# American democracy has overcome big stress tests since the 2020 election. More challenges are ahead
By **NICHOLAS RICCARDI**
December 31, 2023. 10:05 AM EST

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Over the past three years, the world's oldest democracy has been tested in ways not seen in decades.

A sitting president tried to overturn an election and his supporters stormed the Capitol to stop the winner from taking power. Supporters of that attack launched a campaign against local election offices, chasing out veteran administrators and pushing conservative states to pass new laws making it harder to vote.

At the same time, the past three years proved that American democracy was resilient.

Former President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election results failed, blocked by the constitutional system's checks and balances, and he now faces both federal and state charges for those efforts. Then the voters stepped in. In every presidential battleground state, they rejected all candidates who supported Trump's stolen election lies and were running for statewide offices that had some oversight of elections.

The election infrastructure in the country performed well, with only scattered disruptions during the 2022 midterms. New voting laws, many of which are technical and incremental, had little discernable impact on actual voting.

"Voters have stepped up to defend our democracy over the past few years," said Joanna Lydgate, chief executive officer of States United, which tracks those who refuse to believe in the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. "State and local officials have done a tremendous job in protecting our free and fair elections."

So why all the worry? As Lydgate and anyone else who works in the pro-democracy field quickly notes, the big test - what Lydgate calls "the Super Bowl" - awaits in 2024.

Trump is running for the White House again and has been dominating the Republican primary as the first votes approach. He has called for pardoning those prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, continues to insist falsely that the 2020 election was "stolen" and says he will use the federal government to seek revenge on his political enemies.

Trump has used increasingly authoritarian rhetoric as he campaigns for the GOP nomination. If he wins, allies have been planning to seed the government with loyalists so the bureaucracy doesn't hinder Trump's more controversial plans the way it did during his first term.

It's gotten to the point that Trump was recently asked by conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt whether he planned to be a dictator: "Not at all," Trump responded. "No, I'm gonna rule as somebody that's very popular with the people."

The 2024 election could cause all sorts of conflict, including scenarios that have notably not materialized despite widespread concern since 2020: violence at the polls, overly aggressive partisan poll watchers or breakdowns in the ballot count.

It seems unlikely, though, that Trump could return to the White House if he loses the election. That's what he failed to accomplish in 2020, and he's in a weaker position now.

His strategy then was to use Republican dominance in swing state legislatures, governorships and secretary of state offices to try to send slates of fake electors to Congress even though Democrat Joe Biden won those states and captured the presidency.

Since then, Republicans have lost two of those swing state secretary of state offices - in Arizona and Nevada - as well as the governor's office in Arizona and control of the state legislatures in Michigan and Pennsylvania. In Congress, lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill closing some of the loopholes in the counting of Electoral College votes that Trump tried to exploit to stay in office, making it harder to challenge state certifications on the House floor.

The upshot is it will be far harder for Trump to try to overturn a loss in 2024 than in 2020. The most likely way he returns to the White House is by winning the election outright.

"It's not to say the risks are gone," said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. "It's to say we've successfully fought the last war."

History is full of examples of authoritarians who first came to office by winning a legitimate democratic election. But the risk to democracy of someone legitimately winning an election is different than the risk of a candidate trying to overturn an election loss.

When Trump began to falsely claim he had won the 2020 election and urged Republicans to overrule their states' voters and send his electors to Congress, every GOP official with the power to do that refused. The Republican leaders of the Michigan Legislature turned down his request to overrule voters. In Georgia, where the presidential ballots were counted three times and affirmed Biden's win, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger earned Trump's fury by rejecting him. So did then- Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and the Republican leaders of that state's legislature.

Some Republicans did try to aid Trump. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led a group of 17 GOP attorneys general in filing a lawsuit urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election. The high court swiftly dismissed the case. Trump lost all but one of more than 60 lawsuits he and his allies filed in states to overturn the election, sometimes before judges he had appointed.

Then in November 2022, every swing state candidate who backed Trump's effort to overturn his loss and who was running for a statewide office with a role in elections lost.

"There's little doubt our democracy has gotten dinged up in a couple of moments of late, but we have decided we like it compared to the alterative," said Justin Levitt, who served as adviser for democracy and voting rights for two years in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Election deniers have been able to make gains in one area - offices where they simply have to win a Republican primary. That's meant they have taken power in local governments in many rural areas, often disrupting elections and embracing conspiracy theories or procedures such as hand-counting, which is less reliable and more time-consuming than tabulating thousands of votes on machines.

They also have been able to expand their power within Republican legislative bodies from statehouses to Congress. U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who helped organize a brief supporting the quickly thrown-out lawsuit to overturn Biden's victory, is now the House speaker.

If Johnson retains his speakership in January 2025, he could be in a position to disrupt certification of a Biden victory. Republicans more willing to subvert democracy also could have greater sway in state legislatures.

Then there's the view of Trump backers. They report being even more worried about democracy than those who oppose him. Normally members of the party out of power feels like democracy isn't working as well for them, but Trump's situation is different. He's the first president in history to face prosecution and is promoting the narrative that he's being persecuted by his likely general election opponent.

Trump says the criminal cases and separate attempts to bar him from the ballot under the insurrection clause of the Constitution are a form of election interference.

The Colorado Supreme Court found his role in the Jan. 6 attack was sufficient grounds to remove him from the state's ballot under the 14th Amendment, a ruling Trump's campaign said it will appeal soon to the U.S. Supreme Court, where three of his nominees help form the conservative majority. On Thursday, Maine's Democratic secretary of state struck Trump from that state's primary ballot, becoming the first election official to take such action. Shenna Bellows suspended her ruling until Maine's court system rules on the case.

While campaigning, Trump has adopted an "I'm rubber and you're glue" approach, accusing Biden of being the actual threat to democracy.

A more revealing argument comes from a contention one of the former president's attorneys made before the Colorado Supreme Court. Scott Gessler, a former Colorado secretary of state, was arguing against attempts by a liberal group to boot Trump from the ballot.

"If the entire nation chooses someone to be president, can that be an insurrection or is that a democratic choice?" Gessler asked.

Gessler was addressing the hypothetical case of a former Confederate winning the White House in the 19th century, but it's easy to see how this applies to the election before us.

Or, as Levitt said of American democracy: "It is kind of up to us how resilient we make it."


# On New Year's Eve, DeSantis urges crowd to defy odds and help him 'win the Iowa caucuses'
By **THOMAS BEAUMONT**
January 1, 2024. 12:12 AM EST

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**WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)** - To underscore how much Iowa means to Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor was unwilling to put his campaigning there on hold even in the waning hours of 2023.

At a New Year's Eve event in a Sheraton Hotel ballroom in West Des Moines, jeans and cowboy boots outnumbered tuxedos and cocktail dresses, and Miller Lite seemed more popular than champagne.

But the modesty of the affair, where roughly 200 people turned out for the last campaign event of the busy year in Iowa, belied its importance to the host, who has wagered the future of his Republican bid for president on the leadoff Iowa caucuses, just two weeks away.

"Are you ready to work hard over these next two weeks and win the Iowa caucuses?" DeSantis asked supporters who turned out at the suburban hotel Sunday evening.

While Donald Trump prepares to return this week for a series of rallies, DeSantis did not leave Iowa alone during the week between Christmas and New Year's. He campaigned in the suburbs of Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport, revisiting spots he had gone to in 2023 as part of his drive to touch all 99 of Iowa's counties as a gesture of commitment to the leadoff nominating contests.

But Trump holds a large advantage in Iowa polls as well as a sophisticated campaign organization in the state, threatening to deny DeSantis the win he needs to justify his claim to be the leading alternative to the former president.

Appearing Sunday night with his wife, Casey, and their young children, DeSantis urged his audience to defy the odds. "I think we have an opportunity to just make a statement that in this country it's we the people that ultimately decide these things," he said. "Because I think you have a lot of media, they don't think you even matter."

DeSantis wasn't alone in Iowa between Christmas and New Year's, a period typically free from politics. The Jan. 15 caucuses' earlier-than-usual spot on the election-year calendar lured former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to eastern Iowa stops Friday and Saturday, as she competes with DeSantis as a Trump alternative.

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy also stormed the state, trying to remain part of the conversation despite curtailing his advertising spending. Ramaswamy held more than two dozen Iowa events last week and over the weekend.

No one has more riding on Iowa than DeSantis, who reshuffled a campaign viewed early as national in scope after summer staff shakeups prompted by overspending and internal disagreements. He stood onstage Sunday evening in West Des Moines with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and evangelical Christian leader Bob Vander Plaats, who have risked their own influence by backing DeSantis.

DeSantis and his supporters asked the audience Sunday to ignore polls that show him trailing Trump appreciably.

"Everywhere I go the polls do not match up with reality," Vander Plaats told the crowd. "Going up in northwest Iowa - heavy Trump country - they all say the same thing to me. They like what he did, but it's time to turn the page."

DeSantis has an unrelenting Iowa schedule ahead of him beginning early this week. Trump, who has drawn hundreds - even thousands - more to fewer events, plans his own blitz over the final two weeks, including in deeply conservative northwest Iowa.


# Maine bars Trump from ballot as US Supreme Court weighs states' authority to block former president
By **NICHOLAS RICCARDI** and **DAVID SHARP**
December 29, 2023. 12:27 AM EST

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**PORTLAND, Maine (AP)** - Maine's Democratic secretary of state on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot under the Constitution's insurrection clause, becoming the first election official to take action unilaterally as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether Trump remains eligible to return to the White House.

The decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows follows a ruling earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court that booted Trump from the ballot there under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by the Civil War-era provision, which prohibits those who "engaged in insurrection" from holding office.

The Trump campaign said it would appeal Bellows' decision to Maine's state courts, and Bellows suspended her ruling until that court system rules on the case. In the end, it is likely that the nation's highest court will have the final say on whether Trump appears on the ballot in Maine and in the other states.

Bellows found that Trump could no longer run for his prior job because his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol violated Section 3, which bans from office those who "engaged in insurrection." Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, challenged Trump's position on the ballot.

"I do not reach this conclusion lightly," Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision. "I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection."

The Trump campaign immediately slammed the ruling. "We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter," campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.

Legal experts said that Thursday's ruling demonstrates the need for the nation's highest court, which has never ruled on Section 3, to clarify what states can do.

"It is clear that these decisions are going to keep popping up, and inconsistent decisions reached (like the many states keeping Trump on the ballot over challenges) until there is final and decisive guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court," Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, wrote in response to the Maine decision. "It seems a certainty that SCOTUS will have to address the merits sooner or later."

While Maine has just four electoral votes, it's one of two states to split them. Trump won one of Maine's electors in 2020, so having him off the ballot there, should he emerge as the Republican general election candidate, could have outsized implications in a race that is expected to be narrowly decided.

That's in contrast to Colorado, which Trump lost by 13 percentage points in 2020 and where he wasn't expected to compete in November if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.

In her decision, Bellows acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court will probably have the final word but said it was important she did her official duty.

That won her praise from the former state lawmakers who filed one of the petitions forcing her to consider the case.

"Secretary Bellows showed great courage in her ruling, and we look forward to helping her defend her judicious and correct decision in court. No elected official is above the law or our constitution, and today's ruling reaffirms this most important of American principles," Republican Kimberley Rosen, independent Thomas Saviello and Democrat Ethan Strimling said in a statement.

But other Republicans in the state were outraged.

"The Secretary of State's decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned," U.S. Sen. Susan Collins wrote on the social media site X.

"This is a sham decision that mimics Third World dictatorships," Maine's House Republican leader, Billy Bob Faulkingham, said in a statement. "It will not stand legal scrutiny. People have a right to choose their leaders devoid of mindless decisions by partisan hacks."

The criticism wasn't just along normal partisan lines, though. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat who represents Maine's 2nd congressional district that Trump won in 2020, noted on X that he'd voted to impeach Trump for the Jan. 6 attack and doesn't believe he should win next year's election.

"However, we are a nation of laws, and therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot," Golden wrote.

The Trump campaign on Tuesday requested that Bellows disqualify herself from the case because she'd previously tweeted that Jan. 6 was an "insurrection" and bemoaned that Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate after the capitol attack. She refused to step aside.

"My decision was based exclusively on the record presented to me at the hearing and was in no way influenced by my political affiliation or personal views about the events of Jan. 6, 2021," Bellows told the Associated Press Thursday night.

Bellows is a former head of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. All seven of the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court, which split 4-3 on whether to become the first court in history to declare a presidential candidate ineligible under Section 3, were appointed by Democrats. Two Washington, D.C.-based liberal groups have launched the most serious prior challenges to Trump, in Colorado and a handful of other states.

That's led Trump to contend the dozens of lawsuits nationwide seeking to remove him from the ballot under Section 3 are a Democratic plot to end his campaign. But some of the most prominent advocates have been conservative legal theorists who argue that the text of the Constitution makes the former president ineligible to run again, just as if he failed to clear the document's age threshold - 35 years old - for the office.

Likewise, until Bellows' decision, every top state election official, whether Democrat or Republican, had rejected requests to bar Trump from the ballot, saying they didn't have the power to remove him unless ordered to do so by a court.

In California, which has the largest trove of delegates in the 2024 presidential contest, Trump was included on the certified list of candidates released Thursday for the state's March 5 primary.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber faced political pressure to reject Trump's candidacy in the state, including from Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a fellow Democrat who urged her in a Dec. 20 letter to "explore every legal option" to remove the former president from the California ballot. Weber later responded that she was guided by "the rule of law," and indicated the proper venue to resolve ballot challenges was in the courts.

The timing on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision is unclear, but both sides want it fast. Colorado's Republican Party appealed the Colorado high court decision on Wednesday, urging an expedited schedule, and Trump is also expected to file an appeal within the week. The petitioners in the Colorado case on Thursday urged the nation's highest court to adopt an even faster schedule so it could rule before March 5, known as Super Tuesday, when 16 states, including Colorado and Maine, are scheduled to vote in the Republican presidential nominating process.

The high court needs to formally accept the case first, but legal experts consider that a certainty. The Section 3 cases seem tailor-made for the Supreme Court, addressing an area of U.S. governance where there's scant judicial guidance.

The clause was added in 1868 to keep defeated Confederates from returning to their former positions of power in local and federal government. It prohibits anyone who broke an oath to "support" the Constitution from holding office. The provision was used to bar a wide range of ex-Confederates from positions ranging from local sheriff to Congress, but fell into disuse after an 1872 congressional amnesty for most former Confederates.

Legal historians believe the only time the provision was used in the 20th Century was in 1919, when it was cited to deny a House seat to a socialist who had opposed U.S. involvement in World War I. But since the Jan. 6 attack, it has been revived.

Last year, it was cited by a court to remove a rural New Mexico County Commissioner who had entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. One liberal group tried to remove Republican Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene from the 2022 ballot under the provision, but Cawthorn lost his primary so his case was thrown out, and a judge ruled for Greene.


# Americans sour on the primary election process and major political parties, an AP-NORC poll says
By **NICHOLAS RICCARDI** and **LINLEY SANDERS**
December 27, 2023. 7:56 AM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - With the GOP presidential primaries just about to start, many Republicans aren't certain that votes will be counted correctly in their contest, as pessimism spreads about the future of both the Democratic and Republican parties, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

About one-third of Republicans say they have a "great deal" or "quite a bit" of confidence that votes in the Republican primary elections and caucuses will be counted correctly. About three in 10 Republicans report a "moderate" amount of confidence, and 32% say they have "only a little" or "none at all." In contrast, 72% of Democrats have high confidence their party will count votes accurately in its primary contests. Democrats are also slightly more likely than Republicans to have a high level of confidence in the Republican Party's vote count being accurate.

Republicans continue to be broadly doubtful about votes being counted accurately - in the early contests or beyond them. About one-quarter of Republicans say they have at least "quite a bit" of confidence that the votes in the 2024 presidential election will be counted accurately, significantly lower than Democrats. Slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults overall (46%) believe the same, which is in line with an AP-NORC poll conducted in June.

The skepticism among Republicans comes after years of former President Donald Trump falsely blaming his 2020 loss on election fraud. Federal and state election officials and Trump's own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president's allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.

"Nothing will be fair because the last election was rigged," said Julie Duggan, 32, of Chicago, a Trump voter, referring to 2020. "I don't trust any of them at this point."

The AP-NORC poll found a widespread lack of trust in both major political parties among U.S. adults overall.

About one-quarter of U.S. adults say they have "only a little" confidence or "none at all" that both the Democratic Party and Republican Party have a fair process for selecting a presidential nominee. About half of independents have that low level of confidence in both party's processes, compared with one-quarter of Republicans and 19% of Democrats.

Slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults - 46% - say they are pessimistic about the way the country's leaders are chosen.

About half of U.S. adults are pessimistic about the future of the Republican Party, including one-third of Republicans and 45% of independents. The poll found 45% of U.S. adults are pessimistic about the future of the Democratic Party, including about one-quarter of Democrats and 41% of independents.

"The way they're spending our money, sending it all over the world and not protecting our people here in the United States of America," said Gary Jackson, a 65-year-old retired trucker and Republican in Boise, Idaho. "Right now, I'm not impressed with either party."

Christine Allen, a political independent in Gambrills, Maryland, sees her state's last governor, Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican, as a model for the country. But Hogan refused to run in the GOP presidential primary, which she sees as emblematic of how the two-party system prevents talented leaders from holding office,

"Everybody right now is a bunch of children, stomping their feet until they get their way," Allen, 44, said. "Everybody's at fault here. There's no winners."

Nonetheless, Allen thinks the primaries will be fair. "They're fairer than the Electoral College," she said.

Even those who identify with the two political parties are uneasy about whom their organizations will nominate. A recent AP-NORC poll found that Democrats and Republicans are also not especially confident that their party's primary contests will result in a candidate who can win the general election in November. Additionally, there are some doubts on both sides that the emerging candidates will represent their party's views or Americans overall.

Only three in 10 Democrats say they are confident the Democratic party's process will result in a candidate whose views represent most Americans. About one-quarter of Democrats believe the process will produce a candidate whose views represent their own. Similarly, about three in 10 Republicans say the GOP process will produce a candidate who represents a majority of Americans. About one-third of Republicans expect they'll get a nominee whose views represent their own.

Mark Richards, a 33-year-old middle school teacher in Toledo, Ohio, and a Democrat, said he expects President Joe Biden will be nominated again by the party, despite his low job approval numbers. The incumbent faces only token opposition in the Democratic presidential primary.

