(CNN) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the 2024 GOP presidential race next week, two Republicans familiar with the matter told CNN, initiating his much-anticipated bid to wrestle the future of the party from former President Donald Trump.

DeSantis will file paperwork declaring his candidacy next week with the Federal Election Commission, one Republican said, with a formal announcement expected the following week in his Florida hometown of Dunedin. DeSantis is likely to soft-launch the campaign as early as Wednesday to coincide with the filing of the paperwork, according to a Republican consultant close to the governor’s political team.

However, another source cautioned that the planning remains a moving target, and DeSantis is known to surprise even his closest allies and advisers with last-minute changes. DeSantis, who often boasts that he runs an operation free of leaks, may be further motivated to throw out the script to vex the media outlets who have preempted his announcement, the source said.

“With him, it’s always a possibility,” the source added.

But the machinery for a launch is already in motion as dozens of his top fundraisers and donors have been summoned to South Florida under the assumption they will be asked to begin building up a war chest for a DeSantis presidential campaign. By officially submitting his paperwork, his supporters can begin soliciting donations on his behalf.

About 100 hotel rooms have been reserved at the Four Seasons in Miami, which will host receptions for donors, briefings with DeSantis’ political team and sessions where attendees will dial for dollars, according to two sources familiar with the details. The goal is for each fundraiser to bring in between $100,000 and $150,000.

A spokesman for DeSantis’ political operation did not respond to a request for comment.

An announcement around the Memorial Day weekend is on the earlier side of the timeline that the governor’s political operation had targeted six months ago when it eyed a launch after Florida’s legislative session. This suggests DeSantis is responding to donors and supporters anxious to see him get in the race and more directly challenge Trump. Polling shows the former president remains firmly in the lead while DeSantis has lost some momentum during the belabored rollout of his expected campaign, which has included a book release and tour, a dozen appearances at local GOP fundraisers, an international trip, the creation of a super PAC, a donor retreat near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and a blitz through conservative media.

Along the way, DeSantis has stumbled at times, drawing poor reviews for his oscillating takes on the Russia-Ukraine war, prolonging his clash with Disney into a second year and getting caught flat-footed as Trump unveiled endorsements from Florida Republicans in Congress just before the governor visited Washington to build support.

However, DeSantis’ allies believe the trajectory of the race will change significantly once he is officially a candidate and responds to Trump’s broadsides and more vigorously shares his vision for the country.

According to The New York Times, DeSantis told donors and supporters during a call Thursday that there were only three credible candidates in the race – himself, President Joe Biden and Trump – and that only he and Biden had a chance of winning the general election.

DeSantis said on the call, which was organized by Never Back Down, a super PAC closely aligned with the governor, that data from swing states was “not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” the Times reported.

DeSantis has spent the last couple of weeks tying up loose ends – rapidly signing dozens of bills that have reached his desk, meeting with donors in Tallahassee and South Florida, and shoring up endorsements to boost his launch. He spent Saturday in Iowa, where he appeared to one-up Trump, making an unannounced visit to a BBQ joint in Des Moines – minutes from where the former president had canceled a rally due to threat of weather. While in the state, DeSantis laid the framework for his case against Trump.

“If we make 2024 a referendum on Joe Biden and his failures and we provide a positive alternative for the future of this country, Republicans will win across the board,” DeSantis told Iowa caucus voters in Sioux Center. “If we do not do that, if we get distracted, if we focus on the election in the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again, and I think it will be very difficult to recover from that defeat.”

On Friday, DeSantis will travel to another early nominating state, New Hampshire, to meet with state lawmakers – many of whom endorsed him earlier this week – for a policy round table, according to three sources familiar with the planning.

Never Back Down has in recent weeks rolled out dozens of key endorsements for the governor in Iowa and New Hampshire. On Wednesday, the super PAC also announced endorsements from 99 Florida lawmakers – a show of force from the rank-and-file Republicans who helped push DeSantis’ agenda through the state legislature this spring.

“Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature have worked together to achieve historic results and produce conservative victories for the people of Florida – turning the state into a beacon of freedom and the fastest growing state in the nation,” Never Back Down spokeswoman Erin Perrine said.

Trump’s campaign dismissed the Florida endorsements as politically motivated, noting that DeSantis had not yet signed the state budget, for which he has line-item veto power over the pet projects of state lawmakers.

“There are some brave legislators who have stood up to DeSantis’ Swamp-like behavior and resisted his intimidation tactics in order to do what is right for Florida and the country,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said. “Those who he can’t control – including almost the entirety of the Florida federal congressional delegation – have endorsed President Trump because he’s the only candidate who can beat Joe Biden and take back the White House.”

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 (CNN) — On the final day of overtime in Georgia, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock exuded confidence, but warned supporters against being complacent in his runoff election with Republican nominee and former football great Herschel Walker.

“There is still a path for Herschel Walker to win this race,” Warnock said after a campaign stop here Monday. “If there’s anything I worry about it’s that people will think we don’t need their voice. We do. We need you to show up.”

Warnock was the leading vote-getter in the general election last month, but the contest extended into December since he failed to win a majority. After four weeks of runoff campaigning, Warnock and Democrats are optimistic that he can outlast Walker and secure a full, six-year term. Such a victory would help solidify Georgia as a purple state after Joe Biden narrowly carried it in 2020 and Warnock and Jon Ossoff won January 2021 runoffs that delivered the president a Democratic Senate.

Tuesday’s race, though, is still expected to be tight, with both parties and allied groups pouring tens of millions into a contest that will shape the balance of power in the Senate over the next two years.

