Morning Report — Trump argues immunity; Iowa heats up

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 01/10/24 6:30 AM ET

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Former President Trump traded snowy Iowa for a court appearance in Washington on Tuesday, where his legal arguments about immunity invited a chilly judicial response.

The three-judge panel’s reception to Trump’s presidential immunity claims regarding charges related to the 2020 election was broadly skeptical. 

Trump attended the hearing before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, leaving the campaign trail less than a week before the Iowa caucuses. His lawyers took a firm position, arguing former presidents can only face prosecution if they are first impeached and then convicted by the Senate. 

They suggested Tuesday that even a president directing SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent would be an action barred from prosecution. Trump’s legal team has asked the court to toss the case entirely; in all likelihood, it will make its way to the Supreme Court.

THE JUDGES APPEARED POISED TO REJECT Trump’s arguments, warning that Congress may not always choose to impeach a president for unlawful conduct, and that such a stance would prohibit prosecutors from later acting on new evidence of crimes if it went unweighed by the Senate (The Hill and Politico).

“What kind of world are we living in … if a president orders his SEAL team to murder a political rival and then resigns or is not impeached — that is not a crime?” asked James Pearce, who led the arguments for special counsel Jack Smith’s team. “I think that is an extraordinarily frightening future that should weigh heavily on the court’s decision.”

MOST AMERICANS DISAGREE with Trump’s argument that he should be immune from prosecution. In a Tuesday poll by CBS News/YouGov, more than 6 in 10 participants (64 percent) disagreed with Trump’s argument, while about 36 percent said the former president should have immunity.

▪ Axios: Trump warns of “bedlam in the country” if he loses election while being prosecuted.

▪ The New York Times: Allegations against District Attorney Fani Willis (D) bolster Trump’s criticisms of his Georgia case.

▪ CNN: Ray Epps, a man at the center of right-wing conspiracy theories, was sentenced to one year probation for his actions on Jan. 6.

Tuesday’s court appearance marked yet another case of Trump’s legal issues. The former president faces civil and criminal trials in several jurisdictions — from D.C. to New York City to Fulton County, Ga. — which are interfering in his campaign schedule. And the issue that is only set to get thornier as both the primaries and his legal calendar ramp up. But despite scheduling puzzles, the prosecutions are helping Trump among his voter base.

According to The Hill/DecisionDeskHQ’s average of polls, the former president has a 52.9 percent lead over his primary rivals. With 64.4 percent support, he vastly outpaces former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has 11.4 percent support, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, closely following Haley at 11.2 percent.

HALEY AND DESANTIS WILL GO HEAD-TO-HEAD tonight during a CNN debate in Des Moines, where each candidate will battle to be the alternative to Trump. The former president will skip the GOP debate and will instead spend the 9 p.m. ET hour on Fox News’s town hall — his first live interview with the network in two years.

The Hill: Protesters interrupted DeSantis during a Tuesday town hall in Iowa hosted by Fox.  

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:

▪ Severe weather and wind shear Tuesday night diverted Vice President Harris’s Air Force 2 plane from Atlanta to Dulles International Airport in Virginia rather than to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Early today, tens of millions of people in the Mid-Atlantic region face flood warnings, watches or advisories, according to the National Weather Service, and more than half a million households in about a dozen states are without power.

▪ Boeing’s CEO Dave Calhoun fought back tears Tuesday while speaking with employees about the midair fuselage blowout on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9. He said the company acknowledges “our mistake.” 

▪ Amalija Knavs, 78, mother of former first lady Melania Trump, died Tuesday.

⬟ After four days of unexplained secrecy and public controversy about transparency and national security, the world learned Tuesday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, 70, was treated for prostate cancer Dec. 22 and subsequently readmitted Jan. 1 with an infection and complications, according to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the Pentagon (The Hill and NBC News). Austin was placed under general anesthesia for surgery early last month and “recovered uneventfully” until experiencing pain that put him back in the hospital for treatment, where he remains. 

The cancer “was detected early and his prognosis is excellent,” according to a statement from Walter Reed clinicians and defense officials. The secrecy over Austin’s condition prompted calls in Congress and elsewhere for his firing, which have been rejected by President Biden, who spoke with Austin by phone Saturday but only learned about the secretary’s prostate cancer Tuesday. About 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime. Risk of the disease rises in older males and among African American men, according to the American Cancer Society. 

