Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Businesman Bernie Moreno handily won Ohio’s GOP Senate primary, scoring a win for him and former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Moreno’s bid and campaigned with him in the race’s final stretch.

Trump and President Joe Biden, meanwhile, coasted in presidential primaries held in five states Tuesday, though lingering signs remained of some disgruntled voters in each party.

And several House matchups were cemented Tuesday after key primaries determined who the parties’ nominees will be.

Here are three takeaways from Tuesday’s results:

Moreno runs away with Ohio GOP Senate nomination

Ohio’s GOP Senate primary was a nail-biter for much of the year, with the race’s final weeks devolving into an ugly barroom brawl.

Polls had shown a tight race throughout, with strategists predicting a narrow Moreno win, given his personal wealth and Trump endorsement, against state Sen. Matt Dolan, who dumped much of his own fortune into the race, outspending both Moreno and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who just couldn’t keep up financially.

In the end, though, Moreno outperformed even the rosiest of public polls and strategists’ predictions of roughly a five-point win.

With three-fourths of the estimated vote in, Moreno hovered around 50%, with Dolan trailing at about 33%. LaRose was stuck at just over 17%.

The win underscored the power of Trump’s endorsement, which was highlighted by a Saturday rally in Dayton, and the waning influence of the GOP’s more traditional flank.

Dolan said during the campaign he supported Trump’s policies but was more circumspect on the former president himself, declining to explicitly endorse his comeback White House bid. He also earned the endorsements of popular Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and former Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, two lawmakers more aligned with the GOP establishment.

Moreno’s campaign, aided by Trump’s endorsement, was able to combat an avalanche of spending from Dolan, including attacks that he was a “phony,” as well as an unflattering article about an online account for an adult website set up with an email address linked to Moreno’s business.

The article never explicitly linked Moreno himself to the account; Moreno denied the connection, and his lawyer provided a statement from a former intern who said it was a prank. 

Dolan conceded the impact of Trump’s support on the race Tuesday, dubbing his endorsement for Moreno “a key factor for Bernie winning.”

Operatives warned against reading the race too much as a proxy war — but only because there are so few other battlegrounds left, given Trump’s dominance.

“For it to be really part of a broader proxy world would require there to be a living, breathing, moderate George W. Bush, John McCain wing of the party that still existed. While Dolan embodies that and collects that sort of disparate piece of the electorate, I don’t think it suggests there’s a proxy war because there isn’t a broader national fight between those two camps going on,” said one strategist involved in the race. “That fight has been put to bed for a couple of cycles.”

Moreno will now face Sen. Sherrod Brown, D, a three-term senator with a pre-Trump era reputation as a populist and working-class advocate.

Democrats appeared to prefer a Brown run against Moreno, running ads hamming the businessman as conservative and pro-Trump — seemingly to boost his bona fides with the conservative and pro-Trump primary electorate.

Still, Brown will face stiff headwinds running in a state that has veered to the right in recent years and handed Trump roughly eight-point wins in 2016 and 2020.

Trump and Biden coast, with room for consolidation

Both Trump and Biden coasted in their respective parties’ primaries across Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio.

Trump won over three-quarters of the vote in each state, and Biden clinched at least 80% in all five, solidifying the next step on their marches to their party nominations.

Still, each candidate had room left to grow their support.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race earlier this month while some states held early voting, earned around 15% in the Republican primaries in many states.

In Ohio, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., took 13% in the Democratic primary, and “none of the names shown” drew 10% of the vote in Kansas.

The vote shares for the others weren’t massive, but they did follow trends for each party.

Toward the end of her campaign and after she dropped out, Haley was able to garner as much as a quarter of the GOP primary vote, though exit polls have suggested many of those votes could have come from independent or even Democratic voters.

And in Michigan, over 100,000 voters backed “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary as a protest vote against Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.

House races set up across the country

While the Ohio Senate race and presidential primaries were in the spotlight, several House primaries helped solidify the electoral landscape in November in the battle for Congress.

In the special election in Ohio’s 6th Congressional District to complete the term of former GOP Rep. Bill Johnson, who retired to become a college president, state Sen. Michael Rulli defeated state Rep. Reggie Stoltzfus and Rick Tsai. Rulli and Stoltzfus ran as staunch conservatives, though Rulli received support from Defending Main Street, the super PAC arm of the more middle-ground Republican Main Street Partnership.

In Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, which is represented by Democrat Marcy Kaptur but also voted for Trump in 2020, state Rep. Derek Merrin won the GOP primary after receiving support from Republicans in Washington against former state Rep. Craig Riedel, who has been attacked over a resurfaced video of him criticizing Trump.

Illinois’ 7th Congressional District is set to send 82-year-old Rep. Danny Davis back to the House after he fended off Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and activist Kina Collins in the Democratic primary there. Conyears-Ervin was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union and Collins has several allies in the activist community, with the race largely revolving around Davis’ age and calls for a generational change in leadership.

In the state’s 12th Congressional District, Rep. Mike Bost held a single-digit lead over Darren Bailey, a former state lawmaker and failed 2022 gubernatorial nominee. Bailey ran on hard-line views on issues like abortion and had the endorsement of Rep. Matt Gaetz, R.-Fla. Bost boasts a conservative voting record and ran with Trump’s endorsement.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The special primary election to succeed former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy unfolded on Tuesday in California’s 20th Congressional District.

ABC News projects that State Assemblyman Vince Fong will advance to the special general election in May.

The race will fill a critical vacancy for Republicans who are already dancing on the knife’s edge of a microscopic majority in the House.

The special election, open to all registered voters in the district, is set to determine who will finish the remainder of McCarthy’s term. He left Congress at the end of December.

Fong, endorsed by McCarthy and former President Donald Trump, and Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux had established themselves as the front-runner candidates in the special primary.

Nine candidates were on the ballot.

Back in Washington, a runoff could prove frustrating to congressional Republicans, who have recently faced a wave of high-profile retirements, including McCarthy and, more recently, Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, who announced that he would leave the House at the end of the week.

Currently, Republicans can only afford to lose two members of their conference on any party-line vote on legislation.

As of Tuesday’s election, five House Republicans, including Buck, had resigned or been removed from office during this Congress.

Beyond McCarthy’s seat, two other Republican vacancies remain unfilled and one of those five overall seats, formerly held by expelled New York Rep. George Santos, is now held by Democrat Tom Suozzi, leaving Republicans with 219 seats to Democrats’ 213.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden made a campaign swing through battlegrounds Nevada and Arizona on Tuesday in which he touted his administration’s accomplishments and drew contrasts with what his campaign calls “Trump’s anti-Latino agenda.”

Before traveling to Arizona, Biden spoke with local leaders and volunteers in Reno, Nevada, at the Washoe County Democrats’ office where he highlighted job creation and health care.

“We’ve already created tens of thousands of good paying jobs,” Biden said. “Right here in this state as well, by the way, clean jobs, jobs, clean energy jobs. Trump lost millions of jobs, millions when he was president.”

Asked if Americans could expect to again see COVID-era child tax credits, Biden responded, “We’re gonna bring back the child tax credit to cut child poverty in half.”

The event was part of the Biden-Harris campaign’s “I’m on Board” month of action, designed to engage and mobilize voters and volunteers, in which the president, vice president, first lady, and second gentleman are expected to visit every battleground state.

In Las Vegas, Biden spoke about his administration’s efforts to tackle the issue of affordable housing, discussing a provision in his budget proposal that would help build and renovate more than two million homes to reduce costs.

“What my dad used to always say was, the way you build equity in your home was the way you build wealth. So that when you build enough equity in your home, then you have enough money to borrow to get something new and move, and so on,” he said. “And that’s how everybody makes it — everybody, middle-class makes it.”

“We know affordability for housing is a key challenge in Nevada, and it’s one in which the president’s agenda will really help address” a senior administration official said in a call with reporters on Monday.

Later, in Arizona, Biden was scheduled to stop at a Mexican restaurant in South Phoenix to launch a national organizing program called “Latinos con Biden-Harris,” in another effort to mobilize Latino voters ahead of the general election.

Throughout the week, Latinos Con Biden-Harris was holding organizing events, trainings and house parties in Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

“The Latino vote was critical to the President’s victory in 2020, and 2024 will be no different,” said campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, in a press release. “Latinos con Biden-Harris will be essential to activating and mobilizing Latinos across the country, and importantly, is another way we are making clear with action that we are investing aggressively into earning the Latino vote.”

