Connect with us

News

The RNC is weighing a resolution to declare Trump its 'presumptive' nominee

Published

on

The RNC is weighing a resolution to declare Trump its 'presumptive' nominee

The Republican National Committee could move next week to declare former President Donald Trump the “presumptive 2024 nominee” for the party’s presidential nomination. 

A draft resolution anointing Trump and obtained by NBC News from two sources has been circulating among RNC members, who could vote on it at their winter meeting in Las Vegas.

The resolution asserts in part that “all evidence negates the possibility of a mathematical path forward to the 2024 Republican nomination by any candidate other than President Trump, our presumptive nominee.” The document also maintains that the RNC has “impartially [supported] the caucus/primary processes nationwide to provide a level playing field” and sponsored “robust, issues-focused” debates to help GOP voters assess the field. (The resolution leaves out the fact that Trump skipped all of those debates.)

“RESOLVED that the Republican National Committee hereby declares President Trump as our presumptive 2024 nominee for the office of President of the United States and from this moment forward moves into full general election mode welcoming supporters of all candidates as valued members of Team Trump 2024,” the resolution reads.

Trump called for the party to unify around his candidacy Tuesday night after his decisive victory in the New Hampshire primary. But Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, has vowed to continue her campaign, drawing fury from the former president.

Advertisement

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel has telegraphed a desire to unite around Trump if his dominance of early caucuses and primaries continues.

“If President Trump comes out strong tonight, that’s a clear message being sent by our primary voters,” McDaniel said in a statement to NBC News before the New Hampshire results came in Tuesday. “Republicans know that if we’re not united as a party behind our nominee we won’t be able to beat Biden.”

Following Trump’s victory Tuesday, McDaniel told Fox News: “I’m looking at the map and the path going forward, and I don’t see it for Nikki Haley.”

“I do think there’s a message that’s coming out from the voters, which is very clear: We need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is gonna be Donald Trump,” she added.

Asked for comment Thursday, RNC spokesperson Keith Schipper noted that McDaniel doesn’t offer resolutions.

Advertisement

“Resolutions, such as this one, are brought forward by members of the RNC,” Schipper said. “This will be taken up by the Resolutions Committee and they will decide whether to send this resolution to be voted on by the 168 RNC members at our annual meeting next week.”

News of the resolution — first reported by The Dispatch, which noted it was submitted by close Trump ally and Maryland committee member David Bossie — drew quick complaints from other corners of the RNC.

Bossie did not return a request for comment.

Oscar Brock, an RNC member from Tennessee, said he caught wind of the resolution Thursday afternoon and feels it “certainly violates the intent of” RNC rules around the presidential primary.

“The rules specifically say you’re not the guy until you’ve gotten 50% plus one of the delegates required for the convention,” he said, adding, “I would think that we would be more open to letting more people have a say in this process before declaring it over.”

Advertisement

Bill Palatucci, a committee member from New Jersey who helped lead the super PAC that supported Chris Christie’s presidential campaign, called the proposal “crazy.”

“This is insulting to the grassroots activists who wait four years for the chance to take part in the nominating process,” Palatucci added.

Gordon Ackley, the chair of the Virgin Islands GOP, which has presidential nominating caucuses scheduled Feb. 8, also panned the proposal.

“It is unfortunate other Republicans want to deny their voters the opportunity to be heard and cast a vote,” Ackley wrote in a post on X. “Regardless of who you support, there is a process that must be followed.”

A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Haley spokesperson brushed off the proposed resolution Thursday.

Advertisement

“Who cares what the RNC says? We’ll let millions of Republican voters across the country decide who should be our party’s nominee, not a bunch of Washington insiders,” the spokesperson said. “If Ronna McDaniel wants to be helpful she can organize a debate in South Carolina, unless she’s also worried that Trump can’t handle being on the stage for 90 minutes with Nikki Haley.”

A source familiar with the Republican Party’s rules noted that the term “presumptive nominee” doesn’t come with any official meaning or resources under party rules. And the resolution, while calling for the RNC to move “into full general election mode,” does not require the party to take any specific, tangible steps to aid Trump.

There’s precedent for the party to declare a “presumptive nominee” and begin the tangible work of merging the campaign and the national party before the summer. In late April 2012, then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus declared Mitt Romney the party’s “presumptive nominee,” adding that the designation was “beyond an endorsement. It is a complete merger wherein the RNC is putting all of its resources and energy behind Mitt Romney,” according to the Los Angeles Times. However, the GOP nominating contest was significantly further along by that point, with nearly all of Romney’s competitors having already dropped out.

That same source familiar with the party’s rules added that the decision to merge those resources is left to the chair of the party. But while the resolution itself may not trigger any formal resource shift, the result would be a declaration from RNC members to McDaniel about how they may want her to handle the upcoming weeks or months — caught between a former president who is seen as a heavy favorite for the GOP nominating fight and a second-place Haley who has won almost 30% of the delegates allocated in the first two races of the nomination. 

Brock, the RNC member from Tennessee, said passing the resolution would be akin to disenfranchising millions of primary voters before Haley’s even dropped out of the race. He added that while it’s traditional for the RNC to package together a group of resolutions and pass them all in the same vote, this one is more than likely to stand alone, apart from any other resolutions the party seeks to pass next week.

Advertisement

“There might have been other debates on other issues,” Brock said. “But they just made it to the backburner right away.” 