Axios: White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, responding to the Pentagon’s decision not to immediately inform the White House, lawmakers and defense officials about Austin’s absence, plans a review of Cabinet protocols dealing with the delegation of authority and notifications at the top of the executive branch.

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press / Alex Brandon | Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who faces a House committee impeachment hearing today, testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee in November.

CONGRESS

Despite a razor-thin House GOP majority and a jammed schedule to try to keep the government funded after Jan. 19, committee Republicans today will begin to try to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for allegedly failing to implement U.S. law at the southern border and for telling lawmakers that migration under the Biden administration was not a “crisis.”

At the same time, Mayorkas has been toiling at the table with Senate negotiators from both parties to try to hammer out a border security and asylum reform deal that Republicans demand as a condition before potentially backing White House priorities, such as increased aid to Ukraine and Israel, reports The Hill’s Al Weaver.   

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) asserted Sunday during a CBS News interview that Mayorkas has not performed his duties under law and “lied” to him — now a talking point among House conservatives.

“Secretary Mayorkas is not a good-faith negotiating partner,” Johnson said. “He is unwilling to enforce existing federal law. Why would we believe that he would do any new provision? He’s lied to Congress repeatedly. He’s lied to me personally, under oath… He’s stood in front of my committee on multiple occasions and insisted that the border is closed and secure when everyone in America knows it’s not true.”

Conservative Senate Republicans are skeptical of the House effort to spend time trying to purge Mayorkas from Biden’s Cabinet. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said the secretary “definitely hasn’t done his job” but questioned “where they can get the votes” in the House to impeach him.

And this observation won’t help House Republicans get the votes: Legal expert and conservative commentator Jonathan Turley wrote in an op-ed that Mayorkas’s conduct is not impeachable because it amounts to a disagreement over policy.

▪ The Hill: Senate Republicans refer to Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attackers who were arrested and convicted as felons, not as “hostages,” which was the false campaign rhetoric used by Trump this week in Iowa. 

▪ The Hill: Lawmakers are cautious about regulating artificial intelligence as the technology spreads rapidly through critical sectors of the economy and governments.

▪ The Hill: The future of an administration IRS overhaul and fortification of U.S. tax collections is in some doubt under a draft bipartisan, bicameral spending framework for 2024 that would reduce IRS funding in a bow to House GOP ultimatums. 

WHERE AND WHEN

The House meets at 10 a.m. 

The Senate will convene at 10 a.m. 

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at the White House at 11:30 a.m., accompanied by the vice president. The two will have lunch together at 12:30 p.m. 

Harris also is scheduled to conduct the ceremonial swearing-in of Nathalie Rayes as ambassador to Croatia at 5:35 p.m.  

Secretary of State Antony Blinken today met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The secretary also will visit Egypt before returning to Washington Thursday after wrapping up nine stops in the Middle East.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to Boston to tour Roxbury Community College and speak at 11:30 a.m. about administration investments in key policies. She will be joined by Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (D). The secretary will tour the college’s Center for Smart Building Technology and host a roundtable discussion with local business leaders to discuss the clean energy industry and federal and state incentives for economic opportunity. 

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1 p.m.

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press / Andrew Harnik | GOP presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley will debate tonight at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Trump is skipping the event to headline a Fox News town hall in Iowa. 

POLITICS

? Here’s how to view GOP rivals DeSantis and Haley during tonight’s debate in Iowa broadcast by CNN. The Hill rounded up five things to watch, and analyst Niall Stanage anticipates the closing arguments from the Florida governor and former South Carolina governor as they try to build momentum ahead of the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary.  

The Hill: Trump has a lock on political endorsements from the House GOP leadership. That backing is less important when it comes to swaying voter sentiment than in calling the shots in Congress early in the primary cycle. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, No. 3 in the GOP leadership, on Tuesday became the highest ranking senator to endorse Trump.

? Biden is struggling in Michigan (8 points behind Trump), according to a new statewide poll of likely general election voters commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4). 

“If I were a Democrat in Michigan, I would be breaking the emergency fire alarms in the White House and demanding to know what the plan is for Michigan,” said Richard Czuba, founder of Glengariff Group, which conducted the poll. “Because these numbers are very bad for any incumbent of any party.” In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in Michigan by 3 percentage points.

