A judge agreed Friday to postpone Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case until after the November election, granting him a hard-won reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the homestretch of his presidential campaign.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is also weighing a defense request to overturn the verdict on immunity grounds, delayed Trump’s sentencing until Nov. 26, several weeks after the final votes are cast in the presidential election.
It had been scheduled for Sept. 18, about seven weeks before Election Day.
Merchan wrote that he was postponing the sentencing “to avoid any appearance—however unwarranted—that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.”
“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” he added.
Trump’s lawyers pushed for the delay on multiple fronts, petitioning the judge and asking a federal court to intervene. They argued that punishing the former president and current Republican nominee in the thick of his campaign to retake the White House would amount to election interference.
Trump’s lawyers argued that delaying his sentencing until after the election would also allow him time to weigh next steps after Merchan rules on the defense’s request to reverse his conviction and dismiss the case because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity ruling.
Judge Juan M. Merchan
In his order Friday, Merchan delayed a decision on that until Nov. 12.
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Trump’s request to have the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize the case from Merchan’s state court. Had they been successful, Trump’s lawyers said they would have then sought to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed on immunity grounds.
Trump is appealing the federal court ruling.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case, deferred to Merchan and did not take a position on the defense’s delay request.
Messages seeking comment were left for Trump's lawyers and the district attorney's office.
Election Day is Nov. 5, but many states allow voters to cast ballots early, with some set to start the process just a few days before or after Sept. 18.
Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she and Trump had a sexual encounter a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
Prosecutors cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first presidential campaign. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.
Trump maintains that the stories were false, that reimbursements were for legal work and logged correctly, and that the case—brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat—was part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at damaging his current campaign.
Democrats backing their party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, have made his conviction a focus of their messaging.
In speeches at the party’s conviction in Chicago last month, President Joe Biden called Trump a “convicted felon” running against a former prosecutor. Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas labeled Trump a “career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments, and one porn star to prove it.”
Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, inspired chants of “lock him up” from the convention crowd when she quipped that Trump “fell asleep at his own trial, and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”
Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge, which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment. Trump is the first ex-president convicted of a crime.
Trump has pledged to appeal, but that cannot happen until he is sentenced.
In seeking the delay, Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that the short time between the scheduled immunity ruling on Sept. 16 and sentencing, which was to have taken place two days later, was unfair to Trump.
To prepare for a Sept. 18 sentencing, the lawyers said, prosecutors would be submitting their punishment recommendation while Merchan is still weighing whether to dismiss the case. If Merchan rules against Trump, he would need “adequate time to assess and pursue state and federal appellate options,” they said.
The Supreme Court’s immunity decision reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.
Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.
LOS ANGELES — Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to federal tax charges Thursday in a surprise move that spares President Joe Biden and his family another likely embarrassing and painful criminal trial of the president’s son.
Hunter Biden’s stunning decision to guilty plea to misdemeanor and felony charges without the benefits of a deal with prosecutors came hours after jury selection was supposed to begin in the case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes.
The president’s son was already facing potential prison time after his June conviction on felony gun charges in a trial that aired unflattering and salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction. The tax trial was expected to showcase more potentially lurid evidence as well as details about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, which Republicans have seized on to try to paint the Biden family as corrupt.
Although President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential election muted the potential political implications of the tax case, the trial was expected to carry a heavy emotional toll for the president in the final months of his five-decade political career.
“Enough is enough,” defense attorney Abbe Lowell told the judge before Hunter Biden entered his plea. “Mr. Biden is prepared, because of the public and private interest, to proceed today and finish this.”
Hunter Biden quickly responded “guilty” as the judge read out each of the nine counts. The charges carry up to 17 years behind bars, but federal sentencing guidelines are likely to call for a much shorter sentence. Sentencing is set for Dec. 16.
More than 100 potential jurors had been brought to the courthouse in Los Angeles on Thursday to begin the process of picking the panel to hear the case alleging a four-year scheme to avoid paying taxes while spending wildly on things like strippers, luxury hotels and exotic cars.
Prosecutors were caught off guard when Hunter Biden’s lawyer told the judge Thursday morning that Hunter wanted to enter what’s known as an Alford plea, under which a defendant maintains their innocence but acknowledges prosecutors have enough evidence to secure a conviction.
Prosecutors said they objected to such a plea, telling the judge that Hunter Biden “is not entitled to plead guilty on special terms that apply only to him.”
“Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty,” prosecutor Leo Wise said.
Hunter Biden held hands with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, as he entered the courtroom on Sept. 5.