"I feel like there's got to be someone better out there, but I don't think another Democrat is going to unseat Joe Biden," Richards said.

Though Richards thinks the primaries will be fair and the votes accurately counted, he sees the nominating system as inherently flawed. "It's all about money, who can get the most money from PACs and Super PACs," he said, referring to political committees that donate to candidates or spend millions of dollars on their behalf.

The poll of 1,074 adults was conducted Nov. 30-Dec. 4, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to represent the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.


# Punishing their own but passing few laws, a Congress in chaos leaves much to do in 2024
By **LISA MASCARO**
December 22, 2023. 12:05 AM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - This Congress started with showy bluster, a bitter 15-round, multi-day spectacle to elect a House speaker, a Republican who vowed to "never quit," and then did just that.

House lawmakers proceeded not only to oust the GOP speaker, they also punished their own colleagues with censures and expulsion, launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and were barely able to conduct the basics of governing by keeping federal offices from shuttering.

While this first year of the 118th Congress was a historic one, thanks to the dizzying turmoil coming from the Republicans on the House side of the Capitol, next year is headed toward more of the same. With just 27 bills and resolutions signed into law, not counting a few board appointments, it's among the most do-nothing sessions of Congress in recent times.

"This fall has been a very actively stupid political environment," said Rep. Patrick McHenry, the bow-tie-wearing Republican from North Carolina, who emerged as a voice of reason as the interim House speaker leading the chamber during the upheaval.

While Americans typically give low marks to Congress, as the branch of government closest to the people, it's still the main venue the U.S. relies on, at times more so than the presidency or the courts, to work out the nation's problems and challenges.

The need for a functioning Congress - what one scholar calls "the place" where it all happens - is even more apparent heading into a tumultuous presidential election year and with hot wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.

"People's expectations for this Congress were so low, and so just doing the bare minimum seems like a passing grade," said Philip Wallach, author of "Why Congress" and a senior scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington.

He said he's grading this Congress on a curve. "I see this as symptoms rather than causes - symptoms of a lot of sort of institutional and cultural breakdowns or decay that have led to a lot of really bad feelings and a lot of desire to lash out across the aisle," he said.

Next year has its own challenges ahead with Biden facing a potential rematch against Donald Trump, the former president and Republican party front-runner. Trump's loss in 2020 resulted in his supporters laying siege to the U.S. Capitol, and a charge of insurrection led to his second impeachment, for which he was acquitted by the Senate. It now threatens his removal from the Colorado ballot.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said "the dark cloud of Donald Trump looms" as the GOP tries to find its way.

"We're going to persevere," Schumer said in an interview with The Associated Press, listing bills to lower the price of insulin, ensure child safety online and others he is lining up for the new year.

While the House Republicans, in majority control, led the chaos, including the removal of indicted GOP Rep. George Santos of New York, the Senate, despite its proclivity toward moderation, was not immune to the dysfunction.

One single Republican, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, threw the Defense Department into crisis by blocking the promotions of hundreds of military officers, including some of the nation's most essential four-star generals. He finally relented just before the holiday recess.

And as Ukraine fights for its political survival against the Russian invasion, senators tried, and failed, to broker a U.S.-Mexico border security deal demanded by Republicans in exchange for providing more American military aid to the Western ally - despite a personal visit from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleading to help.

"I'm not very happy with how productive the Senate has been this year, and hopefully it will get better," acknowledged Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Trump's influence is especially felt in the border security talks as the former president intensifies his long history of lashing out at immigrants to the U.S. in alarming language evocative of World War II. It's putting pressure on his party as Republicans follow his lead.

The chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said he's "heartsick" Congress failed to approve Ukraine aid before year's end. But he remains confident it will get done in the new year.

Heading into 2024, new House Speaker Mike Johnson will start the year under the same pressure to pass legislation to keep the government funded, starting Jan. 19, that led to then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy's ouster after he brokered a budget-cutting debt deal with Biden.

The Republican-era speakers are being forced to relinquish control, a bottom-up approach, as the hard-right Freedom Caucus and its allies, many aligned with Trump, refuse to go along with compromises emanating from the Speaker's office.

The GOP's right flank is fueling the revolt, deploying rarely used procedural tactics to advance their own ideas and halt those of Republican leadership.

Much like the "motion to vacate," which was used to eject McCarthy, the right wing is relying on privileged resolutions to censure Democrats and try to impeach Biden and others, seizing control of the House floor.

And in a series of stunning rebukes to GOP leadership, enough Republican lawmakers opposed procedural rules to advance the few major bills that did become law this year - to keep the government running and authorize military programs - that the Republican speakers had no choice but to rush to Democrats for help.

"The speakers are just trying to cope," Wallach said.

While House Republicans passed a strict border security bill that the Senate refused to consider, Johnson, in a sign of challenges ahead, urged Biden on Thursday to act on his own, without Congress, to stem record numbers of migrant arrivals.

"It must start with you," Johnson wrote. "I urge you to immediately take executive actions."

It's a shift from Nancy Pelosi's run as speaker, when the powerful gavel wielded political fear and discipline, but also legislative results. The last Congress, among the most productive in decades, passed more than 300 pieces of legislation over two years, including major infrastructure and climate change bills.

By year's end, it wasn't just the ousted McCarthy calling it quits, but dozens of lawmakers heading for the exits.

After his stint as interim speaker, McHenry, a powerful committee chairman with allies across Congress, promptly announced he, too, would be retiring at the end of his term, as his far-right colleagues claim increasing power.

"We need people to be realists, not just blind ideologues," he said.


# Presidential candidate Haley cheers on Iowa hoops star Caitlin Clark in between campaign stops
By **HANNAH FINGERHUT**
December 30, 2023. 8:13 PM EST

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**IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP)** - Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley finally got her wish to see Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark, catching the fourth-ranked Hawkeyes in between campaign stops Saturday.

Haley walked into Carver-Hawkeye Arena alongside her son, Nalin, wearing an Iowa button on her jacket. The former South Carolina governor called Iowa coach Lisa Bluder a "rock star" and made a reference to her home-state Gamecocks, the current No. 1 women's basketball team.

"We are used to women's basketball in South Carolina," Haley said. "We're excited, so glad to be here. Go Lady Hawkeyes." Last March, in an NCAA tournament semifinal, Clark scored 41 points as Iowa ended the perfect season of defending champion South Carolina.

At the game, Haley chatted with former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and David Bluder, the coach's husband.

Even as some fans approached Haley as she took her seat, all eyes were on Clark, the reigning Associated Press national player of the year.

Clark, who has earned fame and fortune with her once-in-a-generation game, has about 20,000 more followers on Instagram than does Haley, a former U.N. ambassador.

Earlier Saturday, at an appearance in Coralville, Haley flubbed the Iowa star's name, calling her "Caitlin Collins," perhaps with CNN's Kaitlan Collins in mind.

But there's no doubt Haley knows all about Clark. During a stop in Ankeny in November, Haley said that if there was a way to get to a game and meet Clark, she would be there.

Campaigning in Iowa Friday and Saturday, Haley attempted to pivot from an awkward moment in New Hampshire, when she was asked at a town hall event about the reason for the Civil War and didn't include slavery in her response. During four similar events in eastern Iowa, addressing more than 500 people in total, Haley didn't mentioned the episode and was never asked about it during the Q&A.

Haley is hoping to build on momentum as the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses approach battling Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for what may amount to a second-place finish. Former President Donald Trump continues to be a commanding force in the party, frustrating some Iowa voters who want a more competitive race.


# Activists who engage with voters of color are looking for messages that will resonate in 2024
By **AYANNA ALEXANDER** and **GARY FIELDS**
December 30, 2023. 8:32 AM EST

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WASHINGTON (AP) - This year's elections in Louisiana didn't go the way that voting rights advocate Ashley Shelton had hoped, with the far-right conservative attorney general replacing a term-limited Democratic governor and consolidating Republican control in the state.

Turnout was just 37%, despite the efforts of activists like her.

"Even when you work hard and you do all the things you're supposed to, you get an unfortunate outcome, which was these statewide elections," said Shelton, the executive director of Power Coalition for Equity & Justice in Louisiana.

She said it will be a challenge to regain trust from the communities of color she typically focuses on, mostly because of a constant drumbeat of disappointments in recent years, from attacks on voting rights to the failure of a sweeping student loan forgiveness plan. While Louisiana is not a battleground for national races, Shelton's experience in the state serves as a window into some of the challenges President Joe Biden faces as his reelection campaign plans strategies to engage the diverse communities that helped him win in 2020.

Shelton and other activists say they already are looking for messages that will resonate with voters, despite fighting through their own fatigue. That follows recent polling showing that adults in the United States are broadly unenthusiastic about a rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump at the top of the ticket.

"I don't have the luxury of being tired or frustrated or exasperated," she said. "I have to just get back in the community with folks and understand how to reconnect them to the power in their voice."

Voting advocacy groups that were essential to Biden's victory are coming into the new year expecting to have a difficult time rebuilding the same level of support, especially among voters of color and younger voters.

Just 33% of nonwhite adults under age 45 approve of Biden's job performance, according to the most recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs research poll. Just as concerning for the Biden camp is the precipitous drop he has seen overall among Black and Hispanic adults from his first months in office, when his approval rating was 86% among Black adults, 63% among Hispanic adults and 49% among white adults. Now those approval rate stand at 50%, 36% and 40%, respectively.

