Politics

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is expected to nominate Gen. “CQ” Brown, current Air Force chief of staff, to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a senior administration official said, elevating the four-star general to be the senior military adviser to the president and White House.

At 61, Charles Quinton Brown Jr. would succeed Gen. Mark Milley as chairman if the Senate confirms him, and would be the second Black Joint Chiefs chairman after Army Gen. Colin Powell. Also, for the first time in history, the Pentagon’s top two leaders, the current secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and the Joint Chiefs chairman, would be Black men.

An Air Force F-16 fighter pilot who became an officer after completing his undergraduate degree in engineering in 1984, Brown rose through the ranks to become a general in 2009. He held senior leadership roles in the Middle East beginning in 2015, and in 2018 took command of Pacific Air Forces, America’s presence in the skies of the Indo-Pacific.

After being nominated by former President Donald Trump in 2020, the Senate confirmed Brown 98-0 to be chief of staff of the Air Force. His nomination now to lead the military’s service chiefs comes as Milley’s tenure comes to a mandated end in September. Milley came to have a notoriously strained relationship with Trump, who had chosen him to be chairman.

As Biden’s senior adviser in uniform, Brown would be called to contend with a growing Chinese military presence where he once led American airmen, the Indo-Pacific.

Heather Wilson, a former congresswoman and secretary of the Air Force who served with Brown, told ABC News his experience in the region makes him a good fit for the moment.

“There is no more important adversary or potential adversary now than China,” she said. “And he has that experience. I think even more than just understanding the strategic landscape of the Pacific, he has started to build relationships with our allies. And one of the things that America has that’s an advantage is that we have allies. China generally does not. Their neighbors are afraid of them.”

Brown’s personal character would be a plus, Wilson said.

“This position, if he’s confirmed, has a role in relationships with our allies in deepening those partnerships of trust. And if there’s one thing CQ Brown has demonstrated it’s that he’s a man that you can trust. And I think that will be very important as we deepen our alliances in the Pacific,” she said.

The threat is different from the one U.S. leaders have come to know in the Middle East, according to Wilson.

“I think that’s a challenge because for the last thirty years, we have really been focusing on terrorist threats all around the world and not necessarily crisis or conflict with a near-peer adversary. That’s different. Particularly, a technologically advanced near-peer adversary. So, he has to think about warfare in all of its domains. When we have not had to do that against ISIS and Al Qaeda,” she said.

Brown, in a video message spread widely in June 2020, reckoned publicly with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, an injustice he felt compelled to discuss as a senior military leader who was often the first or the only Black man in his position. He said his son asked him how the Air Force would respond to Floyd’s killing, and he knew he needed to speak out.

“I’m thinking about how full I am with emotion not just for George Floyd, but the many African Americans that have suffered the same fate as George Floyd,” he said. “I’m thinking about a history of racial issues and my own experiences that didn’t always sing of liberty and equality.”

When Wilson saw the video, she said she “was really proud of him. He had a sense of what airmen needed to hear from him. And as a leader, he was in a unique position to stand up and say so. And – I think – I was really proud of him.”

Wilson pointed to the admission of women to service academies for the first time in 1976 as the sort of breakthrough Brown’s nomination represents.

“I think this country has benefited from that. We have a stronger national defense because you use the gifts that everyone brings to the table,” she said.

Joining ABC’s “GMA3” last February, Brown told ABC News, “You can only aspire to be what you can see. And hopefully by me being in this position, I’ll inspire many young people to open doors for not just in the military, but just really across the country, to be in a great position to — just like this.”

Brown’s “style is different,” Wilson said. “But that’s okay…Different secretaries of defense and different presidents need different things.”

“One of the things that CQ does well is listen, and this is in a town where there’s a lot more people who want to talk than listen and who listens and understands and synthesizes problems. He asks good questions and then is able to crystallize what the big issues are.”

ABC News’ Matthew Seyler contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — In his first televised public remarks since the pandemic, Chief Justice John Roberts defended the integrity of the Supreme Court in the face of slumping public approval and growing political pressure after a recent barrage of misconduct allegations.

“I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a Court adhere to the highest standards of conduct,” Roberts said Tuesday at the American Law Institute gala in Washington, D.C.

The gala, at which the chief justice was awarded the Henry J. Friendly Medal for contributions to the law, marked the first time Roberts directly addressed growing concern about how the justices handle potential conflicts of interest with their personal lives, a topic that has gotten renewed attention amid a series of alleged ethical infringements by Justice Clarence Thomas.