Hunter Biden walked into the courtroom holding hands with his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and flanked by Secret Service agents. Initially, he pleaded not guilty to the charges related to his 2016 through 2019 taxes and his attorneys had indicated they would argue he didn’t act “willfully,” or with the intention to break the law, in part because of his well-documented struggles with alcohol and drug addiction.
Hunter Biden had agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses last year in a deal with the Justice Department that would allow him to avoid prosecution in the gun case if he stayed out of trouble. But the agreement imploded after a judge questioned unusual aspects of it, and he was subsequently indicted in the two cases.
His decision to change his plea Thursday came after the judge issued some unfavorable pre-trial rulings for the defense, including rejecting a proposed defense expert lined up to testify about addiction.
Scarsi, who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, also placed some restrictions on what jurors would be allowed to hear about the traumatic events that Hunter Biden's family, friends and attorneys say led to his drug addiction.
The judge barred attorneys from connecting his substance abuse struggles to the 2015 death of his brother Beau Biden from cancer or the car accident that killed his mother and sister when he was a toddler.
The indictment alleged that Hunter Biden lived lavishly while flouting the tax law, spending his cash on things like strippers and luxury hotels — “in short, everything but his taxes.”
Hunter Biden’s attorneys had asked Scarsi to also limit prosecutors from highlighting details of his expenses that they say amount to a “character assassination,” including payments made to strippers or pornographic websites. The judge has said in court papers that he will maintain “strict control” over the presentation of potentially salacious evidence.
Prosecutors had said they want to introduce evidence about Hunter Biden’s overseas dealings, which have been at the center of Republican investigations into the Biden family often seeking — without evidence— to tie the president to an alleged influence peddling scheme.
The special counsel’s team had planned to have a business associate of Hunter Biden's testify about their work for a Romanian businessman, who prosecutors say sought to “influence U.S. government policy” while Joe Biden was vice president.
Sentencing in Hunter Biden's Delaware conviction is set for Nov. 13. He could face up to 25 years in prison in that case, though he is likely to get far less time or avoid prison entirely.
As Vice President Kamala Harris begins her fall campaign for the White House, she can look to history and hope for better luck than others in her position who have tried the same.
Since 1836, only one sitting vice president, George H.W. Bush in 1988, has been elected to the White House. Among those who tried and failed were Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Al Gore in 2000. All three lost in narrow elections shaped by issues ranging from war and scandal to crime and the subtleties of televised debates. But two other factors proved crucial for each vice president: whether the incumbent president was well-liked and whether the president and vice president enjoyed a productive relationship.
“You really do want those elements to come together,” says Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “If the person the vice president is working for is popular, that means people like what he’s doing and you can gain from that. And you need to have the two principals working together.”
In 1988, Bush easily defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor whom Republicans labeled as ineffectual and out of touch. Bush was otherwise helped by a solid economy, the easing of Cold War tensions and some rare luck for a vice president. President Ronald Reagan's approval ratings rose through much of the year after falling sharply in the wake of the 1986-87 Iran-Contra scandal, and Reagan and Bush worked well together during the campaign. Reagan openly backed his vice president, who had run against him in the 1980 primaries. He praised Bush at the Republican convention as an engaged and invaluable partner, appeared with him at a California rally and spoke at gatherings in Michigan, New Jersey and Missouri.
President George H.W. Bush
“Reagan was not a man to hold grudges,” said historian-journalist Jonathan Darman. “And Bush did a good job of navigating the complexity of their relationship while he was vice president.”
Past vice presidents who ran
When Gore ran in 2000, his advantages were similar to those enjoyed by George H.W. Bush. The economy was strong, the country was at peace and the president, Bill Clinton, had high approval ratings despite his recent impeachment over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Gore had worked closely with Clinton over the previous eight years, but the scandal led to enduring tensions between them. He minimized the president’s presence during the campaign and pronounced himself “my own man” during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Commentators would cite his distance from Clinton as a setback in a historically close race, decided by a margin of fewer than 1,000 votes in Florida.
“Instead of finding a way to embrace the accomplishments of the Clinton administration, Gore ran away from Clinton as fast as his legs could carry him,” Slate's Jacob Weisberg wrote soon after the election.
Like Gore, Nixon could not — or would not — capitalize on the incumbent Dwight Eisenhower's popularity. In 1960, Eisenhower was still so admired as he neared the end of his second term that Nixon's opponent, Democrat John F. Kennedy, feared the president's active support would prove critical. But Eisenhower and Nixon had a complicated relationship dating back to when Eisenhower ran eight years earlier. He had chosen Nixon as his running mate, but nearly dropped him because of the so-called Checkers scandal, in which Nixon was accused of misusing funds donated by political backers.