The Biden-Harris campaign launched its “first Latino creative” as a part of a previously announced $30 million paid media buy for spring. The ad, titled “Only One Choice” or “Una Opción,” is a direct-to-camera video from Biden, which will run in English, Spanish, and Spanglish.

Biden spoke to Hispanic Radio stations Tuesday to outline his administration’s efforts to address the needs of Latino communities and slammed former President Donald Trump over his immigration policy, claiming Trump “despises” Latinos.

Trump claims he is gaining support among Latinos.

“He separated kids and parents at the border, and encaged children. Planning mass deportations of literally several million people who are here in the country. Several million people. And he wants to end birthright citizenship. I mean, this guy despises Latinos,” Biden told host Univision host Raúl Moinar.

Biden claimed in the interview with Nueva Network that he wants to allow immigrants to come into the country in an “orderly way” and Republicans are trying to “block” that.

“…We are a nation of immigrants. That’s who we are, from my Irish ancestors to your Hispanic ancestors,” Biden told Nueva Network’s Alex Lucas. “And so, what we might want to do is allow them to continue to come into the country in an orderly way … And what Republicans are trying to do is block all that.”

Biden called out Trump’s weekend comments stating some immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally are “not people” but “animals.”

“But here’s the thing I want to stop. Trump this Saturday, called migrants … he said they’re ‘not people’,” Biden said in an interview with Univision Radio. “He says immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of this country,’ separated children from parents at the border, caged the kids, planned mass deportations systems, tens of thousands of people here and wants to end birthright citizenship. I mean, we have to stop this guy. We can’t let this happen. We are a nation of immigrants.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — While voting in Florida on Tuesday, in the presidential primary, former President Donald Trump was joined in a rare appearance by wife Melania Trump as he slammed the jail sentence of Peter Navarro, a former adviser, said he “couldn’t care less” about his former Vice President Mike Pence, and reiterated why he thinks Jewish Americans shouldn’t vote for Democrats.

“I voted for Donald Trump,” he said as he walked away laughing after speaking with reporters outside of the polling location not far from his Mar-a-Lago home.

Earlier, as he entered the polling site, Trump was asked if the Supreme Court should’ve intervened and kept Navarro, who is serving four months, out of prison.

Navarro was convicted in September of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to provide testimony and documents to the House committee that first investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump on Tuesday called his jail sentence “a disgrace” and his unsuccessful legal battle “a shame.”

“Peter was treated very unfairly, a great patriot,” Trump said when asked if he’d pardon Navarro if he is elected again to the White House.

Trump denied any knowledge of whether his convicted former campaign manager Paul Manafort will be joining his 2024 bid, simply saying that he’s another person who was “treated badly.”

“I don’t know anything about it. … But we’ll see what happens with that,” Trump said.

Asked by ABC News what his reaction is to Pence refusing to endorse him, Trump said, “I couldn’t care less.”

“We need strong people in this country. We don’t need weak people,” he said.

Melania Trump, appearing alongside her husband, teased whether or not she will make campaign appearances with the former president.

“Stay tuned,” she said.

Donald Trump on Tuesday also railed against his New York civil fraud case when asked if he’d be able to pay an approximately $460 million bond as he pursues an appeal of the ruling against him.

“This was a rigged trial,” he claimed, which prosecutors have denied.

“We’ll see how the courts rule on it,” he said.

Trump also doubled down on his comments about why Jewish Americans shouldn’t support Democrats, including by attacking Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whom he said had been a “disgrace on Israel.”

In a radio interview on Monday, echoing previous comments, Trump had said that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats — amid Israel’s war against Hamas and other tensions in the Middle East — “hate” their religion and Israel and that they “should be ashamed of themselves.”

“I think that the Democrats have been very, very opposed to Jewish people,” Trump argued on Tuesday.

President Joe Biden’s campaign has pushed back, saying in a statement, in part: “The only person who should be ashamed here is Donald Trump.”

And asked on Tuesday about a possible national 15-week abortion ban, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about that soon.”

Pressed again on the timeline, though, Trump dodged.