“We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment,” Roberts said, “and I am confident there are ways to do that, that are consistent with our status as an independent branch of government under the constitutions, separation of powers.”

Roberts did not indicate what additional steps the Court could take to shore up public confidence or when it might act.

A series of reports exposed Thomas’ undisclosed personal and financial ties to billionaire GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow. Thomas, who has denied wrongdoing, did not report gifts of luxury travel, real estate transactions and private tuition payments for a grandnephew on financial disclosure reports, according to ProPublica — steps many legal experts say are required under federal ethics guidelines.

The revelations have renewed calls by Democrats to impose a binding ethics code on the justices with independent oversight, among other reforms aimed at boosting transparency. Republicans have branded the campaign for judicial reforms as a partisan attack on the court’s credibility over dissatisfaction with recent decisions.

All nine current justices have signaled opposition to the Democratic proposals, recently signing a public memo explaining their ethics standards and how they are practiced.

“The justices … consult a wide variety of authorities to address specific ethical issues,” the members of the high court said in a document titled “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices.”

During an earlier wave of public concerns about ethics at the high court in 2012, Roberts had the justices would study whether to formally adopt a code of conduct of its own but so far declined to do so.

The court has suffered declining favorability in recent months. A new poll by Marquette University Law School — the first since the Justice Thomas allegations were reported by ProPublica last month — finds 41% of Americans approve of the way the Supreme Court is doing its job, while 59% disapprove.

A narrow majority, 51%, of the public now thinks justices base their rulings mainly on their personal political opinions instead of on the law, and well fewer than half, 39%, think Supreme Court rulings are based mainly on the law — a seven-point drop in this measure of confidence in the court, according to an ABC New/Washington Post poll published earlier this month.

In his speech Tuesday, Roberts suggested he has been troubled by the changing relationship between the public and the judiciary, lamenting protests against judges on law school campuses and growing threats of violence that resulted in U.S. Marshal protection outside their homes 24/7.

“The hardest decision I had to make was whether to erect fences and barricades around the Supreme Court,” Roberts said, referencing fallout from the decision last spring to overrule Roe v. Wade.

“I had no choice but to go ahead and do it. But while it was going on while the fences were going up, I kept hearing [then Chief justice] Charles Evans Hughes’s remarks at the opening of the Supreme Court building: He said, ‘the Republic endures, and this is the symbol of its faith.'”

Despite the partisan concerns swirling about the high court, Roberts insisted the six conservative and three liberal justices maintain “collegial relations,” as is the historic norm. Ahead of his Tuesday night remarks, Roberts was introduced by Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal serving alongside him.

Kagan, appointed by former President Barack Obama, lavished Roberts with praise as a statesman and professional, and she suggested he deserves more public credit for his service than he has received.

“He is a consummate legal craftsman. He writes intelligibly and powerfully about the most difficult issues of the law. He produces work of great insight and analytic strength and penetration and eloquence,” Kagan said.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — After three weeks of negotiations and eight days from a possible default, as of Wednesday there was still no breakthrough in talks to avert a potential financial catastrophe as soon as June 1.

Shortly before noon, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters he was sending his House Republican bargaining team to the White House “to try to finish out negotiations.”

Earlier, as McCarthy made his way into the Capitol, ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott asked him where things stand.

“I still feel they’re productive — the talks,” he said, but there were no signs of a deal.

In fact, McCarthy said he has not spoken to President Joe Biden since Monday.

Both sides appear to be waiting for the other to blink.

“I’m hopeful that they come back that they realize what the American public is telling them as well, that you cannot have the highest percentage of debt and spend the most amount of money while you’re getting the most amount of revenue in, that you got to change that behavior, just like you would do in any household,” McCarthy said. “And I’m hopeful as they come, if they come back today that they realize that.”

As the standoff over federal spending continued, the White House has offered to freeze spending while Republicans are demanding deep cuts, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

“Well, the point you have to make, here we are eight days away. Why are we here? The Democrats do not want to come off their spending addiction,” McCarthy said.

Asked how much in federal spending Republicans want to cut, he said, “Well, that’s part of negotiation. Democrats don’t even want to spend less, they want to spend more, that’s unreasonable,” he said.

He again made it clear increasing tax revenue is not on the table.