Nixon was more than 20 years younger than Eisenhower, the victorious World War II commander who often looked upon his vice president as a junior officer, according to Nixon biographer John A. Farrell. At the end of a summer press conference in 1960, Eisenhower was asked if he could cite Nixon's influence on any important decision. He answered, “If you give me a week, I might think of one." Meanwhile, Nixon was reluctant to have Eisenhower campaign, out of a desire to forge his own path, and, allegedly, out of concern for the 70-year-old president.
“Nixon very much wanted to be his own man,” says Farrell, whose prize-winning “Richard Nixon" was published in 2017. “He always said he was worried about Eisenhower's health, but there are also anecdotes that Eisenhower was chafing at the bit. Both could be true.”
Nixon's luck changed when he ran eight years later against Lyndon B. Johnson's vice president. No vice president was more entrapped by his predecessor than Hubert Humphrey, whose candidacy was only possible because Johnson decided not to seek reelection.
Humphrey faced challenges within the party from the anti-war candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy (who was assassinated in June 1968 after winning the California primary) and was tied to Johnson's divisive, hawkish stance.
Humphrey privately advocated a less hardline approach to the war, but Johnson intimidated him into silence and he trailed Nixon badly in many polls. Only in the fall did Humphrey diverge and call for a bombing halt with North Vietnam. The vice president rallied, but ended up losing the popular vote by less than a percentage point while falling short more decisively in the Electoral College.
“Johnson did catastrophic damage to Humphrey, in my opinion,” says Boston Globe columnist Michael Cohen, author of a book on the 1968 election, “American Carnage.”
How does Harris fare?
Like Johnson, President Joe Biden declared he wouldn’t seek a new term less than a year before Election Day, though he waited much longer in the cycle than Johnson did. Unlike Humphrey, Harris quickly consolidated Democratic support and accepted her party’s nomination at an uplifting convention that concluded without significant damage from protests, unlike the violence-marred 1968 event in the same city, Chicago.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris
In an AP-NORC survey conducted in July, after Biden dropped out of the race, about 4 in 10 Americans approved of his performance as president, roughly where his approval numbers have stood since the summer of 2021 and comparable to those of the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton frequently held higher approval ratings than Biden, although all served in less polarized eras.
Harris wants to succeed a president who himself served as vice president and ran for president, four years later. President Barack Obama discouraged Biden from seeking election in 2016 and waited to endorse Biden in 2020 until the crowded Democratic primary field was clear.
“Obama became an enthusiastic backer, which helped unify the party at a time when Biden’s record on race in the 1990s, including his support for the crime bill, was fueling doubts among young progressive voters,” Biden biographer Evan Osnos says. “Obama’s endorsement of Biden was about more than his candidacy; it was about his character, and that proved to be important.”
As president, Biden has worked to include Harris on his major policy calls and conversations with foreign leaders. He’s pledged to be Harris’ top campaign volunteer and to do whatever she asks of him for her election, though aides are still determining where the still-unpopular president would best be utilized. On Labor Day, Biden and Harris will appear together in Pittsburgh for a campaign event in a key swing state, Pennsylvania.
Russell Vought sounds like a general marshaling troops for combat when he talks about taming a “woke and weaponized” federal government.
He recently described political opposition as “enemy fire that’s coming over the target,” while urging allies to be “fearless at the point of attack” and calling his policy proposals “battle plans.”
If former President Donald Trump wins a second term in November, Vought may get the opportunity to go on the offensive.
A chief architect of Project 2025 — the controversial conservative blueprint to remake the federal government — Vought is likely to be appointed to a high-ranking post in a second Trump administration. And he’s been drafting a so-far secret “180-Day Transition Playbook” to speed the plan’s implementation to avoid a repeat of the chaotic start that dogged Trump’s first term.
Among the small cadre of Trump advisers who has a mechanic’s understanding of how Washington operates, Vought has advised influential conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill, held a top post in the Trump White House and later established his own pro-Trump think tank. Now, he’s being mentioned as a candidate to be Trump’s White House chief of staff, one of the most powerful positions in government.
“If we don’t have courage, then we will step away from the battle,” Vought said in June on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. “But our view is that’s where the country needs us, and we’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.”
Conservative blueprint to change the government
Led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Project 2025 is a detailed 920-page handbook for governing under the next Republican administration. A whirlwind of hard-right ambitions, its proposals range from ousting thousands of civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists to reversing the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of medications used in abortions. Democrats for months have been using Project 2025 to hammer Trump and other Republicans, arguing to voters that it represents the former president’s true — and extreme — agenda.