Democratic campaign strategists say they are encouraging more robust outreach to Black voters in key states. Biden's campaign said it already is laying the groundwork for just such an effort.

Voting activists said they know voters of color are essential for Biden and cited myriad reasons for the drop in support. Among them is the failure to pass a law that would have strengthened voting rights, after numerous Republican-controlled states passed restrictions in the past few years, and Biden's promise about student loan forgiveness, only to see the Supreme Court kill it.

"The candidates who are predicted to be at the top of the ballot in 2024 do pose an issue," said Lily Trieu, executive director of Asian Texans for Justice. "A lot of young people, especially, are feeling really disillusioned with Biden."

The Rev. Frederick Haynes, president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Chicago-based civil rights group founded more than 50 years ago by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said the Democratic Party needs to tell voters what it has accomplished and what it plans to do beyond next year's election.

"Rainbow PUSH will be challenging the administration: What are you doing to get the message through the appropriate mediums to the communities that you say you're serving?" Haynes said.

The Biden campaign agrees and said it is highlighting gains that include delivering on broadband internet access, especially in communities of color, reducing unemployment rates and diversifying the federal judiciary, said Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager.

Fulks added that the campaign also has begun organizing programs in two crucial states, Arizona and Wisconsin, to communicate with Latino, Black and young voters.

"There's a lot at stake here, and our job as a campaign is to communicate that. But it has to be mixed with also, 'What have you done for me and what has the administration done and what will this administration continue to do to try to improve the lives of people?'" Fulks said. "Our campaign is not taking our foot off the gas, nor are we taking any of these voters for granted."

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Georgia Black Republican Council also is planning a radio and billboard campaign highlighting issues it thinks are pertinent to Black voters in a state expected to be closely contested. Among the topics are school choice, immigration and abortion. The organization has plans to conduct listening sessions at Black churches across the state.

Other voting advocates say their messages to communities of color will range from successes, such as continued low unemployment, to explanations about why priorities such as federal voting and police overhaul legislation failed. Statewide issues will be a critical part of their messaging, highlighting book bans, gerrymandered districts and abortion.

Elsie Cooke-Holmes, international president of Delta Sigma Theta, a historically Black sorority, said her organization is developing a national strategy and will hold webinars with members to fashion strategies for local communities.

Even if voters are not excited about the presidential race, they have to be educated about how issues will affect them "not only at the top of the ticket but all the way up and down the ballot," Cooke-Holmes said. "So much of what has been decided, especially with these voter suppression laws, is certainly at the state level and the local level. We want to make sure that that education happens and that message is crafted."

The groups also plan to highlight some of the direct attacks on their efforts and priorities. Since 2021, for example, about 10 states have attempted to create or increase criminal penalties and fines for individuals and groups that assist voters. Several of those laws faced legal challenges.

Recently, a panel of three federal appeals court judges ruled that private individuals and groups do not have the ability to sue under a key section of the Voting Rights Act. It's another example of an attack on the tools that remain to protect voters, said Cesar Ruiz, an associate counsel with a focus on voting rights for LatinoJustice.

Yterenickia Bell, senior director of the And Still I Vote Program at the Leadership Conference Education Fund, will be targeting women of color between age 18 and 35 in 11 states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

"We have to remind them when we go to that door that the country is only as successful as the young people who are engaged," she said, pointing out that many of the front-line civil rights activists of the 1960s were their age at the time.

Student debt, climate change, health care, abortion and reproductive care will be the selling points to that targeted group, Bell said.

"Black voters are pragmatic voters" and the younger ones are less party-centric and more focused on issues, said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. "At the end of the day, this cannot be an election just around the candidates. It can't be just Trump. It can't be just about Biden. It really has to be, 'How does democracy protect us?'"

Mishara Davis, director of issue and electoral organizing at State Voices, said the message cannot be one size fits all.

"The same messaging that we use for young Black students in Georgia may look a little different than when we're speaking to white women in Wyoming," Davis said. "Or we're speaking to a church congregation in Arkansas compared to someone in Detroit."

That method was proved in Ohio last fall when voters approved a constitutional amendment that guaranteed the right to abortion, said Prentiss Haney, co-executive director of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. He said the group registered at least 20,000 people, 90% of whom were Black voters, and knocked on more than 200,000 doors, making their outreach the largest Black voter engagement program in the state.

The key was not treating the Black community as if it was monolithic, he said. The group is aiming to take a similar approach in 2024, when Ohio will have one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.

"What we did is understand that there's diversity in values and ideology, especially in Black voters anywhere in the country, and especially in Ohio," Haney said.

As long as the messaging is tailored to meet the needs of a diverse audience and prioritizes the issues they care most about - rather than focusing on personalities and candidates - it will be successful, said Rev. William Barber, co-founder of the Poor People's Campaign.

The questions should be about who supports health care, higher wages, voting rights and bodily autonomy, he said.

The ground troops might be worn down, Barber said, but "there's two kinds of tired: There's a tired when I'm going to quit, and there's a sick-and-tired but I'm not going to quit because I know I have the power to change this."


# Trump's dominance in GOP frustrates some in Iowa eager for a competitive campaign
By **HANNAH FINGERHUT**
December 30, 2023. 12:28 AM EST

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**DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)** - The Iowa frenzy is typically in full force by now.

With less than three weeks until the Iowa caucuses formally usher in the presidential nomination process, White House hopefuls are usually in a heated competition. They fan out across the state and pack as many events into a single day as is humanly possible - all in a bid to appeal to undecided voters and lock down support that could lift them to victory in Iowa and keep them in the race for months to come.

But as the campaign intensifies ahead of the Jan. 15 caucuses, the normal frenzy is subdued. While the schedule is filling up, former President Donald Trump is such a commanding force in the party that some voters worry the contest that normally transforms Iowa into the center of the political world may turn out to be something of a snooze.

"It's kind of frustrating," said Jenna Maifeld, a 19-year-old student at the University of Iowa who is eager to participate in her first caucus but is disappointed with the campaign cycle's lack of competition. "I feel like a lot of people's voices aren't being heard."

There's still time for the dynamics of the race to shift. And Trump's rivals are hardly ceding the state to him, working to convince voters that his victory isn't inevitable. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has effectively centered his campaign on Iowa, pumping it with advertising and crafting a robust travel schedule of events and media availabilities. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is also campaigning throughout Iowa, stepping up criticism of Trump while laying the groundwork for a potentially stronger showing in New Hampshire, where the Jan. 23 primary includes more independent voters.

The question is whether any of those efforts will notably erode Trump's standing, a prospect some voters find unlikely at this point.

"A lot of candidates are hoping that one of these spears in his back will finally take him down, but I doubt it," said Nick Peters, a 31-year-old from Prairie City who is also among the Iowa Republicans frustrated by Trump's dominance.

Trump enters the final stretch before the caucuses facing a host of challenges. He's the subject of 91 criminal charges related to everything from his handling of classified information to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The Colorado Supreme Court and Maine's top election official have recently declared Trump ineligible to appear on their states' ballots, decisions the former president is likely to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And Trump is embroiled in controversy over his harsh rhetoric toward immigrants, repeatedly using language that extremism experts say echoes writings from Adolf Hitler about the "purity" of Aryan blood, which underpinned Nazi Germany's systematic murder of millions of Jews and other "undesirables" before and during World War II.

For now, however, Trump's baggage appears to be doing little to deter a majority of Republican voters. In fact, Trump has sought to turn his vulnerabilities into something of an advantage, arguing that he's been indicted on behalf of his supporters. He's also aimed to turn around concerns that he poses a threat to democracy by accusing President Joe Biden of harnessing the power of government against a political rival. There's no evidence that Biden or the White House had any influence on the Justice Department's decision to criminally charge Trump.

It's Trump's impenetrable base of support that has left many feeling resigned to seeing his name on the ballot in November.

"If democracy is working fairly and if the country wants him, then it's going to be him," said Dylan Kooiman, a 21-year-old student at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa, who said it would be hard for him to support Trump given his legal battles. "It doesn't always fall the way everyone wants it."

Iowans are historically proud of the role they play at the beginning of the presidential election calendar every four years. Voters are accustomed to intimate exchanges with candidates, who pay visits to living rooms, neighborhood centers and county fairgrounds in an effort to connect and persuade.

The pride Iowans take in their role in shaping the presidential contest is also matched with a perennial anxiety that their status may not last forever. The final period ahead of the 2020 caucuses, which focused on Democrats, was unusually muted because many candidates, who were also senators, had to be in Washington to participate in Trump's first impeachment trial. A bungled effort to report results contributed to Democrats removing Iowa from their leadoff spot, replacing it instead with South Carolina.

Republicans have kept Iowa in the opening position in the 2024 campaign. But like so many traditions, Trump has abandoned some long held Iowa political practices, particularly when it comes to retail campaigning. He's largely traded living rooms for rallies, prompting some criticism that he's taking Iowa for granted.

Trump is stepping up his efforts in the closing weeks to prove that he's willing to work for a win that's so commanding that his rivals will have to give up. He is, for example, taking the rare step of holding four campaign events over two days in early January, appearing in rural western Iowa, in industrial eastern Iowa along the Mississippi River and stops in between.

If he's successful, he may be on a path to a race that few Americans appear eager to embrace. Nearly 3 in 10 U.S. adults, or 28%, say they would be dissatisfied with both Trump and Biden becoming their parties' respective nominees, a recent AP-NORC poll showed.