Democrats have already clinched control of the chamber, but victory for Warnock — after the party picked up a seat in Pennsylvania — would give Majority Leader Chuck Schumer a vote to spare and allow Democrats to lead committees that have been split since Biden took office. With that in mind, Walker and a host of GOP senators have implored Republicans to send him to Washington as a check on Biden and his policies.

“We’re working on turnout, turnout, turnout,” Walker said as he barnstormed across northern Georgia at five scheduled rallies on the eve of the election. “A vote for Warnock is a vote for these failed policies. A vote for me is a better coming.”

During a campaign rally for Warnock in Atlanta last week, former President Barack Obama stressed the immediate impact of Democrats potentially winning a 51st Senate seat. “It prevents one person from holding up everything,” he said, while also looking ahead to the next election and its implications.

“It also puts us in a better position a couple years from now when you’ve got another election and the Senate map is going to be tilted in the favor of Republicans,” Obama said. “And it’ll help prevent Republicans from getting a filibuster-proof majority that could allow them to do things like passing a federal abortion ban.”

The turnout question

In the final act of the 2022 midterm election, Georgia voters once again have the last word.

For the past few weeks, Georgia Republican leaders have been touting early in-person voting turnout. That’s despite GOP officials having sought unsuccessfully to close the polls on the Saturday after Thanksgiving owing to a controversial reading of state voting laws. The Georgia Supreme Court ultimately upheld a lower court’s ruling that allowed them to open.

On Friday, the state broke its single-day record, again, when more than 350,000 people went to the polls to cast ballots before Election Day.

But those figures, though impressive, came during an early voting period that had been significantly condensed from 2021. Though several days last week ended with historically high numbers of ballots cast, the overall number of voters ahead of this runoff — as compared to the 2021 election — actually decreased, from roughly 3.1 million last year to about 1.87 million in 2022. (About 2.5 million voted before Election Day last month.)

Despite the uncertainty some Democrats feel around turnout, especially given an ugly weather forecast for Tuesday, Walker faces steep challenges in money and math.

Democrats have more than doubled GOP ad spending over the last month alone, according to a CNN analysis of data from AdImpact. Democrats have spent an astonishing $55 million to the GOP’s $26 million on TV spots since November 9.

Walker is also scrambling to overcome an extraordinary 200,000-vote gap between his November vote total and that of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who handily defeated Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams. That’s a deficit complicating Walker’s path as he looks to win over Republican or Republican-leaning voters who didn’t turn out for him last month.

Yet his GOP supporters are keeping hope alive.

“I think there’s a lot of people who are sorry they didn’t get out and vote last time,” said Elizabeth Walters, a retiree who came to see Walker at a weekend stop in Loganville. “I think it might be close, but I think he’ll win.”

The optimism is far more muted in many Republican circles in Washington, where a mix of dissatisfaction and disappointment are directed at the Walker campaign and former President Donald Trump, who recruited him to run.

Trump steered clear of Georgia, but held a tele-rally on Monday night to rally his supporters.

“If Herschel wins this race Republicans can make Chuck Schumer’s life a little more difficult and we can slam on the brakes on every extreme left-wing judge and everything else that’s happening right now for the last two years, been happening to our country,” Trump said in remarks that lasted less than 10 minutes.

“We’re in dire straits in this nation,” said John Hayes, a Republican voter who watched Walker campaign at a weekend stop. “I think there will be a lot of Republicans who come out to vote on Tuesday. That’s what we need.”

Kemp has done his best to aid the cause after stiff-arming Walker for most of the general election campaign. With Trump effectively out of the picture, Kemp has emerged as Walker’s top surrogate, appearing in a pair of television ads during the runoff for his fellow Republican.

Victory for Walker would be a boon for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the coming Congress. And Trump, ignoring all evidence that his involvement complicated the GOP’s path here, would surely claim vindication.

But the most profound effect of a Walker win could be bolstering Kemp’s national stature. After defeating a Trump-backed primary challenger last spring and being reelected by a wide margin last month, he is the rare high-profile Republican to publicly reject Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election and maintain, if not grow, his popularity with the GOP base.

Kids and cross-over voters

Further underscoring the growing strength of Kemp’s brand has been Warnock’s effort to reinforce and grow his support among so-called crossover voters. In the run-up to the runoff, Warnock debuted an ad spotlighting voters who said they had backed Kemp and plan to do the same for Warnock on Tuesday.

But in the final sprint, the Democrat has also been seeking to energize the young voters who, over the past two cycles, have emerged as increasingly crucial parts of the party’s coalition.

At Georgia Tech on Monday, Warnock urged students who had not already cast ballots to get out on Tuesday — and asked that they encourage their friends and family to do the same.

“I want you to know that your assignment, if you’ve already voted, your assignment is not yet done. Your assignment is to get some more of your friends,” Warnock said. “Call Lottie, Dottie, and everybody. Tell them it’s time to vote.”

Warnock was introduced by Florida Rep.-elect Maxwell Frost, who will become the first Gen-Z member of Congress.

“We know that young people don’t make up the biggest voting bloc right now,” Frost said, “but we are the bloc that matters.”

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    (CNN) — The two-month sprint to the midterm elections is set to take place on political terrain that is much less settled than Republicans had hoped it would be, with improving economic news, a raging battle over abortion rights and former President Donald Trump’s return to the forefront raising Democrats’ hopes that the party can hold onto its narrow majority in the House or Senate.

Republicans entered the year riding strong historical trends, with President Joe Biden’s approval rating slipping as the first midterm elections of his presidency approached, and poised to benefit from an electorate eager to assign blame for soaring inflation.

But gas prices have dropped, and Biden’s approval rating has ticked upward. Republicans, meanwhile, have watched as their electorate followed Trump’s endorsements in a handful of key races for Senate seats and governorships. Those Trump-endorsed candidates — many of whom had built their campaigns around his lies about widespread election fraud — have struggled to broaden their appeal to moderates and independents who will decide November’s key races.

The FBI search of Mar-a-Lago has shifted the spotlight from Biden, whom Republicans want to run against, to Trump, who remains a galvanizing force for Democrats and suburban moderates who oppose him.

The most significant factor could be the Supreme Court’s decision to end federal abortion rights. Since the late June decision, Democrats have scored a string of surprising victories.

In deep-red Kansas, voters resoundingly rejected an effort to end the state’s constitutional protection of abortion rights. In a special election for a bellwether House seat in New York, in which abortion was a key issue, the Democratic candidate won. And in last week in Alaska, little-known Democratic former state lawmaker Mary Peltola defeated Republican former Gov. Sarah Palin in a ranked-choice special election for a House seat that had been in GOP hands for nearly half a century.

Republicans are expressing anxiety — not about any shift in the landscape so far but about the unknown issues that could crop up in the final weeks before Election Day and disrupt the perceptions of swing voters.

“It’s like you’re up in the beginning of the fourth quarter and you want to limit the variables,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist. “You’ve just got to run out the clock.”

While Republicans attempt to keep the focus on Biden, Democrats argue that, with the passage of their health care and climate bill, the party has more to sell to voters as a result of Biden’s first two years in office.

The day after the Inflation Reduction Act became law, House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, after ticking off nearly every notable piece of legislation signed by Biden — from the American Rescue Plan, to the bipartisan infrastructure, gun and manufacturing bills — heaped praise on Biden.

“If someone were to say that a president had a record of accomplishment that I just described, without putting a timeframe on it, the logical response would be that person had a successful two-term presidency,” the New York Democrat said.

GOP concerns about candidate quality build

After Labor Day — long seen as the unofficial start to campaign season — candidates typically shift into a higher gear. Debates are scheduled, rallies are more frequent, get-out-the-vote efforts are launched and the television advertising battles escalate.

The fall campaign is opening with an air of uncertainty, with the President leading the charge in trying to turn the midterm election into a stark contrast with Republicans — rather than simply a referendum on Democratic control of Washington.

“We have a choice,” Biden said Monday evening, speaking at a rally outside Pittsburgh. “Trump and the MAGA Republicans made their choice. We can choose to build a better America, or we can continue down this sliding path to oblivion, to where we don’t want to go.”

The President’s visits to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on Labor Day were the latest sign that those two states — and their respective Senate seats, both held by Republicans — are the biggest prizes Democrats are eyeing over the next two months. The comments from Biden come after months of surveys and focus groups, with a tailored-message to try and open the door to winning over independent and even some Republican voters frustrated with Trump’s return.

“We found ourselves in a situation where we were either going to look forward or look backwards and it’s clear which way he wants to look,” Biden said, referring to his predecessor. “It’s clear which way the new MAGA Republicans are — they’re extreme and democracy’s really at stake.”

Trump also visited Pennsylvania for a rally over the weekend, where he railed against the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home, but barely touted the Senate and gubernatorial candidates he was there to support.

Pennsylvania is perhaps the best window into Republicans’ struggles in recent months. The GOP is attempting to hold onto the seat of retiring Sen. Pat Toomey, and nominated Trump-endorsed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz to take on Democrat John Fetterman, the current lieutenant governor.

Republicans had also hoped to win the governor’s office, with term-limited Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf not running. But the party’s voters nominated another Trump-backed candidate, far-right state lawmaker Doug Mastriano, a leading proponent of the former President’s election fraud lies. The GOP is now pumping millions of dollars into Oz’s race, and has all but abandoned Mastriano.

Concerns about the quality of candidates Republicans have nominated are growing not just in Pennsylvania, but across the political map. In Arizona, the GOP nominated a slate of Trump-endorsed election deniers with competitive Senate and governor’s races on the ballot. In Georgia, former football star Herschel Walker has faced a series of damaging revelations about his personal history in his race against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who’s running for a full six-year term after winning a 2021 special election.

The clearest case of a candidate struggling in a race Republicans need to win is Oz in Pennsylvania, who, after spending millions of his own money to win the commonwealth’s primary in May, stopped that personal spending over the summer and largely disappeared from the campaign trail while Fetterman recovered from a stroke. Top Republicans now believe Oz squandered the summer, allowing a Democratic candidate who wasn’t even campaigning to open a polling lead.

But Oz is not alone. Republicans have privately and publicly expressed concerns about Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona and Adam Laxalt in Nevada. In New Hampshire, a state that holds its primary next week, Republicans are also growing increasingly concerned that Don Bolduc, a retired United States Army brigadier general, could defeat New Hampshire Senate President Chuck Morse in the Republican Senate primary — a win that some believe would make Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan’s path to reelection easier.

All of it has led Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to temper expectations that his party will control the Senate in January.

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell said in August. “Senate races are just different. They’re statewide. … Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

That led to a feud between McConnell and Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the party’s Senate campaign arm, to burst into public view last week.