Trump in recent weeks has sought to distance himself from Project 2025. He posted on social media he has not seen the plan and has “no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it.”
Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025.
Trump’s attempts to reject the blueprint are complicated by the connections he has with many of its contributors. More than two dozen authors served in his administration, including Vought, who was director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.
The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about which Project 2025 proposals the former president opposes or whether Vought would be offered a high-level government position in a new Trump term.
Vought did not respond to an interview request or to questions first emailed in February to his think tank, the Center for Renewing America, which played a key role in creating Project 2025.
Those who know Vought described him as fiercely dedicated to Trump’s cause, if not to the former president himself.
“A very determined warrior is how I would see Russ,” said a former Trump administration official who worked with Vought in the White House and requested anonymity to speak candidly about him. “I don’t think he thinks about whether or not he likes Donald Trump as a person. I think he likes what Donald Trump represents in terms of the political forces he’s able to harness.”
Washington insider
Born in New York and raised in Connecticut, Vought has described his family as blue collar. His parents were devout Christians. Vought’s father, a Marine Corps veteran, was a union electrician and his mother was a schoolteacher.
Vought’s father, nicknamed Turk, didn’t stand for idleness or waste. Mark Maliszewski, an electrician who knew him, recalled that after a job Turk Vought would scold his co-workers if they tossed out still usable material.
“He’d go over and kick the garbage can,” Maliszewski said. “He’d say: ‘What is this? If those were quarters or dollars in that garbage can, you’d be picking them up.’”
Russell Vought graduated in 1998 from Wheaton College, a Christian school in Illinois that counts the famed evangelist Billy Graham among its alumni. He moved to Washington to work for Republicans who championed fiscal austerity and small government.
“I worked with a lot of different staff people and as far as work ethic, tenacity, intellect, knowledge (and) commitment to principle, Russell was one of the more impressive people I worked with,” said former GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who hired Vought in 2003.
After honing his credentials as a fiscal hawk, Vought was named policy director of the House Republican Conference, the party’s primary messaging platform chaired at the time by then-Rep. Mike Pence, who went on to serve as Indiana governor and Trump’s vice president.
Vought left Capitol Hill for a lobbying organization attached to the Heritage Foundation. When Trump was elected, Vought became OMB’s deputy director.
Vought told senators his remarks were taken out of context and said he respected the right of every person to express their religious beliefs.
The Senate confirmed him to be OMB’s No. 2 by a single vote. He became acting director in early 2019 after his boss, Mick Mulvaney, was named Trump's acting chief of staff. Vought was confirmed as OMB director a year and half later as the COVID-19 pandemic was sweeping the globe.
Russell Vough served as acting director of the Office of Management under Donald Trump.
OMB is a typically sedate office that builds the president’s budget and reviews regulations. But with Vought at the helm, OMB was at the center of showdowns between Trump and Congress over federal spending and the legal bounds of presidential power.
After lawmakers refused to give Trump more money for his southern U.S. border wall, the budget office siphoned billions of dollars from the Pentagon and Treasury Department budgets to pay for it.
Under Vought, OMB also withheld military aid to Ukraine as Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate President Joe Biden and his son. Vought refused to comply with a congressional demand to depose him during the subsequent Democrat-led House investigation that led to Trump’s first impeachment. The inquiry, Vought said, was a sham.
Following Trump's exit from the White House, Vought formed The Center for Renewing America. The organization’s mission is to be “the tip of the America First spear” and “to renew a consensus that America is a nation under God.”
Vought has defended the concept of Christian nationalism, which is a fusion of American and Christian values, symbols and identity. Christian nationalism, he wrote three years ago, “is a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society.”
The only way to return America to the country the Founding Fathers envisioned is “radical constitutionalism,” Vought said on Bannon’s podcast. That means ensuring control of the executive branch rests solely with the president, not a vast federal bureaucracy.
Anticipating the fights to achieve this, Trump’s backers need to be “fearless, faithful and frugal in everything we do,” he said.
A declaration of less independence
Vought’s center was part of a coalition of conservative organizations, organized by the Heritage Foundation, that launched Project 2025 and crafted a detailed plan for governing in the next Republican administration.
The project’s public-facing document, “Mandate for Leadership,” examined nearly every corner of the federal government and urged reforms large and small to bridle a “behemoth” bureaucracy.
