Author: PolitCens

As a new election season begins, the Republican Party is struggling to navigate the politics of abortion.

Allies for leading presidential candidates concede that their hardline anti-abortion policies may be popular with the conservatives who decide primary elections, but they could ultimately alienate the broader set of voters they need to win the presidency.

The conflict is unfolding across the United States this week, but nowhere more than in Florida, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law one of the nation’s toughest abortion bans on Thursday. If the courts ultimately allow the new measure to take effect, it will soon be illegal for Florida women to obtain an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most realize they’re pregnant.

Even before he signed the law, DeSantis’ team was eager to highlight his willingness to fight for, and enact, aggressive abortion restrictions. The Florida governor’s position stands in sharp contrast, they say, with some Republican White House hopefuls — most notably former President Donald Trump — who are downplaying their support for anti-abortion policies for fear they may ultimately alienate women or other swing voters in the 2024 general election.

“Unlike Trump, Governor DeSantis doesn’t back down from defending the lives of innocent unborn babies,” said Erin Perrine, a spokesperson for DeSantis’ super political action committee, when asked about Florida’s six-week ban.

‘An electoral disaster’

DeSantis’ latest policy victory in the nation’s third-most populous state offers a new window into the Republican Party’s sustained political challenges on the explosive social issue. In recent days alone, Republican leaders across Iowa, New Hampshire and Washington have struggled to answer nagging questions about their opposition to the controversial medical procedure as Republican-controlled state legislatures rush to enact a wave of new abortion restrictions.

Republicans have suffered painful losses in recent weeks and months across Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada and even deep-red Kansas in elections that focused, at least in part, on abortion. Last week in Wisconsin, an anti-abortion candidate for the state Supreme Court was trounced by 11 points in a state President Joe Biden carried by less than 1 point.

“Any conversation about banning abortion or limiting it nationwide is an electoral disaster for the Republicans,” said New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican who describes himself as “pro-choice” but also signed a law banning abortions in the state after 24 weeks.

Privately, at least, strategists involved with Republican presidential campaigns concede that the Republican Party is on the wrong side of the debate as it currently stands. While popular with Republican primary voters, public polling consistently shows that the broader collection of voters who decide general elections believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Anti-abortion activists have been particularly vocal in warning Republican presidential candidates that the party’s base will not tolerate any weakness on abortion given that Republican leaders have been vowing for decades to ban abortion rights if given the chance.

Praise for DeSantis

Before this week, Kristan Hawkins, the president of the anti-abortion group, Students for Life of America, was unwilling to describe DeSantis as a leader in the abortion fight.

“This is his opportunity to show himself as a leader on this issue. That’s what’s exciting about this moment,” Hawkins said of DeSantis’ six-week ban. “He has done a lot, but we really needed to see action at the legislative level. I think this ‘heartbeat law’ fully cements his pro-life street cred.”

Such pressure ensures that the issue will remain central to the 2024 campaign as Republican presidential prospects begin to fan out across America to court primary voters. At the very same time, an escalating court battle over access to an FDA-approved abortion pill is forcing Republican leaders to answer more questions.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, long a vocal abortion opponent, condemned the abortion pill during an interview this week with Newsmax while vowing to “champion the right to life.”

“We’re going to continue to champion the interests of women born and unborn and pushing back against the abortion pill,” Pence declared.

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley told Iowa voters this week that abortion is “a personal issue” that should be left to the states, although she left open the possibility of a federal ban without getting into specifics.

And in New Hampshire, just a day after launching a presidential exploratory committee, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott outlined his support for a federal law that would ban abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

He tried repeatedly to refocus the conversation on Democrats’ “radical position” on the issue because they generally oppose any abortion restrictions whatsoever.

Sununu, the New Hampshire governor, said he counts Scott as a friend, but was surprised that he would openly discuss his support for a federal abortion ban in New Hampshire, a state long known for supporting abortion rights.

“Of all places to talk about a federal ban of abortion, New Hampshire ain’t it,” Sununu said. “He’s a good candidate and does a great job in the Senate. But know your audience here, man.”

Republican officials in Washington are still looking for answers as well.

Republican strategist Alice Stewart said Republicans must find a way to keep the focus on the failings of the Biden administration, the economy, crime and education in the 2024 campaign.

“Abortion poses a challenge for Republicans. There’s no denying it,” said Stewart, who initially cheered the Supreme Court’s Roe reversal. “Politically, it has become problematic.”
…

Recuperating U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California asked Wednesday to be temporarily replaced on the Judiciary Committee, shortly after two House Democrats called on her to resign after her extended absence from Washington.

In a statement, the long-serving Democratic senator said her recovery from a case of shingles, disclosed in early March, had been delayed because of complications. She provided no date for her return to the Senate and said she had asked Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to ask the Senate to allow another Democratic senator to serve in her committee seat until she was able to return.

“I intend to return as soon as possible once my medical team advises that it’s safe for me to travel,” Feinstein said. “In the meantime, I remain committed to the job and will continue to work from home in San Francisco.”

Feinstein’s decision to seek a committee stand-in during her recovery comes amid increasing anxiety within her party that her lengthy absence has damaged Democratic efforts to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominees for federal courts in a narrowly divided chamber.

She is the oldest member of Congress, at 89.

California Rep. Ro Khanna, one of two Democratic House members who called Wednesday for Feinstein to resign, said in a statement Wednesday: “This is a moment of crisis for women’s rights and voting rights. It’s unacceptable to have Sen. Feinstein miss vote after vote to confirm judges who will uphold reproductive rights.”

Khanna, a California progressive, wrote on Twitter that Feinstein should step aside. She announced in February that she would not seek reelection in 2024, opening up her seat for the first time in more than 30 years.

“We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty,” wrote Khanna, who has endorsed the Senate campaign of Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee. “While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties.”

Not long afterward, Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota tweeted that he agreed with Khanna.

Feinstein, he wrote, “is a remarkable American whose contributions to our country are immeasurable. But I believe it’s now a dereliction of duty to remain in the Senate and a dereliction of duty for those who agree to remain quiet.”