He also again made claims about immigrants who are in the country illegally and said he will deport them if he’s president while not explaining how he would conduct such “mass deportation.”

Separately, in a British TV interview also on Tuesday, Trump sounded off on multiple subjects including the controversy sparked when Kate Middleton apologized for sharing an edited photo of her with her kids.

“Everybody doctors,” Trump said on GB News, adding, “I don’t understand why there could be such a howl over that.”

He also said he’s a “big fan of the concept of the royal family,” repeatedly praising the late Queen Elizabeth.

Trump also praised King Charles, calling him a “wonderful guy” and saying they “got along” even though Charles “was a little bit more into environmental restriction than I am.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday filed a brief with the Supreme Court making his formal argument for why he should be granted absolute presidential immunity from criminal prosecution — asking the justices to dismiss a four-count federal indictment over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election that he lost.

The high court will hear oral arguments on the matter on April 25.

“The President cannot function, and the Presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the President faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in their opening brief to the high court in U.S. v. Trump.

“Denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future President with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents,” they argued. “The threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would become a political cudgel to influence the most sensitive and controversial Presidential decisions, taking away the strength, authority, and decisiveness of the Presidency.”

Similar to arguments made in lower courts, which were unsuccessful, Trump contended that presidential immunity flows from the Constitution’s Executive Vesting Clause and the separation of powers.

While a unanimous appeals court panel resoundingly rejected the claim, Trump again implored the justices to adopt the view that only a president convicted by the Senate following impeachment proceedings could be criminally prosecuted.

“The Constitution authorizes the criminal prosecution of a former President, but it builds in a formidable structural check against politically motivated prosecutions by requiring a majority of the House and a supermajority of the Senate to authorize such a dramatic action,” Trump’s team wrote. “The Founders thus carefully balanced the public interest in ensuring accountability for Presidential wrongdoing against the mortal danger to our system of government presented by political targeting of the Chief Executive.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case further delays Trump’s prosecution. Special counsel Jack Smith brought four charges against Trump over his alleged election subversion in 2020 and on Jan. 6, 2021. The former president has pleaded not guilty and denies any wrongdoing.

Smith’s team has been instructed to file their own brief on the matter by April 8.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The FBI is doing everything it can to get “justice” for Laken Riley, the college student who was murdered by a migrant in the country illegally, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the University of Georgia on Tuesday.

Laken Riley, a student at Georgia’s Augusta University, was killed by a migrant who was illegally in the country from Venezuela last month, according to authorities. The 22-year-old was killed while jogging in a park on the University of Georgia campus on Feb. 22.

“I want to tell you how heartbroken I am — not just for the family, friends, classmates, and staff who are grieving Laken’s loss,” Wray said. “But for Augusta University and the entire UGA community, which many members of my own family are a part of. A lot of people — students, alumni, and community members alike — see Athens as a kind of safe haven from what ails so much of the rest of the country.”

Wray went on to say that he is “saddened to see that sense of peace shattered by Laken’s murder and the subsequent arrest of a Venezuelan national who’d illegally entered the country in 2022.”

“We’re doing everything we can to help achieve justice for Laken,” Wray said.

His comments marked the first time Wray had spoken publicly about Riley, whose death has become a rallying cry for immigration reform for many conservatives.

During President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last month, he engaged in an ad-libbed exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., after she called out from the chamber about Riley’s death. Many Republicans have claimed Biden and administration officials have avoided saying her name so as not to highlight the crime and the suspect.

Biden called her “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal.”

During his remarks, Wray also mentioned the six officers in Mississippi who were found guilty of “heinous” crimes targeting two Black men — including handcuffing, beating, kicking victims, staging a fake execution and discharging a weapon breaking one defendant’s jaw. The officers also “bombarded them” with racial slurs, Wray said.

The officers were sentenced Tuesday to a total of 16 charges related to the January 2023 torture of the men.

“Without a warrant or any exigent circumstances, the six of them kicked in the door of a home where two Black men were staying and subjected them to an hour and a half of pure hell,” Wray said. “Can you imagine the abject terror those two victims must have felt? I mean, who do you call when the police are the ones terrorizing you?”

Wray said that instead of rendering aid, the officers came up with a “cover story.” He said the case is an example of “holding the powerful” accountable.