Project 2025 calls for the U.S. Education Department to be shuttered, and the Homeland Security Department dismantled, with its various parts absorbed by other federal offices. Diversity, inclusion and equity programs would be gutted. Promotions in the U.S. military to general or admiral would go under a microscope to ensure candidates haven’t prioritized issues like climate change or critical race theory.
In 2021, Russell Vough joined Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Dan Bishop to criticize "critical race theory" on Capitol Hill.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor and author of "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” criticized Project 2025 as “a recipe for mass chaos, abuses of power, and dysfunction in government.”
The overarching theme of Project 2025 is to strip down the “administrative state.” This, according to the blueprint, is the mass of unelected government officials who pursue policy agendas at odds with the president’s plans.
In his public comments and in a Project 2025 chapter he wrote, Vought has said that no executive branch department or agency, including the Justice Department, should operate outside the president’s authority.
“The whole notion of independent agencies is anathema from the standpoint of the Constitution,” Vought said during a recent appearance on the Fox Business Network.
Critics warn this may leave the Justice Department and other investigative agencies vulnerable to a president who might pressure them to punish or probe a political foe. Trump, who has faced four separate prosecutions, has threatened retribution against Biden and other perceived enemies.
Diminishing the Justice Department’s independence would be a “radically bad idea,” said Paul Coggins, past president of the National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys.
“No president deserves to sic the Justice Department on his political enemies, or, frankly, to pull the Justice Department off his political friends,” he said.
It is not clear what job Vought might get in a second Trump administration. He could return as OMB director, the job he held at the end of Trump's presidency, or an even higher-ranking post.
“Russ would make a really, really good (White House) chief of staff,” Mulvaney said.
Whatever the position, Vought is expected to be one of Trump’s top field commanders in his campaign to dominate Washington.
After nearly a near year of careful planning, organizers of the Democratic National Convention are in a mad dash to accommodate a new nominee, a re-crafted program, and a highly compressed deadline to pull everything off as though this was the plan all along.
With President Joe Biden now out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris pursuing the party's nomination, a dramatic role reversal for the two is likely to play out before a nationally televised audience when around 5,000 delegates, 12,000 volunteers, and 15,000 media members gather for four days in Chicago starting Aug. 19.
Harris is banking on introducing her vice presidential pick to the country and standing at center stage to accept her party's nomination. Biden—who until mere days ago thought he'd be the one getting the nod—will have a more peripheral and ceremonial role akin to the treatment of second-term presidents set to leave office.
He will still give a speech and have his achievements feted, but the whole thing will require a delicate political balance between the president and his No. 2.
“If it’s a Biden-Harris reelection convention, it’s all about doubling down on the great accomplishment. The challenge, obviously, will be how to sort of bank that, but also talk about the future," said William M. Daley, a former Obama White House chief of staff whose father and brother were Chicago mayors.
There have occasionally been tensions, or at least struggles with political messaging and tone, as vice presidents campaign to succeed a president—like in 2000, when Bill Clinton was in office and Al Gore was seeking the White House. Clinton left the convention after offering a triumphant review of his accomplishments on the first day, but prominent party leaders urged him to more definitively cede the spotlight to his vice president going forward, citing the Monica Lewinsky scandal that prompted the president's impeachment.
Then-Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who would be the Democratic nominee himself four years later, said of Clinton: “We may need to get the Jaws of Life to pry him free from the thing -- but we’ve got to pry him free."
As for Biden's situation this year, “there are people in the party that would have rather seen something different happen. The question is can this be subsumed to an overarching unity message," said Julia Azari, a political science professor at Marquette University who is co-authoring a book on the vice presidency and political parties.
A convention helmed by Harris would nonetheless make history as Democrats become the first major party to nominate a woman of color for president.
“It lights a fire under national Democrats. It’s an added level of history,” said Christian Perry, political director for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. He added that Harris would break more barriers in a city that produced a series of history-making Black Democrats, from the Rev. Jesse Jackson to former President Barack Obama.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a Wisconsin rally—her first as the presidential nominee—on Tuesday.
“I think it’ll be a celebratory mood," said Bruce Thompson, a member of the convention rules committee. “There’s been way too much gallows humor in the Democratic Party over the last month. And now we have this confidence and this energy.”
Like Biden, Harris could be expected to use the convention to promote the administration’s policy accomplishments, while decrying Republican President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy.
But other aspects of the campaign are shifting profoundly—from fundraising and travel schedules to how Harris targets key states and the personal advisers closest to her. The vice president's “Harris for President” logo in blue and red does feature lettering similar to the original Biden-Harris reelection insignia, at least.
The convention's background music could also reflect a fresher vibe.
