Gabbard ignored shouted questions about her 2017 visit to war-torn Syria as she ducked into one of several private meetings with senators who are being asked to confirm Trump’s unusual nominees.

But the Democrat-turned-Republican Army National Reserve lieutenant colonel delivered a statement in which she reiterated her support for Trump’s America First approach to national security and a more limited U.S. military footprint overseas.

“I want to address the issue that’s in the headlines right now: I stand in full support and wholeheartedly agree with the statements that President Trump has made over these last few days with regards to the developments in Syria,” Gabbard said exiting a Senate meeting.

The incoming president’s Cabinet and top administrative choices are dividing his Republican allies and drawing concern, if not full opposition, from Democrats and others. Not just Gabbard, but other Trump nominees including Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth, were back at the Capitol ahead of what is expected to be volatile confirmation hearings next year.

The incoming president is working to put his team in place for an ambitious agenda of mass immigrant deportations, firing federal workers and rollbacks of U.S. support for Ukraine and NATO allies.

“We’re going to sit down and visit, that’s what this is all about,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., as he welcomed Gabbard into his office.

The president-elect announced other appointments Monday, including his lawyer Harmeet Dhillon for assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department and Mark Paoletta as the returning general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary pick Hegseth appeared to be picking up support from once-skeptical senators, the former Army National Guard major denying sexual misconduct allegations and pledging not to drink alcohol if he is confirmed.

The president-elect’s choice to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, who has written extensively about locking up Trump’s foes and proposed dismantling the Federal Bureau of Investigation, launched his first visits with senators Monday.

“I expect our Republican Senate is going to confirm all of President Trump’s nominees,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., on social media.

Despite widespread concern about the nominees’ qualifications and demeanors for the jobs that are among the highest positions in the U.S. government, Trump’s team is portraying the criticism against them as nothing more than political smears and innuendo.

Showing that concern, nearly 100 former senior U.S. diplomats and intelligence and national security officials have urged Senate leaders to schedule closed-door hearings to allow for a full review of the government’s files on Gabbard.

Trump’s allies have described the criticisms of Hegseth in particular as similar to those lodged against Brett Kavanaugh, the former president’s Supreme Court nominee who denied a sexual assault allegation and went on to be confirmed during Trump’s first term in office.

Said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., about Hegseth: “Anonymous accusations are trying to destroy reputations again. We saw this with Kavanaugh. I won’t stand for it.”

One widely watched Republican, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, herself a former Army National Guard lieutenant colonel and sexual assault survivor who had been criticized by Trump allies for her cool reception to Hegseth, appeared more open to him after their follow-up meeting Monday.

“I appreciate Pete Hegseth’s responsiveness and respect for the process,” Ernst said in a statement.

Ernst said that following “encouraging conversations,” he had committed to selecting a senior official who will “prioritize and strengthen my work to prevent sexual assault within the ranks. As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources.”

Hegseth, in an interview late Monday with Sean Hannity of Fox News, said he had a “great meeting” with Ernst and “the fact that she’s willing to support me through this process means a lot.”

Hegseth said he had meetings scheduled this week with two other female Republican senators — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska on Tuesday and Susan Collins of Maine on Wednesday.

Ernst, meanwhile, also had praise for Patel — “He shares my passion for shaking up federal agencies” — and for Gabbard.

Once a rising Democratic star, Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress, arrived a decade ago in Washington, her surfboard in tow, a new generation of potential leaders. She ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020.

But Gabbard abruptly left the party and briefly became an independent before joining with Trump’s 2024 campaign as one of his enthusiasts, in large part over his disdain for U.S. involvement overseas and opposition to helping Ukraine battle Russia.

Her visit to Syria to meet with then-President Bashar Assad around the time of Trump’s first inauguration during the country’s bloody civil war stunned her former colleagues and the Washington national security establishment. The U.S. had severed diplomatic relations with Syria. Her visit was seen by some as legitimizing a brutal leader who was accused of war crimes.

Gabbard has defended the trip, saying it’s important to open dialogue, but critics hear in her commentary echoes of Russia-fueled talking points. Assad fled to Moscow over the weekend after Islamist rebels overtook Syria in a surprise attack, ending his family’s five decades of rule.

She said her own views have been shaped by “my multiple deployments and seeing firsthand the cost of war and the threat of Islamist terrorism.”

Gabbard said, “It’s one of the many reasons why I appreciate President Trump’s leadership and his election, where he is fully committed, as he has said over and over, to bring about an end to wars.”

Last week, the nearly 100 former officials, who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, said in the letter to Senate leaders they were “alarmed” by the choice of Gabbard to oversee all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies.