“It’s hard to imagine a more atrocious set of civil rights violations than those carried out by these guys,” he said.

Wray said holding law enforcement and elected accountable is a core tenant of the bureau’s work.

“When someone decides the office they hold places them above the law, it’s often the bureau’s job to make sure they’re held accountable,” he said. “Now again, many public servants working at all levels of government are honest and dedicated people who strive to do the right thing for their constituents and their country. Unfortunately, there are also public officials who are only concerned with serving a very specific constituency: themselves.”

Wray said that public corruption strikes at the “very heart of government.”

“It eats away at public confidence and undermines the strength of our democracy — and public corruption is not limited to crooked politicians who get caught with their hands in the till,” Wray said.

“It can affect everything from how well our borders are secured and our neighborhoods are protected, to how verdicts are handed down in courtrooms and how roads and schools are built and it can take a significant toll on the public’s wallet by siphoning off tax dollars. In fact, estimates put the cost of public corruption to the U.S. government and the American public at billions of dollars every year,” Wray added.

When talking about the FBI’s broad authority and power, he said it is important they hold themselves to the highest standard.

“Uncle Ben from Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man is credited with saying that ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ So while that authority and power are necessary for the FBI to do our job, they also come with an enormous amount of responsibility — and in turn, close scrutiny. And that’s how it should be.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The top two military leaders who oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 are testifying Tuesday afternoon before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a hearing meant to assess the Biden administration’s role in the chaos that unfolded at the end of the America’s longest war.

One of those leaders is Gen. Mark Milley, who retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last September. He is likely to face tough questions from Republican lawmakers on the panel — reflecting how the withdrawal has become a persistent part of conservative criticism of the White House.

Milley told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz in a 2023 interview that he had “lots of regrets” about how the 20-year conflict concluded.

“In the broader sense, the war was lost,” he said then.

The second senior military leader testifying before the committee is Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who was the top U.S. general in the Middle East during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

McKenzie has also expressed regrets — in particular over not having earlier evacuated embassy staff, U.S. citizens and Afghans seeking escape as the Taliban again took over the country.

In August 2021, the U.S. military and State Department scrambled to evacuate some 124,000 embassy personnel, Americans and at-risk Afghans following the Taliban’s swift march to the capital of Kabul, facing relatively little opposition from Afghan forces or its national government, which swiftly collapsed.

The evacuation efforts were centered on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

On Aug. 26, an ISIS-K terrorist detonated a suicide bomb at the Abbey Gate of the airport, killing 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans.

Gold Star families of several of the U.S. service members killed in that attack are present for Tuesday’s hearing.

“I’m humbled to be here today with three Gold Star families from Abbey Gate, and I know the other families couldn’t make it, but I intend to contact them in the coming weeks,” Milley said in his opening remarks before the committee. “They know that there are no words by me or any general or any politician or anyone that can ever bring back their fallen.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court has rejected a Biden administration request to intervene and keep Texas’s strict immigration enforcement law, known as SB 4, on hold while it is challenged in lower courts.

The law would authorize local and state law enforcement to arrest migrants they suspect crossed into the state illegally. It would also also give judges the power to order migrants to be transported to a port of entry and returned to Mexico regardless of their country of origin.

The Biden administration has argued that immigration law is solely the responsibility of the federal government, and not local jurisdictions, as laid out in the Constitution.

“This Court has long recognized that the regulation of entry and removal of noncitizens is inseparably intertwined with the conduct of foreign relations and thus vested ‘solely in the Federal Government,'” the administration wrote in a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month.

Texas, meanwhile, has argued that it is within its rights to arrest migrants because SB 4 is applicable under the State War Clause of the Constitution, which allows states to act when it is “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott reacted to the decision on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, saying it was “clearly a positive development.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said Tuesday the decision “invites further chaos and crisis in immigration enforcement.”

“Texas can now immediately enforce its own law imposing criminal liability on thousands of noncitizens and requiring their removal to Mexico,” Sotomayor wrote. “This law will disrupt sensitive foreign relations, frustrate the protection of individuals fleeing persecution, hamper active federal enforcement efforts, undermine federal agencies’ ability to detect and monitor imminent security threats, and deter noncitizens from reporting abuse or trafficking.”