News

Trump claims US stockpiles mean wars can be fought ‘forever’; Kristi Noem testifies before Congress – US politics live

Published

on

Trump claims US stockpiles mean wars can be fought ‘forever’; Kristi Noem testifies before Congress – US politics live

Trump says US stockpiles mean “wars can be fought ‘forever’”

In a late night post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said that the US munitions stockpiles “at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better”.

He added that the US has a “virtually unlimited supply of these weapons”, meaning that “wars can be fought ‘forever’”.

This comes after Trump said that the US-Israel war on Iran could go beyond the four-five weeks that the administration initially predicted. The president also did not rule out the possibility of US boots on the ground in Iran during an interview with the New York Post on Monday.

Advertisement

“I rebuilt the military in my first term, and continue to do so. The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!!,” he wrote.

Share

Key events

During his opening remarks, Senate judicicary committee chairman, Chuck Grassley, blamed Democrats for the ongoing shutdown Department of Homeland Security (DHS) but highlighted four agencies: the Secret Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the Coast Guard.

Democrats are demanding tighter guardrails for federal immigration enforcement, but a sweeping tax bill signed into law last year conferred $75bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which means the agency is still functional amid the wider department shuttering.

Share
Continue Reading

News

Supreme Court blocks redrawing of New York congressional map, dealing a win for GOP

Published

on

Supreme Court blocks redrawing of New York congressional map, dealing a win for GOP

The Supreme Court

Win McNamee/Getty Images


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Win McNamee/Getty Images

The Supreme Court on Monday intervened in New York’s redistricting process, blocking a lower court decision that would likely have flipped a Republican congressional district into a Democratic district.    
  
At issue is the midterm redrawing of New York’s 11th congressional district, including Staten Island and a small part of Brooklyn. The district is currently held by a Republican, but on Jan. 21, a state Supreme Court judge ruled that the current district dilutes the power of Black and Latino voters in violation of the state constitution.  
  
GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who represents the district, and the Republican co-chair of the state Board of Elections promptly appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to block the redrawing as an unconstitutional “racial gerrymander.” New York’s congressional election cycle was set to officially begin Feb. 24, the opening day for candidates to seek placement on the ballot.  
  
As in this year’s prior mid-decade redistricting fights — in Texas and California — the Trump administration backed the Republicans.   
 
Voters and the State of New York contended it’s too soon for the Supreme Court to wade into this dispute. New York’s highest state court has not issued a final judgment, so the voters asserted that if the Supreme Court grants relief now “future stay applicants will see little purpose in waiting for state court rulings before coming to this Court” and “be rewarded for such gamesmanship.” The state argues this is an issue for “New York courts, not federal courts” to resolve, and there is sufficient time for the dispute to be resolved on the merits. 
  
The court majority explained the decision to intervene in 101 words, which the three dissenting liberal justices  summarized as “Rules for thee, but not for me.” 
 
The unsigned majority order does not explain the Court’s rationale. It says only how long the stay will last, until the case moves through the New York State appeals courts. If, however, the losing party petitions and the court agrees to hear the challenge, the stay extends until the final opinion is announced. 
 
Dissenting from the decision were Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Writing for the three, Sotomayor  said that  if nonfinal decisions of a state trial court can be brought to highest court, “then every decision from any court is now fair game.” More immediately, she noted, “By granting these applications, the Court thrusts itself into the middle of every election-law dispute around the country, even as many States redraw their congressional maps ahead of the 2026 election.” 

Monday’s Supreme Court action deviates from the court’s hands-off pattern in these mid-term redistricting fights this year. In two previous cases — from Texas and California — the court refused to intervene, allowing newly drawn maps to stay in effect.  
  
Requests for Supreme Court intervention on redistricting issues has been a recurring theme this term, a trend that is likely to grow.  Earlier last month  the high court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map.  California’s redistricting came in response to a GOP-friendly redistricting plan in Texas that the Supreme Court also permitted to move forward. These redistricting efforts are expected to offset one another.     
   
But the high court itself has yet to rule on a challenge to Louisiana’s voting map, which was drawn by the state legislature after the decennial census in order to create a second majority-Black district.  Since the drawing of that second majority-black district, the state has backed away from that map, hoping to return to a plan that provides for only one majority-minority district.    
     
The Supreme Court’s consideration of the Louisiana case has stretched across two terms. The justices failed to resolve the case last term and chose to order a second round of arguments this term adding a new question: Does the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority district violate the constitution’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments’ guarantee of the right to vote and the authority of Congress to enforce that mandate?    
Following the addition of the new question, the state of Louisiana flipped positions to oppose the map it had just drawn and defended in court. Whether the Supreme Court follows suit remains to be seen. But the tone of the October argument suggested that the court’s conservative supermajority is likely to continue undercutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act.   

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Map: Earthquake Shakes Central California

Published

on

Map: Earthquake Shakes Central California

Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 3 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “weak,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown.  All times on the map are Pacific time. The New York Times

A minor earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 3.5 struck in Central California on Monday, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The temblor happened at 7:17 a.m. Pacific time about 6 miles northwest of Pinnacles, Calif., data from the agency shows.

As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.

Source: United States Geological Survey | Notes: Shaking categories are based on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale. When aftershock data is available, the corresponding maps and charts include earthquakes within 100 miles and seven days of the initial quake. All times above are Pacific time. Shake data is as of Monday, March 2 at 10:20 a.m. Eastern. Aftershocks data is as of Monday, March 2 at 11:18 a.m. Eastern.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending