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(WASHINGTON) — This year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, an erstwhile cross section of the GOP that has turned into a major staging ground for the party’s MAGA grassroots, is set to kick off in full force on Thursday.

The four-day conference, which formally started on Wednesday before big events begin Thursday, is expected to continue its relatively new legacy of vociferous support for former President Donald Trump and opposition toward his perceived enemies, both within and outside the Republican Party.

This year’s gathering is taking place in an election year when Trump looks set to coast to his third straight GOP nomination while promising “retribution” — and weighing who he might pick to join him on the Republican ticket this November.

All the while, the conference, much like the party, is delving into the nation’s culture wars.

Here are three things to watch at this year’s CPAC, which is set to attract notable names beyond Trump himself:

How much ‘retribution’ do Republicans want?

Trump vowed to Republicans at a rally in Waco, Texas, last year that he would be “your retribution” — a position he has since echoed and also sought to downplay.

But many of his supporters have sounded eager for him to make good on his promise, though it’s unclear how much revenge they’re looking for, either inside the GOP or in the federal government, if Trump is elected again.

Trump will speak to the crowd on Saturday, and the schedule is packed with his allies. Their remarks could help illuminate how much they and the base want to punish Democrats or government bureaucrats whom Trump has derided as the “deep state,” should Trump retake the White House later this year.

Already, the former president has expressed interest in firing swaths of the government’s career civil servants, falsely accusing them of broadly undermining his agenda while he was in office. He’s also floated going after President Joe Biden in retaliation for some of the criminal charges he faces, indictments that were brought by independent prosecutors but that he and his followers claim were politically motivated. He has pleaded not guilty.

CPAC in recent years has bragged about not inviting Sen. Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential nominee-turned-Trump critic, and speaker slots in recent years have been reserved for those allied with the former president.

Now, the conference is taking place after Trump dispatched with a slate of primary challengers, none of whom came particularly close to supplanting him atop the polls or as de facto GOP leader.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who suspended his own presidential campaign after running as a Trump cheerleader, is the only other former candidate taking the stage.

A spate of vice president auditions

With Trump cruising to victory in the initial nominating races in states like Iowa and Nevada, increased attention is being paid to who could join him on the 2024 GOP ticket — and many of the would-be contenders are slated to speak at CPAC in the next few days.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik (a member of her party’s House leadership) and Ohio Sen. JD Vance are among those speaking at CPAC who are thought to be in the vice-presidential conversation.

The conference marks one of the first cattle calls where multiple would-be running mates are in attendance, marking CPAC as an audition of sorts in front of the heart of Trump’s base.

CPAC is also including a vice presidential question on its straw poll for the first time in at least 10 years.

It’s not clear yet who will be featured in the non-scientific survey.

Picking battles in the culture war

Republicans in Washington are in the middle of a slew of policy debates, from Ukraine aid to government funding to the country’s spying powers. But if this year’s CPAC reflects the way the conference has gone in recent years, there will be an intense focus on culture war issues that reflect some of the base’s priorities.

Though there will certainly be discussions on foreign aid and abortion, among other things, the conference is also stocked with panels addressing the right’s grievance on issues like education and more, including talks on “Would Moses Go To Harvard?”, “Trump’s Wall Vs. Biden’s Gaps” and “Putting Our Heads in the Gas Stove,” referencing the often-cited and hyperbolic GOP complaint that Democrats are pushing families to use electric stoves.

CPAC this year chose Ramaswamy to headline its vaunted Ronald Reagan Dinner — which, if similar to the way Ramaswamy ran his presidential campaign, will focus on a potential wholesale revamp of the federal government and what he calls the disintegration of the family unit in America.

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(NEW YORK) — John McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain rejected Kari Lake’s offer on Wednesday to meet one-on-one after Lake claimed that disparaging comments she previously made about the late senator during her failed gubernatorial run in 2022 were “said in jest.”

Lake, a former TV reporter-turned-vocal ally of former President Donald Trump, who notably feuded with John McCain, said after winning the Republican nomination to be Arizona’s governor in 2022 that she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine,” referring to the family’s roots in the state.

But now, as she campaigns to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate, Lake’s tone and strategy are shifting, a change she has suggested is in the interest of getting things done.

“I’d love nothing more than to buy you a beer, a coffee or lunch and pick your brain about how we can work together to strengthen our state,” she wrote Wednesday in a 225-word public post to Meghan McCain. “My team is sending you my contact info — if you’re willing to meet, it would mean a lot to me.”

Lake’s appeal comes after she told Arizona’s KTAR on Monday that her past comments about John McCain, such as her telling McCain supporters to “get the hell out” of an event in December 2021, were meant as a joke.

“I think that if John McCain, who had a great sense of humor, would have heard it, he would have laughed,” Lake told hosts Barry Markson and Bruce St. James.

She also said Republicans “need to get a little bit thicker skin because we’re going through some tough stuff right now and we need to be able to take a joke,” before the hosts asked her — in that spirit — to unblock them on X.

Meghan McCain, a former co-host of ABC’s The View, rejected Lake’s answer.

“Kari Lake is trying to walk back her continued attacks on my Dad (& family) and all of his loyal supporters after telling them to ‘get the hell out,'” McCain wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. “Guess she realized she can’t become a Senator without us.”

“We see you for who you are – and are repulsed by it,” she added.

Lake’s lengthy post, in turn, sought to appeal to Meghan McCain by noting they’re both mothers and both lost their fathers to cancer.

“Our movement to save Arizona & America is growing, and it’s Mama Bears like us who are leading the charge — ALL Moms want the same thing: to leave our children a better America than the one we had. It’s as simple as that,” she wrote.

“I want to make Senator McCain and Larry Lake proud,” she continued — before Meghan McCain bluntly dismissed her offer to meet.

“NO PEACE, B—-!” she wrote, in a post that was shared by Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison.

Later, Meghan McCain also posted: “I breathe fire for my family and never forgive those who have trashed any of us – particularly my Dad in death. Never.”

Markson, one of the KTAR hosts who interviewed Lake, questioned afterward why the likely Republican nominee for Senate “won’t just admit she was wrong and apologize.”

“Kari was a friend of the McCains, a close friend of the family, yet she had no problem attacking John McCain over and over, and she even attacked Cindy McCain in her recent book,” Markson wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Lake, in an interview in July 2022, accused John McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, of running a scheme to promote a “globalist” agenda.

“This is the Cindy McCain branch of the Republican Party. They’re not Republicans. … I think they want an end to America,” Lake said at the time.

Her new outreach to Meghan McCain appears to be part of a larger trend of her attempting to mend relationships with so-called “establishment Republicans” she torched during her unsuccessful gubernatorial run.

Asked Tuesday on KTAR if she’d won back over any of those Republicans, Lake said she’s having conversations “that would shock you.”

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(SAN FRANCISCO) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB,” while also taking a shot at former President Donald Trump for comparing his legal woes to the persecution of Alexei Navalny who died in a Russian jail this week.

“He’s comparing himself to Navalny and saying that he – because our country has become a communist country… [is being] persecuted just like Navalny [was] persecuted,” Biden said of Trump.

“Where the hell does this come from? If I stood here 10-15 years ago you all would have thought that I should be committed,” Biden continued, adding that Trump’s comment was “astounding.”

Biden was speaking at a big-dollar fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday as part of a three-day California fundraising swing that began in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

While speaking, Biden had choice words for Putin, though he said climate change is humanity’s biggest threat, according to reporters in the room.

“We have a crazy SOB, that guy Putin, others, and we always have to be worried about a nuclear conflict. But the existential threat to humanity is climate,” Biden told a gathering of about 20 deep-pocket donors.

Biden’s remarks at the fundraiser were heavily focused on climate change and the work his administration has done to fight it.

The White House on Tuesday said that the U.S. would announce a “major sanctions” package against Russia in response to Navalny’s death, which Biden has blamed on Putin.