They said her past actions “call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to coordinate the nation’s intelligence agencies and act as the president’s main intelligence adviser.

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Blasting the Democratic president “a total moron,” Trump before a crowd of tens of thousands repeatedly characterized the cases against him as politically motivated and timed to harm his ability to campaign.

“He’s a fool. He’s not a smart man,” Trump said of Biden. “I talk about him differently now because now the gloves are off.”

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, drew what his team called a “mega crowd” to a Saturday evening rally in the southern New Jersey resort town of Wildwood, 150 miles (241 kilometers) south of the New York City courthouse where he has been forced to spend most weekdays sitting silently through his felony hush money trial.

Lisa Fagan, spokesperson for the city of Wildwood, told The Associated Press that she estimated a crowd of between 80,000 and 100,000 attendees, based off her own observations on the scene Saturday, having seen “dozens” of other events in the same space.

Trump was joined on stage by several high-level endorsers including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, who is still listed as a registered sex offender after pleading guilty in New York in 2011 to misdemeanor criminal charges of sexual misconduct and patronizing an underage prostitute.

The beachfront gathering, described by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., as the largest political gathering in state history, was designed to serve as a show of force at a critical moment for Trump, who is facing dozens of felony charges in four separate criminal cases with the election less than six months away.

Hours before he was scheduled to take the stage, thousands of Trump loyalists donning “Never Surrender” T-shirts and red “Make America Great Again” hats crowded onto the sand between the boardwalk and carnival rides to greet the former Republican president.

“The everyday American people are 100% behind him,” said Doreen O’Neill, a 62-year-old nurse from Philadelphia.

“They have to cheat and smear him and humiliate him in that courtroom every single day,” O’Neill said. “This country is going to go insane if they steal the election again.”

Trump’s extraordinary legal woes, which include three other unrelated criminal cases, have emerged as a central issue in the campaign.

Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration and Democratic officials in New York of using the legal system to block his return to the White House. Prosecutors allege the former president broke the law to conceal an affair with a porn actor that would have hurt his first presidential bid.

The hush money case was filed by local prosecutors in Manhattan who do not work for the Justice Department or any White House office. The Justice Department has said the White House has had no involvement in the two criminal cases against Trump brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

On Saturday, Trump posited that even those whom he accuses of politically motivated prosecutions didn’t bring every case they could have, pointing to the boosts his campaign has sustained with each wave of charges.

“I heard they were going to do a couple of other things and they said from Washington … ‘we’re indicting him into the White House,’” Trump said. “They said, ‘Don’t do it.’”

While Trump seized on his legal woes Saturday, a judge’s gag order — and the threat of jail — limit Trump’s ability to comment publicly on witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the New York trial, which is expected to consume much of the month. The judge in the case already has fined Trump $9,000 for violating the order and warned that jail could follow if he doesn’t comply.

The order doesn’t include references to Judge Juan M. Merchan, whom Trump called “highly conflicted” or District Attorney Alvin Bragg, both of whom Trump said are “doing the bidding for crooked Joe Biden.”

Trump’s responsibilities as a defendant have limited his ability to win over voters on the campaign trail.

He spent last week’s off-day from court in the general election battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan. And he was campaigning with tens of thousands of voters Saturday in New Jersey, a reliably Democratic state. Parts of New Jersey have deep-red enclaves and the southern shoreline in particular draws tourists and summer homeowners from neighboring Pennsylvania, a key swing state.

Biden, meanwhile, opened his weekend with a series of fundraising events on the West Coast.

He avoided Trump’s legal challenges — as he has done consistently — while addressing donors in Seattle. Instead, the Democratic president focused on Trump’s recent interview with Time magazine in which the Republican former president said states should be left to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies.

Saturday’s visit to the New Jersey Shore resort wasn’t Trump’s first.

While president, Trump held a rally there in January 2020 to thank Van Drew, the New Jersey congressman who had just left the Democratic Party for the GOP as a rebuke for the former president’s first impeachment.

Trump drew a crowd at the time that lined the streets, filled bars and supported numerous vendors in what is usually a sleepy city in the winter. This time, the summer season is around the corner for the resort known for its wide beaches and boardwalk games and shops.

Wildwood is in New Jersey’s 2nd District, which Van Drew has represented for three terms and covers all or part of six counties in southern New Jersey. It went for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020 after earlier backing Barack Obama.

Trump is set to return to the courtroom next week, when key prosecution witness Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer-turned-foe, is expected to take the witness stand. Last week, he was visibly angry at times as he was forced to sit through testimony from former porn actor Stormy Daniels, who described a sexual encounter with the former president in shocking detail.