Independents (43%) are more likely than Democrats (28%) or Republicans (20%) to express their displeasure with both men gaining party nominations.

Rick Hyndman may be one of the thousands of Iowans who wants to support Trump again, but he also thinks Trump needs to speak more to the middle.

In line to attend a Trump rally in Coralville, the 70-year-old local retiree was noncommittal, waiting to hear some signals from the former president that he could appeal to independents to ensure his electability in the general election. Hyndman thinks he could, by focusing on the issues and avoiding putting other people down.

Despite that concern, Hyndman thinks neither DeSantis nor Haley can beat him.

"I don't see anybody stepping up," he said. "We've been waiting."


# Maine secretary of state who opted to keep Trump off primary ballot is facing threat of impeachment
By **DAVID SHARP**
December 29, 2023. 7:28 PM EST

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**PORTLAND, Maine (AP)** - Maine's top election official could face an impeachment attempt in the state Legislature over her decision to keep former President Donald Trump off the Republican primary ballot.

At least one Republican lawmaker has vowed to pursue impeachment against Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows despite long odds in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Bellows said Friday that she had no comment on the impeachment effort, but said she was duty-bound by state law to make a determination on three challenges brought by registered Maine voters. She reiterated that she suspended her decision pending an anticipated appeal by Trump in Superior Court.

"Under Maine law, I have not only the authority but the obligation to act," she said. "I will follow the Constitution and the rule of law as directed by the courts," she added.

Bellows' decision Thursday followed a ruling earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court that removed Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision is on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump violated the Civil War-era provision prohibiting those who "engaged in insurrection" from holding office.

"In 150 years, no candidate was kept off a ballot for engaging in an insurrection. It's now happened twice to Donald Trump in the last two weeks. There will be major pressure on the Supreme Court to offer clarity very soon," said Derek Muller, a Notre Dame Law School professor and election law scholar.

In Maine, state Rep. John Andrews, who sits on the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee, called the decision "hyper-partisanship on full display" as he pressed for an impeachment proceeding. He said he sent a notice to the state revisor's office for a joint order to set the wheels in motion ahead of lawmakers' return to Augusta next week.

"There is bipartisan opposition to the extreme decision made by the secretary of state. She has clearly overstepped her authority. It remains to be seen if her effort at voter suppression will garner enough Democrat support to remove her from her position," said House Republican leader Billy Bob Faulkingham.

The decision exposed Bellows to hate and vitriol on social media - along with posts showing support - and her office said Bellows and members of her staff were subjected to threats, something she called "unacceptable."

"My obligation is to the Constitution and the rule of law. It's the Constitution and the rule of law that make our Democratic Republic so great. No one should be threatened for doing their job," she said Friday evening.

"I hope those people who are engaging in angry and threatening communications consider the impact of their words and actions," she added.

Among Maine's congressional delegation, only Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, who represents the liberal 1st Congressional District, supported Bellows' conclusion that Trump incited an insurrection, justifying his removal from the March 5 primary ballot.

U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Friday that absent a final judicial determination on the issue of insurrection, the decision on whether Trump should be considered for president "should rest with the people as expressed in free and fair elections."

U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat representing the 2nd Congressional District, agreed that "until (Trump) is found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot."

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, the state's senior senator, was one of a handful of Republicans to vote to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial, and she criticized him in a floor speech for failing to obey his oath of office.

But she nonetheless disagreed with Bellows' decision. "Maine voters should decide who wins the election, not a secretary of state chosen by the Legislature," she said.


# Top Hamas official Saleh Arouri, who headed West Bank operations, killed in Beirut blast
By **BASSEM MROUE**
January 2, 2024. 12:14 PM EST

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**BEIRUT (AP)** - An explosion in Beirut on Tuesday killed Saleh Arouri, a top official with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and three others, officials with Hamas and the Lebanese group Hezbollah said.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said the blast killed four people and was carried out by an Israeli drone. Israeli officials declined to comment.

If Israel is behind the attack it could mark a major escalation in the Middle East conflict. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to retaliate against any Israeli targeting of Palestinian officials in Lebanon.

Hamas official Bassem Naim confirmed to The Associated Press that Arouri was killed in the blast. A Hezbollah official speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations also said Arouri was killed.

Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas' military wing, had headed the group's presence in the West Bank. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill him even before the Hamas-Israel war began on Oct. 7.

The explosion shook Musharafieh, one of the Lebanese capital's southern suburbs, which are a stronghold of the militant Hezbollah group, which is an ally of Hamas. The explosion caused fire in Hadi Nasrallah street south of Beirut.

The explosion came during more than two months of heavy exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and members of Hezbollah along Lebanon's southern border.

Since the fighting began on Oct. 8, the fighting has been concentrated a few miles (kilometers) from the border but on several occasions Israel's air force hit Hezbollah targets deeper in Lebanon.

Earlier in the day, Hezbollah said its fighters carried out several attacks along the Lebanon-Israel border targeting Israeli military posts.


# Israel says it will defend itself against genocide accusations at world court filed by South Africa
By **WAFAA SHURAFA**, **SAMY MAGDY**, and **MELANIE LIDMAN**
January 2, 2024. 12:12 PM EST

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**TEL AVIV, Israel (AP)** - Israel will defend itself before the United Nation's top court against charges that it has engaged in genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, officials said Tuesday, setting the stage for what is likely to be a landmark case in international law.

South Africa launched the case Friday at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands, saying the Israeli military campaign targeting Hamas has resulted in enough death, destruction and humanitarian crisis in Gaza to meet the threshold of genocide under international law. South Africa asked the court to order Israel to halt its attacks in Gaza.

Israel rarely cooperates in international court cases against it, dismissing the United Nations and international tribunals as unfair and biased. Its decision to respond to the charge signals that the government is concerned about the potential damage to its reputation.

The genocide charge strikes at the heart of Israel's national identity. The country sees itself as a bulwark of security for Jews after the Holocaust killed 6 million Jews, and world support for Israel's creation in Palestine in 1948 was deeply rooted in outrage over Nazi atrocities.

The convention against genocide was drawn up by world powers the same year in hopes of preventing similar atrocities.

Eylon Levy, an official in the Israeli prime minister's office, accused South Africa of "giving political and legal cover" to Hamas after its Oct. 7 attack triggered Israel's campaign.

"The state of Israel will appear before the International Court of Justice at the Hague to dispel South Africa's absurd blood libel," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with the war until Hamas is crushed and the more than 100 hostages still held by the militant group in Gaza are freed, which he has said could take several more months.

But Israel is under growing international pressure to scale back the offensive ahead of a visit to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has urged Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians. On Monday, Israel said it was withdrawing thousands of troops from other areas in a potential shift away from the massive air and ground operations that have devastated the Hamas-ruled enclave.

Still, heavy fighting continued Tuesday in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

Israel's onslaught in Gaza has been unprecedented in the century-old Mideast conflict, killing nearly 22,000 Palestinians and leveling large swaths of the tiny Mediterranean territory. Since the war began, Israel has banned entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies to Gaza's population of 2.3 million people, except for a trickle of aid that the U.N. says falls far below the territory's needs.

Israel's War Cabinet was to meet later Tuesday, Netanyahu's office said. The agenda reportedly includes a discussion on postwar arrangements for Gaza, a highly polarizing issue in Israel.

Until now, Netanyahu has not presented any plan despite repeated U.S. requests. He has rejected proposals that the Palestinian Authority, which currently administers pockets of self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, undergo reforms and then take over administration of Gaza as a precursor to Palestinian statehood.

## TROOPS ROTATE OUT BUT COMBAT CONTINUES
The army said Monday that five brigades, or several thousand troops, would leave Gaza in the coming weeks. Still, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said it would be a mistake to think that Israel is planning on halting the war.

"The feeling that we will stop soon is incorrect," he said Tuesday. "Without a clear victory, we will not be able to live in the Middle East."

Israel has said it's close to achieving operational control over most of northern Gaza, where ground troops have been battling militants for over two months. But Gallant said several thousand Hamas fighters are believed to still be in the north, and residents reported clashes in several parts of Gaza City, as well as in the nearby urban Jabaliya refugee camp.

Fierce fighting has continued in other areas of the Palestinian territory, especially the south, where many of Hamas' forces remain intact and where most of Gaza's population has fled.

Palestinians reported heavy airstrikes and artillery shelling in the southern city of Khan Younis and farming areas to the east. The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israel bombed its headquarters in the city, killing five people. At least 14,000 displaced people are sheltering in the building, it said.

Fighting was also underway in and around the built-up Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. The army issued evacuation orders to people living in parts of nearby Nuseirat camp. A strike Tuesday leveled a building in Nuseirat, killing at least eight people, according to officials at the nearby hospital. Associated Press footage showed people pulling several children out of the wreckage.

## GENOCIDE CASE
Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people, and 240 others were taken hostage.

Israel responded with an air, ground and sea offensive that has killed more than 21,900 people in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The Israeli military says 173 soldiers have died since it launched its ground operation.

The campaign has driven some 85% of Gaza's population from their homes, forcing hundreds of thousands of people into overcrowded shelters or teeming tent camps in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless bombed. Palestinians are left with a sense that nowhere is safe. The siege has left a quarter of Gaza residents facing starvation, according to the United Nations.