“Whatever story the Russian government decides to tell the world, it’s clear that President Putin and his government are responsible for Mr. Navalny’s death,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

Trump on Monday wrote on his social media platform, in his first comments since the leading dissident’s death, “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.” He added that his political and legal opponents are “leading us down a path to destruction.”

The next day, Trump doubled down on the comparison in a televised town hall-style interview on Fox News. 

“It’s a form of Navalny,” Trump said in reference to his legal challenges.

In recent weeks, Biden has sharpened his attacks against rival Trump as his campaign pivots to November’s general election.

“You got to prevent this other guy from being president,” Biden said of Trump at the fundraiser. “He’s made it absolutely clear everything you’ve done, everything we’ve done, he’s against.”

While making a joke about his age, “I know I don’t look it. I’m only 40. Forgive me, lord,” Biden also questioned the “moral compass” of the “MAGA Republican crowd,” saying he’s seen nothing like it, though he’s “been around a long time.”

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(WASHINGTON) — “Absolutely none” of the Republican National Committee’s funds will be used to pay former President Donald Trump’s multimillion-dollar stack of legal bills, a senior Trump campaign adviser insisted to ABC News as the former president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, says that “every penny” of the party’s funds should be prioritized toward his reelection.

“Every penny will go to making sure Donald Trump will be the 47th president, to ensuring that we have great candidates to expand our lead in the House and to take back the Senate,” Lara Trump, who was recently endorsed by the former president to head the RNC as co-chair, said to ABC News after her first surrogate event in South Carolina on Wednesday.

Later, at another event, Lara Trump told reporters that among her key roles as the RNC’s co-chair would be to “raise a ton of money,” saying, “We have to have a huge fundraising push.”

When pressed on whether any of RNC money would go toward covering Trump’s legal bills, she remained noncommittal: “I actually don’t know where they stand on that.”

Asked if she would support the RNC paying Donald Trump’s legal bills, Lara Trump said she believes “his legal bills have already been covered at this point” — citing a GoFundMe page set up by Trump supporters upset about his many court battles.

“They can see just how egregious and outrageous all of this is that he has to deal with,” she contended.

Donald Trump faces 91 criminal charges and has pleaded not guilty, along with other civil matters. He denies all wrongdoing.

Trump campaign officials say that instead of the RNC footing his legal bills, the candidate’s fundraising entities, including the leadership PAC Save America as well as Donald Trump himself, will continue to cover the costs.

Earlier this month, amid reporting that RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel discussed stepping down with the former president, he endorsed North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley as the new chair of the national party and said he would support Lara Trump as the co-chair, with his senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita as the chief operating officer — growing evidence of the Trump campaign pushing for the party’s national leadership to largely merge their operations ahead of the election.

Lara Trump on Wednesday praised McDaniel for her work as RNC chairwoman but said “it’s time for change” and that she believes McDaniel acknowledges that too. The RNC has said that its leadership will be resolved after the South Carolina presidential primary on Saturday.

“I think that fresh eyes are always good on a situation,” Lara Trump said. “I think Ronna has been there for a while and I think she probably herself feels like it’s time for a new chapter and time to pass on the torch.”

The former president’s various court battles have cost his various political fundraising committees more than $50 million in legal expenditures throughout last year and another $2.9 million just in January — amid growing questions about whether the Republican Party committee would begin to foot any of his bills again with donor money if the party unites its fundraising operation with his campaign.

Both the RNC and the Trump campaign have also been in something of a cash crunch as they ramp up for the 2024 general election, while President Joe Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee’s joint fundraising operation — because Biden is not facing the same kind of contested primary as Trump — boasts a $130 million war chest entering February.

A former RNC member who spoke with ABC News anonymously in order to share their candid thoughts on a potential merge between the RNC and Trump campaign operation said they thought that rather than any significant shift in spending from a reorganized national party, the focus of new leadership would be on bolstering fundraising efforts.