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal Trump Organization business records. The charges stem from paperwork such as invoices and checks that were deemed legal expenses in company records. Prosecutors say those payments largely were reimbursements to Cohen, Trump’s attorney, who paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet.

The prosecution could rest its case by the end of the week. It’s unclear if Trump himself will take the stand when the defense presents its case.

Back on the Jersey Shore, 65-year-old Pat Day said she felt some urgency to see Trump in person on Saturday.

“We want to see Trump before they take him out,” said Day, who was visiting from the Florida Keys. “I’m worried. They’re going to do everything they can so he doesn’t get elected again.”

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TIME’s release of its interview with Trump came as Seoul and Washington recently launched new negotiations over South Korea’s share of the cost for the upkeep of the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) under a deal, called the Special Measures Agreement (SMA).

“We have 40,000 troops that are in a precarious position,” he was quoted by TIME as saying. “Which doesn’t make any sense. Why would we defend somebody? And we’re talking about a very wealthy country.”

He was apparently referring to the 28,500 USFK service members.

Based on the remarks, TIME said in an article that Trump “suggests” the U.S. could withdraw its forces “if South Korea doesn’t pay more to support U.S. troops there to deter (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-un’s increasingly belligerent regime to the north.”

In Honolulu last week, Seoul and Washington held the first round of negotiations over a new SMA as the current six-year SMA is set to expire at the end of next year.

Observers have said that the allies had sought to hold SMA talks earlier than usual amid concerns that should former Trump return to the White House for a second term, he could drive a hard bargain over a new SMA in a way that could cause friction in the alliance.

During Trump’s presidency, the SMA negotiation was a major bone of contention as he demanded a hefty rise in South Korea’s share of the cost for USFK.

Since 1991, Seoul has partially shared the cost for Korean USFK workers; the construction of military installations, such as barracks, and training, educational, operational and communications facilities; and other logistical support.

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Aso, vice president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was a longtime ally of the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who built a strong personal relationship with Trump when the two led their respective countries.

Even after stepping down as prime minister in 2009, Aso, an 83-year-old House of Representatives member, remains one of the most influential politicians in the party, currently headed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

“He’s a highly respected man in Japan and beyond,” Trump told reporters as he greeted Aso in the lobby of Trump Tower. “It’s a great honor to have him.”

The former president and Aso “discussed the enduring importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance to both countries’ physical and economic security,” as well as challenges posed by China and North Korea, a readout issued by Trump’s representatives after the meeting said.

Trump also praised Japan’s increased defense spending, according to the readout.

Aso’s visit to New York comes after Kishida’s trip to the United States two weeks ago, during which he met Biden and showcased the robustness of the bilateral alliance.

Earlier this month, Trump, 77, met with former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who now serves as foreign secretary, as well as with Polish President Andrzej Duda. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also met with Trump last month.

Tuesday’s meeting took place after Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate for the presidency, attended a session of his criminal trial related to an alleged cover-up of hush money paid on his behalf to a porn star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

In Tokyo on Tuesday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told reporters that “the government was not involved” in arranging the meeting between Aso and Trump, saying Aso’s trip to the United States is in his capacity as a lawmaker.

Trump, whose presidency ran through January 2021, effectively clinched the Republican presidential nomination in March, and is set for a rematch against Democratic President Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, Trump earlier in the day questioned the recent rise in the value of the U.S. dollar against the Japanese yen to a 34-year high, saying it is “a total disaster for the United States.”

If the dollar continues to appreciate against major currencies, U.S. manufacturers and other industries will be “unable to compete and will be forced to either lose lots of business” or build plants overseas, Trump said on Truth Social, a social media company he founded.

Trump said he put limits to avoid the dollar rising too high when he was in office but “Biden let it go.”

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“I predict a lot of continuity, and the same things that motivated him when he was elected the first time, I think, continue to motivate him,” Alexander Gray, who was deputy assistant to the former president, said in an interview with Kyodo News.

For Trump, Gray said that China would likely be regarded as the greatest threat to national security, and his foreign policy approach, with a strong emphasis on enhancing deterrence capabilities, is more relevant in 2025 than it was in 2017 when first he took office.

Referring to the decades-old U.S.-Japan alliance, he said it is “beyond any one prime minister, any one president. It has such extraordinary strategic significance” to serve U.S. interests and ensure stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

He also shrugged off deep-seated speculation should Trump win the November general election, he would significantly alter the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy set forth by the administration of President Joe Biden, which has been marked by a focus on multilateral cooperation.

“My sense is he doesn’t have a preference. If you asked him that question, I don’t think he’d have a preference. I think his preference is for alliances that work, whether it’s U.S.-Japan, or U.S.-Japan-South Korea, or NATO or whatever it might be,” he said. “If it’s effective, if it keeps the peace and if it serves U.S. interests, I think the (former) president is all for it.”

