The '24 Seven - 3/5/24
The top seven stories shaping the race for the White House
Hello, and welcome to The ‘24 Seven – 24sight’s daily roundup of the top seven stories shaping the race for the White House. Budding Substacker Warren Rojas will be your cruise director today, as we all sail into another presidential primary gauntlet.
If you see something we missed or have suggestions, drop us a note - tom@24sight.news.
1 Not-So Super Tuesday
It’s primary day in over a dozen states today, with nearly 900 GOP delegates up for grabs in the lopsided contest between front-runner Donald Trump and long-shot White House hopeful Nikki Haley.
While Haley made history recently by winning the D.C. Republican primary – becoming the first GOP woman to clinch the top spot in a POTUS nominating contest – Trump is widely expected to continue hoovering up support from a fiercely loyal MAGA base pining for the return of their disruptor-in-chief.
With no significant challengers on his side, President Joe Biden is also projected to continue cruising towards reelection – though the New York Times notes that neither of the top contenders will likely sew up the nomination outright this evening. But there could be some fireworks in the California Senate race to replace the late-Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and the North Carolina governor’s race is shaping up to be a culture war showdown.
So stay tuned.
2 Split screen overload
The general election hasn’t technically started. But there’s no getting away from the dueling campaign stops by the presumptive nominees.
Last week, Trump and Biden appeared along different parts of the U.S.-Mexico border to highlight their wildly divergent stances on immigration policy. Biden put congressional Republicans on blast for blowing up the bipartisan border security bill co-authored by GOP Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, while Trump doubled down on his pledges to orchestrate mass deportations and somehow shut down the border if elected to a second term.
This weekend, they’ll be battling for attention in Georgia – home to the 2020 election interference trial that’s part of Trump’s swirling legal challenges.
3 Insurrection protection
In other Trump legal news, the Supreme Court yesterday swatted down state-led attempts to keep him off the presidential ballot this fall, ruling that Congress should deal with candidate screening issues.
That unsurprising but still polarizing decision lit a fire under January 6 select committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin to refine languishing legislation that would keep insurrectionists from ever holding federal office.
"We are going to revise it in light of the Supreme Court's decision," the Maryland Democrat told Axios of his bid to bolster the disqualification safeguards outlined in the 14th Amendment. That type of fine-tuning would be a tall order even if Democrats manage to flip the House this fall, and is guaranteed to go nowhere if Trump-aligned House GOP leaders retain control of the chamber.
4 Vive la difference
After watching the U.S. rip itself apart since SCOTUS overturned the landmark Roe v Wade decision in 2022, French lawmakers decided to clear the air on abortion rights for good.
French leaders overwhelmingly approved a plan, proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron, to explicitly guarantee the right to have an abortion by enshrining said protections in the French Constitution. The move comes as congressional Republicans scramble to contain the fallout from an Alabama ruling that thrust the future of in vitro fertilization treatments into the national spotlight.
5 Who *hearts* SOTU?
In a nod to social media’s place in the public consciousness, the White House digital strategy team has invited viewers to respond to Biden’s upcoming State of the Union address with a trio of affirmative emojis.
“Click or hold an emoji to share your reaction to any part of the address as it happens live,” staff instructs those interested in weighing in on the annual check-in with either a thumbs up, sparkling heart, or celebratory “tada” horn.
In addition to only offering positive responses, the White House is also hosting this particular forum rather than fielding comments from all of online. Because collecting feedback on X, for instance, would likely result in non-stop roasting/insane ratioing by Biden critics.
6 AI flunks Elections 101
The bad news: AI chatbots are coming for all of our jobs.
The good news: They may never find us.
That’s one takeaway from a recent non-profit group/news organization report on just how woefully unprepared leading chatbots are when it comes to dealing with U.S. elections.
In a recent test, five models – including OpenAI’s GPT-4, Meta’s Llama 2, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and French-backed Mixtral – spewed out inaccurate responses ranging from directions to non-existent polling places to erroneous information about same-day voting.
“The chatbots are not ready for primetime when it comes to giving important, nuanced information about elections,” Philadelphia GOP city commissioner Seth Bluestein said of the eye-opening experiment.
7 Raw power
Now that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has committed to stepping down from leadership this fall, his most vocal critics are stepping up efforts to bring any potential successors to heel ASAP.
While long standing GOP leaders like Senate Whip John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas work to fill McConnell’s shoes, conservative bomb-throwers such as Ted Cruz of Texas, Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin are doing their damnedest to ensure the next boss caters to their far-right needs.
Scott, who ran against and lost to McConnell in a post-midterms tug-of-war, is reportedly thinking of running again. Scott is close with Trump.