Third-party candidates are the worrisome wild card amid Biden-Trump rematch in Wisconsin
CNN
As former President Donald Trump returns to Wisconsin on Tuesday night for the first time in nearly two years, Democrats have a close eye on him – but not only him – as they build a general election campaign in this critical battleground state.
As former President Donald Trump returns to Wisconsin on Tuesday night for the first time in nearly two years, Democrats have a close eye on him – but not only him – as they build a general election campaign in this critical battleground state. “Any appetite for Robert Kennedy Jr. this fall?” progressive host Mike Crute asked this week on “The Devil’s Advocate Radio Show,” where listeners call in and compare notes about liberal politics. “Would you consider voting for a third party?” As Wisconsin voters cast ballots Tuesday in a largely symbolic primary seven months ahead of the November election, that question is on the minds of Democrats and Republicans as they brace for a rematch between President Joe Biden and Trump – with Kennedy’s independent candidacy increasingly becoming a worrisome wild card in the race. “Third-party candidacies, to my opinion, are an unacceptable answer in the 2024 election,” Crute said, before delivering an even sharper message to his audience: “Don’t throw away your vote.” Look no further than Wisconsin to see how serious the threat of third-party challengers could be to the Biden-Trump rematch. In 2020, Biden won the state by fewer than 21,000 votes, with no Green Party candidates on the ballot. Four years earlier, Trump carried Wisconsin by nearly 23,000 votes, with the Green Party’s Jill Stein earning more than 30,000 voters. Stein, along with Kennedy and left-wing scholar Cornel West, are offering themselves up this year as alternatives to voters unimpressed – or even angry – over the prospect of choosing again between two of the least popular candidates in modern times. “I would say Jill Stein, the Green Party, worries me as much as Kennedy does,” said Crute, who broadcasts his progressive show across the state. “But I’m concerned. Anything that changes the head-to-head electoral math between Trump and Biden and I don’t like that.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?
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The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
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National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
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Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.
Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.