Politico published an interview with Scott saying that he and McConnell have a “strategic disagreement” over the party’s candidates, and the Washington Examiner published an op-ed by Scott taking issue with the view that those candidates could cost the GOP the Senate.

“Ultimately, though, when you complain and lament that we have ‘bad candidates,’ what you are really saying is that you have contempt for the voters who chose them. Now we are at the heart of the matter,” Scott wrote. “Much of Washington’s chattering class disrespects and secretly (or not so secretly) loathes Republican voters.”

Increase in women registering to vote after abortion ruling

Though energy seems to have been on Democrats’ side in the wake of the Supreme Court ending federal abortion rights protections, the ruling’s most significant impact could be the ways in which it reshapes the electorate.

Ahead of the Kansas constitutional referendum, voter registration among women surged — one reason proponents believe voters opted to keep the abortion protections.

With just weeks before the midterms, though, it appears a similar trend is at play in a range of key states, according to Tom Bonier, the head of TargetSmart, a Democratic political data tracking firm. Catalist, another political data firm, found a similar trend — and while the numbers of new registrations were relatively small, there are noticeable trends toward Democrats and women.

Bonier put it bluntly: In his decades of analyzing voter registration data, he has never seen the kind of surge among women that has followed the Supreme Court’s decision, leading him to believe that the 2022 midterms may not be as big a Republican wave as history may suggest.

“If women turn out at a rate, maybe 10 points higher than men, you see a dramatically different electorate than you would have expected to see in the midterm election that dynamically should favor Republicans given everything else,” said Bonier, who added that even small shifts in women voters could mean dramatic shifts in midterm races. “I truly have never seen anything like that in election data.”

Bonier and analysts have argued this is the reason that several top Republican candidates are scrubbing their websites of strict abortion positions and de-prioritizing abortion as an issue at events.

Last month, Democrat Pat Ryan won a special election in New York’s 19th Congressional District largely by centering his campaign on abortion rights, describing the election as a referendum on Roe. Weeks earlier, Kansans — in a high turnout vote that cut across traditional partisan lines — rejected a ballot measure that would’ve allowed its legislature to pursue a ban.

But Ryan’s run posed different challenge. Voters in the upstate district were choosing between candidates, not voting directly on an issue — even as Ryan insisted they were inextricable. In the end, though, his message appeared to win the day and further embolden Democrats.

Abortion rights are “something people feel viscerally and more deeply than any single policy issue. And when you hit that nerve, you get the response you got here last night that, that you got in Kansas a few weeks ago,” he told CNN the morning after his victory. “And I think we will continue to see that happen, especially because far right members of Congress and other far right folks out there are doubling down on the extremism, calling for a national abortion ban, wanting to put doctors in jail. It’s just so divorced from where, where the vast, vast, vast majority of Americans are.”

In a Sunday interview on Fox News, Rep. Tom Emmer, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP’s House campaign arm, argued that Democratic efforts to rally voters around abortion rights would backfire.

But in the process, he handed his opponents another inflammatory sound bite — calling House legislation to codify the protections from Roe v. Wade “the Chinese genocide bill.”

“If Democrats want to make abortion the main issue, when every poll we’ve seen says that the economy and the cost of living is the number one issue, good luck to them trying to defend their extreme position. Every one of them voted for what I call the Chinese genocide bill, which would allow abortion up to moments before a child takes its first breath. I think our candidates know how to message that and they’ll be just fine in the midterms.”

Governor’s races test GOP’s candidate quality

Governor’s seats in all five states that flipped from Trump to Biden in 2020 are on the ballot this year, lending those races importance that stretches well beyond their borders.

In Michigan and Wisconsin, Democratic Govs. Gretchen Whitmer and Tony Evers, respectively, are vying for second terms, while Pennsylvania state Attorney General Josh Shapiro is running to keep the seat in Democratic hands with Wolf on the way out.

“We’ve had numerous Republicans take off that red jersey, cross the line and endorse my candidacy,” Shapiro told CNN on Monday, arguing that he is capitalizing on a rival he views as extreme. “We’re going to keep building a big broad coalition and we’re going to win in November.”

Trump endorsed the eventual Republican nominees in all three races and, were they to win, each could potentially preside over GOP governing trifectas. Republicans already control state government in Arizona, where Republican nominee Kari Lake, a Trump-allied former TV news anchor, made election denial the centerpiece of her primary campaign. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a rare Republican to break with Trump’s election lies but keep his grip on power, is locked in a rematch of his 2018 race with Democrat Stacey Abrams.

In all these contests, and others from Nevada to Maine, Democrats are hammering their GOP rivals over right-wing extremism in the party. They are betting that the message will be especially effecitve in Pennsylvania, where Mastriano, who was in Washington on January 6, 2021, has said he wants to ban abortion, with no exceptions.

“This is an issue about Republicans talking about taking away rights and freedoms and what that means for other right freedoms,” Democratic Governors Association spokesman David Turner said. “There’s a real, visceral sentiment amongst voters about what Republicans are doing that’s driving a lot of the conversation.”

Republicans, though, are making a different calculation — and arguing that statewide races like those for governor are going to turn on a combination of more provincial concerns and the overall state of the economy, which remains voters’ top concern in most polling.

“Voters are more concerned with the kitchen table issues that are affecting their everyday lives, more so than an issue that certainly invigorates the base Democratic voters,” Republican Governors Association spokesman Jesse Hunt said.

He pinpointed Nevada, where Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak is faced with both a slow-recovering economy and a tough challenge from Republican Joe Lombardo, the Clark County sheriff, as a prime pick-up opportunity for the GOP.