In his view, the Biden administration has inherited the elevation of the U.S.-Japan relationship from Trump’s era and cooperation of the two countries is set to deepen across various domains, ranging from defense to economic security, and extend its reach to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and beyond.

Asked about what may be the biggest foreign policy issue for a second Trump presidency, Gray, who helped to shape the previous administration’s approach to Asia, said, “China will continue to be probably the dominant focus.”

Gray, who was also chief of staff of the National Security Council, said China is “more malign than before” on the trade front “so I absolutely think there’s going to be a significant increase in tariffs, maybe as high as 60 percent.”

He also spotlighted that China and Russia are more integrated as “an axis of autocracy” than when Trump was president.

He contended that the increasing alignment between Beijing and Moscow in an anti-American partnership is partially attributable to the shortcomings of the Biden administration.

“It’s going to be very difficult to separate the two the way we were really able to in (former) President Trump’s first term,” said Gray, who is now chief executive officer of American Global Strategies LLC.

The failure came despite Trump’s “greatest historical legacy” of transforming Washington’s approach to Beijing “180 degrees from his predecessor” Barack Obama.

“When I started, there were still big parts of the U.S. government that viewed China as a potential friend and partner,” he said. “When I left, every agency of the U.S. government was focused on how do we win a great power competition.”

Similarly, he expressed disappointment over North Korea’s deepening ties with Russia, whose utilization of Pyongyang’s artillery shells to kill Ukrainians has destabilized the security situation not only on the Korean Peninsula but also elsewhere in the world.

“So, you know, as much as I think (former) President Trump wants to have reduction of tensions, the world has changed for the worse under President Biden, and that’s just a reality he’s going to have to confront,” he said.

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A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Democrats are more likely to report feeling “fearful” or “angry” about the prospects of another Trump term than Republicans are about the idea of Biden remaining in the White House.

The emotional reaction Trump inspires may work in his favor too, though, since the poll also found that Republicans are more excited about the prospect of a Trump win than Democrats are about a Biden victory.

Seven in 10 Democrats say the words “angry” or “fearful” would describe their emotions “extremely well” or “very well” upon a Trump victory. A smaller majority of Republicans – 56% – say the same about a Biden triumph. About 6 in 10 Democrats cite both emotions when contemplating a Trump victory. Again, that exceeds the roughly 4 out of 10 Republicans who said they would feel both angry and scared about Biden prevailing.

The findings are notable in an unusual campaign pitting an incumbent president against his predecessor, with both men facing doubters within their own parties and among independents. Consolidating support from Republicans who backed Nikki Haley in the GOP primary could be a challenge for Trump. Biden faces disenchanted progressives to his left and concerns over whether his age, 81, is a liability in the job.

Excitement about the two candidates will be an important factor in a race where turnout from each side’s base will be key. But dislike can motivate voters as much as enthusiasm.

“If there was a third-party candidate who had a chance in hell I would vote for them,” said Austin Healey, a 26-year-old Democrat. Healey, who describes himself as “very liberal,” said his mixed reviews of Biden take a back seat to his concerns that Trump’s comeback bid “looks like a clear ploy for trying to abolish democracy.”

Though he is “not excited about it,” Healey said, that means a vote for Biden.

Derrick Johnson, a Michigan voter who identifies as a liberal independent, offered plenty of critiques against Biden, as well. But the 46-year-old caregiver and food service worker made his bottom line clear: “Donald Trump is a madman. I’m afraid he’ll have us in World War III. My message is anybody but Trump.”

Democrats’ intense feelings about Trump account for the overall differences in how Americans view the two rivals. Altogether, about 4 in 10 U.S. adults say “fearful” would describe their emotions “extremely” or “very” well if Trump is elected again, while roughly 3 in 10 would fear a second Biden term. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults said they would be angered by Trump winning in November while 28% said the same about Biden.

The poll’s findings on negative emotions could be especially important for Biden given his other weak spots, including that Republicans remain more excited about electing Trump again than Democrats are about reelecting Biden. Slightly more than half of Republicans, 54%, said “excited” describes their feelings about another Trump term “extremely well” or “very well.” For Biden, that number was just 4 in 10 among Democrats.

“We know what we’re getting with Trump,” said Republican John Novak, a 54-year-old maintenance worker who lives in swing-state Wisconsin and counted himself among those GOP loyalists who would be excited by another Trump term.

“I knew who he was when he came down that escalator in 2015, and we were never getting Boy Scout material,” Novak said. “But he put conservatives on the Supreme Court, he was firm on immigration … and he’s a conservative who handled the economy.”

