The historic indictment of former President Donald Trump thrust the 2024 presidential election into uncharted territory, raising the remarkable prospect that the leading contender for the Republican nomination will seek the White House while also facing trial for criminal charges in New York.In an acknowledgment of the sway the former president holds with the voters who will decide the GOP contest next year, those eyeing a primary challenge to Trump were quick to criticize the indictment. Without naming Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called the move "un-American." Former Vice President Mike Pence, whose life was threatened after Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, told CNN the charges were "outrageous."Video above: Former Vice President Mike Pence was among the lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who reacted to the indictment. That posture speaks to the short-term incentives for Republicans to avoid anything that might antagonize Trump's loyal base. But the indictment raises profound questions for the GOP's future, particularly as Trump faces the possibility of additional charges soon in Atlanta and Washington. While that might galvanize his supporters, the turmoil could threaten the GOP's standing in the very swing-state suburbs that have abandoned the party in three successive elections, eroding its grip on the White House, Congress and key governorships.Trump has spent four decades managing to skirt this type of legal jeopardy and expressed confidence again late Thursday, blaming the charges on "Thugs and Radical Left Monsters.""THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE," Trump wrote on his social media site.Trump is "ready to fight," his attorney, Joe Tacopina, said on Fox News.Trump is expected to surrender to authorities next week on charges connected to hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to women who alleged extramarital sexual encounters. For now, it remains unclear how the development will resonate with voters. Polls show Trump remains the undisputed frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and his standing has not faltered, even amid widespread reporting on the expected charges.Trump's campaign and his allies have long hoped an indictment would serve as a rallying cry for his supporters, angering his "Make America Great Again" base, drawing small dollar donations and forcing Trump's potential rivals into the awkward position of having to defend him — or risk their wrath.Indeed, Trump's campaign began fundraising off the news almost immediately after it broke, firing an email to supporters with the all-caps subject line "BREAKING: PRESIDENT TRUMP INDICTED."At Trump's first rally of the 2024 campaign, held in Texas over the weekend, supporters expressed widespread disgust with the investigation and insisted the case wouldn't affect his chances."It's a joke," Patti Murphy, 63, of Fort Worth, Texas said. "It's just another way of them trying to get him out of their way."Others in the crowd said their support for Trump had been waning since he left the White House, but the looming indictment made them more likely to support him in 2024 because they felt his anger had been justified.Video below: Trump supporters gather at Mar-a-Lago after indictment At the same time, there is little chance a criminal trial will help Trump in a general election, particularly with independents, who have grown tired of his constant chaos. That has provided an opening for alternatives like DeSantis, who are expected to paint themselves as champions of the former president's policies, but without all his baggage.But there were no immediate signs the party was ready to use the indictment to move past him. Instead, Republicans, including members of Congress and Trump's rivals, rushed to his defense en masse. In addition to DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has already declared her candidacy, blasted the indictment as "more about revenge than it is about justice." Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is mulling a run, accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of "undermining America's confidence in our legal system," while also sending a fundraising text off the news.Trump, meanwhile, has tried to turn the public against the case. Early on March 18, amid reports that police in New York were preparing for a possible indictment, he fired off a message on his social media site in which he declared that he expected to be arrested within days.While that never came to pass (and his aides made clear it had not been based on any inside information), Trump used the time to highlight the case's widely-discussed weaknesses and to attack Bragg with a barrage of deeply personal — and at times racist — attacks.Trump also sought to project an air of strength. The night of his post, he traveled with aides to a college wrestling championship, where he spent hours greeting supporters and posing for photos. On the way home, the assembled entourage watched mixed martial arts cage fighting aboard his plane.And last weekend, Trump held a rally in Waco, Texas, where he railed against the case in front of thousands of supporters.People who have spoken with Trump in recent weeks have described him as both angry and unbothered about the prospect of charges. Freshman Republican Rep. Mark Alford of Missouri said Trump was "upbeat" at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago the night before he warned of his arrest.Indeed, Trump has at times appeared in denial about the gravity of the situation. He and his aides were caught off-guard by the news Thursday. And during the plane ride home from his Texas rally, Trump told reporters he believed the case had been dropped."I have no idea what's going to happen, but I can tell you that they have no case. So I think the case is — I think they've already dropped the case, from what I understand. I think it's been dropped," he said.Still, Trump responded with anger when pressed, even as he insisted he was not frustrated.Video below: The indictment in New York is from one of three known investigations linked to Donald TrumpBeyond the Manhattan case, Trump is facing several other investigations, including a Georgia inquiry into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and a federal probe into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.It remains unclear how the public might respond if Trump ends up facing charges in additional cases, particularly if some lead to convictions and others are dismissed.An indictment — or even a conviction — would not bar Trump from running for president or serving as the Republican nominee._______Associated Press writers Paul Weber in Waco, Texas, and Lisa Mascaro in Orlando contributed to this report.

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit from Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas and several Arizona Republicans seeking to force Vice President Mike Pence to help throw the election to President Donald Trump next week when Congress meets to count the Electoral College votes.Judge Jeremy Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas said on Friday that Gohmert and the others lacked standing to sue. In a filing late Friday, Gohmert and other plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.Gohmert's suit was part of the GOP's attempt to overturn the presidential election using unproven allegations of mass voter fraud and charging that multiple states that President-elect Joe Biden won illegally changed their voting rules due to the pandemic.Those arguments have failed dozens of times in state and federal courts over the past two months.Gohmert and a slate of would-be Trump electors from Arizona had said only Pence could decide what electoral votes count — a remarkable argument suggesting vice presidents can directly determine who wins a presidential election, regardless of the results.Kernodle, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed in the Senate by voice vote in 2018, wrote that Gohmert "alleges at most an institutional injury to the House of Representatives. Under well-settled Supreme Court authority, that is insufficient to support standing."As for the group of Arizona Republicans, who claimed that Biden's electors in the state were unlawfully certified, Kernodle wrote that they "allege an injury that is not fairly traceable to the Defendant, the Vice President of the United States, and is unlikely to be redressed by the requested relief."Kernodle does not get into the constitutionality of the Electoral Count Act or Pence's ceremonial role overseeing the certification process in his 13-page opinion.Pence on Thursday asked Kernodle to reject the case, arguing that the legal issues from Gohmert should be directed to the House and Senate, rather than the vice president. Pence's filing did not say if he would entertain the possibility of interfering in the Electoral College count, but there is no public indication that he will."(A) suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction," Pence said."Ironically, Representative Gohmert's position, if adopted by the Court, would actually deprive him of his opportunity as a Member of the House under the Electoral Count Act to raise objections to the counting of electoral votes, and then to debate and vote on them," Pence's filing added.At least 140 House Republicans are expected to vote against counting the electoral votes on Jan. 6, CNN reported Thursday. Gohmert has said he will be one of them.There have been no credible allegations of any issues with voting that would have impacted the election, as affirmed by dozens of state and federal courts, governors, state election officials and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice.Both a House member and senator are required to mount an objection when Congress counts the votes. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Wednesday he will object, which will force lawmakers in both the House and Senate to vote on whether to accept the results of Biden's victory.The Justice Department gave the White House a heads-up earlier this week that the Pence filing was coming, according to a person familiar with the matter. Word was sent to chief of staff Mark Meadows that the department would be asking the judge to reject the lawsuit. White House counsel Pat Cipollone was also aware it was coming.It's not clear whether Trump, who remains furious at the Justice Department for its perceived inaction on voter fraud, was informed himself. He has taken an interest in Pence's role during the Jan. 6 proceedings, though Pence and others at the White House have tried to explain to him that it's merely a ceremonial post.House General Counsel Doug Letter filed an amicus brief with the court on Thursday, asking for the Gohmert case to be dismissed, calling it a "radical departure from our constitutional procedures and consistent legislative practices.""At bottom, this litigation seeks to enlist the federal courts in a belated and meritless assault on longstanding constitutional processes for confirming the results of a national election for President," the House attorney wrote.The Trump campaign is also continuing its quest at the Supreme Court with the same baseless and unproven voter fraud claims. It twice this week asked the court to overturn Biden's win in Wisconsin. Other cases from the President and his allies looking to throw out Biden's victories in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona are pending on the court's docket.

On Wednesday, the latest extraordinary development in an extraordinary election will unfold.In a joint session of Congress designed as a ceremonial affirmation to President-elect Joe Biden's victory, some Republicans — but hardly all of them — are vowing to object to voting results in one or more states. Despite no evidence, they accuse the elections of being fraudulent.Though their actions — at least outwardly — are designed to aid President Donald Trump's efforts to stay in office, the efforts face near-certain failure even as they carve an even deeper divide in the American public sphere. Lisa Mascaro, congressional correspondent for The Associated Press, has been covering Congress since 2010 and is waist-deep in the current, extraordinary saga. Here, she breaks down exactly what's going to happen Wednesday — and why it is highly unlikely to change anything related to Biden's impending inauguration.___WHY WON'T IT WORK? This effort is all but certain to fail. The main reason is that there's a robust bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate to accept the results of the election as they've been certified by the states.So the challenge that's being mounted comes from about a dozen Republican senators — I think we're up to 13 now — and as many as 100 House Republicans. But there are a total of 535 members of Congress (minus a few vacancies). Those are the numbers. Democrats have the majority in the house. They will almost certainly agree with the results from the states that Biden won the election. Republicans are very split over this effort. Trump's efforts to challenge the results has splintered the party in ways we have not seen. The votes Wednesday will show that. This really is a time unlike any other in the Capitol.HOW DID WE GET HERE?Under the Constitution, the Electoral College is the way the votes are counted. Laws have been enacted to govern this process — and a joint session of Congress is sort of the final confirmation.We don't have a national election. The states confirm the results and the states determine the electors and then send that tally up to Washington. So the House and Senate will convene for this session at 1 p.m. — all the lawmakers gathered in the House chamber to confirm the election results. And that's that Joe Biden won. Even William Barr, Trump's