Still, optimism among many Republican officials over the state of governors’ races has dimmed over the past few months, as GOP primary voters mostly followed Trump’s lead — sometimes with a nudge from meddling Democrats — and picked nominees widely viewed as less acceptable to the broader electorate.

The picture for Republicans in states like Texas and Florida, where Trump comfortably won in 2016 and 2020, is brighter.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who could use reelection as a springboard for a potential 2024 presidential run, has emerged as a prolific fundraiser and, after Trump, the second most popular figure among Republicans nationwide.

Democratic nominee Charlie Crist is trying not only to unseat DeSantis, but to turn the tide for a party that hasn’t won a race for governor in Florida since 1994. Crist held the job more recently, from 2007 to 2011, but was elected as a Republican before leaving the party to become an independent and then eventually joining the Democrats. He lost a 2014 challenge as the Democratic nominee to then-Gov. Rick Scott, now the state’s junior GOP senator.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is less closely tied to Trump, but won his endorsement and re-nomination in a landslide. Democrat Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso, is trying to recreate the grassroots fervor that nearly carried him to victory over Sen. Ted Cruz four years ago, but will not have a blue wave at his back this time around.

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As he walked through the front gate of the White House complex last year for the first time as President, Joe Biden declared it felt like “going home.”

If the presidency seemed then like a natural fit for a 50-year creature of Washington, today its limits are leading to a reckoning over expectations and ambitions in a country as exhausted, angry and divided as ever.

Biden enters the second year of his term with one of the lowest approval ratings of a modern-day president, depleted of the political capital and sense of confidence that followed him into office.

A sense of normalcy returned to the White House following the whiplash of Donald Trump’s presidency, but a string of setbacks — at home and abroad — have eroded the air of competence that once surrounded a President and his team, who have spent most of their lives in government and campaigned for the job on a pledge of restoring order.

On most days since January 20, 2021, the President has arrived at the Oval Office early in the morning, peppered his team with detailed questions and tried not to think too much about the man who’d just vacated the building, leaving behind a pandemic, angry divisions and — inside a drawer of the Resolute Desk — a lengthy letter for Biden. The President has worked to make the place his own, installing his family’s furniture, ordering up chocolate ice cream bars branded with the presidential seal and returning to traditions his predecessor abandoned.

The 12 months Biden has been in office did come with major victories. He successfully guided passage of trillions in new funding to combat the coronavirus pandemic and rebuild American’s crumbling infrastructure through Congress. He has appointed more federal judges than his recent predecessors, overseen a boom in hiring, a drop in poverty and orchestrated a nationwide vaccination campaign.

Yet for all that, the country remains fractured and irritable. A “malaise” has sunk in as the pandemic persists, his vice president conceded in an interview this month. Americans are misbehaving on airplanes, in school board meetings and at grocery stores. So entrenched is the anger that one father felt comfortable blurting out a coded derogatory phrase about Biden when he was speaking to the President on the phone last Christmas Eve — while his own son watched on.

“There are successes that he’s had, but people do not feel it and you can’t persuade people to feel better. You can’t jawbone that,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser in former President Barack Obama’s White House and a CNN senior political commentator.

Unlike Trump, Biden is not actively stoking the anger. But his inaugural speech pledge to “end this uncivil war” remains unfulfilled.

Biden’s trademark personal style — wielded over breakfasts in Delaware, inside caucus rooms on Capitol Hill and across the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office — hasn’t brought around holdout Democrats to some of his boldest ideas, let alone many Republicans.

Overseas, a full-blown conflict now looms with Moscow just six months after coming face-to-face with the Russian leader in an old villa in Geneva. And after declaring “independence from the virus” on the South Lawn in July, Biden is contemplating Covid’s permanent presence going forward.

On a personal level, just adjusting to life in the White House has been a struggle. By his own admission, Biden finds the place stifling and regularly spends three nights a week elsewhere.

Blame game

Even as top advisers and longtime friends of Biden try to help reset a floundering presidency, recriminations have quietly surfaced inside the West Wing about the fundamental causes of the challenges.

A considerable share of finger-pointing is aimed at deep divisions among Democrats and how some top officials have sought to accommodate progressives in hopes of keeping peace inside the party.

“Over the last year, the White House has allowed the left to hijack and misinterpret the rationale for Biden’s election,” said one former Democratic official in regular touch with the President, speaking to CNN on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the West Wing. “He was not elected to transform the country.”

White House chief of staff Ron Klain, a longtime Biden adviser, is at the middle of those internal tensions. He is seen by some observers as pushing his own agenda or being too quick to side with demands from liberals, which raises expectations that ultimately lead to disappointment.

When Democrats clinched their razor-thin majority in the Senate, following the Georgia runoff victories for Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, those expectations skyrocketed far beyond what the narrowly divided Senate has been able to deliver. The expected failure of voting rights legislation is only the latest example.

“They pushed for everything you would have thought they would have done if they had 58 or 60 Democrats,” one lawmaker told CNN, who lamented how Biden’s first year is ending with a focus on what he didn’t accomplish rather than what he did.

“Either your message is wrong, or your approach is wrong. Something is wrong.”

At the center of the White House challenges, though, is Biden himself and what even many longtime admirers describe as unremarkable and uneven performances. Several members of Congress who speak with Biden frequently told CNN that his grasp of details is impressive, but how he communicates that publicly is often anything but.