The latest AP-NORC poll showed Biden with an overall approval rating of 38%. U.S. adults also expressed discontent about his handling of the economy and immigration – and not all of the disapproval is driven by partisan loyalties. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of Biden’s stewardship of the economy, roughly equal to his overall job approval rating.

On specific issues, about 3 in 10 Democrats disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy; about 4 in 10 disapprove of his approach to immigration or border security.

“The situation at the border really bothers me,” said Johnson, the Michigan liberal. “The border crossings are just getting out of control.”

The president and his campaign advisers tout the Biden administration’s legislative record, especially on infrastructure, an improving economy and new spending intended to combat climate change. But the president and his allies are also unsparing in lambasting Trump as interested only in “revenge and retribution” for his defeat in 2020 and the pending criminal prosecutions and other legal troubles that have followed.

They have seized on Trump’s praise of authoritarians like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Victor Orban and recirculated the former president’s statement that he would be willing to act like a dictator for a day to close the border and expand drilling for fossil fuel.

Trump has countered with searing attacks on Biden’s mental acuity and physical fitness for the presidency and even mocked Biden’s stutter. But the latest poll results suggest Trump has not yet maximized the potential benefits of those attacks — or perhaps that they simply have a lower yield for him.

Biden sometimes turns his version of the argument into a humorous quip he used often in 2020, when he was vying to unseat Trump: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.”

Indeed, that is what resonates with reluctant Democrats and some independents.

“I voted for Trump (in 2016) because I wanted somebody to shake up Washington,” said Neil Murray, a 67-year-old retiree in Jonesboro, Arkansas, who identifies as an independent. “He certainly did that, but he couldn’t do anything productive with it.”

Frustrated with Trump’s negative qualities that he overlooked in 2016, Murray voted for Biden in 2020 — but not enthusiastically. He called Biden “disingenuous on some things” and too close to his left flank on economic policy.

But in November, Murray said, he will have no reservations when casting a second vote for the Democrat, because, “Donald Trump is a screaming lunatic.”

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But underdog candidate Nikki Haley denied Trump a clean sweep on the Republican side with her victory in the small northeastern state of Vermont, where she resonated with moderate voters.

The result offered a glimmer of hope for Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor. Haley has long trailed Trump in national and state-level polls. Her victory in Vermont, however, comes on the heels of her win in Sunday’s Republican primary in Washington, DC — two results that may fuel her long-shot campaign to continue chugging along.

Likewise, Biden faced protests at the ballot box over his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza. He also suffered a relatively minor loss in the US territory of American Samoa.

Super Tuesday marks the most pivotal date on the primary calendar, as the day when the most states vote. They included the two most populous — California and Texas — as well as battleground states like Minnesota and Virginia.

As a result, nearly a third of all party delegates for both Democrats and Republicans were up for grabs. While the night’s results were not enough for Trump or Biden to clinch their party’s nominations, they have both made significant strides in reaching the delegate threshold needed. A rematch of their match-up in the 2020 presidential race appears all but certain.

Here are five takeaways from the 2024 Super Tuesday results.

Supporters cheer as Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley at a campaign event in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 4 [Shelby Tauber/Reuters]

Haley wins big in Vermont

Super Tuesday has long been the bullseye that the Haley campaign has been aiming for.

“That’s as far as I’ve thought, in terms of going forward,” she said during the South Carolina primary, a race in her home state that she ultimately lost.

But she pledged to keep going, and her efforts were rewarded on Super Tuesday with a key symbolic victory in Vermont, a state in the left-leaning New England region.

Her campaign, however, still faces questions about its longevity: Donors like the Americans for Prosperity super PAC stepped away from her presidential bid in the wake of her defeat in South Carolina.

Michael Fauntroy, a political science professor at George Mason University, told Al Jazeera that Haley’s Super Tuesday performance might be less significant as a reflection of her success — and more indicative of the weaknesses Trump faces going into the general election.

“If you look at many of the closely contested swing states that we’ve seen so far, including some tonight, there are roughly 20 percent to maybe even a third of Republican voters in those states who are voting for Nikki Haley,” he said.

“And in a closely contested state like Michigan or Wisconsin, perhaps even North Carolina, if those voters stay home in November or just can’t bring themselves to vote for former President Trump, then former President Trump cannot win those states. And if he can’t win those states, he can’t win the election.”

Two of the most populous states, including California, cast ballots in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5 [Loren Elliott/Reuters]

Protest vote against Biden spreads

Super Tuesday has likewise forced Biden to confront the vulnerabilities in his campaign. A protest campaign that started largely in Michigan continued to exert influence over the day’s races.

In last month’s Michigan primary, grassroots movements called on voters to choose the “uncommitted” option on their ballot instead of Biden, as a rebuke to his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.