attorney general until last month, has said he found no evidence of fraud on a wide scale that could change the outcome. The outcomes have been repeatedly certified by state officials.That said, a number of Republicans are taking the president's challenge and splitting the party on this issue.WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS CONVENES? There are about six states that the Republicans concerned about the elections want to challenge.What's going to happen is that results from the states will be brought in in envelopes, and Vice President Mike Pence will open them and read the tallies. As he does, any member can object. And some will. But for any challenge to have currency, it has to have a member of the House and a member of the Senate join in writing.Right now, we have only a few senators saying they will join any of this in writing. One of the first states to be challenged is expected to be Arizona. A number of House Republicans will challenge that. And Ted Cruz, a senator on the Republican side, has said he will challenge it. If there's a challenge, the proceedings come to a halt.The senators will go back to the Senate and deliberate, and the House members will stay in the house and deliberate. Each will have two hours of deliberation. And then they'll vote and they'll come back together and explain their vote. So this is expected to be a very long day.WHY SO LONG? In the Senate, the Republicans are split. So even though they have a majority, they're not all part of this group of a dozen or so who are willing to challenge the election.When the lawmakers come back in the joint session, we'll see that the challenge for Arizona is likely to fail. And we'll see this over and over through the day — Arizona, Pennsylvania, possibly Georgia, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin.The only other state we know for sure there'll be a challenge in is Pennsylvania. Sen. Josh Hawley has said he'll challenge it. But the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, has said he will not challenge it.If all these states are challenged, that's many hours of debate. The leadership is expected to try to make certain there's an outcome — that they stay until the process is finished, even if that means working through the night and coming back the next day. The leadership is set to make sure this gets finished.WHAT'S THE PRECEDENT FOR THIS? Other vice presidents have also had to preside over their own defeats.Vice President Al Gore was presiding over the chamber in 2001 over the disputed 2000 election. He, too, had to sign off on the tally that essentially prevented him from becoming president. Lawmakers have made challenges before, but nothing on the scope we expect to see this time. So we're in extraordinary, unprecedented times here.

A large group of protesters gathered outside of Senate chambers Wednesday afternoon, breaching barricades at the Capitol building and outside Senate chambers in Washington, according to multiple reports. House and Senate debates have been placed on recess.By Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Capitol was placed on lockdown, according to reports.This is a breaking news update. Check back for more details. Hundreds of law enforcement officers have mobilized across Washington as thousands of supporters who refuse to accept President Donald Trump's election loss have flocked to the nation's capital to protest when Congress gathers Wednesday afternoon to put the final stamp on President-elect Joe Biden's victory.Earlier in the day, Thousands of protesters gathered around the Washington Monument as the Elton John song "Tiny Dancer" played from loud speakers. The song was interrupted by an announcement telling people to leave behind backpacks, chairs and flagpoles so people could get through a security checkpoint. Hundreds of people carried flags. Some were American, some were Trump 2020 flags, among others.As part of their preparations, police posted signs around the district warning of the illegality of gun possession during protests as Trump tweeted his support for the protesters, saying, "Our Country has had enough, they won't take it anymore!" and "We Hear you (and love you) from the Oval Office."The Department of Homeland Security, which has staffed a "Virtual Situation Room" to help communication between different agencies, is "not currently tracking any active threats," spokesman Alexei Woltornist said.Trump traveled a short distance from the White House to the rally Wednesday morning. About 20 aides were outside awaiting Trump's departure, audibly shouting "Save our country" as he boarded his SUV. Trump gave a fist bump and appeared to blow a kiss.Trump addressed a large, tightly packed and largely maskless crowd of supporters on the Ellipse. His remarks got off to an inauspicious start as Trump's microphone appeared to be turned off as he began speaking."We can't hear you!" members of the audience were heard shouting on the video feed, though he appeared unaware and kept speaking.Moments later, audio was restored, and Trump was railing against the media.Trump's speech included calls for his vice president to step outside his constitutional bounds and overturn the results of the election."Hope Mike is going to do the right thing," Trump said at a rally on the Ellipse. "If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election."Pence released a letter he wrote to congress Wednesday just after noon, saying he wouldn't object to Biden's victory.A large glass barrier shielded Trump from the crowd, similar to when he spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July 2019.Ahead of Trump's speech, Rudy Giuliani was addressing the rally on the Ellipse, baselessly repeating claims that voting machines were "crooked," and continuing to insist that Pence can do something today to change the election's outcome, which he does not have power to do. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud."Let's have trial by combat!" Giuliani told the enthusiastic crowd.D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the District is "absolutely prepared" for protests and announced that that at least ten people were arrested overnight related to the protests. At least one person was arrested for carrying an unlicensed gun and six people were charged with assault, including one for assaulting a police officer."We had several arrests related to that activity, but not a single one of them was a D.C. resident," she said.Authorities — a mix that includes local police, National Guard and federal uniformed officers — had already arrested several people ahead of demonstrations including the leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that Trump directly addressed during an autumn debate to "stand back and stand by."The Proud Boys' leader, Henry Tarrio, who goes by Enrique Tarrio, was released from police custody Tuesday on charges related to a protest last month and ordered by a local judge to stay out of DC as he awaits trial, including during this week's protests.

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