“Find ways to eliminate the waste. And that’s what we’ve been doing. That’s why on February 1, I sat with the president. That’s exactly what I said to him. We can’t raise taxes, and what’s he talking about now? We need to raise more because I want to spend more after you’ve already done that, you set all the records you want to set, once the Democrats took the majority, this is what they brought us. And in doing so they brought us inflation, hurting every family,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday tripled down on her warnings that June 1 might be the day the U.S. could default on its debt, even, she said, if it’s “hard to be precise” about what happens around that date.

Yellen, speaking at a Wall Street Journal forum, was reluctant to discuss a “day-after” scenario in the wake of a U.S. default but allowed that Treasury would have to be ready to prioritize some bills over others.

She said payment prioritization is “not operationally feasible” — emphasizing how unprecedented a default would be.

ABC News’ Justin Gomez and Chris Boccia contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the 2024 Republican presidential primary race on Wednesday — setting the stage for a long awaited and potentially volatile contest between the Florida governor, who is a rising star in his party, and former President Donald Trump, who has so far dominated most polls in the very early months of the election.

A recent ABC News/Washington Post survey showed that among the six best-known candidates, Trump clinched 51% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents while DeSantis garnered 25%. A majority of those voters said they’d be satisfied with either Trump (75%) or DeSantis (64%) as their presidential nominee.

Those margins are far ahead of other declared candidates, like South Carolinians Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, though still well behind Trump, a former DeSantis ally who grew more critical as DeSantis’ own national ambitions became clearer.

The governor will announce his candidacy during a live, audio-only Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk at 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday, sources have told ABC News. He is also set to file with the Federal Election Commission this week.

Wednesday’s announcement will mark the climax of months of anticipation about the governor’s plans to seek higher office. He has made trips this year to several key early-voting states, including multiple stops in Iowa and New Hampshire, but ultimately waited until the completion of the Florida legislative session to formally enter the presidential race.

Gearing up to run, DeSantis has argued that it’s time for Republicans to move beyond Trump.

“Two [people] have a chance to get elected president: [Joe] Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” he told donors last week, sources have said.

During the legislative session, DeSantis burnished his conservative bona fides while continuing to stoke the controversial culture war issues that have increasingly been his signature. He signed bills restricting abortion after six weeks, defunding diversity programs at state universities and permitting concealed carry of a firearm without a government-issued permit.

He also targeted Disney’s long-standing self-governing status in Florida after the company opposed the state’s Parental Rights in Education Act forbidding discussion of sexual orientation and gender in some K-12 classrooms, a ban critics called “Don’t Say Gay.”

DeSantis and Disney — which is ABC News’ parent company — have since become embroiled in a legal battle, with DeSantis arguing Disney is trying to “to have their own fiefdom” and Disney accusing DeSantis and other Florida officials of being “patently retaliatory, patently anti-business, and patently unconstitutional.”

Over the past week, the governor has touted his record in front of audiences made up of the kinds of voters who often swing Republican primaries.

In Orlando on Saturday, while delivering a speech at a gala hosted by the Florida Family Policy Council, an anti-abortion group, DeSantis promised “a war on the woke,” vowed to lock up people who “take away or cut off someone’s private parts” — referring to gender confirmation procedures — and railed against critical race theory, parts of which many conservatives argue are being inappropriately taught in K-12 grades.

“We need to restore sanity to our society, we need to restore normalcy to our communities and we need to restore integrity to our institutions,” DeSantis said, to cheers.

A former Navy lawyer-turned-lawmaker, DeSantis first emerged on the national stage during the COVID-19 pandemic when he bucked public health guidance on masks and vaccines, contending that some restrictions could be excessive and unnecessary.

He has seemingly relished angering Democrats and hitting back at the mainstream press — a task also carried out online by his staff, who are prone to post on Twitter their correspondence with reporters while calling out what they see as unfair coverage.

DeSantis was born in Jacksonville and spent his childhood in the Tampa suburb of Dunedin. He graduated from Yale University, having played on the baseball team, and Harvard Law School before joining the Navy in 2004.

He first held office in 2013, as a representative for Florida’s 6th Congressional District, serving until 2018.

That year, he won the Republican nomination for governor — after an endorsement from Trump — and narrowly defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum in the general election.

Since DeSantis became governor, Florida, long seen as a purple state, has shifted markedly in favor of Republicans.

He links those conservative victories to his style of leadership, a response to even those critics in his own party — including Trump, who labeled him with a characteristically insulting nickname: “DeSanctimonious.”