Israel says, without providing evidence, that more than 8,000 militants have been killed. It blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll, saying the militants embed within residential areas, including schools and hospitals.

In its case to the ICJ, South Africa accused Israel of "genocidal" acts that aim "to destroy Palestinians in Gaza." It pointed to "indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants" as well as the Israeli siege. It argued that no attack on a state - even one "involving atrocity crimes" - can justify violations of the 1948 convention against genocide.

Israel, a signatory to the convention, angrily rejected the charge. "The Jewish people know more than any other what genocide is," national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot.

The case is likely to take years to reach a final judgment. But the court will likely rule within weeks on Pretoria's request for interim orders known as provisional measures, including that Israel "immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza" and "take all reasonable measures" to prevent genocide. The provisional measures orders are considered binding but not always followed.

Israel's decision to defend itself means it can use the courtroom to present legal arguments justifying its actions in Gaza. But the move could also leave the country open to more international condemnation if it ultimately loses the case and is found to have breached the genocide convention.

The case comes as Israel's Supreme Court struck down a key component of Netanyahu's contentious judicial overhaul plan, which had deeply divided Israelis and threatened the military's readiness before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

The Supreme Court ruling could help Israel at the International Court of Justice, since it and other international tribunals consider whether countries have their own independent judiciaries in deciding on whether to intervene.

It's unclear what concrete effects an ICJ ruling against Israel would have, but it would likely isolate the country politically and economically.

"Israel can't afford to ignore this," said Barak Medina, a law professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.


# Turkey detains 33 people suspected of spying for Israel
January 2, 2024. 8:52 AM EST

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**ANKARA, Turkey (AP)** - Turkish authorities have detained 33 people suspected of spying for Israel, Turkey's state-run news agency reported on Tuesday.

Authorities were still searching for 13 others believed to have links to Israel's Mossad security service, the Anadolu Agency reported.

The suspects were detained in raids in Istanbul and seven other provinces for allegedly planning to carry out activities that included "reconnaissance" and "pursuing, assaulting and kidnapping" foreign nationals living in Turkey, the agency reported.

The suspects were allegedly recruited to spy on Palestinians residing in Turkey as well as Israeli activists opposed to their government, Anadolu said. Israeli officials allegedly contacted the suspects via social media, it said.

The report comes weeks after the head of Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet, said in an audio recording that his organization is prepared to destroy Hamas "in every place," including in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Israel of "serious consequences" if it pressed ahead with its threat to attack Hamas officials on Turkish soil.

Turkey and Israel had normalized ties in 2022 by reappointing ambassadors following years of tensions. But those ties quickly deteriorated after the Israel-Hamas war, with Ankara becoming one of the strongest critics of Israel's military actions in Gaza.

Israel initially withdrew its diplomats from Turkey over security concerns and later announced it was recalling its diplomats for political reasons, citing "increasingly harsh statements" from Turkish officials. Turkey also pulled out its ambassador from Israel.

Erdogan's reaction to the Israel-Hamas war was initially fairly muted. But the Turkish leader has since intensified his criticism of Israel, describing its actions in Gaza as verging on "genocide." He has called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be prosecuted for "war crimes" and compared him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Erdogan, whose government has hosted several Hamas officials in the past, has also said the militant group - considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union - is fighting for the liberation of its lands and people.


# Russia covered up and undercounted true human cost of floodings after dam explosion, AP investigation finds
By **SAMYA KULLAB** and **ILLIA NOVIKOV**
December 28, 2023. 8:07 AM EST

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**MYKOLAIV, Ukraine (AP)** - They recognized the TV repairman.

The residents of Oleshky in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine could not identify many of those they buried after a catastrophic dam collapse in June sent water coursing through their homes and shattered their lives. The bodies were too bloated and discolored, volunteer rescuers and health workers said. They described seeing faces that resembled rubber masks, frozen in that last frenzied gasp for air. But to those secretly keeping count of the drowned, Yurii Bilyi was no stranger.

The cheerful 56-year-old was a town fixture. He had serviced many homes and spent his days working from a shop just across the street from the churchyard where he was buried, in a hurriedly dug mass grave, The Associated Press has learned.

Anastasiia Bila, his daughter, remembers his last words clearly over the unstable phone connection. "Nastya," he affectionately called her, hoping to soothe her anxieties as flood waters rose quickly, inundating 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), submerging entire towns and villages along the banks of the Dnipro River, the majority in Russian-occupied areas. "I've seen worse under occupation."

Over six months since the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region, an AP investigation has found Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war. Russian authorities took control of the issuance of death certificates, immediately removing bodies not claimed by family, and preventing local health workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they defied orders.

"The scale of this tragedy, not just Russia, but even Ukraine doesn't realize," said Svitlana, a nurse who initially oversaw the process of collecting death certificates and later escaped to Ukrainian-controlled territory. "It's a huge tragedy."

Russia, which didn't respond to questions for this article, has said 59 people drowned in the territory it controls, roughly 408 square kilometers (160 square miles) of flooded areas. But in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky alone, which Ukrainian military officials estimate had a population of 16,000 at the time of the flooding, the number is at least in the hundreds. An exact figure for the dead - in Oleshky, the occupied area's most populous town before the war, and beyond - may never be known, even if Ukrainian forces retake the territory and are able to investigate on the ground.

The AP spoke to three health workers who kept records of the dead in Oleshky, one volunteer who buried bodies and said she was later threatened by Russian police, and two Ukrainian informants passing intelligence from the area to the Ukrainian security service. According to their accounts, mass graves were dug, and unidentified bodies were taken away and never seen again.

Nearly a dozen interviews were conducted with other residents, rescue volunteers and recent escapees from the area. The AP also gained access to a closed Telegram chat group of 3,000 Oleshky residents who posted about bodies lying on the streets, bodies collected by police and the many missing.

Most spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity or, like Svitlana, on condition only their first names be used, fearing reprisal from Russia on family members still in occupied territory.

Together, these accounts reveal a calculated attempt by Russian authorities to cover up the true cost of the dam collapse, which the AP has found was likely caused by Moscow. Residents of Oleshky fear their enduring traumas risk being forgotten as the war grinds on, and their beloved once idyllic home is gradually depopulated.

## A TOWN ABANDONED
The dam burst in the early hours of June 6, causing extensive flooding along the lower Dnipro River, submerging entire communities across the Ukraine-controlled right and Russian-occupied left banks in a matter of hours.

At first, the Russian-appointed administration in Kherson told residents not to be alarmed. In a post on its official Telegram channel, it stressed the "situation is not critical." So most went about their normal day - walking dogs, going to work, staying at home. Choices that would later prove fatal.

By the afternoon the water levels were rising quickly, inundating two-story homes as the powerful current swept everything away. The elderly struggled to climb up to roofs, people clung to their chimneys waiting to be saved by local rescue crews, most of them civilians who owned boats.

For the first three days of the floods occupation authorities were nowhere to be found, locals said, having apparently fled, despite initially reassuring residents. Conspicuously absent were police and prosecutors, both Russian-appointed officials authorized to deal with the deceased.

Bodies were piling up and decaying in the summer heat, their stench wafted in the air. Wailing relatives approached the town's medical workers, not knowing where to take the dead.

"A lot of people drowned," said Svitlana, the head nurse at the Oleshky District Multidisciplinary Hospital, the city's main primary health center, which later transformed into a shelter for people forced out of their homes. The putrefaction of flesh caused many corpses to inflate. "People were floating around the city like balloons."

They needed to be buried. "We took the responsibility," the nurse said.

They had the authority to issue death certificates both under Ukrainian law and Russian rule. The health center functioned as a main hospital for Oleshky residents after Russia occupied the town in March 2022, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine. Health workers continued to receive salaries from Ukraine, deposited electronically into their bank accounts, a crucial link tying them to their homeland as the occupation's draconian laws began to transform everything else before their eyes.

Russian rubles replaced Ukrainian hryvnias in the market. Some residents accepted Russian passports to make life under occupation easier. Keeping record of the Ukrainian dead, largely caused by shelling before the floods, became a last vestige of Ukrainian control.

For health workers in the hospital, it was a matter of national necessity. After occupation authorities forbade the issuance of death certificates in the Ukrainian language on Jan. 1, health workers continued to do so in secret to ensure the Ukrainian medical database was up to date in Kyiv, the capital. Residents were given two certificates, one to satisfy their new occupiers, and the other to keep moored to their homeland. Health workers told residents to hide the latter.

The same procedure was followed immediately after the dam collapse.

In total, around 15 death certificates were electronically sent during the first week after the flood to Svitlana Serdiukova, the health facility's medical director in exile, who was keeping track of the registry remotely in government-controlled Ukraine. Svitlana, the nurse in Oleshky, was in direct contact with her during this time.

The cause of death for all 15 was asphyxia by drowning.

## RUSSIA CERTIFIES THE DEAD
Everything came to a halt on June 12.

The Russian state emergency rescue service workers were back in Oleshky by the afternoon of June 9, and three days later, they began reasserting control.

They brought large trucks and road-clearing equipment and offered to evacuate people first to Radensk, in Kherson region, and from there relocate them to Chelyabinsk and Tula in Russia. The residents refused to be taken that far, asking only to be taken to a dry patch in Oleshky.

They were refused. Many stayed put.