In the first appearances of her nascent 2024 presidential campaign, Harris' soundtrack has featured Beyoncé’s hit “Freedom." Biden's events leaned more toward working-class-themed ballads by the likes of Bruce Springsteen.
The Chicago convention will have different themes each night, such as economic growth or national diversity. In addition to Biden, there will be addresses from White House alums Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Before Biden bowed out of the race, he and his family gathered at Camp David to pose for famed photographer Annie Leibovitz for photos to be used at the convention. They'll still be used—but likely in a more retrospective way.
For all the upheaval to the presidential race, organizers say actual convention logistics won't change all that much—highlighting how the quadrennial gatherings are as much about a party partying as they are about fortifying candidates.
“Our mission remains the same,” said convention chair Minyon Moore.
Party staff began occupying the United Center, normally home to the NBA’s Bulls and the NHL’s Blackhawks, on June 25. Construction to remake the arena to better meet the convention's needs has been underway for more than a month, with nearly as long still to go. The convention logo still reads “CHICAGO” over the city’s signature four-star insignia and “DNC 2024." The slogan remains: “Our future is created here.”
“There’s not a lot in the actual hall that has to move around because you’re taking one out and putting the other in. It’s all somewhat neutral,” Daley said. “The stage and all that, is all set, if it’s Biden or it's Harris or who walks out.”
Also unaltered are plans for widespread demonstrations protesting the Biden administration's strong support for Israel in its war with Hamas.
Azari said Democrats may be hoping to re-create the last time the Democrats held a Chicago convention in 1996, when there were no significant protests, the party was mostly unified behind Clinton and the lasting image was of Hillary Clinton and others dancing the Macarena.
“The ‘96 convention is what they’re aiming for," Azair said, "where the biggest story is gonna be people dancing badly."
Even though President Joe Biden won't be on the ballot this November, voters still will be weighing his legacy.
As Vice President Kamala Harris moves to take his place as the Democratic standard-bearer, Biden’s accomplishments remain very much at risk should Republican Donald Trump prevail.
How Biden’s single term and his decision to step aside are remembered will be intertwined with Harris’ electoral success in November, particularly as the vice president runs tightly on the achievements of the Biden administration.
Biden will have an opportunity to make a case for his legacy—sweeping domestic legislation, renewal of alliances abroad, defense of democracy—on Wednesday night when he delivers an Oval Office address about his decision to bow out of the race and “what lies ahead.”
And no matter how frustrated Biden is at being pushed aside by his party — and he’s plenty upset — he has too much at stake simply to wash his hands of this election.
Biden endorsed Harris shortly after he announced Sunday that he would end his candidacy, effectively giving her a head start over would-be challengers and helping to jumpstart a candidacy focused largely on continuing his own agenda.
“If she wins, then it will be confirmation that he did the right thing to fight against the threat that is Trump, and he will be seen as a legend on behalf of democracy,” said presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. “If she loses, I think there will be questions about, did he step down too late? Would the Democratic Party have been more effective if he had said he was not going to run?”
The last vice president to run for the top job was Democrat Al Gore, who sought to distance himself from President Bill Clinton during the 2000 campaign after the president's affair with a White House intern and subsequent impeachment.
Harris, in contrast, has spent the better part of the last three years praising Biden’s doings—meaning any attempt to now distance herself would be difficult to explain. And she has to rely on the Biden political operation she inherited to win the election with just over 100 days to go before polls close.
Speaking to campaign staff on Monday, Harris said Biden's legacy of accomplishment "just over the last three and a half years is unmatched in modern history.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden in 2021
Trump and his allies, for their part, were eager to tie Harris to Biden’s record even before the president left the race—and not in a good way.
One campaign email to supporters declared “KAMALA HARRIS IS BIDEN 2.0 – Kamala Harris owns Joe Biden’s terrible record because it is her record as well,” calling out high inflation and border policies, among other things.
Biden this week promised the staffers of his former campaign that he was still “going to be on the road” as he handed off the reins of the organization to Harris, adding, “I’m not going anywhere.”
His advisers say he intends to hold campaign events and fundraisers benefiting Harris, albeit at a far slower pace than had he remained on the ballot himself.
Harris advisers will ultimately have to decide how to deploy the president, whose popularity sagged as voters on both sides of the aisle questioned his fitness for office.
The president’s allies insist that no matter what, Biden’s place in the history books is intact.
Biden's win in 2020 "was that election that protected us from a Donald Trump presidency,” said Rep. Steven Horsford, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Yes, we have to do it again this November. But had Donald Trump been in office another four years, the damage, the destruction, the decay of our democracy would’ve gone even further.”
Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way, predicted there will be a difference between short-term recollections of Biden and his legacy if Democrats lose in November.
“It is true that if we lose, that will cloud things for him in the near-term” because Democrats will have to confront Trump, Bennett said. “In the long term, when history judges Biden, they’ll look at him on his own terms. They will judge him for what he did or did not do as president, and they will judge him very favorably.”
Biden’s decision to end his candidacy buoyed the spirits of congressional Democrats who had been fretting that the incumbent president would drag down their prospects of retaining the Senate and retaking the House. An all-Republican Washington would threaten to do even more damage to Biden’s legacy.
Already, congressional Republicans have tried to unravel pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act, a central Biden achievement that was passed on party lines in 2022. And they could succeed next year, with a President Trump waiting to sign a repeal into law.
GOP lawmakers could also vote to reverse key federal regulations that arrived later in the Biden administration.
“If the Republicans get dual majorities, they’re going to claw back as much as they can, they’re going to undo as much as they can and not only will that be a disaster for America and the world, it’ll be really bad for the Biden legacy," Bennett said.
Biden aides point to the thus-far seamless nature of Harris’ takeover of his political apparatus as evidenced that the president has set up his vice president to successfully run on their shared record. But the ultimate test of that organization will come in November.
No one will be cheering her on more than the president.
Republican former congressman Adam Kinzinger endorsed President Joe Biden on Wednesday, giving the Democrat a prominent new ally in his high-stakes campaign to win over moderate Republicans and independents this fall.
Kinzinger, a military pilot who emerged as a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump after the U.S. Capitol was attacked by Trump's supporters, described Trump as “a direct threat to every fundamental American value” in a video announcing the Biden endorsement.
“While I certainly don’t agree with President Biden on everything, and I never thought I’d be endorsing a Democrat for president, I know that he will always protect the very thing that makes America the best country in the world: our democracy,” said Kinzinger, who voted for Trump in 2020.
The former Illinois congressman also issued an ominous warning. Trump, he said, will “hurt anyone or anything in pursuit of power.”
Kinzinger's announcement comes on the eve of the opening presidential debate and gives Biden an example he can raise Thursday night of a well-known Republican supporting him over Trump. Biden’s camp is prioritizing outreach to moderate Republicans and independents alienated by Trump’s tumultuous White House tenure.
Kinzinger becomes the highest-profile Republican official formally backing Biden, whose campaign earlier in the month tapped Kinzinger's former chief of staff Austin Weatherford to serve as its national Republican outreach director. Republican former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan also endorsed Biden last month.
Ultimately, a number of prominent Republicans are expected to join Biden's campaign, with more influential names likely to be announced closer to the November election.
Shortly after Kinzinger announced his decision, Biden shared the endorsement video on social media and said he was grateful for the Republican's support.
“This is what putting your country before your party looks like,” Biden wrote on X.
Biden's team is trying to create what it calls “a permission structure” for Republican voters who would otherwise have a difficult time casting a ballot for the Democratic president.
Kinzinger developed a national profile as one of two Republicans who served on the House's committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. The committee highlighted a number of Trump's transgressions before and during the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol as Congress tried to certify the election results for Biden.
Kinzinger, who did not seek reelection in 2022 after voting to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, called on the GOP to change course.
“To every American of every political party and those of none, I say now is not the time to watch quietly as Donald Trump threatens the future of America,” said Kinzinger, who repeatedly described himself as a conservative in the video. “Now is the time to unite behind Joe Biden and show Donald Trump off the stage once and for all.”
In a statement Wednesday, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez described Kinzinger as “a true public servant who is a model for putting our country and our democracy over party and blind acquiescence to Trump.”
“Congressman Kinzinger represents the countless Americans that Donald Trump’s Republican Party have left behind," she said. “Those Americans have a home in President Biden’s coalition, and our campaign knows that we need to show up and earn their support.”
Trump and his allies have long dismissed Kinzinger's efforts to rally Republicans against him. The former president publicly celebrated when Kinzinger didn't seek reelection and has called for the prosecution of Kinzinger and others who served on the Jan. 6 committee, part of his pattern of suggesting his opponents face government retribution.
Biden has been particularly focused on courting supporters of Republican former presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who continued to win over a significant number of anti-Trump GOP primary voters throughout the spring even after suspending her campaign.
As part of Biden’s sustained outreach to moderate voters in both parties, his campaign released an ad highlighting Trump’s often-personal attacks against Haley, including his primary nickname of her as “birdbrain” and suggestion that “she’s not presidential timber.”