“You can call me whatever you want just as long as you also call me a winner, because that’s what we’ve been able to do in Florida is put a lot of points on the board and really take this state to the next level,” DeSantis said earlier this year.

In November, he won reelection by nearly 20%, the largest margin by a Republican governor in Florida’s history.

He and his wife, Casey, whom he married in 2009, have three children together.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The White House is painting House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as talking out of both sides of his mouth amid the debt ceiling standoff, criticizing him for being “beholden” to far-right Republicans while publicly voicing support for a bipartisan deal, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

The White House’s talking points also criticize McCarthy for not agreeing to the White House’s concessions. The Republican congressional leader “claims he wants to negotiate, but today he said the only concession he is willing to make is to prevent default — a basic Constitutional responsibility of his job,” according to the talking points.

President Joe Biden, on the other hand, is willing to compromise, the source said. The talking points state that the Democratic president has offered a “spending freeze which cuts spending by more than $1 trillion over 10 years,” a recall of “significant unspent COVID relief funds” and a “two-year cap on spending.”

The talking points come as the so-called “x-date” draws closer — the June 1 deadline to reach a deal on the federal debt limit and spending, or the U.S. government risks defaulting on its obligations for the first time. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned in a letter to congressional leaders on Monday that it is “highly likely” the national treasury will run out of money in early June.

On Tuesday, McCarthy told a close-door meeting of House Republicans that he and the Biden administration are “nowhere near a deal,” urging members of his caucus to hold firm, sources told ABC News.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden plans on Wednesday to call on Republicans in Congress to act to end the “epidemic” of gun violence in the United States, the White House said.

The remarks are expected during an afternoon speech marking a year since the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Nineteen fourth graders and two teachers were killed when a gunman stormed Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022. Seventeen others were injured.

“The president will remember those lost in Uvalde and reiterate his call for Republicans in Congress to act and help stop the epidemic of gun violence that has become the number one killer of kids in America,” a White House official said in the statement.

Biden on the day of the shooting in Uvalde spoke of how he was “sick and tired” of gun violence, saying we “can do so much more.” The shooting came 10 days after a gunman attacked a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people.

“It’s time — for those who obstruct or delay or block the commonsense gun laws, we need to let you know that we will not forget,” he said a year ago at the White House. “We can do so much more. We have to do more.”

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday that the president believes the Uvalde shooting and the Buffalo supermarket shooting were the catalyst for Congress passing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act

“While he’s very, he’s very appreciative of what Congress was able to do, there’s so much more to be done … We need to see Congress do something more, do more,” she told ABC News. “Put forward some commonsense, gun reform. That’s what these families deserve. That’s what they should be able to see.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has formally requested a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland, amid fears from his attorneys that the coming weeks could bring a possible indictment of Trump regarding his alleged efforts to retain materials after leaving office and to obstruct the government’s attempts to retrieve them.

The letter, though thin on details, presents arguments that Trump should not be charged in the investigation related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

The letter asks Garland for a meeting at his earliest convenience to discuss what the attorneys describe as the “ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated” by special counsel Jack Smith and says that no president has been “baselessly investigated” in such an “unlawful fashion.”

The one-page letter was signed by Trump lawyers John Rowley and James Trusty, and does not outline any specific allegations of wrongdoing by Smith and his team.

The request does not specifically detail what Trump’s legal team wants to discuss with the attorney general. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing associated with his handling of materials bearing classification markings.

It’s not clear whether Trump’s attorneys are acting on any specific knowledge of Smith’s investigation.

Trump posted the letter on his Truth Social account Tuesday night.

A spokesperson for Garland and a spokesperson for the special counsel’s office both declined to comment to ABC News.

The letter from Trump’s attorneys follows more than a year of negotiations between Trump’s team and the government, which resulted in a breakdown of trust that led to the government’s May 2022 subpoena for documents and its subsequent search of Mar-a-Lago last August. Since then, as ABC News has previously reported, the DOJ and Trump’s lawyers have continued to battle over compliance with grand jury subpoenas.

National Archives officials initially asked the Justice Department in early 2022 to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records after the National Archives in January retrieved 15 boxes of records from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that had been improperly taken from the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The DOJ probe hit a critical point on Aug. 8, 2022, when Mar-a-Lago was searched by FBI agents. Federal investigators seized more than 100 documents with classified markings during the search, according to an unsealed detailed inventory list. From Trump’s office alone, there were 43 empty folders seized with classified banners.