“The Court gives a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos, when the only court to consider the law concluded that it is likely unconstitutional,” she continued. “This law implicates serious issues that are subject to ongoing political debate, and Texas’s novel scheme requires careful and reasoned consideration in the courts to determine which provisions may be unconstitutional. Although the Court today expresses no view on whether Texas’s law is constitutional, and instead defers to a lower court’s management of its docket, the Court of Appeals abused its discretion by entering an unreasoned and indefinite administrative stay that altered the status quo. This Court stands idle. Because I cannot, I dissent.”

Justice Elena Kagan also filed a short dissent, saying she believes the government has met the standard for a stay of the law pending appeal.

All six of the Court’s conservative justices agreed with the decision to allow SB4 to take effect for now.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said she preferred to allow the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to render judgment first on whether SB 4 should be blocked pending ongoing litigation.

A decision by that court could come any day.

“If a decision does not issue soon, the applicants [the Biden administration] may return to this Court,” Barrett wrote.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro reported to prison on Tuesday, one day after the Supreme Court denied a stay of his sentence.

He was convicted in September of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to provide testimony and documents to the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Navarro spoke Tuesday morning in a strip mall in West Miami near the prison where he will serve four months.

“I will walk proudly in there to do my time,” Navarro said. “I will gather strength from this: Donald John Trump is the nominee.”

Navarro remained defiant as called he the case an “unprecedented assault on the constitutional separation of powers.”

He went on to mention former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s contempt of Congress case and how Bannon was allowed to remain free from prison while he appeals his case.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in a short opinion, wrote Monday that he saw “no reason to disagree” with lower courts, which also rejected Navarro’s request.

Navarro’s appeal on the merits remains pending, but he will have to begin serving his sentence in the meantime.

Navarro was ordered on March 11 to report to prison on Tuesday.

He filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court last week in an attempt to remain out of prison as he works to overturn his conviction.

In testimony during Navarro’s trial, former Jan. 6 committee staff director David Buckley said the House panel had wanted to question Navarro about efforts to delay Congress’ certification of the 2020 election, a plan Navarro dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep” in his book “In Trump Time.”

Navarro unsuccessfully argued that former President Donald Trump had asserted executive privilege over his testimony and document production.

-ABC News’ Devin Dwyer contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Congressional leaders and the White House have reached agreement on how to fund the Department of Homeland Security, one of the last hurdles to prevent an approaching partial government shutdown deadline Friday — but it might not come together in time.

Funding for DHS was the final major sticking point in negotiations for the six spending bills that need to pass to avert a shutdown. The details of the negotiation haven’t yet been released.

The agreement on DHS funding paves the way for lawmakers to start processing the spending package in the hopes of meeting Friday’s deadline to avert a partial government shutdown. A deal has been reached on the remaining six government funding bills, congressional leaders confirmed.

“An agreement has been reached for DHS appropriations, which will allow completion of the FY24 appropriations process,” said Speaker Mike Johnson. “House and Senate committees have begun drafting bill text to be prepared for release and consideration by the full House and Senate as soon as possible.”

But with negotiators still working out the details and legislative text of the full agreement still not out, lawmakers are up against the clock to prevent a shutdown. The House has a rule requiring 72 hours for members to review legislation before voting; the Senate also can take a few days to process House-passed bills. That means a vote may not happen until the end of the week or weekend — increasing the chances of shutdown — unless Johnson speeds up the process.

Another wrinkle: the funding agreement may face pushback from some House GOP hard-liners. The House Freedom Caucus — made up of many of the House’s most conservative members — have urged members of the party to reject the appropriations package “otherwise Republicans will be actively funding Biden’s ‘open borders’ policies” — a reference to the DHS deal, its members said in a letter Monday.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that once Congress approves the package, he “will sign it immediately.”

This shutdown threat has been the latest in a series of challenges for Johnson, whose party maintains a razor-thin margin in the lower chamber.

Congress has nearly shut the government down, at least partially, five times since October. During those votes, Johnson has had to rely on House Democrats’ votes to prevent shutdowns — something that landed his predecessor Kevin McCarthy in hot water with the party and contributed to his ouster last year.

ABC News’ Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.