Haley last month said she will vote for Trump in the general election.
Indeed, Trump’s grip on his party’s passionate base is stronger than ever. And the overwhelming majority of Republican elected officials are backing his 2024 campaign, even those few, like Haley, who worked against him in the primary phase of the campaign.
Hunter Biden has been convicted of all three felony charges related to the purchase of a revolver in 2018 when, prosecutors argued, the president’s son lied on a mandatory gun-purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
Jurors found Hunter Biden guilty of lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application by saying he was not a drug user and illegally having the gun for 11 days.
He faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced by Judge Maryellen Noreika, though first-time offenders do not get anywhere near the maximum, and it’s unclear whether she would give him time behind bars.
Now, Hunter Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, the chief political rival of President Joe Biden, have been convicted by American jurors in an election year that has been as much about the courtroom as it has been about campaign events and rallies.
Joe Biden has steered clear of the federal courtroom in Delaware where his son was tried and said little about the case, wary of creating an impression of interfering in a criminal matter brought by his own Justice Department. But allies of the Democrat have worried about the toll that the trial — and now the conviction — will take on the 81-year-old, who has long been concerned with his only living son’s health and sustained sobriety.
Hunter Biden and Trump have both argued they were victimized by the politics of the moment. But while Trump has continued to falsely claim the verdict was “rigged,” Joe Biden has said he would accept the results of the verdict and would not seek to pardon his son.
Hunter Biden’s legal troubles aren’t over. He faces a trial in September in California on charges of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes and congressional Republicans have signaled they will keep going after him in their stalled impeachment effort into the president. The president has not been accused or charged with any wrongdoing by prosecutors investigating his son.
The prosecution devoted much of the trial to highlighting the seriousness of Hunter Biden’s drug problem, through highly personal testimony and embarrassing evidence.
Jurors heard Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and a former girlfriend testify about his habitual crack use and their failed efforts to help him get clean. Jurors saw images of the president’s son bare-chested and disheveled in a filthy room, and half-naked holding crack pipes. And jurors watched video of his crack cocaine weighed on a scale.
Hunter Biden did not testify but jurors heard his voice when prosecutors played audio excerpts of his 2021 memoir “Beautiful Things,” in which he talks about hitting bottom after the death of his brother Beau in 2015, and his descent into drugs before his eventual sobriety.
Prosecutors felt the evidence was necessary to prove that Hunter, 54, was in the throes of addiction when he bought the gun and therefore lied when he checked “no” on the form that asked whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to” drugs.
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell had argued that Hunter Biden’s state of mind was different when he wrote the book than when he bought the gun — when he didn’t believe he had an addiction. Lowell pointed out to jurors that some of the questions on the firearms transaction record are in the present tense, such as “are you an unlawful user of or addicted to” drugs.
And Lowell suggested Hunter Biden might have felt he had a drinking problem at the time, but not a drug problem. Alcohol abuse does not preclude a gun purchase.
Hunter Biden had hoped last year to resolve a long-running investigation federal investigation under a deal with prosecutors that would avoided the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election. Under the deal, he would have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses and avoid prosecution in the gun case if he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the deal fell apart after Noreika, who was nominated by Trump, questioned unusual aspects of the proposed agreement, and the lawyers could not resolve the matter.
Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed top investigator David Weiss, Delaware’s U.S. attorney, as a special counsel last August, and a month later Hunter Biden was indicted.
Hunter Biden has said he was charged because the Justice Department bowed to pressure from Republicans who argued the Democratic president’s son was getting special treatment.
The reason that law enforcement raised any questions about the revolver is because Hallie Biden, Beau’s widow, found it unloaded in Hunter’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018, panicked and tossed it into a garbage can at Janssen’s Market, where a man inadvertently fished it out of the trash. She testified about the episode in court.
Hallie Biden, who had a romantic relationship with Hunter after Beau died, eventually called the police. Officers retrieved the gun from the man who inadvertently took the gun along with other recyclables from the trash. The case was eventually closed because of lack of cooperation from Hunter Biden, who was considered the victim.
The case, to be argued Thursday, stems from Trump's attempts to have charges against him dismissed. Lower courts have found he cannot claim 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.
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.
NIXON'S GHOST
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.”
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
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.
WHO ARE THE LAWYERS?
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.
FULL BENCH
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.
Republican senators requested more time Tuesday to build a case for a full trial. The sudden change of plans cast fresh doubts on the proceedings, the historic first impeachment of a Cabinet secretary in roughly 150 years.