Biden has long touted his “rock-solid” support for Israel, even as its military offensive in the Palestinian enclave elicited concerns about the risk of genocide and famine. More than 30,000 Palestinians have died in Israel’s military campaign so far.

The “uncommitted” movement ultimately pulled an estimated 101,000 votes in the Michigan primary — or approximately 13 percent of the total ballots cast.

The push to vote “uncommitted” remained strong on Super Tuesday. That was particularly apparent in Minnesota, a key swing state in the Midwest. Early results showed that “uncommitted” was in second place in that state’s Democratic primary, with nearly 20 percent of the vote.

That could spell trouble for Biden in the general elections, as he faces drooping poll numbers — and a tight race against his likely opponent Trump.

US Representative Adam Schiff celebrates his win in California’s ‘jungle primary’ at the Avalon Theater in Los Angeles, California, on March 5 [Aude Guerrucci/Reuters]

Senate race in California deals blow to progressives

One of the biggest down-ballot primaries was the race to replace the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, who passed away last year after more than three decades representing California.

To decide which two candidates would proceed to the general elections in November, California held a “jungle primary”, where Senate hopefuls from any party could participate. It proved to be a fatal contest for the race’s two most prominent progressives, Representatives Barbara Lee and Katie Porter.

Both women had decided against running for re-election to the House of Representatives in order to compete in the Senate race. It was a high-stakes gamble. The two representatives had developed national profiles, Lee as an antiwar figure and Porter as a champion against corporate overreach.

Their fellow US representative, centrist Democrat Adam Schiff, handily emerged as the frontrunner on Super Tuesday, despite criticism for his pro-Israel stance amid the Gaza war. But Lee and Porter were ultimately edged out by a Republican with no previous political experience: former baseball player Steve Garvey.

The result has left their political careers in question — and Porter’s congressional district vulnerable to being flipped. Control of both the House and the Senate are up in the air this November.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump celebrated Super Tuesday with a results-watching party at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida [Marco Bello/Reuters]

A referendum on Trump’s grip over Republicans

Other hotly anticipated races revolved around gauging just how strong Trump’s sway over the Republican Party is.

In the Republican stronghold of Texas, for instance, one state-level race showed how fierce the internal power struggle has become.

Two-term state Representative Dade Phelan had gained a relatively high profile as Texas’s Speaker of the House — a powerful figure in the state’s politics — and this year, he was up for re-election.

But he had spurred the ire of the far-right flank of his party by overseeing the recent impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican provocateur known for challenging the Biden administration in the courts. Paxton had also previously petitioned the US Supreme Court to reject Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, in support of Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.

In the Super Tuesday primary, Phelan came to represent the more establishment branch of the Republican Party, while his adversary David Covey enjoyed the endorsements of Trump and Paxton.

The Republican race was so close, however, that it is set to go to a runoff in May, teeing up another battle for the soul of the party.

Rapper Forgiato Blow wears a necklace with a face representative of Donald Trump at an election watch party in Florida [Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo]

Biden and Trump look ahead to November showdown

Despite a wobble for Biden in American Samoa and a loss for Trump in Vermont, the two frontrunners seem destined for a rematch in November’s general elections.

They each offered a glimpse of their campaign strategies moving forward, with comments released in the midst of the Super Tuesday results.

Trump took the stage in person at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, greeting a ballroom full of supporters for an election-night watch party.

As he spoke, though, Trump revisited familiar themes: The United States was in decline, he said, and only he could reverse the slide. He made no mentions of Haley, his only major Republican rival left standing, focusing instead on Biden.

“He’s the worst president in the history of our country,” Trump said of Biden, blaming the Democratic incumbent for inflation, the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border and conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. “We’ve watched our country take a great beating over the last three years.”

Biden likewise returned to his familiar playbook, warning that Trump represented an existential threat to US democracy.

“My message to the country is this: Every generation of Americans will face a moment when it has to defend democracy,” Biden said in a Super Tuesday statement. A centrist, he framed himself as the candidate of unity, offering a preview of his appeal to voters in November.

“To every Democrat, Republican, and independent who believes in a free and fair America: This is our moment. This is our fight.”

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An upset in South Carolina, though, is a longshot in a state where Republicans like their former governor but love the former president.

Trump is looking to complete an early state sweep after scoring big wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. For Haley, who was twice elected South Carolina governor and then served as Trump’s U.N. ambassador, she has a chance to narrow the margin and dampen Trump’s momentum.

Here’s a look at what to watch in Saturday’s primary.

Can Donald Trump deliver another home-state knockout?