The property inventory list also showed agents gathered more than 11,000 documents or photographs without classification markings, all of which were described as property of the U.S. government.

Since the August search, Trump and his legal team have found additional classified documents and have received additional subpoenas for information that the government believes could still be in Trump’s possession.

As ABC News first reported in March, prosecutors in the special counsel’s office have presented compelling preliminary evidence that Trump knowingly and deliberately misled his own attorneys about his retention of classified material after leaving office, according to sources who described the contents of a sealed filing from a top federal judge.

In a sealed filing from March, Judge Beryl Howell ordered Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to comply with a grand jury subpoena for testimony over which he had previously asserted attorney-client privilege. Sources said Howell ordered Corcoran to hand over a number of records tied to what she described as Trump’s alleged “criminal scheme,” echoing prosecutors. Those records included handwritten notes, invoices and transcriptions of personal audio recordings.

The meeting request from Trump’s attorneys comes as infighting within Trump’s legal team has spilled into the public eye.

Over the weekend, former Trump lawyer Tim Parlatore — who left Trump’s legal team last week — publicly blasted a current lawyer for Trump, alleging that Boris Epshteyn attempted to interfere with additional searches for classified material at Trump’s properties.

“In my opinion, he was not very honest with us or with the client on certain things. There were certain things like the searches that he had attempted to interfere with,” Parlatore said during an appearance on CNN on Saturday.

Parlatore added that Epshteyn, who has served as somewhat of a liaison between the lawyers, made defending Trump more difficult.

A Trump campaign spokesperson said in a statement that Parlatore’s assertions were “categorically false.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — As Washington struggles to reach a debt ceiling deal with little more than a week until potential default, a key hangup in the negotiations is turning out to be — “work requirements.”

A long-sought effort by Republicans to impose stricter conditions on recipients of Medicaid and other federal assistance programs is now front-and-center in the debt ceiling standoff.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has described tougher work requirements as a “red line” in his ongoing negotiations with President Joe Biden to reduce federal spending in exchange for addressing the debt ceiling.

“We want to take people from poverty to jobs. It is only for people who are able-bodied with no dependents,” McCarthy told reporters Monday evening after he met with Biden at the White House.

“I don’t think it’s right that we borrow money from China to pay somebody who has no dependents, able-bodied to sit on a couch,” McCarthy added, using a line used by leading Republicans in recent days.

Several Democrats, however, have said the GOP’s proposed work requirements are a nonstarter.

Here’s what to know as talks continue.

How much money would work requirements save?
As McCarthy digs in his heels on work requirements, an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found the changes outlined in the Limit, Save, Grow Act would reduce federal spending by $120 billion over the next decade.

That’s a relatively small amount, just 2.5%, of the $4.8 trillion total the bill is projected to save in costs over that timespan.

The Republican bill would ramp up work requirements for some recipients of Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The most savings ($109 billion) would come from the Medicaid changes, which would require able-bodied adults to participate in work-related activities for at least 80 hours per month. The SNAP changes would save $11 billion and TANF changes $6 billion, according to the CBO.

The agency estimated the changes would result, on average, in about 600,000 people becoming uninsured and 275,000 losing SNAP benefits.

What Biden has said
Biden opened the door to considering some work requirements but insisted they wouldn’t affect people’s health care or any other area of “consequence.”

“I’m not going to accept any work requirements that’s going to impact on medical health needs of people,” Biden said last week. “I’m not going to accept any work requirements that go much beyond what is already — I voted years ago for the work requirements that exist. But it’s possible there could be a few others, but not anything of any consequence.”

McCarthy subsequently laughed off Biden’s comments, saying at a press conference: “Anything that has consequences? This is the senator who voted for work requirements.

Will the issue threaten any deal between Biden and McCarthy?
Several progressive Democrats told ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott that additional work requirements were dead on arrival.

“I cannot support work requirements, additional work requirements, which are just going to take away benefits,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., when asked if she would support stricter requirements, gave a flat out “no.” Rep. Jamaal Bowman, another New York Democrat, also shut down supporting such provisions.

“It’s really taken aback for me and many of our colleagues that have seen the same people that are now jumping up and down and saying, We got to do all these things. Why didn’t you say it when the previous president was there?” Rep. Rashina Tlaib, D-Mich., said.