The senator, who turns 90 in June, has faced questions in recent years about her cognitive health and memory, though she has defended her effectiveness representing a state that is home to nearly 40 million people.

If Feinstein decides to step down during her term, it would be up to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the vacancy, potentially reordering the highly competitive race.

Newsom declined through a spokesperson to comment on Khanna’s statement.

Before the calls for her resignation, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, acknowledged in remarks to CNN that Feinstein’s absence has slowed down their push to confirm nominees in the closely divided panel.

“I can’t consider nominees in these circumstances because a tie vote is a losing vote in committee,” Durbin said.

Feinstein has had a groundbreaking political career and shattered gender barriers from San Francisco’s City Hall to the corridors of Capitol Hill.

She was the first woman to serve as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the 1970s and the first female mayor of San Francisco. She ascended to that post after the November 1978 assassinations of then-Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk by a former supervisor, Dan White.

In the Senate, she was the first woman to head the Senate Intelligence Committee and the first woman to serve as the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat. She gained a reputation as a pragmatic centrist who left a mark on political battles over issues ranging from reproductive rights to environmental protection.

 
…

The second of two Black Democrats expelled from the Republican-led Tennessee House will return to the Legislature after a Memphis commission voted to reinstate him Wednesday, nearly a week after his banishment for supporting gun control protesters propelled him into the national spotlight.

Hundreds of supporters chanted and cheered as they marched Representative Justin Pearson through Memphis to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners meeting, where officials quickly voted 7-0 to restore his position.

“The message for all the people in Nashville who decided to expel us: ‘You can’t expel hope. You can’t expel justice,” Pearson said at the meeting, his voice rising as he spoke. “You can’t expel our voice. And you sure can’t expel our fight.”

Pearson is expected to return to the Capitol on Thursday, when the House holds its next floor session.

Republicans expelled Pearson and Representative Justin Jones last week over their role in a gun control protest on the House floor after a Nashville school shooting that left three children and three adults dead.

The Nashville Metropolitan Council took only a few minutes Monday to unanimously restore Jones to office. He was quickly reinstated to his House seat.

The appointments are interim, and special elections for the seats will take place in the coming months. Jones and Pearson have said they plan to run in the special elections.

Accusations of racism

The House’s vote to remove Pearson and Jones but keep white Representative Gloria Johnson drew accusations of racism. Johnson survived by one vote. Republican leadership denied that race was a factor, however.

The expulsions last Thursday made Tennessee a new front in the battle for the future of American democracy. In the span of a few days, the two politicians had raised thousands of campaign dollars, and the Tennessee Democratic Party had received a new jolt of support from across the U.S.

Political tensions rose when Pearson, Johnson and Jones on the House floor joined hundreds of demonstrators who packed the Capitol last month to call for passage of gun control measures.

As protesters filled galleries, the lawmakers approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn and participated in a chant. The scene unfolded days after the shooting at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Tennessee. Their participation from the front of the chamber broke House rules because the three did not have permission from the House speaker.

Support for Pearson has come from across the country, including Memphis. During a Monday rally in support of Tyre Nichols, who died in January after he was beaten by police during an arrest, backers of Pearson said the commission was “on the clock.”

“You’ve got one job — to reinstate Justin Pearson,” activist LJ Abraham said.

Pearson grew up in the same House district he was chosen to represent after longtime state Representative Barbara Cooper, a Black Democrat, died in office. It winds along the neighborhoods, forests and wetlands of south Memphis, through the city’s downtown area and into north Shelby County.

Before he was elected, Pearson helped lead a successful campaign against a planned oil pipeline that would have run through neighborhoods and wetlands, and near wells that pump water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer, which provides drinking water to 1 million people.

He gained a quick reputation as a skilled community activist and gifted public speaker.

Political divisions deep

Should Pearson join Jones in returning to the Tennessee Capitol, they’ll do so when political divisions between the state’s few Democratic strongholds and the Republican supermajority were already reaching a boiling point before the expulsions.

Republican members this year introduced a wave of punishing proposals to strip away Nashville’s autonomy. Others have pushed to abolish the state’s few community oversight boards that investigate police misconduct and instead replace them with advisory panels that would be blocked from investigating complaints.

Lawmakers are also nearing passage of a bill that would move control of the board that oversees Nashville’s airport from local appointments to selections by Republican state government leaders.

Particularly on addressing gun violence, Republicans have so far refused to consider placing any new restrictions on firearms in the wake of the Nashville school shooting. Instead, lawmakers have advanced legislation designed to add more armed guards in public and private schools and are considering a proposal that would allow teachers to carry guns.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office confirmed this week that a Republican lawmaker was stripped of a top committee assignment more than a month after he asked during a hearing if “hanging by a tree” could be added to the state’s execution methods. The speaker’s office declined to specify the reason for removing him from the committee.

Representative Paul Sherrell was taken off the Criminal Justice Committee and transferred to another, and was “very agreeable” to the change, Sexton spokesperson Doug Kufner said.

Sherrell, who is white, later apologized for what he said amid outcry from Black lawmakers, who pointed to the state’s dark history of lynching. Sherrell said his comments were “exaggerated” to show “support of families who often wait decades for justice.”
…

In an episode that fuses simmering conflicts in the United States over race, gun control, and the country’s deep political divide, Republican legislators in Tennessee have come under widespread criticism following a vote Thursday to expel two Democratic members from the state’s House of Representatives.

The expulsion votes came just days after the two lawmakers, Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, interrupted a House session to demand that lawmakers implement stronger gun control laws. Jones and Pearson are both Black men.

A motion to expel Representative Gloria Johnson, who participated in the protest with Jones and Pearson, failed by one vote. Johnson is white.

The eyes of the nation are especially focused on Tennessee’s Legislature because of the House Republicans’ exercise of raw political power in ousting Jones and Pearson, the race of the expelled lawmakers, and, the topic of their protest — gun control.

Intense emotions

The expulsion vote took place amid already intense emotions in Nashville, Tennessee’s state capital. On March 27, a person armed with several semi-automatic weapons stormed The Covenant School, a small private Christian elementary school a little more than 5 miles from the Capitol building. The shooter killed three 9-year-old children and three adults before being shot to death by police.