Note: Battleground Michigan is not a polling outlier. Recent hypothetical matchups in surveys of Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania found Trump leading Biden.

2024 ROUNDUP:

▪ Biden’s infrastructure implementation coordinator Mitch Landrieu is leaving the White House to join the Biden reelection campaign as a national co-chair. Landrieu also plans to work in the private sector promoting clean energy.

▪ From “pizzagate” to QAnon and the “Epstein list”: An expert on conspiracy theories explains why MAGA figures embrace theories surrounding sex trafficking.

▪ Haley has trimmed Trump’s lead in the Republican primary race in New Hampshire to single digits, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire. Trump still holds a meaningful lead in the poll, with the backing of 39 percent of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire compared with Haley’s 32 percent. 

▪ Elections and disinformation are colliding in 2024, as expected.  

ELSEWHERE

© The Associated Press / Evelyn Hockstein, Reuters | Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday in Tel Aviv met with Israeli leaders, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

INTERNATIONAL 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the West Bank this morning as the U.S. tries to rally the region behind a post-war vision. 

Blinken told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials Tuesday that Palestinians must be allowed to return to their homes in Gaza “as soon as conditions allow” and must not be displaced from the strip. He announced that the Israeli government had agreed to a plan to allow a United Nations assessment mission to northern Gaza as the Israeli offensive there shifts to a new phase.

“It will determine what needs to be done to allow displaced Palestinians to return safely to homes in the north,” Blinken said at a news conference in Tel Aviv.

The secretary has spent the past week on a trip crisscrossing the Middle East, speaking to leaders about the situation in Gaza, where Israel’s war against Hamas has left millions displaced and more than 23,000 dead. At a news conference in Jerusalem, Blinken said the civilian death toll in Gaza was “far too high,” especially among children, and called for aid to reach the besieged strip more effectively. He added the U.S. continues to stand with Israel in its mission to “ensure that Oct. 7 never happens again,” but also sought to prevent the conflict from spreading to the wider region.

While the Biden administration has sought to maintain pressure on Netanyahu’s government to curb its offensive and reduce harm to civilians, U.S. officials support Israel’s decision to carry out a military campaign, even amid growing international isolation (CNN and Al Jazeera).

▪ Politico magazine: The U.S. is dealing with an Israeli leader who’s losing control. 

▪ NBC News: Blinken said he is optimistic Hamas “can and will” engage on hostage talks despite targeted killings.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Gaza hostage talks inch closer to a restart as Blinken meets with Israeli leaders and seeks to avoid wider war as tensions grow between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

▪ The New York Times: In the ruins of two Gazan towns, journalists witnessed the destruction of Israel’s war and the devastation of Hamas’s operations.

▪ Foreign Policy: Does Biden have a Middle East peace plan? Sort of.

Russian-born U.S. citizen Robert Woodland has been detained in Moscow for at least two months on alleged drug charges that can carry up to 20 years in prison (Reuters and CNN).  

OPINION

■ Who’s afraid of Nikki Haley? by The Wall Street Journal editorial board.

■ Peace won’t come easily, but the process must begin in Gaza, by Earle Mack, opinion contributor, The Hill.

THE CLOSER

© The Associated Press / Ryan Sun | This week’s annual Consumer Technology Association trade show, CES, in Las Vegas, seen Sunday, leans heavily into gadgets featuring AI.

And finally … Will inventors and fantasists stop the insanity? AI-branded products are the new “smart” electronics of 2024, according to Bloomberg News.  

Versions of artificial intelligence are showing up in consumer gadgets of all types, including televisions, vacuums and pet gizmos, judging from the CES trade show in Las Vegas this week sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association, which is known for corralling “weird tech.”

What’s a fad, a must-have feature for better living or a gimmick to try to sell hardware? (Tempted to ask ChatGPT? Warning: The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, today reports that the top, immediate risk to the global economy is AI-powered misinformation.) 

▪ Zdnet: The best CES 2024 gadgets for sale now. 

▪ WIRED: CES 2024 photo gallery.

▪ Bloomberg News: AI is the focus of CES in Las Vegas.

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