Trump braces for fraud trial verdict as allies pledge ‘holy war’ against Taylor Swift

Moody’s Analytics has released its last election model report, predicting a that Joe Biden will win re-election by a thin margin, supposing average turnout.

The second term could be secured on the strength of the economy but the firm warns “the upcoming presidential election will be close”.

However, as in 2020 the election will depend on key battlegrounds, with something of a cushion for the president if he carries all or most of them.

Similar to 2020’s close and contentious race, the 2024 election will be determined in a few battleground states. On the state level, the outcome is likely to be even closer than in 2020 with five states decided by less than 1 percentage point compared with only three in the previous election. The narrowness of Biden’s margins in Georgia (+0.9 ppt), North Carolina (+0.3 ppt), Nevada (+0.2 ppt), Pennsylvania (+0.8 ppt), and Arizona (-0.8 ppt) suggests that the outcome may not be determined on election night as several states face the prospect of automatic recounts and court challenges—a situation likely to raise anxieties given the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Biden’s projected 308 electoral vote tally provides some cushion. If we start flipping the results of his slimmest victories, the loss of North Carolina and Nevada would trim his vote total to 286, still enough to achieve victory. Losing Georgia, which has 16 electoral votes, would then bring Biden to the exact threshold he needs to win a second term. Therefore, Pennsylvania appears to be the key to winning or losing the 2024 election. Losing the Keystone State’s 19 electoral votes would drop Biden to 267 votes, if he also loses North Carolinaand Nevada, and 251 votes, if he also loses Georgia, swinging the election to Trump. In other words, our model suggests that the upcoming presidential election will likely be determined in Pennsylvania.

Republicans are now buzzing about the possibility of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, serving as secretary of state in Trump’s second term. According to two sources, prominent Republicans are speculating that Kushner is in the running to take charge at Foggy Bottom if Trump wins in November. One source briefed on the conversations said Republican senators have privately asked Kushner to head up the agency. According to the source, Kushner has said he is “focused on his family and his business,” and would wait until late summer to consider serving as the nation’s top diplomat.

Mr Kushner declined to comment and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.

Martha McHardy has the story:

John Bowden explains what’s going on in the Silver State:

Nevada will be the next state to vote for the Republican nominee for president. But one could be forgiven for not remembering that fact, given the lack of media attention.

Both Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, the only two prominent contenders remaining in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination, are technically on the ballot in Nevada. But they are on different ones — Ms Haley is competing in the state’s primary, and Donald Trump is competing in the caucuses. The two won’t actually be “against” each other in the state, as Republican voters can choose to participate in both the primary and the caucus, which will be held on different days.

It’s a bewildering system that has sapped almost the entirety of the state’s political relevance for the 2024 primary season. And it’s all thanks to 2020, when a delay in the results led to many Democratic political leaders in the state, includind the late Harry Reid, pushing for the state to abandon the caucus system in favour of a primary. Only, they didn’t: Nevada now has both.

Just a few hours after a poll showing Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump in six key swing states, a new Quinnipiac University national poll shows the current president pulling ahead of the former president by six points.

Mr Biden holds a lead over Trump 50 to 44 per cent among registered voters in a hypothetical general election matchup. The survey was conducted between 25-29 January and updates a 20 December survey that had the two at 47-46 per cent in favour of the incumbent.

In today’s poll, Democrats (96-2 per cent) and independents (52-40 per cent) support Mr Biden, while Republicans (91-7 per cent) support Mr Trump.

There is good news for Nikki Haley, Mr Trump’s rival for the Republican Party nomination. In a head-to-head match up against Mr Biden, the former UN Ambassador beats the incumbent president 47 per cent to 42 per cent.

“Donald Trump was instrumental in facilitating the first new peace agreements in the Middle East in almost 30 years,” she claimed in a statement posted on her website.

“For decades, bureaucrats, foreign policy ‘professionals’, and international organisations insisted that additional Middle East peace agreements were impossible without a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Trump proved that to be false,” she added.

Martha McHardy has the story:

Donald Trump is in Washington, DC, to meet with the Teamsters union — a city he describes as a “crime fest”.

Stopping to talk to the media, the former president was asked whether he would strike Iran after the drone attack that killed three US soldiers in Jordan, and claimed that it would never have happened if he were in the White House. He then changed the topic to inflation.

Mr Trump also touched on human-trafficking and the border before moving on to talking about his civil and criminal cases. Garrett Haake of NBC News reports that the former president was asked if he would use campaign funds to pay settlements in his New York civil cases, to which he rplied that did nothing wrong. He called the Carroll case a disgrace and says he’s appealing but did not directly answer the question.

Haake further reports that Mr Trump also said says he has told lawmakers who have called him that they should not pass a border bill that isn’t a “great bill,” and calls the bill being negotiated now a terrible bill — but denies he’s opposing the bill because it’s passage could help President Joe Biden.

The former president added that senators who vote for the bill are making a “terrible mistake”.

Mr Biden, briefly speaking to reporters shouting questions outside the White House as he prepared to board a helicopter, was asked whether Mr Trump should be “allowed” to stay on presidential election ballots.

“As far as I’m concerned, that’s fine,” Mr Biden replied.

“Trump incited, and therefore engaged in, an armed insurrection against the Constitution’s express and foundational mandates that require the peaceful transfer of executive power to a newly-elected President,” Mr Luttig told the justices in a friend-of-the-court brief filed on Monday.

“In doing so, Mr Trump disqualified himself under Section 3 (of the Constitution),” he added.

Donald Trump will remain on the 2024 presidential primary ballot in Illinois following a unanimous vote by the state’s Board of Elections to dismiss an attempt to remove the former president under the 14th Amendment.

However, the Illinois Board of Election said that they did not believe they had the authority to determine Mr Trump’s eligibility because it raises a constitutional question and would require them to look outside their scope.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he manipulated, instigated, aided and abetted an insurrection on January 6,” Republican board member, Catherine McCrory said Tuesday morning. “However, it’s not my place to rule on that today.”