Officials said the killer at Covenant had legally purchased the weapons used in the attack.

The killings prompted a flood of calls for tighter restrictions on firearms ownership. However, in largely rural and gun-friendly Tennessee, where the state government is dominated by Republicans, gun-control legislation is not likely to pass.

After the shooting, Republicans in the Legislature and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee focused instead on laws that would “harden” schools against attacks like the one at Covenant by, for example, mandating that doors be locked and requiring security measures at points of entry.

Competing narratives

On March 30, thousands of people converged on the Tennessee Capitol, where the Legislature was meeting, to demand action on gun control in response to the Covenant shootings. Many protesters entered an open gallery area above the House floor and began chanting.

With the House in session, Jones, Pearson and Johnson moved to the front of the chamber and joined the protesters. Using a megaphone, they at times led the crowd in chants.

Afterward, House Speaker Cameron Sexton compared the lawmakers’ actions to the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump. He also accused them of taking attention away from those killed at the Covenant School.

“What they did was try to hold up the people’s business on the House floor instead of doing it the way that they should have done it, which they have the means to do,” Sexton said. “They actually thought that they would be arrested, and so they decided that them being a victim was more important than focusing on the six victims from Monday. And that’s appalling.”

On Thursday, Sexton called votes on three separate bills to expel Jones, Pearson, and Johnson.

In remarks to the House as it debated the expulsion vote, Jones called the process “a farce of democracy.”

“What is happening here today is a situation in which the jury has already publicly announced the verdict,” he said. “What we see today is just a spectacle. What we see today is a lynch mob assembled to not lynch me, but our democratic process.”

Suggestion of racism

The votes fell largely along party lines. Republicans hold a supermajority in the 99-seat Tennessee House, and in the case of Jones and Pearson, were able to secure 72 and 69 votes in favor, respectively, clearing the requirement for a two-thirds majority for expulsion.

Only 65 lawmakers voted in favor of expelling Johnson, one shy of the necessary 66.

The fact that two Black men were expelled while a white woman was allowed to retain her seat sparked charges that the expulsions were racially motivated, including from Johnson herself.

Immediately after the votes, when asked why she thought lawmakers expelled her colleagues but not her, Johnson told a reporter, “It might have to do with the color of our skin.”

Such expulsions have been rare in the Tennessee House. It happened once in 2016, when a member was under investigation for serial sexual harassment, and once in 1980, when a member was found to have solicited a bribe. Beyond that, the most recent expulsions occurred in 1866, the year after the end of the Civil War.

Experts surprised

Experts told VOA that they were surprised by the severity of the penalty levied on Jones and Pearson.

“There are certainly lesser sanctions, which legislators use to penalize members who behave inappropriately either in decorum or in ethical [matters],” said Bruce Oppenheimer, professor emeritus in political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

“The simplest one is a reprimand, which is saying, ‘You did wrong. You shouldn’t do that again,’” said Oppenheimer. “Stronger would be a censure, where you would have to stand and be admonished on the floor of the chamber by the presiding officer. … But it’s very rare for somebody to be expelled.”

Disproportionate penalty

Ken Paulson, the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, told VOA that while it is not unusual for a governmental body to have rules to punish members when they deviate from its internal regulations, the penalty in Jones’ and Pearson’s case appeared excessive.

“The penalty is so disproportionate to the alleged crime that it really raises questions about motivation,” Paulson said.

He said that he did not expect the Tennessee expulsions to lead to other legislators in other states suddenly losing their seats. However, he said, it does send a worrying message.

“It does raise the question, ‘How low does the bar go?’” he said. “If a legislator does anything that involves action — not just speech — with which a state legislature is uncomfortable, what keeps them from removing those voices from the legislature? The real concern is that it gives some other supermajority legislatures ideas on how to deal with the other side.”

Practical effect limited

The practical effect of the expulsion may be limited by Tennessee laws that allow local governments to appoint individuals to vacant seats in the Legislature.

Officials in Nashville, which Jones represented before his expulsion, and in Memphis, where Pearson was elected, have signaled that they plan to simply appoint both men to their former positions, returning them to the Legislature.

Both would then be free to run in a special election, which the law requires be held to fill the empty seats.

“It’s likely that each of these people will be reelected,” Oppenheimer said.
…

The Manhattan district attorney’s indictment of Donald Trump on 34 felony charges and the prospect of more charges to come have injected more uncertainty into the November 2024 race for the White House.

Trump, who has declared himself a candidate for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, was formally charged this week with falsifying New York business records to conceal his role in paying hush money to an adult film actress before the 2016 election. He is also facing potential charges in at least three other cases.

Never before in American history have criminal charges been brought against a former president, much less one who is attempting another run. According to the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, even with the indictment Trump is leading the Republican primary field.

Should Trump become the nominee, he will likely face President Joe Biden. Biden won over Trump in 2020.

In the short term, Trump may be benefiting from the controversy. One of the first polls done after the indictment showed Trump surging to his largest-ever lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 57% to 31% among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. As recently as February, DeSantis was narrowly ahead of Trump by 45% to 41%.

Trump is also leveraging his grievance over the case to rake in funds, $12 million in just one week since the indictment’s announcement, according to his campaign.

Watch related video by Mike O’Sullivan:

However, pollsters say the indictment is unlikely to sway the crucial independent voters that Trump will need in the general election.

“All the polling basically shows [is] a very divided America. You have one America that is very much in favor of the indictment, believes that Trump has been lawless, has not followed the rules,” said Clifford Young, president for U.S. public affairs at Ipsos. “On the flip side, there’s another America, red America, Republican America, that thinks it’s completely, utterly, politically motivated.”

Impact on Republican primary

Since the indictment, Trump has widened his lead over other Republican contenders. According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, 48% of self-described Republicans said they wanted Trump to be their party’s presidential nominee, up from 44% in a March 14-20 poll.