Progressives and conservative hardliners have voiced opposition to the ongoing talks between Biden and McCarthy. That means both leaders will need the moderates in both parties to back whatever deal emerges.

“I think there might be some common ground and a modicum of change to other programs. If that’s what it takes to avoid default, the tragedy of default will affect millions of lives instantaneously. And that’s what we’re gonna have to weigh sadly,” said Rep. Dean Phillips, a moderate Democrat from Minnesota.

When I asked if he is open to stricter work requirements, Phillips replied, “I’m open to anything at this point, to avoid default.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(FLORIDA) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will launch his 2024 presidential campaign during a social media event with Elon Musk on Wednesday night, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

DeSantis will declare he is seeking the Republican nomination during a live, audio-only Twitter Spaces event at 6 p.m. ET Wednesday, the sources said. The Twitter conversation will be moderated by Musk ally David Sacks.

Later Wednesday, DeSantis will appear on Fox News to talk about his campaign.

Musk, the high-profile tech billionaire who bought Twitter last year, has said that he intends to back DeSantis in 2024.

News of their event was first reported by NBC News.

The governor’s plans for launching a White House bid have shifted this year, ABC News has reported.

Among the initial ideas was for DeSantis to tout his wins after the close of the Florida Legislature’s current session, throughout May and well into June, while holding off on formally announcing a 2024 run as long as possible, sources familiar have told ABC News.

But as speculation grew that he was in fact gearing up to run, and as former President Donald Trump and Trump’s political operation unleashed an onslaught of attacks, the governor and his team moved up his timeline — even scrapping tentative plans to launch an exploratory committee and moving up a formal announcement date to May rather than June, sources have said.

Separate from his Twitter event Wednesday, DeSantis’ team has also been planning for him to hold an official kickoff in his hometown of Dunedin, outside Tampa, according to sources. That event is tentatively planned to take place the week of Memorial Day, but sources have cautioned that the details could still change.

The governor will also meet with donors at a two-day event in Miami that begins Wednesday.

He will enter the Republican primary field as Trump’s biggest rival for the nomination. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll showed DeSantis as Trump’s nearest potential opponent among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.

Among the six best-known candidates, Trump clinched 51% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents while DeSantis garnered 25%. Still, a majority of those voters said they’d be satisfied with either Trump (75%) or DeSantis (64%) as their presidential nominee.

DeSantis held a call last week with donors and supporters where he took on Trump directly.

“You have basically three people at this point that are credible in this whole thing,” he said, according to two people who were on the call.

“[President Joe] Biden, Trump and me. And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president: Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” he said.

On Tuesday, Trump’s team responded to news of DeSantis’ upcoming announcement by criticizing him as avoiding scrutiny.

“Announcing on Twitter is perfect for Ron DeSantis,” a Trump adviser told ABC News. “This way he doesn’t have to interact with people and the media can’t ask him any questions.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A New York City judge has set a trial date of March 25, 2024, for former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges of falsifying business records.

The former president appeared, virtually, in a Manhattan court Tuesday before the judge presiding over his criminal case.

Trump, sitting side-by-side with his attorney Todd Blanche, his hands folded on the table, scowled into the camera when Judge Juan Merchan announced the trial date, possibly because the date conflicts with the GOP primary calendar as Trump seeks to reclaim the presidency.

Merchan has previously indicated that no one associated with the case is allowed to schedule anything that would conflict with the trial, which would seemingly including any campaign appearances that would keep Trump from appearing in court.

Merchan reviewed for Trump the terms of a protective order that prohibits him from sharing on social media any evidence turned over by the Manhattan district attorney during discovery.

Prosecutors sought the protective order after Trump criticized Merchan, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and others associated with the case.

“President Trump is running for president of the United States and is the leading contender,” Blanche told the judge. “He is very much concerned that his First Amendment rights are being violated.”

Merchan reiterated that the protective order is not a gag order.

“It’s certainly not a gag order and it’s not my intention to impede Mr. Trump to campaign for president,” Merchan said. “He’s free to do just about anything that does not violate the terms of this protective order.”

Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records stemming from a $130,000 hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign.

Trump has been charged in connection with what prosecutors have called “an illegal scheme” to influence the 2016 presidential election by directing his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to pay $130,000 to Daniels to prevent her from publicizing a long-denied affair with Trump. Trump reimbursed Cohen through a series of monthly checks, which prosecutors say caused business records to be falsified to disguise the true purpose of the payments.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.