Heading into a tumultuous midterm election year, where Democrats are already bracing for the prospect of losing control of the House and possibly the Senate, the White House said Biden will spend more of his time communicating directly with the American people, rather than trying to negotiate deals in Congress.

That promise, however, rings familiar. The administration has repeatedly promised that Biden would spend more time on the road selling his plans, yet he has traveled less than most recent predecessors.

“There should be some really significant issues that we should be able to come around and coalesce around and get done. And I think we can. I think we can get it done. And we need the President, we need the administration to lead the way. They’re in charge. The buck stops there. There is no doubt about, and we need to get things done. We’re not doing good enough,” said Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who is running for Senate in the state.

“The President is the President, and there is no question that he bears some responsibility for it. But there is also Congress and the Senate, and the Republicans are MIA. They’re worthless,” Ryan said on CNN.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday hailed the legislative successes and the economic strides, despite coming into office under what she described as “an incredibly difficult circumstance.”

“You don’t get everything done in the first year,” Psaki said. “The work is not done. The job is not done, and we are certainly not conveying that it is.”

Confronting Covid

As his second year begins, advisers tell CNN that Covid-19 and its messy fallout is the biggest weight on Biden — the one challenge he believes could reverse his fortunes or forever damage his presidency.

Biden has made significant strides, particularly in getting hundreds of millions of Americans vaccinated. But millions still refuse to get shots, a persistent source of frustration for the President.

“This virus has fooled us multiple times,” one senior health official told CNN. “Nobody expected Delta to just blow us away. And then to have Omicron come out of nowhere, it’s a big, big surprise.”

Still, the President has maintained the same mentality throughout. He has repeatedly advised his team that while outsiders will quickly point out any of their missteps, “you should keep your head down and keep working.”

“He’s not panicking. He’s not blaming anyone,” the official said.

Trillions of dollars in Covid relief funds helped alleviate some of the economic stresses of the pandemic, but even Biden has admitted the influx of cash into the economy may have driven up consumer prices. Inflation triggered by a Covid-related mismatch between supply and demand remains a drag on the President’s approval ratings.

Biden’s poll numbers began taking a southward turn over the summer, when it became clear his celebrations of a waning virus were premature. Mask recommendations returned, shutdowns persisted and the once-hopeful feeling disappeared. Confusing messaging from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been a source of constant irritation in the West Wing.

In other ways, the pandemic has altered the normal rhythms of executive branch life. Unable to travel as extensively as he’d once hoped, Biden has taken to conducting events from an elaborate stage-set built in a White House auditorium where participants can beam in on video-chat. He has traveled abroad only twice, a slower pace than his predecessors.

Ordinarily the West Wing and its adjacent offices are a hive of activity, where at any single moment meetings could be unfolding on dozens of pressing topics. But even a year into his presidency, Covid has left some staffers still working at home. Those who are selected for a meeting with the President himself must arrive well beforehand to undergo testing by the White House Medical Unit. What once could have been a 30-minute block of a Cabinet secretary or lawmaker’s day becomes more of an ordeal.

“You know what it takes to go meet with the President?” said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra last month. “It’s just a pain. And you knock out so much of your day. You’ve got to get tested, what is it, an hour and a half before you can see the President, you got to hang around there. So, the actual physical one-on-one, not as often.”

Calls for a reset

Growing anxious ahead of this year’s midterm elections, many Democrats have issued various calls for a strategy reset — on Covid, the economy and communications. Some have privately questioned whether Biden — whose public schedule sometimes contains only a few events per week — is doing enough to promote his accomplishments and break through to voters.

Biden’s speeches often rely on the same lengthy passages, recited verbatim from a teleprompter. When he does leave Washington, his events have tended to adopt a familiar look: a tour of a factory or plant, a speech to a group of unionized workers and up to an hour of shaking hands afterward. His top-visited state, aside from Delaware where he travels home on weekends, was Pennsylvania.

At moments, the nation’s oldest President shows his age. After he reminisced about working with noted segregationist Strom Thurmond in a speech about voting rights last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed perplexed: “None of us have a lot of happy memories about Strom Thurmond,” she said afterward.

Questions persist about whether he plans to run again in 2024. And missteps by his vice president, Kamala Harris — whose allies believe she is both underutilized as a political asset and overexposed to difficult issues — have led to deeper introspection about the future of the Democratic Party.

After urging from party strategists, Biden has lately begun drawing sharper contrasts with Republicans and speaking out louder about the corrosive lies peddled by Trump. The President has begun staging more events meant to highlight the benefits of what he has been able to accomplish, like passing the largest public works bill in decades.

Heading into the new year, the White House has drawn up executive actions on issues like police reform for Biden to act where Congress won’t.

And White House officials and Democratic lawmakers are beginning to quietly plot a way forward on Biden’s sweeping spending agenda, including potentially splitting it into pieces.

Biden has stood accused by some progressives, including his onetime rival for the Democratic presidential nomination Sen. Bernie Sanders, of failing to pursue an agenda focused on real-world economic issues. It’s a charge that stings for the President who still makes a point in meetings of asking how policy proposals will affect pipefitters and construction workers in his Pennsylvania hometown, and angrily scolds advisers for using jargon those people wouldn’t understand.

His top aides insist Biden’s achievements have been squarely focused on improving conditions for the working class.

“I would not say that the Democratic Party has turned its back on the working class. We have had historic successes in the first year of the Biden presidency, the passage of the American Rescue Plan, to give one example, has cut child poverty in this country almost in half,” said Susan Rice, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, last week on CNN. “We have put very important supports in the pockets of the American people at a time when the pandemic has made their economic prospects perilous.”