DeSantis, Trump’s closest rival, was backed by 19%, down from 30% last month. Other likely rivals, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and former ambassador to the United Nations, polled in the single digits.

Aside from former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, those eyeing the Republican nomination have been rushing to defend Trump from the indictment.

“They can’t be critical of the former president because they clearly want his supporters to go with them in the event that Donald Trump can’t or will not run,” political consultant Julie Roginsky told VOA.

Roginsky noted the risk for Republican challengers who voice support while silently hoping Trump will bow out.

“Then essentially they’re anointing him as the next nominee, if they don’t all get together and try to take him down based on these issues,” she said.

Should Trump become bogged down by more legal woes, including those related to allegations of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state of Georgia, and mishandling classified documents at his Florida home after leaving office, more Republican candidates would likely run, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

But if he survives them, his opponents will push for a smaller field, Sabato told VOA. “It’s the only way you could stop him, if you consolidate support behind one or two candidates.”

Trump vs. Biden

If Trump becomes the Republican nominee, that’s good news for Biden’s reelection prospects because it would galvanize the Democratic base and most independent voters, Sabato said.

“He’s going to generate those votes because they can’t stand the alternative.”

Even if he is not the nominee, Trump’s influence over the Republican base will force other potential nominees to embrace him, possibly making it easier for Biden to beat him or her, Sabato added.

Trump could also split the Republican vote by refusing to support the nominee. In a February radio interview, Trump said that if he were not the party’s pick, his support “would have to depend on who the nominee was.”

Biden has not officially announced that he is running for reelection and will likely do so at a time when he does not have to share the political spotlight with Trump, whom he beat in 2020.

“It’s not like anybody’s gearing up, anybody of consequence is gearing up to run against him. So, he can take his time and doesn’t have to start incurring any expenses of an official campaign at the moment,” Roginsky said.

What if Trump wins?

Trump can be found guilty and still win the election, in which case the country would have a convicted felon as its commander in chief.

“There’s nothing in the Constitution that precludes someone who has been convicted of a crime from being elected president,” said Richard Pierce, a law professor at George Washington University.

There are only three constitutional requirements for the presidency: he or she must be at least 35 years of age, be a natural-born citizen and have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years.

Experts say if convicted on the New York charges, Trump is unlikely to spend any time behind bars as judges rarely sentence first-time offenders to jail for falsifying business records.

However, other criminal investigations, including the one on his role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, may lead to more serious charges and potential imprisonment.

That would be a “truly unprecedented situation,” Pierce told VOA.

“I don’t know how one could be effective as president of the United States while being in a jail cell,” he said. “But there is nothing in the Constitution that would keep somebody from being president of the United States and being incarcerated at the same time.”

But a conviction could bar Trump from voting for himself. Florida, where he is registered to vote, is one of 11 states with the most restrictive laws regarding voting while incarcerated.
…

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is making a trip to the Southern U.S. state of Tennessee Friday, a day after Republican state lawmakers took the rare step of expelling two Democratic lawmakers from the state legislature because they participated in a protest at the State Capitol calling for more gun control.  

Harris is expected to meet with state lawmakers as well as young people calling for gun reform, according to a tweet from her spokesperson, Kirsten Allen.  

The vice president will also meet with the expelled lawmakers — Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — along with a third lawmaker who avoided the ouster by one vote, according to The Associated Press. 

U.S. President Joe Biden called the expulsions “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent,” in a twitter post Thursday.  

The expelled lawmakers took part in a protest last week at the State Capitol calling for more gun control in the aftermath of a recent deadly school shooting in Nashville that left three adults and three 9-year-old students dead.  

During the protest, the three Democrats approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn and participated in a chant, violating the legislature’s rules of decorum. However, the extreme punishment of expulsion has seldom been used in the past and only for more serious transgressions.  

“We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” ousted politician Jones said.  

Biden also commented on Twitter: “Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting. And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action.” 

GOP leaders said it was necessary to expel the lawmakers to avoid setting a precedent that disrupting House proceedings would be tolerated. 

Republican state Representative Gino Bulso said the three Democrats had “effectively conducted a mutiny.” 

The expelled lawmakers — Jones and Pearson — are African American men.  The third lawmaker who narrowly avoided expulsion — Gloria Johnson — is a white woman.  Republican leaders, however, have denied that race had anything to do with the expulsions.     

“You cannot ignore the racial dynamic of what happened today. Two young Black lawmakers get expelled, and the one white woman does not. That’s a statement in and of itself,” Pearson said.   

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.   
…

As his predecessor was entering not guilty pleas to felonies in a courtroom, U.S. President Joe Biden met with his science and technology advisers and commented about the potential risks and benefits of artificial intelligence. He ignored reporters’ questions about Donald Trump’s arraignment.

The president on Tuesday was not paying attention to the activities in New York, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

“It’s an ongoing case, so we’re just not going to comment on the case specifically itself,” said Jean-Pierre. “Look, the president is just going to focus on the American people like he does every day.” 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement saying he believes Trump will get a fair trial on the 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments.

Numerous Republican lawmakers see it differently. They are terming the case against the former president a politically motivated prosecution.
…

Thirty-four counts of “falsifying business records in the first degree.”

Those are the charges against former President Donald Trump in the first indictment of a current or former U.S. president.

The indictment, handed down by a New York grand jury last week, was made public Tuesday afternoon after Trump was arraigned in a New York state court, where he pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The charges stem from a hush money payment of $130,000 that Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential election.

The payoff, prosecutors say, was part of an illegal “scheme” conceived by Trump and his associates to “identify and suppress” stories damaging to his candidacy. The practice is known in the industry as “catch and kill.”

Cohen was later reimbursed for the payment, and in 2018 he pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the secret effort.

‘Critical false statement’

At the center of the conspiracy was what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg called a “critical false statement” repeated over and over: Cohen was being reimbursed for “legal services” performed in 2017.

To reimburse Cohen for the hush money payment to Daniels, Trump or his company made monthly payments of $35,000 to the lawyer under a “retainer agreement” that did not exist, prosecutors say.

The payments took place over the course of 2017, Trump’s first year in the White House.