Russian authorities had strict orders for the hospital: Doctors were now forbidden from issuing death certificates for flood victims. They were still permitted to issue certificates for other causes of death, however. The new rule was issued verbally, said Svitlana and Yelena, a fellow nurse at the hospital.

From that moment on, they said, flood victims would have to be referred for autopsies in facilities elsewhere in Kherson region, in Kalanchak, Skadovsk, and Henichesk, where doctors approved by occupation authorities would be in charge of issuing the certificates after conducting forensic examinations. Relatives could not bury their family members without the crucial document.

Svitlana said she pressed the police for an official order proving the old policy in place since March had changed. They didn't have it, and responded to her queries with threats, she said.

"They said: 'You will suffer the consequences for doing this.' I said, 'Alright, I am ready, and the doctor, too.'"

The order deprived doctors of responsibility for flood victims. It also took away their ability to keep records of the dead for Kyiv.

Serdiukova's record-keeping could go no further. The last Ukrainian death certificate she received was on June 14.

The police came to the hospital daily to make copies of death certificates issued by doctors, to ensure the rules were being obeyed. "You need to understand under what circumstances we worked there - under the FSB, police, prosecutors," Svitlana said, using the acronym for the Russian security service that is the main successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB.

The hospital referred just under 50 bodies to the new autopsy centers, but this doesn't reflect the total dead. Residents were given specific numbers to call police who dispatched workers to collect discovered bodies, circumventing the hospital altogether. Family members were charged 10,000 rubles (equivalent to about $108) as a service fee, a hefty sum for many under occupation. Those who couldn't afford that begged doctors to write a different cause of death, such as "heart attack," so they could be buried quickly, both nurses said.

Bodies without relatives to claim them were never seen again.

The rescue service also patrolled Oleshky's streets to collect the dead.

On June 15, the hospital began giving vaccines against hepatitis A, dysentery and typhoid amid rising concerns of water-borne diseases. A worker from the town's municipal "Pobut" service, responsible for cleaning streets, arrived visibly inebriated, Svitlana said.

Svitlana told him to return when he was sober. But the man, in his early 40s, replied, he could not but drink after what he had seen. He had been ordered to dig out the dead from under their collapsed homes, he said, and bury them in mass graves.

He recognized some.

"The TV guy has drowned, the ginger, Yura," he told her, referring to his hair color, according to Svitlana's account.

She knew him, too.

## A FATHER BURIED
Anastasiia Bila, Yurii's daughter, was in Lviv in western Ukraine, where she had fled before the invasion, when she spoke to her father for the last time. It was on June 6, at around 3 p.m.

He had refused to evacuate their family home. He had two German shepherds he could not abandon.

The connection was intermittent. She urged him to go to the second floor of the house if the water levels continued to rise. She tried to call again a half-hour later, but there was no reception.

She made a plea on the private Telegram chat: "Bilyi Yurii Anatoliyovych, does not get in touch for a second day," she wrote, adding his last known location, his home's address: Dniprovska, 85. "Please help me find my father, maybe someone saw or knows his whereabouts, any information."

On Sunday, five days later, Bila's uncle was able to check on his brother by hiring a boat with his wife and son. They found Bilyi's lifeless body. He told Anastasiia she could stop looking for her father.

The body was buried in a mass grave in the yard of the Orthodox Pokrovska Church in the center of Oleshky. It was not possible to bury him and others anywhere else, as most places were still flooded, Bila said.

Bilyi's shop has been on the same street.

The grave was doused with chlorine, Bila's uncle, who witnessed the burial, recounted to her, she said. The priest prayed over the dead.

Pobut workers, made up of local Ukrainians and acting on orders of occupation authorities, were responsible for collecting and burying the dead, according to health workers. They dug on a daily basis between June 10-20. The bodies were buried without coffins, not even bags to cover them.

As the unit was acting on orders of occupation authorities, the decision to bury people in mass graves likely came from those authorities, health workers said.

"The first bodies were buried in the city center (church), as 90% of the city was underwater," said Bila. "Those bodies were not processed by a hospital, no autopsy or time of death, they were buried right away," she said.

Serdiukova later confirmed Bilyi was not in Ukraine's registry. Officially he is considered a missing person.

The exact number of bodies in the grave where Bilyi was buried is not known. Bila said her uncle did not tell her a precise number. He is living under occupation and did not respond to questions from the AP.

But the hospital workers the AP interviewed estimate the number to be between 10 to 20. For a time, they tried to document who was buried where. They asked relatives to fill out forms detailing where bodies were found, how they were clothed, and later, which plot of which grave they were buried in.

"The bodies were collected and buried in a mass grave to ensure they don't start decomposing on city streets. After de-occupation there will be an exhumation. That's when we'll be able to investigate everything," said Serdiukova.

With the return of the Russian state emergency service, the process became more orderly. They arrived with trucks to carry bodies and a special rescue team.

The fate of unidentified bodies, those without relatives to claim them, carted away by the Russian rescue service is also not known. Yelena, the nurse, approached a truck driver and asked him what would happen to them.

He told her casually that the bodies with no relatives were buried in a mass grave, she said. Without caskets, in black bags.

While several people interviewed referred to more mass graves than the one where Bila's father was buried, the AP was unable to determine the precise number of such graves or how many people were buried in them.

Bila considers herself lucky. At least her father is buried in the town he loved and refused to leave, even under the threat of death.

Like many, she's waiting for Ukraine to liberate the town. Then, she said, "I'll be able to re-bury him in a proper cemetery."

## THE THREAT
The volunteer was not afraid of dead bodies. When the floods inundated her neighborhood in Oleshky, the sight of the floating dead did not stir her like it did the others. She had witnessed her best friend's death when she was a teenager.

"It's the living that frighten me," she said.

On June 7, she, her husband and three neighbors went about evacuating trapped residents inside homes. By June 9, she witnessed dead bodies for the first time. They were "bloated and partially decomposed. They were floating. I often couldn't recognize a person," she said.

Some were trapped under the sticky mud and had to be dug out. Those she knew, around 20, she took to the hospital with the hopes that relatives could claim the bodies. The rest were taken to another church in the city, blessed by a priest and buried in the town's cemetery. She said she collected "more than 100" dead.

The health workers estimate 200 to 300 people drowned in Oleshky. "I'm even afraid to say it out loud," said Yelena.

Many were older, unable to physically leave their homes or climb up to the roof, according to the accounts of rescue volunteers, residents who reported relatives dead, and health workers.

"I buried them with my own hands," the volunteer said. There was no money to hire diggers, she said, but people volunteered to do it for free. The graves were dug shallow, 1 meter (3 feet) deep. Any more and they would flood. The volunteer said she used bedsheets to cover them. When those ran out, she said, she found plastic film.

Pits were dug for each person, but sometimes for up to three, the volunteer said.

But this work was put to a stop when the Russian rescue service returned. Occupation authorities prohibited volunteers from collecting or burying the dead, telling them this was a job for the police only.

Russian emergency service trucks arrived. Workers in white bodysuits put the dead in black bags, witnesses said. One driver told the volunteer they were destined for autopsies in Henichesk, an occupied port city about three hours away.

Some days later, several police officers came to the volunteer's home. She said they told her that an informant had told them she had been involved in burying people without death certificates. They interrogated her about why she had transported bodies, and how many she had recovered. She explained there was no other option, the bodies were smelling.

They reprimanded her, telling her she did not have the right to collect bodies and eventually forced her to sign a document promising she would stop collecting the dead because she didn't have the right qualifications, she said.

"They told me that if I continue doing so they'll 'cage me', That's when I stopped," the volunteer said. "I was scared for myself and my family."

The police visited her home almost every day after that, she said.

"They had video journalists coming here to show how Russia helps here. They wanted to conceal the consequences of the dam explosion, so that people don't talk about how many people suffered and how many needed help. They wanted to hide it," she said. "That's why they prohibited us."

## WORLDS APART
The evidence is still hidden in Oleshky: documents detailing the dead, plots where they are buried, photos, the death certificates collected in secret.

"I hid all these papers behind closed doors so that no one knew," Svitlana said. "With time everything is forgotten, some people might leave, their life will change, but with those papers - no one will forget. It was important to save them."

She is waiting for Ukraine to liberate the territory so the truth can come to light. She cleared her phone and left documents behind to keep them out of the hands of Russians who routinely stop Ukrainians leaving occupied areas and conduct thorough security checks.

Residents, speaking to the AP after they returned to Ukraine-controlled territory, said most of the town is no longer habitable. Many remain missing since the floods, while battles inch closer. Ukrainian forces are reportedly advancing near the Krynky area, which lies 40 kilometers (24 miles) from Oleshky. There was a pause during the flooding from shelling, which resumed with ferocity, residents say.

Both Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for bringing down the dam, but analysts agree that Russia had motive. The dam's collapse occurred right as Ukraine launched what would develop into a disappointing counteroffensive. The flooding altered the geography of the Dnipro River, complicating plans set out by Ukrainian military leaders.

Now, two-thirds of Oleshky is gone, entire districts and homes are destroyed, according to the accounts of half a dozen residents who left.

"There are two Ukraines," said Svitlana. "One is at war, in tragedy, many people are left homeless. And the other is living life well and flourishes."

In Oleshky, divisions between the townspeople have deepened, sometimes within members of a single family. The volunteer's sister moved to Russia. Bila's uncle and his family are estranged from hers because he harbors pro-Russian views, she said.