Managing expectations

In many ways, Biden’s first year was defined by expectations getting away from him: about the trajectory of the pandemic, the durability of Trump and the ability of a governing veteran to find solutions to any of it. At junctures throughout the year, Biden appeared caught by surprise when challenges arose that, at least in retrospect, were not surprising.

When the Taliban swiftly took control of Afghanistan in August, Biden said it happened quicker than anyone expected — despite intelligence warnings painting a grim picture following a complete American withdrawal.

When France erupted in anger following his deal to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, Biden said he thought someone had given Paris a heads up that their own agreement to provide conventional subs was off — even though no one had.

When Biden said in June that inflation would “pop up a little bit and then go back down,” he was discounting warnings from veterans of Democratic administrations of a more serious trend — one that continues six months later.

And when testing shortages at the start of the latest Covid surge caused mile-long lines, Biden said he wished he’d thought of ordering millions more tests earlier — even though health experts have been warning for months of a looming shortage.

Repeatedly appearing caught off-guard by events undercut Biden’s promise of restoring competence to government and predictability on the world stage and led to accusations he was being poorly served by his team. It belied a President who, behind the scenes, solicits a wide range of opinions on critical issues and engages a panel of advisers inside and outside government. The process has sometimes delayed critical decisions, giving the impression of indecisiveness.

After the harrowing Afghanistan ordeal, there were calls to fire his national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Others have urged Biden to replace his Covid response coordinator Jeff Zients. After publicly sinking prospects for quick passage of the Build Back Better plan, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia vented frustration at White House staff he said drove him to his “wit’s end.”

Whether Biden plans to replace anyone in the new year remains to be seen; he is a known deliberator and hasn’t executed any major personnel changes since taking office. The advisers he continues to rely upon most — chief of staff Ron Klain and senior advisers Mike Donilon, Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti — have worked for him for decades.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t voices advocating for changes in the West Wing.

“If I was down [this much] in my ratings, I’d have a new chief of staff,” one prominent Democrat who speaks regularly with Biden said.

A struggle to adjust

The pandemic has not been the only factor contributing to an uneasy transition to White House life. After spending eight years haunting the West Wing, Biden had only been upstairs to the private presidential residence once during his time as vice president.

When he moved into the executive mansion last year, staff crowded him at awkward hours, including in the early mornings. Someone was always just outside the door or walking quietly through the hallways. It was a way of life Biden wasn’t accustomed to — and did not enjoy.

Attempts to make the place feel more like home had mixed results. Some of the furniture from his home in Delaware made its way to the White House. Books and family photographs adorn shelves and tables that previously held antiques from the White House collection. But the family German Shepherd Major was dispatched permanently to a friend’s house after a series of nipping incidents (a new puppy, Commander, arrived late last year).

Over the course of the year, Biden and the first lady requested some changes. No longer are chefs or Secret Service agents posted in the private kitchen on his third-floor residence during breakfast hours; instead, he can wander in wearing a bathrobe and pour himself a bowl of Special K cereal before lifting weights in the residence gym.

Waiting for him in the morning is a notecard with his schedule for the day, which Biden marks with checks as each meeting is completed, and a stapled-together compilation of daily news clips called “The Bulletin.” He packs it all in a worn leather briefcase to carry with him downstairs to the office.

A focus on the familiar has extended beyond the White House. When Biden met Putin in Geneva last summer, an aide made sure to bring along a bottle of orange Gatorade, the President’s preferred drink. And even when he is traveling, Biden places daily phone calls to his grandchildren, who remain at the center of his personal life.

The third time was a charm in Biden’s quest for the presidency, with a triumph in 2020 after falling well short in the campaigns of 1988 and 2008. The question that many of his longtime admirers raise in quiet conversations is whether Biden still approaches the job and, in fact, Washington in the same way he might have decades ago.

There’s little question that the outcome of his second year — and his ability to spark a turnaround, as many presidents before him have — will help shape how Biden answers the biggest question of all, likely by this time next year: whether he will run again in 2024.

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Former President Donald Trump is still working to assemble a full legal team for his Senate impeachment trial, people familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday, even as he has begun to craft a defense strategy with Butch Bowers, the South Carolina lawyer who has agreed to represent him in the historic proceedings.

Bowers — a respected lawyer from Columbia, South Carolina, who once worked in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush — has been in conversation with Trump in recent days, according to two people familiar with the matter. Bowers was connected to Trump by Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is also helping to add new lawyers to the team.

Charlie Condon, a former South Carolina attorney general who now works in private practice in Charleston, has been approached about joining the legal team, two people familiar with the matter said. In a brief statement to CNN on Monday evening, Condon wrote: “I am not representing former President Trump. Thanks.”

But with just two weeks before the substance of the trial is set to get underway, Trump is still struggling to find other lawyers to join his team, people familiar with the matter said. Some law firms have raised questions about whether they would be paid and other layers have expressed a reluctance to associate themselves with the deadly insurrection of the US Capitol on January 6, the people said.

News of Trump’s struggles to secure counsel comes the same day that House impeachment managers formally triggered the start of the former President’s second impeachment trial. They walked across the Capitol on Monday evening and read on the Senate floor the charge against him, the first president in history to be impeached twice.

The contours of Trump’s Senate trial are starting to take shape as the ceremonial elements get underway, with the Senate’s longest-serving Democrat expected to preside over the trial and Democrats still weighing whether to pursue witnesses during proceedings that could take up a chunk of February.