Each criminal count against Trump represents a “false entry in business records” made in connection with a single reimbursement installment to Cohen.

Count one, for example, is related to the first invoice that Cohen submitted to the Trump Organization on February 14, 2017.

Counts two and three are related to vouchers created by the Trump Organization, while count four is related to a check made out to Cohen by Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust.

In all, Cohen received 11 checks: two from Trump’s trust and nine from Trump’s personal bank account.

“Each check was processed by the Trump Organization, and each check was disguised as a payment for legal services rendered in a given month of 2017 pursuant to a retainer agreement,” prosecutors say. “The payment records, kept and maintained by the Trump Organization, were false New York business records.”

Falsifying business records or making “a false entry in the business records of an enterprise” is a crime in New York.

The offense is typically charged as a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison. But it rises to the level of a felony — punishable by up to four years in prison — when it is carried out with the intent to commit or conceal “another crime.”

The indictment doesn’t specify Trump’s alleged “other crime.” But an accompanying statement of facts points to at least three: a state campaign finance crime, a federal campaign finance crime, and a tax crime, said Joshua Stanton, an attorney at the Perry Guha law firm.

“I think it’s entirely possible that they’ll say with respect to each one of these counts that he had the intent to commit several different crimes,” Stanton said in an interview with VOA.

“And it also gives the Manhattan DA something of a sure footing in the highly likely event that Trump filed the motion to dismiss,” Stanton said.

Trump’s lawyers have said they’ll seek to have the charges dismissed.

A new revelation

John Malcolm, a vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said while the case is not “particularly strong,” it can’t be dismissed out of hand either.

“These are felony offenses. You have to take them seriously,” Malcolm told VOA. “But I do think it’s a very unusual charge.”

Both the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission — the bodies tasked with investigating violations of federal campaign finance laws — examined the payment at the center of the Trump indictment and closed their investigations without charging him, he noted.

But the Trump indictment is not solely focused on the Stormy Daniels payment. In a new revelation, prosecutors allege that in 2015, the publisher of the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer paid a former Trump Tower doorman $30,000 to prevent him from going public about a child that Trump had allegedly fathered out of wedlock.

The story turned out to be false, but Cohen allegedly stopped the publisher from releasing the doorman from a confidentiality agreement.
…

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he’s running for president in 2024, offering himself as an alternative for Republicans ready to turn the party away from Donald Trump.

“I’m confident that people want leaders that want the best of the America, not those who appeal to their worst instincts,” Hutchinson told ABC’s “This Week” in an interview aired Sunday. He said he would make a formal announcement in April in Arkansas.

“I have made a decision and my decision is I’m going to run for president of United States,” Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson, 72, left office in January after eight years as governor. He has ramped up his criticism of the former president in recent months, calling another Trump presidential nomination the “worst scenario” for Republicans and saying it would likely benefit President Joe Biden’s chances in 2024.

In addition to Trump, Hutchinson joins a Republican field that also includes former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to jump into the race in the summer, while U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are among those considering bids.

Hutchinson, who was term-limited, has been a fixture in Arkansas politics since the 1980s, when the state was predominantly Democratic. A former congressman, he was one of the House managers prosecuting the impeachment case against President Bill Clinton.

Hutchinson served as President George W. Bush’s head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and was an undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

As governor, Hutchinson championed a series of income tax cuts as the state’s budget surpluses grew. He signed several abortion restrictions into law, including a ban on the procedure that took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year. Hutchinson, however, has said he regretted that the measure did not include exceptions for rape or incest.

Hutchinson earned the ire of Trump and social conservatives last year when he vetoed legislation banning gender-affirming medical care for children. Arkansas’ majority-Republican Legislature overrode Hutchinson’s veto and enacted the ban, which has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

Trump called Hutchinson a “RINO” — a Republican In Name Only — for the veto. Hutchinson’s successor, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has said she would have signed the legislation.

Hutchinson, who signed other restrictions on transgender youth into law, said the Arkansas ban went too far and that he would have signed the measure if it had focused only on surgery.

Although he has supported Trump’s policies, Hutchinson has become increasingly critical of the former president’s rhetoric and lies about the 2020 presidential election. He said Trump’s call to terminate parts of the Constitution to overturn the election hurt the country.

Hutchinson also criticized Trump for meeting with white nationalist leader Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, who has praised Adolf Hitler and spewed antisemitic conspiracy theories. Hutchinson has contrasted that meeting to his own background as a U.S. attorney who prosecuted white supremacists in Arkansas in the 1980s.

An opponent of the federal health care law, Hutchinson after taking office supported keeping Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion. But he championed a work requirement for the law that was blocked by a federal judge.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hutchinson tried to push back against misinformation about the virus with daily news conferences and a series of town halls he held around the state aimed at encouraging people to get vaccinated.

Hutchinson infuriated death penalty opponents in 2017 when he ordered eight executions over a two-week period, scheduling them before one of the state’s lethal injection drugs was set to expire. The state ultimately carried out four of the executions.

The former governor is known more for talking policy than for fiery speeches, often flanked by charts and graphs at his news conferences at the state Capitol. Instead of picking fights on Twitter, he tweets out Bible verses every Sunday morning. 
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With Donald Trump becoming the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges, VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports on the international reaction to his indictment and what it means for the credibility of the U.S. legal and political system
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to be formally arrested and arraigned Tuesday, the first time a former occupant of the White House has faced criminal charges.

In a move without precedent in U.S. history, a grand jury in New York voted Thursday to indict Trump on charges related to paying off a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign.

The highly anticipated charges come as Trump seeks a return to the White House after losing a reelection bid in 2020, making him both the only president, current or former, as well as the only presidential candidate, to be indicted.

The indictment remains under seal, and it is not clear what crimes or how many criminal counts Trump has been charged with. CNN reported that the former president has been charged with more than 30 counts. VOA could not confirm the report.

In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said it has contacted Trump’s attorney “to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment.”

To turn himself in, Trump, who lives in Florida, would have to travel to New York, along with his Secret Service detail.

Once in custody, he would be fingerprinted and photographed before being arraigned before a judge and released on his personal recognizance.

