on Greene, according to journalist Molly Jong-Fast. In her latest column for MSNBC, Jong-Fast observed that the Georgia Republican was roundly criticized by Fox News and the New York Post (both of which are owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch). Even far-right outlets are frustrated with Greene's stranglehold on the House. Pro-Trump outlet Newsmax recently ran an op-ed entitled, "who put Marjorie Taylor Greene in charge?"

"The more the likes of MTG crow about their purity, the more they drive the adults to the other side of the aisle," Newsmax commentator Debra Saunders wrote. "If, somehow, the far-right ousts Johnson and there's a vacancy, who would even want the job?"

Right-wing media turning on the extremist congresswoman is likely due to her refusing to back down from threats to force House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) out via a motion to vacate. Greene's hostility toward Johnson hit a fever pitch after he shepherded through the passage of $95 billion in foreign aid money over the weekend, with the bulk of that money (roughly $61 billion) going toward Ukraine. Jong-Fast observed that Greene has started to become known as "Moscow Marjorie" by both liberals and conservatives.

"Monday, the [New York] Post published a column from Piers Morgan, the longtime Murdoch editor, calling Greene 'Vladimir Putin’s chief ‘useful idiot,’” Jong-Fast wrote. She quoted Howard Polskin, publisher of conservative media tracking website the Righting, who remarked that he was "surprised — pleasantly so" that the unflattering nickname stuck.

"Hopefully, that moniker will be an indelible stain on her reputation," Polskin told Jong-Fast.

Despite the backlash from conservative media, Greene's motion to vacate Johnson has support from other far-right Republicans, like Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky). If all Democrats join those three, then Greene would have the votes to oust Johnson.

Aside from just angering far-right media, Greene is also drawing the ire of other elected Republicans. On Tuesday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), who is considered among the more institutionalist members of the Senate Republican Caucus, didn't mince words about Greene when asked about her on Capitol Hill.

"She is dragging our brand down," Tillis told CNN congressional reporter Lauren Fox. "I think she’s uninformed, she’s a total waste of time, and I’m embarrassed to have actually lived geographically in her district at one time before she was there."

Even if Greene brings her motion to vacate Johnson to the floor, it isn't likely that Democrats would vote alongside her to remove Johnson. House Democrats have consistently come to Johnson's aid in helping him pass government funding bills, and most recently, foreign aid. And should he be removed, it would likely paralyze the legislative branch for weeks, as the Constitution requires the House of Representatives elect a speaker before it can conduct other business.>