When asked what they thought about Lara Trump’s comments that “every penny” should go toward her father-in-law, this former member said that, historically, most of the budget has already gone toward the presidential race and that the party would likely be unable “to get away” from their assistance to certain House and Senate races.

“I would say 75% of the [budget] is for the presidential,” the former member said. “I would say that the other part of the role of the RNC is to be in direct support of the parties that have targeted races in their states … I don’t see how the RNC is going to get away from that.”

Earlier this week, LaCivita, with fellow senior Trump campaign adviser Susie Wiles, wrote in a memo that the campaign and the RNC should join forces so they can begin coordinating “convention planning, fundraising, strategy, and state party tactics” with two other Republican campaign groups in preparation for the general election.

Several state party chairs from battleground states, who asked not to be named because of their roles, along with GOP congressional strategists who spoke with ABC News agreed that they were not concerned about an overhauled RNC’s disinvestment in their states or in key races.

Some of the most competitive House and Senate races are in California, Michigan and New York, where the RNC already has a robust ground game operation.

Lara Trump said on Wednesday that her priorities to revamp the RNC would include bolstering its organizing on the ground, increasing voter registration efforts and “legal ballot harvesting all across the country.”

Questions around the RNC’s potential new leadership and its spending stem from the party committee’s history of footing Donald Trump and his allies’ legal bills throughout multiple courtroom issues over the years.

During his presidency, the RNC covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills on behalf of Donald Trump Jr. and other close allies of the former president; and between 2021 and 2022, the RNC spent nearly $2 million in bills for Donald Trump related to investigations in New York.

That spending was approved by a vote of the RNC’s Executive Committee, per a party resolution adopted in 2009.

That same resolution would require that any significant contributions to Donald Trump’s future legal bills be considered beyond just the top rungs of RNC leadership.

Legal contributions to the former president have long been a divisive subject among some Republican supporters — with some major longtime donors even halting their contributions to the RNC.

Trump primary rival Nikki Haley has attacked the push to have Lara Trump become party co-chair, saying on ABC’s This Week that “We don’t anoint kings in America. … He’s trying to control the RNC.”

During the 2022 midterms, ABC News reported that some leaders of the RNC attempted to use legal bills as a leverage to delay Donald Trump’s announcement of his third presidential bid as they worried he could hurt their election chances if he announced too soon.

Both he and McDaniel denied the story at the time, but he eventually launched his third presidential bid after the 2022 midterms.

The RNC continued to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills related to Donald Trump up until his announcement of 2024 candidacy, including nearly $200,000 paid to attorneys representing him in criminal cases in New York.

The RNC could not be reached by ABC News for comment on their contributions to Trump’s past legal bills.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is addressing former President Donald Trump’s mocking jabs at her husband, Maj. Michael Haley, who is serving a one-year deployment overseas in the South Carolina National Guard.

In a new interview with ABC News’ co-anchor Eva Pilgrim, Nikki Haley discussed the comments about her husband from the former president, suggesting they were offensive to military families across the country.

“It’s not personal for me and Michael; we can handle that,” Haley told Pilgrim on Wednesday. “It’s personal when you think of military families. They go through a lot. They don’t complain.”

Haley’s husband, who was deployed last year to Africa, was recently targeted by Trump, who seemingly implied during a campaign event in Conway, South Carolina, earlier this month that he is in Africa to get away.

“What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone. He knew. He knew,” Trump said then.

He later doubled down on singling out Haley’s husband, saying, “I think he should come back home to help save her dying campaign.”

“And so, for someone to mock or make light of that, it cuts deep no matter what because military families, military spouses and their kids go through so much during this deployment,” Nikki Haley told Pilgrim on Wednesday. “Don’t make light of that.”

In her interview, Haley also reflected on her 26-year marriage to her husband.

“I’ve never done anything without him, we met when I was 17 … he’s all I ever known,” Haley said. “He’s the last person I think about when I go to bed because safety is front of mind. But also, I’m just grateful for him and so many other men and women who believe our country is worth fighting for.”