Several news outlets, citing unnamed sources, said Trump plans to fly to New York on Monday and spend the night at Trump Tower before appearing in court Tuesday.

On Friday, officials from the Secret Service and the New York Police Department toured the courthouse where Trump is set to be arraigned and discussed security plans.

Susan Necheles, a Trump attorney, told Reuters the former president will plead not guilty.

“I am not afraid of what’s to come,” Trump said in a fundraising email on Friday.

Trump’s campaign has used the indictment in its fundraising efforts and said it raised more than $4 million in the first 24 hours after the indictment was announced.

On his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump criticized the judge expected to oversee his case, Justice Juan Merchan. He wrote Friday the judge “HATES ME” and treated the Trump Organization “VICIOUSLY” during last year’s trial in which the company was convicted of tax fraud.

In a statement Thursday, Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing in the case, cast the indictment as part of a long-running Democratic-led witch hunt to destroy his “Make America Great Again” movement.

“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” the former president wrote. “The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable — indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant election interference.”

Rather than hurt his candidacy, Trump said the indictment “will backfire massively on [President] Joe Biden.”

Last week, writing on his social media platform, Trump warned of “potential death and destruction” if he were indicted, a statement some critics viewed as an incitement to violence.

The indictment, though widely expected, set off a firestorm around Washington.

“Outrageous,” tweeted Republican congressman and staunch Trump loyalist Jim Jordan.

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, accusing Bragg of weaponizing the justice system against Trump, vowed that the House would hold the prosecutor and “his unprecedented abuse of power to account.”

Other Republicans who are not particularly close to Trump similarly viewed the prosecution as politically motivated.

The reaction from Democrats, on the other hand, was predictably favorable.

In a statement, former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wrote that the grand jury “has acted upon the facts and the law.”

“No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence,” she wrote. “Hopefully, the former President will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right.”

President Biden declined to comment on the matter Friday, telling reporters, “I’m not going to talk about Trump’s indictment.”

The indictment grew out of a federal investigation of hush money payments that Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

The secret payment came to light in early 2018. Flipping on his former boss, Cohen testified in August 2018 that at Trump’s direction, he paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with the real estate mogul-turned Republican candidate. The Trump Organization later reimbursed Cohen for “legal” services.

While paying hush money is not illegal, federal prosecutors charged that classifying the payment as a “legal” fee violated federal campaign finance laws.

In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to multiple federal criminal charges, including campaign finance violations, and later served more than a year in prison.

While federal prosecutors did not charge Trump at the time, the Manhattan district attorney’s office subsequently picked up the case and began receiving grand jury testimony in January.

Cohen, the prosecutors’ star witness, testified before the panel multiple times.

In a statement issued Thursday, Cohen said he stood by his testimony and the evidence he has provided prosecutors.

While the indictment remains under seal, legal experts say the charges against Trump likely center on New York’s false business records law.

Under the law, falsifying business records is normally a misdemeanor. When it is done with the intent to commit or hide a second crime, it rises to the level of a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.

What additional offenses, if any, Trump has been charged with remains unclear.

Although prosecutors typically bring charges against a defendant only when they believe they can get a conviction, convicting Trump is far from certain, according to legal experts.

While Trump has admitted to reimbursing Cohen for the hush money payment, he has said it “had nothing to do with the campaign.”

His lawyers have placed the responsibility on Cohen.

“The payments were made to a lawyer, not to Stormy Daniels,” Joseph Tacopina, one of Trump’s lawyers, said on MSNBC recently. “The payments were made to Donald Trump’s lawyer, which would be considered legal fees,” he said.

Cohen was “his lawyer at the time and advised him that this was the proper way to do this, to protect himself and his family from embarrassment. It’s as simple as that,” Tacopina said.

But other legal experts argue that prosecutors should be guided by a long-standing principle: treating like cases alike.

In a recent piece on the website Just Security, co-editor-in-chief and New York University law professor Ryan Goodman highlighted cases that he said show how prosecutors in New York “have thrown the book at individuals for falsifying business records — some cases involving actions far less egregious than Trump’s alleged conduct.”

In 2021, a mental health therapy aide was indicted under the statute for defrauding more than $35,000 in workers’ compensation benefits.

Last year, an insurance broker was indicted for allegedly creating and filing fraudulent certificates of liability insurance to further scheme to defraud.

The hush money indictment is not the only criminal case the former president faces.

In Georgia, prosecutors are considering bringing criminal charges in connection with Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in the state. Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, U.S. Justice Department-appointed special counsel Jack Smith has been investigating Trump’s role in trying to upend Biden’s victory as well as his handling of classified documents after he left office.

While in office, Trump was twice impeached, but not convicted.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Every day, hundreds of people are taken into law enforcement custody in New York City. Former President Donald Trump will become one of them next week.

Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon after an investigation into payments made during his 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. The indictment itself remains sealed for now in the first criminal case ever brought against a former U.S. president.

Trump — a Republican who assailed the case Thursday as a Democratic prosecutor’s “political persecution” of “a completely innocent person” — is expected to turn himself in to authorities next week, according to three people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly. The people said the details of a surrender are still being worked out.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said it had contacted Trump’s lawyer to coordinate his surrender and arraignment.

For any New York defendant, poor or powerful, answering criminal charges means being fingerprinted and photographed, fielding basic questions such as name and birthdate, and getting arraigned. All told, defendants are typically detained for at least several hours.

There can be differences in where the different steps happen, how long they take, whether handcuffs come out and other particulars. A lot depends on the severity of the case and whether defendants arrange to turn themselves in.

But there is no playbook for booking an ex-president with U.S. Secret Service protection. Agents are tasked with the protection of former presidents unless and until they say they don’t need it. Trump has kept his detail, so agents would need to be by his side at all times.

“This would be a unique outlier,” said Jeremy Saland, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor in Manhattan.

When Trump turns himself in, expect a carefully choreographed and relatively quick process and release without bail (as is common in New York) — and with a focus on security. A former president isn’t likely to be paraded in cuffs across a sidewalk or through a crowded courthouse hallway, Saland predicts.