Svitlana said colleagues still in Oleshky told her that her office was ransacked after she left in August. But she is confident the documents are still hidden.

"It's a durable book," she said.


# Ex-celebrity lawyer Tom Girardi found competent to stand trial for alleged $15 million client thefts
January 2, 2024. 8:59 PM EST

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***LOS ANGELES (AP)*** - Disgraced Los Angeles celebrity lawyer Tom Girardi has been found competent to stand trial on charges that he stole more than $15 million from his clients.

A federal judge filed a notice of the brief order Tuesday under seal. Lawyers for both sides were given five days to identify any information in it that they would like the judge to keep confidential.

Girardi, 84, is the estranged husband of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Erika Jayne.

Girardi pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles last year to wire fraud on charges that he embezzled from clients, including an Arizona widow whose husband was killed in a boat accident; a Los Angeles couple injured in a car wreck that paralyzed their son; and a man who was severely burned in the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion.

If convicted, he could be sentenced to decades in federal prison.

The Associated Press sent an email seeking comment to his public defenders.

At issue in the competency hearing was whether Girardi understood the charges and proceedings against him and could help with his own defense. His lawyers argued that he was unable to take part in the trial because he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, which they said has left him confused and with memory problems. He currently is staying in the memory care unit of a nursing home.

Prosecutors contended that Girardi was exaggerating his symptoms.

As one of the nation's most prominent plaintiff's attorneys, Girardi took on powerful corporations, movie studios and Pacific Gas and Electric in a case that led to a $333 million settlement, which was portrayed in the 2000 Julia Roberts film "Erin Brockovich."

But his law empire collapsed, he was disbarred in California in 2022 over client thefts, and he faces mounting legal problems.

Girardi also faces federal wire fraud charges in Chicago, where he is accused of stealing about $3 million from family members of victims of a 2018 Lion Air crash that killed 189 people.

The Chicago court is expected to follow the competency decision in California.


# No. 1 Purdue handles Maryland 67-53 to snap Terrapins' 19-game home winning streak
By **NOAH TRISTER**
January 2, 2024. 9:02 PM EST

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**COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP)** - Zach Edey had 23 points and 12 rebounds, and No. 1 Purdue cruised past Maryland 67-53 on Tuesday night to snap the Terrapins' 19-game home winning streak.

The Boilermakers (13-1, 2-1 Big Ten) won their sixth straight, having little difficulty with this offensively challenged Maryland team. Purdue hadn't won at Maryland since 2017. Although the Terps (9-5, 1-2) hung tough defensively for a while, they couldn't overcome shooting woes that have made this season a disappointment so far.

The Boilermakers took an 8-0 lead and forced Maryland to take an early timeout. The Terps managed only 19 points in the first half and trailed by 13 at the break. Then Purdue quickly pushed the lead to 22 in the second.

Only Oral Roberts and Boise State (21 each) had longer home winning streaks than Maryland entering this game, but the Terps went down at Xfinity Center for the first time since December 2022 against UCLA. Maryland also had an overall five-game winning streak snapped.

Jahmir Young scored 26 points for the Terps, the only Maryland player with more than nine. The poor shooting by Maryland was across the board - 33% from the field, 5 of 22 from 3-point range and 6 of 11 on free throws.

Braden Smith scored 14 points for Purdue and Lance Jones added 11.

## BIG PICTURE
Purdue: The Boilermakers' defense vs. Maryland's offense always seemed like a possible mismatch, and Purdue's quick start took the crowd out of the game, pretty much for good.

Maryland: The Terps had some success on the offensive boards but were badly outplayed otherwise. Their offense simply isn't good enough to make them much of a threat to the top Big Ten teams at the moment.

## UP NEXT
Purdue: Hosts No. 9 Illinois on Friday night.

Maryland: At Minnesota on Sunday.


# Spencer scores 20 points, leads No. 4 UConn to 85-56 blowout of DePaul in Big East play
By **PAT EATON-ROBB**
January 2, 2024. 8:51 PM EST

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**STORRS, Conn. (AP)** - Cam Spencer scored 20 points to lead No. 4 UConn to an 85-56 rout of DePaul on Tuesday night.

The graduate transfer from Rutgers shot 7 for 11 from the field, including 4 of 7 from 3-point range.

Alex Karaban added 17 points for the Huskies (12-2, 2-1 Big East) and was 3 of 4 from behind the arc. Hassan Diarra scored 14 as did freshman Stephon Castle, who also had seven assists.

Da'Sean Nelson scored 19 points and Elijah Fisher had 17 for DePaul (3-10, 0-2), which shot just 36% from the floor (20 of 56).

It was the Huskies' 17th straight win over the Blue Demons.

UConn had struggled in its first two conference games this season, a 15-point loss at Seton Hall and a four-point comeback win over St. John's at home on Dec. 23.

The defending national champions started slowly in this one as well, with four early turnovers. They didn't score until a layup by Castle more than four minutes into the game.

A layup by Jaden Henley gave the Blue Demons an 11-10 lead midway through the first half. But then UConn went on a 16-2 run, including a highlight-reel dunk from Castle on a long lob pass from Diarra.

The Huskies held DePaul to eight first-half baskets. A layup by Karaban capped a 9-1 spurt that sent UConn into halftime up 38-19.

## BIG PICTURE
DePaul: The Blue Demons were picked last in the Big East preseason coaches' poll and haven't done much to exceed those expectations.

UConn: Played its second game without 7-foot-2 center Donovan Clingan, who is recovering from a tendon injury in his right foot. Huskies coach Dan Hurley said Clingan is out of a walking boot, but is expected to miss another two to three weeks. The sophomore is averaging 13.9 points and 6.3 rebounds per game.

## UP NEXT
DePaul: The Blue Demons visit Georgetown on Saturday.

UConn: The Huskies travel to Indianapolis to face Butler on Friday.


# Antonio Pierce has a final chance to make the case he should be the Raiders' coach
By **MARK ANDERSON**
January 2, 2024. 8:38 PM EST

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**HENDERSON, Nev. (AP)** - Antonio Pierce has one more chance to, as he has said, improve his resume on the grass.

Like his 4-4 record since replacing Josh McDaniels on Halloween night, Pierce's resume is a mixed bag.

He has brought energy to what had been a lackluster locker room, and the Raiders' defense has been better this season. On the flip side, Pierce has struggled with in-game decisions - often punting on the opposing team's side of the field and misusing timeouts.

None of that might matter if owner Mark Davis already has his mind made up to again chase the shiny object and make a play for a coach such as Jim Harbaugh, who has led Michigan to Monday's national championship game against Washington.

But if Davis is still considering removing the interim tag from Pierce's job title, then Sunday's season finale against the Denver Broncos could take on extra meaning for the coach and his staff.

"At the end of day, everything will be looked at by wins and losses, and I think that's fair and that's what this business is about," Pierce said. "But I do also think it's about what do you build in the foundation? And I think for the most part in these eight or nine weeks, it's been a solid foundation that we've built as a team and as an organization that we can look on and say, 'OK, those are things that went well and there's some other things that we can do better.'"

Pierce's future isn't the only question for the Raiders as the season comes to an end.

Las Vegas will have to decide what to do at quarterback. Aidan O'Connell has had promising moments, but hasn't proven he will be more than a mid-level quarterback. That's especially bad timing for him given that next year's draft is considered the strongest at that position in many years.

There are positions throughout the lineup that Raiders management will have to evaluate, and with the team mathematically eliminated from the postseason, players who haven't seen much action could get a closer look on Sunday.

So while it would appear the Raiders don't have much to play for, there are still questions about this team that need to be answered.

"Unless you plan on retiring and not playing in the NFL or coaching in the NFL, this is still on your resume," Pierce said. "You always look at the last four, five or six games of the season of how a team plays, how they're coached. So I think for us it's very important, it's still part of the process and evaluation."

## WHAT'S WORKING
In two of the past three games, WR Davante Adams has 21 catches for 227 yards and three touchdowns. This has been a down year by Adams' standards, but he still managed to eclipse 1,000 yards for the fifth time in six seasons and is two receptions from hitting the 100 mark for the fifth time over the same span.

## WHAT NEEDS WORK
Consistency. The Raiders sometimes look like a playoff team and will put together back-to-back promising performances. But they don't build on such play, with the 23-20 loss at Indianapolis on Sunday a prime example. Las Vegas had 26 first downs to 16 for the Colts and outgained them 370 yards to 349, but the Raiders couldn't get out of their own way with untimely penalties.

## STOCK UP
Defensive coordinator Patrick Graham could be a candidate for head coaching jobs this offseason. Las Vegas allows 19.8 yards per game, which is eighth in the NFL and 18 places higher than last season when the Raiders gave up a 24.6 average.

## STOCK DOWN
CB Jack Jones has been a big part of the defense's late-season improvement, but he made two critical mistakes against the Colts. The most egregious was an offside on a missed 50-yard field goal by the Colts that would've kept the Raiders within a touchdown. A second attempt from 45 yards gave Indianapolis a two-possession lead with 3:15 left. Jones also was called for pass interference on a deep throw on third down.

## INJURIES
RB Josh Jacobs (quadriceps) has missed the past three games and TE Michael Mayer (toe) has sat out two straight.

## KEY NUMBER
19 - The Raiders have missed the playoffs that many times in the past 21 seasons.

## NEXT STEPS
Conclude the season by hosting the Broncos on Sunday.