Nikki Haley circled Feb. 24 on her calendar months ago. Her bid always hinged on building support through the first three contests and then, as she told voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, winning “my sweet state of South Carolina.”

She has recalibrated recently. Rather than predict victory, she talks of how far she’s come and promises to continue to Super Tuesday. “There were 14 candidates in this race,” she says. “I’ve defeated 12 of the fellas, and I have just one more to catch up to.”

Trump shrugs it off, predicting at a Fox News town hall that he would win “bigly.”

“Everybody knows you can’t lose your home state,” he said.

There’s a certain déjà vu to it all that should give Haley pause. In 2016, three Trump rivals made home-turf primaries their points of pride. Two even won: then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Trump sailed to the nomination anyway.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, meanwhile, stuck around until his home-state primary, which followed Trump’s Super Tuesday domination. Rubio got thrashed — and that was before Trump had made the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach his permanent residence.

Will independents and Democrats make the race close — or closer?

South Carolina has no party registration, and Republicans hold an open primary. That means the only voters who are not eligible Saturday are the 126,000 or so who cast Democratic primary ballots on Feb. 3. That’s significantly less than the 500,000-plus who voted Democratic in 2020, meaning plenty of anti-Trump votes are theoretically available to Haley.

She has not explicitly asked Democrats to help. But she steps right up to the line, telling every audience about open primary rules as she tries to build a wide coalition.

Haley touts her conservative credentials — enacting tax cuts and a voter identification law as governor — while recalling her bipartisan coordination to take down the Confederate banner from state Capitol grounds after a racist massacre at a Charleston church in 2015. She hammers the 77-year-old Trump as chaotic and washed-up but says she voted for him twice and was proud to serve as his U.N. ambassador. She calls herself “pro-life” but does not “judge anyone who is pro-choice” and is not calling for a national abortion ban.

“She ran for governor as a tea party ally, and then she became one of the same good ole boys,” insisted Tim Foster, a Trump supporter and retired deputy sheriff from Spartanburg. Foster took Haley to task, especially for taking down the Confederate battle flag: “She’s a very different person now than she was when I voted for her.”

Antjuan Seawright, a top Democratic campaign veteran, meanwhile, said Democrats, especially Black voters who anchor the party in South Carolina, take Haley at her word when she scoffs at people calling her a “moderate.”

“We remember who Nikki Haley was,” Seawright said, including her positions on the battle flag before the Charleston killings. “The only reason that flag came down is because of that tragedy … We aren’t saving her from Donald Trump. There’s an old saying that fits here: What goes around often comes around.”

Can Haley get Joe Biden’s Charleston-Columbia coalition?

If Haley makes it close, the precincts to watch are in metro Charleston and greater Columbia. Those are places Trump did not carry in the 2016 primary, even though he swept South Carolina’s 50 delegates. Columbia and its suburbs are home to a diverse population, including Black voters, university students and college-educated whites — in short, the coalition that helped President Joe Biden defeat Trump in 2020.

The Charleston area stands out for its moderates. When Biden won the 2020 Democratic primary in South Carolina, his support from Black voters got most of the attention. But he drew critical backing from Charleston’s white voters who hail from the ideological middle of the electorate that does not align with Trump.

Call them Biden Republicans or Haley Democrats or some combination. But if Haley is going to narrow Trump’s margin, she needs a similar boost from the same kinds of voters.

Do Trump’s comments on veterans linger?

Trump asked recently where Haley’s husband has been on the campaign trail. The answer: Maj. Michael Haley is deployed with the South Carolina Army National Guard. He has served previously in Afghanistan.

Haley pounced on the comment. Retired Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who already had been traveling with Haley, made emotional pleas in his introductions of the candidate, recounting Trump’s history of mocking veterans, including 2008 GOP nominee and Vietnam POW John McCain.

“That is not what presidents do. It’s absolutely wrong,” Bolduc said of Trump, who took multiple medical and student deferments during Vietnam. “It tears us apart.”

The immediate question is how many South Carolina veterans react like Bob Crawford, who retired after 36 years in the Navy. “It’s an insult to every service member that’s on active duty, and he’s an insult to this country,” said Crawford, who voted for Trump in 2016 and, reluctantly he said, in 2020. Not this time, Crawford explained, after attending a Haley rally: “She convinced me.”

Regardless of whether Trump has any consequences in South Carolina, it is worth remembering the latest barbs because they give fresh material to Biden and Democrats for the general election campaign.

“If it’s a rematch, I’ll vote for Biden,” Crawford said.

How do Trump and Haley handle the results?

When Haley got to 43% of the vote in New Hampshire, she celebrated as if she had won. And Trump got angry, accusing her of lying to voters.