“It’s a public forum, but safety is also paramount,” he notes.

If defendants are notified of an indictment or an impending arrest, they often arrange to turn themselves in. Doing so can smooth the process and strengthen arguments for bail by showing that they aren’t evading the case.

For example, when the former finance chief of Trump’s company, Allen Weisselberg, was indicted in Manhattan on tax fraud charges in 2021, he was able to turn himself in at a courthouse side door before normal workday hours.

The aim was “to reduce the likelihood that the surrender would become a media frenzy,” his lawyers wrote in a subsequent court filing.

Weisselberg arrived around 6:15 a.m. and was taken to what his attorneys described as a “holding room” for booking, an interview about potential release, and other procedures. To pass the time, he’d brought a book — Chicken Soup for the Baseball Fan’s Soul — and his lawyers supplied him with a snack, a face mask, breath mints and other items, according to the filing.

Weisselberg was arraigned and released about eight hours later, after being walked into a courtroom past a phalanx of news cameras in the hallway. (Weisselberg eventually pleaded guilty to dodging taxes on job perks including a free apartment and school tuition for his grandchildren.)

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, on the other hand, turned himself in at a Manhattan police station in 2018 to face rape and criminal sex act charges. He was briefly in a stationhouse cell, flipping through a biography of famed film director Elia Kazan, before being led out in handcuffs and taken to court under the gaze of journalists on the sidewalk — and other suspects in a courthouse booking area, where some hollered, “Yo, Harvey!”

Within about three hours after his surrender, Weinstein was arraigned and released on electronic monitoring and $1 million bail. (Weinstein was eventually convicted; his appeal is now before New York’s highest court. He’s also been convicted on similar charges in Los Angeles.)

But even a scheduled arrest is still an arrest. Defendants have to give up cellphones and some other personal items for safekeeping (and, in some cases, potential evidence), and lawyers generally aren’t allowed to accompany their clients through the process. Attorneys often advise traveling light and staying mum.

“Don’t make any statements. Because you think you’re helping your situation, but they can just use your statements against you — because you get caught up in the moment, you get nervous,” says Gianni Karmily, a defense lawyer who practices in New York City and on Long Island.

Many arrests in New York City aren’t preplanned. That can be a very different experience for defendants, even prominent ones.

When a hotel housekeeper accused then-International Monetary Fund chief and potential French presidential contender Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in 2011, he was pulled off a plane at Kennedy Airport.

Strauss-Kahn, who said his encounter with the woman was consensual, spent about 36 hours being questioned, arrested, undergoing various exams and waiting in such spots as a courthouse holding pen before being arraigned and jailed without bail. After several days at the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail, Strauss-Kahn was allowed out on $1 million bail, under house arrest with armed guards.

Manhattan prosecutors eventually dropped the criminal case against Strauss-Kahn, who later settled a civil suit brought by his accuser.
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A grand jury in New York has voted to indict former US President Donald Trump on criminal charges related to a payoff to a former adult film star. Mike O’Sullivan reports on reaction to the unprecedented move against a former president.
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Reaction to the indictment of Donald Trump, the first of a former U.S. president, was predictable in the hothouse of divisive American politics. His fellow Republicans assailed the prosecutor for what they claimed was a purely partisan attack, while Democrats contended that no one should be allowed to stand above the law.

Even Republicans eyeing a 2024 run against Trump for the party’s presidential nomination came to his defense after a New York grand jury indicted Trump on charges linked to his $130,000 hush money payment in 2016 to an adult film actress to silence her about an alleged affair she claimed to have had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has long denied the claim by the porn star, Stormy Daniels.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not announced a 2024 presidential bid but nationally polls second behind Trump for the nomination, on Twitter accused New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, of deploying the legal system “to advance a political agenda” that he said “turns the rule of law on its head.”

DeSantis said he would not work with New York officials to extradite Trump from Florida to face the charges, although it may not be an issue in any event. Trump’s lawyer has said the former president would fly to New York to turn himself in.

Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations who has announced her 2024 run for the presidency, said of the indictment, “This is more about revenge than it is justice.”

Mike Pompeo, a secretary of state during Trump’s administration and another possible presidential contender, accused the prosecutor of “playing politics.”

South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott, yet another possible candidate, said in a statement, “This pro-criminal New York DA has failed to uphold the law for violent criminals, yet weaponized the law against political enemies. This is a travesty, and it should not be happening in the greatest country on Earth.”

Longtime Democratic foes of Trump took a different tack, saying no one should be able to escape prosecution if wrongdoing was alleged but should have their day in court to answer the charges.

Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote on Twitter, “The Grand Jury has acted upon the facts and the law. No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence.”

“Hopefully, the former President will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right,” she added.

The Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a statement: “Mr. Trump is subject to the same laws as every American. He will be able to avail himself of the legal system and a jury, not politics, to determine his fate according to the facts and the law. There should be no outside political influence, intimidation or interference in the case. I encourage both Mr. Trump’s critics and supporters to let the process proceed peacefully and according to the law.”
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump, indicted Thursday in connection with a hush money payment to a porn star, is also facing several other significant criminal investigations related to his 2020 reelection loss and classified documents he took with him when his presidential term ended two years ago.

Trump is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and trying to reclaim the White House, but his political future is clouded by the array of probes that could lead to more charges, or possibly clear him of allegations of wrongdoing.

Special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, with an extensive team of prosecutors, is heading the two most wide-ranging probes.

One involves Trump’s role in trying to upend his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the weeks after the November 2020 election and Trump’s subsequent admonition on Jan. 6, 2021, to his supporters to head to the U.S. Capitol and “fight like hell” to keep Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote count that Biden had won.

About 2,000 Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol, ransacked congressional offices and clashed with police that day. About 1,000 of the rioters have been charged with criminal offenses and about half have been convicted so far, with some sentenced to prison for several years.

Smith’s other investigation centers on hundreds of classified documents Trump took with him to his oceanside Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida when he left office, even though he was required by law to turn them over to the National Archives.