Having now run a presidential campaign for a year, Haley said that it has not been easy on her family but they understand the “sacrifice.”

“Our kids know we’re a family of service. They’ve watched their dad get deployed before. They’ve watched me run for office before, and they know this is all about sacrifice and service,” she said. “And so, I’m incredibly proud of Michael [and] I’m incredibly proud of the kids and how they continue to just stay humble and true to themselves.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden touted a new pathway for debt relief that kicked into gear Wednesday for 153,000 student loan borrowers, calling it a ticket to “chase dreams” in a speech in Culver City, California, and highlighting a key part of his 2024 campaign strategy.

“Folks, I’m happy to have been able to forgive these loans because when we realize and relieve Americans of their student debt, they’re free to chase their dreams,” Biden told a small group gathered at Julian Dixon Public Library.

The debt relief announced Wednesday is for those enrolled in a new student debt repayment plan rolled out this past fall, who took out a small initial balance and have been paying it down for a decade or longer.

“This action will be a huge help to graduates of community college and borrowers with smaller loans, putting them back on track faster for debt forgiveness than ever before,” Biden said.

The Department of Education has estimated that 85% of community college students would be debt free within 10 years if they enrolled in the new plan, called SAVE.

Roughly 7.5 million people are currently enrolled in SAVE so far, so the roughly 150,000 people who qualify equates to only 2% of all enrollees. Another four million people in the SAVE Plan have also had their monthly payments reduced to $0 a month because their incomes are below minimum wage.

The plan also shields borrowers from unpaid interest accrual, one of the largest additional fees that borrowers face on their loans, because unpaid interest is forgiven so long as qualified borrowers make their monthly payments on the loan itself — even if their required payment is $0.

Starting this summer, the plan will also cut down the amount that borrowers have to make on their monthly payments by half — from 10% of their discretionary income to 5%.

“This plan is the most generous repayment program ever and today we’re doing it even faster and quicker than ever before,” Biden said.

College debt is a major 2024 campaign issue for young voters, and many were left disappointed when Biden couldn’t follow through on his pledge to cancel $10,000 to $20,000 in debt last year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his sweeping debt relief policy.

Biden’s continued efforts to cancel debt in a more piecemeal fashion have now reached nearly 3.9 million borrowers, which he continues to highlight on the campaign trail in an attempt to gain support from a key voting group.

“This is the kind of relief that can be life changing for individuals and for their families. And it’s good for the economy as a whole. By freeing millions of Americans from the crushing debt of student loan programs it means they can finally get on with their lives instead of getting their lives being put on hold,” Biden said on Wednesday.

Some of the other approaches the Biden administration has taken on debt relief include fixing programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness and income-driven repayment plans, or going after colleges that have defrauded students.

And the administration is continuing to work on a plan B to Biden’s initial debt relief proposal that was rejected by the Supreme Court, taking a narrower approach that could cancel debt for people most constrained by it.

The administration hopes this more bureaucratic approach will not be overturned by the court yet again — though borrowers should be cognizant that it is almost certain to face lawsuits once it reaches its final stages this summer.

The number of borrowers who may receive student loan debt forgiveness under the new policy proposal is vast: it could range from automatic cancellation for people who are on the edge of defaulting on their loans in the near future to application-based relief that could be used on more individualized cases, like people who are struggling to pay down their debts because of costs like health care or housing.

But it doesn’t stop there. Other factors include looking at the amount borrowers are paying toward their student loans compared to how much money borrowers have, including income and assets, as well as loans they have outside of higher education and whether they’ve been able to pay those down.

The department also wants to look at whether borrowers received a Pell Grant, designed for low-income college students, and whether they use any other government support programs.

Other aspects of the proposal, which are less sweeping but had been discussed in the past three monthly meetings held by the Department of Education, focus on borrowers who have more debt now than they initially took out, have loans that they first took out over 25 years ago, have large loans from schools that provided insufficient career advancement opportunities and who qualify for debt relief already under programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness or income-driven repayment plans — but haven’t received it.

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