What Donald Trump has to say about his presidency, his family and the Trump estate: a grand jury investigation of Mar-a-Lago documents
Prosecutors, investigators and lawmakers in Washington, DC, New York, Georgia, Florida and across the United States are among those who will be interested in what Trump has to say about the myriad legal issues facing the former president, his business and his allies.
Multiple federal and state investigations are ongoing regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, his handling of sensitive government documents and his family business.
Trump and his company have always denied any wrongdoing and have maintained their innocence. Trump has also won dismissals of two lawsuits this week in cases brought by his niece and his former attorney.
Mar-a-Lago documents: Did Trump mishandle classified material? The investigation is looking into whether or not the documents from the Trump White House were mishandled after he left office. Potential witnesses to how Trump dealt with documents have been interviewed by a federal grand jury in Washington. The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.
What Will Happen If Donald Trump Wins the 2020 Presidential Election? An Almost-Focused View of Trump and His Third Candidate
Everyone knows how many of the Trump candidates lost, especially the more hard-core ones, who claimed that the 2020 election was stolen. Kari Lake lost in Arizona. Doug Mastriano didn’t win in Pennsylvania. Most of the Secretary of State candidates who were pro-Trump lost. The Senate candidates, too. Donald Trump forced his party to run Herschel Walker in Georgia, a candidate who lost, in order to weaken him and the party.
What everyone does not know by now is what to do with Mr. Trump’s third candidacy for president. What is this campaign about? He’s a candidate without opponents, who has made less frequent public appearances since his announcement than he did before, whose party’s other notable members seem to want to move on but often still don’t really say so publicly. The 2022 incarnation of Mr. Trump is like some kind of trap: He keeps losing and forcing others to go with him, in part because of his and their nature and in part because without him, Republicans might not quite be able to win, either.
Looming over every aspect of Mr. Trump’s current campaign is the simple question: Will this be like before? That is a technical and outcome-driven question of whether or not he will win the election, and also a psychological question of whether or not he will dominate American life. Politics is about a lot more than just the outcomes of elections; a long time separates us from the 2024 election, and each day has the potential to influence the ones after. It is possible to be weak and powerful at the same time; someone can be losing and influential at the same time. These things are compatible.
The Democrats were able to get an Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPs Act done in 2022, despite the Senate having a 50% margin of error.
Meantime, the country is still trying to recover from the COVID pandemic, while girding for a potential recession, as this year also saw high gas prices and soaring inflation.
Midterms: Politics of Immigration and Inflation in the U.S., and Implications for Immigration Laws and Human Rights
As expected, Republicans won control of the House, but the GOP will only have a narrow, four-seat majority, and Democrats held the Senate. The results were very large because of the intense opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision and many election-denying, Trump-backed candidates who were rejected in key swing seats.
But that was just the headliner. It also weighed in on gun rights, environmental regulations, immigration and more, and appears ready to take aim at race-based affirmative action with a decision coming by June.
President Biden appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, making her the first Black woman to sit on the high court. But her appointment did not change its ideological balance, which now tips decidedly in conservatives’ favor.
Inflation reached decades-long highs in 2022, raising the risk of a recession. Gas prices and food costs soared, and with Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, it put them on their heels in this year’s midterms. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates multiple times throughout 2022, squeezing borrowing in hopes of stemming inflation. The effect of that all was on Biden’s approval ratings, which were low for much of the year.
The amount of people being arrested for the first time on the border has risen. It has caused political headaches for Biden and his administration, and led to political stunts like Texas’ and Florida’s governors sending migrants to Democratic-controlled cities and enclaves.
All the while, there has been no movement on a comprehensive federal immigration overhaul in almost a decade in a country that has millions of immigrants living in the U.S. after crossing the border illegally and massive backlogs in immigration courts due to understaffing and underfunding.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1146261338/2022-political-stories-midterms-abortion-inflation-immigration-ukraine
The Crimes of Inflation: The Case of Zelenskyy, the U.S. President, and a Democratic Candidate
Russia’s move tested Biden’s ability to maintain NATO unity and get funding from not just the U.S. Congress but the governments of those other countries. In a war that started in February, Russia was held off by the Ukrainians.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his first trip outside of his country since the war began because of the need for more funding.
The former president is still very much on the scene and will continue to do so despite who is in his party. Trump announced — exceedingly early — that he is running for president again, just a week after Republicans underperformed in the midterm elections, with many pointing the finger at Trump for why. His political weaknesses were shown when his endorsed candidates lost in purple states.
The tightly scripted hearings featured never-before-seen video and explosive testimony from people who participated in the deadly riot, local elections officials and people who worked in the Trump administration or on his campaign hoping to get him reelected. They painted a picture of a then-president who inspired a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol and did nothing to tamp down the violence for hours despite watching it all unfold and being urged to do so.
But many Trump supporters never watched. Instead, it was mostly Democrats and, according to polling, a slim majority of independents who paid closest attention — and blamed Trump more for what happened afterward. With Republicans taking control of the House, the select committee will be dissolved and two GOP members will not return to Congress.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1146261338/2022-political-stories-midterms-abortion-inflation-immigration-ukraine
The Last 20 Years: An Episodic Trigger for the U.S., and a New Era of Extreme Weather and Disasters
Extreme weather events and billion-dollar disasters continue to be more common than they were decades ago. The damage done by Ian was catastrophic. Extreme rain and flooding in other parts of the U.S. as well as a record-low levels in the Mississippi River happened during the summer. It’s taking a toll on communities. It means leaders from the federal and local governments are scrambling in the short term to come up with funding for disaster recovery.
There were many more mass shootings this year. In two instances just days apart, 10 Black people were killed in a supermarket shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., and 21 were killed, including 19 children, in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
The incidents led to modest gun reforms signed into law. It was the most significant gun legislation signed in decades, but that only shows how difficult it is to get sweeping changes passed federally, like raising the age of who can purchase certain firearms or whether the country could ever return to an assault-style weapons ban.
Other mentions: Some other big events included Nancy Pelosi stepping down as House Democratic leader after two decades, making room for Hakeem Jeffries of New York and a new generation of party leaders. The year had political violence with Pelosi’s husband, Paul, attacked in their California home, which led to stepped up security for the justices.