Trump voluntarily returned some of the documents after authorities asked for them, but when Justice Department officials concluded that he had still more at Mar-a-Lago they secured a court-ordered search warrant last August and FBI agents discovered more classified material in a search of his estate. Trump has contended he was entitled as a former president to keep the documents.

In a narrower criminal probe, a state prosecutor in Atlanta, Fani Willis, is investigating Trump’s role in trying to overturn his 11,779-vote loss to Biden in the southern state of Georgia.

In a recorded conversation days ahead of the congressional certification of Biden’s victory, Trump pleaded with Georgia state election chief Brad Raffensperger and other election officials to “find” him 11,780 votes, one more than he needed to overcome his loss.

“The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry,” Trump said in the call to the Georgia officials. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Both Smith and Willis have subpoenaed an array of former Trump administration officials to testify before grand juries about their conversations with Trump in the weeks after the election, his efforts to upend the election result and to stay in power. One effort, never fully implemented in states Trump lost to Biden, was to sign up fake electors supporting Trump to replace the legitimate ones committed to Biden in the Electoral College vote count as the Trump supporters rampaged into the Capitol.

In the past week, former Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s second-in-command, was ordered to honor a grand jury subpoena to testify about his interactions with Trump in the post-election period when the former president unsuccessfully pushed him to delay counting the electoral votes on Jan. 6 two years ago.

Willis has signaled she will decide whether to file charges against Trump or any his aides by May, while Smith could also bring his investigation to a head in the coming months.

In a civil inquiry that centers on events related to Trump’s real estate business empire, New York state Attorney General Letitia James has accused Trump of lying to lenders and insurers about the value of his properties.

She is seeking to bar Trump, along with his sons Donald Jr. and Eric and his daughter Ivanka, from continuing to run a business in New York. A New York judge declined in January to dismiss James’ suit, increasing the likelihood that he will eventually face a trial in the matter later this year.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this week called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and condemned his invasion of Ukraine, a week after coming under criticism for remarks that seemed to advocate a reduction in U.S. support for Ukrainian forces.

DeSantis, widely expected to announce his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination later this year, had previously described the war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” that did not represent a “vital national interest” of the United States.

The remarks earned him immediate condemnation from many, including multiple long-serving Republicans in Congress, even though support for continued U.S. aid to Ukraine is waning among a significant portion of the Republican electorate.

Claims he was mischaracterized

In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan scheduled to stream Thursday evening on Fox Nation, DeSantis said his comments — particularly those that seemed to dismiss the war as a territorial dispute — were “mischaracterized.”

Morgan, who previewed the interview in a New York Post column on Wednesday, quoted the Florida governor’s explanation for his comment at length.

“When I asked him specifically if he regretted using the phrase ‘territorial dispute,’ DeSantis replied, ‘Well, I think it’s been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded [last year] — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — that was wrong.

“ ‘What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now, which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately, but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there.’”

According to Morgan, DeSantis went on to say why he thinks Russia is not the threat that the Biden administration has portrayed: “I think the larger point is, OK, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO. That’s a good thing.”

The Biden administration has characterized support for Ukraine as forestalling deeper U.S. involvement in a broader conflict.

DeSantis told Morgan he sees it differently: “I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified [in invading] — that’s nonsense.”

‘A gas station’ with nuclear weapons

Also in the interview, DeSantis ridiculed Russia’s high dependence on fossil fuel exports and said the country does not have the capacity to act on Putin’s seeming plan to reconstitute the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence.

“I think he’s got grand ambitions,” DeSantis said of Putin. “I think he’s hostile to the United States, but I think the thing that we’ve seen is he doesn’t have the conventional capability to realize his ambitions. And so, he’s basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons, and one of the things we could be doing better is utilizing our own energy resources in the U.S.”

DeSantis’ comments were reminiscent of those of the late John McCain, who was a Republican senator and presidential candidate. Famously hawkish on Russia, he once derided the nation as “a gas station masquerading as a country.”

Zelenskyy responds

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview with the editors of The Atlantic magazine, replied to DeSantis last week with an argument that America’s investment in his country’s defense is preventing a broader conflict that could pull in the U.S. and its NATO allies.

“If we will not have enough weapons, that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us,” Zelenskyy said. “If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

“That’s three Baltic countries which are members of NATO,” he added. “They will occupy them. Of course [the Balts] are brave people, and they will fight. But they are small. And they don’t have nuclear weapons. So they will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union.”

Zelenskyy’s assertions aside, many foreign policy experts are dubious about the likelihood of Russia choosing to invade any countries that are under the protection of NATO’s mutual defense agreement.

Difficult politics

DeSantis’ move to clarify his position on Ukraine highlights a difficulty that any Republican presidential candidate is likely to face on the issue because of a deepening divide within the party.

For Republicans, said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, “finding a tenable path on Ukraine is very difficult, because the party is divided between a traditionalist wing and a populist wing on this issue.”

“The traditionalist view is that the United States, for reasons having to do with both its interests and values, is required to stand up to aggression, such as what Russia has unleashed on Ukraine, and to support indirectly, and in some cases directly, the military effort to oppose it,” Galston told VOA.

“The populist wing of the party is taking the position that this fight is none of our business, and more generally, that the interests of the United States are best served by staying out of foreign entanglements, particularly military entanglements, to the greatest extent possible,” he said.

At the moment, the divide is most visible when comparing the positions of the party’s two leading presidential candidates with those of its foreign policy veterans in Congress.

Both former President Donald Trump and DeSantis have expressed doubts about whether it is in U.S. interests to continue supporting Ukraine. In a recent Monmouth University poll, the two men received 80% of support — 44% for Trump and 36% for DeSantis — when prospective GOP voters were asked whom they support for the party’s presidential nomination.

In Congress, though, prominent Republican voices have offered unwavering support for Ukraine.

“I think the majority opinion among Senate Republicans is that the United States has a vital national security interest there in stopping Russian aggression,” John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, told reporters last week.
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Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul is demanding that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken provide documents on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. McCaul said the ‘catastrophic’ exit from Afghanistan emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. Cindy Saine reports.
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