Trump has mellowed since. Asked in a Fox News town hall Tuesday why Haley has not withdrawn, he was matter of fact: “I don’t think she knows how to get out.”

To be clear, Haley insists she is staying at least through Super Tuesday, maybe longer. “We don’t do coronations in America,” she has said often in South Carolina.

The tone Tuesday night, if Haley indeed sticks around, could set the course for the rest of the primary campaign, however long it lasts.

Be wary, though, of predictions about what an extended primary means for the fall. In 2016, Democratic runner-up Bernie Sanders waged a bitter fight with nominee Hillary Clinton well after she amassed an insurmountable delegate lead. Conventional wisdom says that helped cost Clinton the election. Except among Republicans, second-place finisher Cruz also stayed in long after the nomination was settled, and Cruz did not enthusiastically embrace Trump, who still ultimately defeated Clinton.

In 2020, Biden pulled away from other Democrats in March but still faced plenty of skeptics within his party, especially on his left flank. Trump, then the incumbent, had no primary opposition at all. Biden defeated him anyway.

In short, there are too many variables in a long campaign to know what Haley’s endurance will mean the rest of the way.

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United States President Joe Biden has comfortably won South Carolina’s Democratic primary, promising afterwards that he would make Republican rival Donald Trump a loser for a second time in November’s election.

Biden on Saturday defeated the other long-shot Democrats on South Carolina’s ballot, including Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, notching an overwhelming victory in the state that vaulted him to the White House in 2020.

Kicking off his march to the party’s nomination, Biden secured a massive 96.4 percent of the votes in the first Democratic primary of the 2024 presidential race, US media reports said.

Democrats will now pore over the results to see how well the 81-year-old incumbent, battling low approval ratings, mobilised the Black voters who helped propel him to the White House against Trump, 77, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in the election.

‘Donald Trump a loser’

As the results came in, Biden was at a campaign event in California, as he turned his attention to the next steps in his fight for re-election.

“Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the presidency again – and making Donald Trump a loser – again,” Biden said in a statement.

He urged people to get out and vote in November, saying the stakes “could not be higher” if Trump manages a sensational comeback to the Oval Office.

“There are extreme and dangerous voices at work in the country – led by Donald Trump,” he said.

Four years ago, it was South Carolina’s Black vote in the state’s primary that helped ignite Biden’s campaign and ultimately propel him to the White House.

Besides campaign fears that South Carolina’s heavily Black electorate might not be energised this time around, there were also doubts about his age and concerns about high consumer prices and security along the US-Mexican border.

Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison, left, addresses attendees at South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary [Meg Kinnard/AP]

South Carolina has not backed a Democrat for president in the general election since 1976. But because Black people make up the state’s more than half of the Democratic electorate, it presented an important test of Biden’s appeal with a voting base that typically supports Democrats nine-to-one in presidential races.

‘Least popular president’

Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at the advocacy group Independent Women’s Voice, said Biden’s victory in South Carolina does not guarantee him a lead in the presidential race.

“The reality is that this is just a primary and he is the incumbent president, so nobody ever thought he was actually going to lose. But the reality is that President Biden is the least popular president since World War II – that is truly shocking,” she told Al Jazeera.

“His approval ratings are only 33 percent. He is also losing in key battleground states that he won in 2020 against Donald Trump so he is losing overall across the seven battleground states by six points to Trump, and in North Carolina, it’s in double digits. No matter who wins the GOP primary, whether Donald Trump or Nikki Haley, both are beating Biden in the 2024 general election.”

Some South Carolina voters were also lukewarm about Biden’s re-election bid.

“Sometimes I wonder, is his presence enough because you don’t see him a lot, you don’t hear him a lot,” Martin Orr, a school administrator from McConnells, South Carolina, told The Associated Press news agency.

“Is it quiet because of his age or his physical condition, or what’s going on? I think that’s what a lot of people are concerned about right now,” Orr added.

Another issue that is dominating Biden’s re-election campaign is the domestic concerns over the war in Gaza.

For nearly four months now, Israel has been waging a “genocidal” campaign in Gaza, killing more than 27,200 people, displacing almost its entire population and triggering a widespread hunger and health crisis in the besieged enclave.

Israel’s latest campaign against Gaza started after Hamas fighters on October 7 stormed communities in southern Israel, killing more than 1,100 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 captives, nearly half of whom have since been released.

Michael Fauntroy, head of the Ronald Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center at Howard University, said Biden is walking “a fine line” as he tries to win Jewish votes while also trying to mediate for an end to the fighting inside Gaza.

“He seems to have been working very hard to get the Israelis to slow down and he has not publicly called for a ceasefire, but I think he understands that that is where the US policy will have to go,” Fauntroy told Al Jazeera.

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