Asked if he thinks Trump’s defense team will want to call witnesses, Graham, a close ally of Trump, said he did not know, adding, “I can’t imagine who you’d call” and noting that the House did not have anyone testify in their impeachment proceedings.

The South Carolina Republican argued for dismissing the trial based on a “constitutional lack of jurisdiction.”

Graham said he talked to Trump on Sunday, while the former President was golfing in Florida.

Asked about Trump’s mindset and preparations ahead of his second impeachment trial, Graham said, “Well, I think he’d like to get it over with.” He said he “wouldn’t think” Trump would come back from Florida for the proceedings, again emphasizing the desire for a quick trial.

The exact time frame of the trial itself, which will begin the week of February 8, is also unknown, but multiple impeachment managers have said they don’t think it will go as long as the 21 days of Trump’s trial in 2020. The expectation is still, however, that it will take up much of February and wrap up by month’s end, if not sooner.

The second impeachment is also expected to differ from the first in another key way. Chief Justice John Roberts will not be presiding, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Instead, Vermont Democraict Sen. Patrick Leahy, the president pro tempore of the Senate, is expected to preside, the sources said. The Constitution says the chief justice presides when the person facing trial is the current president of the United States, but senators preside in other cases, one source said.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated that he believes that impeaching President Donald Trump will make it easier to get rid of the President and Trumpism from the Republican Party, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

Another person with direct knowledge told CNN there’s a reason McConnell has been silent on impeachment as other Republicans have pushed back: he’s furious about last week’s attack on the US Capitol by the President’s supporters, even more so that Trump has shown no contrition. His silence has been deliberate as he leaves open the option of supporting impeachment.

McConnell has made no commitments on voting to convict Trump, and wants to see the article itself before voting. It’s a stark contrast to the President’s first impeachment when McConnell repeatedly spoke out against Democratic intentions to hold Trump accountable for a pressure campaign on the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his family.

McConnell has been steadily moving his conference away from Trump for weeks. While he knows they all aren’t there with him, the Kentucky Republican believes the party needs to turn the page.

Several GOP sources said on Tuesday that if McConnell supports conviction, Trump almost certainly will be convicted by 67 senators in the impeachment trial.

“If Mitch is a yes, he’s done,” said one Senate GOP source who asked not to be named.

Many Republican senators are staying quiet about whether they’ll back conviction — a sign that they, too, could support conviction in an effort to rid Trump from their party.

The New York Times was first to report on McConnell’s thoughts about impeachment.

The relationship between the Senate majority leader and the President — the two most powerful men in the Republican Party — has essentially collapsed, multiple sources told CNN.

A source familiar with the relationship between the two men told CNN that McConnell is furious with Trump. The source said McConnell “hates” Trump for what he did last week following the attacks on the Capitol that left at least five people dead including a Capitol Hill police officer.

Trump and McConnell still have not spoken since last Wednesday’s riot, a separate source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN. Another source said the two men haven’t spoken since McConnell’s floor speech acknowledging Biden as President-elect in December.

McConnell couldn’t get Trump on the phone when he refused to sign the stimulus bill over the Christmas week, a third source told CNN. McConnell has since told others in the wake of the stimulus circus he won’t talk to Trump again.

McConnell is also speaking with the President-elect about how the chamber should handle an impeachment trial against Trump.

Biden is not trying to stop the impeachment proceedings, but he is trying to keep them from consuming his agenda and overshadowing the early days of his presidency. CNN has learned Biden called McConnell on Monday to discuss the possibility of “bifurcation” — doing impeachment proceedings alongside confirming his nominees and approving a sweeping Covid relief package.

The two men spoke frankly about a potential impeachment trial for Trump, people familiar with the call said, as both of them noted it would be far different from the trial they sat through in 1999 for then-President Bill Clinton.

McConnell told Biden that the Senate parliamentarian would have to rule whether the Senate could work on legislative business other than impeachment, people familiar with the call said, adding that McConnell did not offer his own view.

Biden raised this idea publicly on Monday as he received his second Covid-19 vaccine, saying he had been speaking with lawmakers. He did not reveal that McConnell was among them.

The New York Times first reported the Biden-McConnell call.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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President-elect Joe Biden has decided to nominate Judge Merrick Garland as attorney general, people familiar with the matter tell CNN, a long-awaited decision that moved toward completion Wednesday as it became apparent that Democrats were on the brink of winning control of the Senate.

The announcement of the attorney general, along with other senior leaders of the Justice Department, is expected to be made as soon as Thursday as Biden moves closer to filling the remaining seats in his Cabinet before assuming power on January 20.

Biden has selected Lisa Monaco, a former homeland security adviser in the Obama administration who has become a close aide to Biden, to be the deputy attorney general, according to a person familiar with the decision.

The President-elect has selected Vanita Gupta, who served as principal deputy assistant attorney general and led the civil rights division at the Department of Justice under President Barack Obama, to be associate attorney general, and Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, the person said.

Garland was chosen by Biden for attorney general over former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones and former acting attorney general Sally Yates, the two other finalists for the position.

While Garland has been a top contender for weeks, concerns about the vacancy his selection would create on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia raised alarm bells among Biden and many advisers who believed Senate Republicans would block any nomination to that seat. But with Democrats poised to control the Senate after two Georgia runoff races, those concerns were allayed.

“Judge Garland will be viewed in a whole new light now,” a top Biden ally tells CNN.

Politico first reported the pick.

Late last month, Biden told reporters he was not waiting until the Georgia races were finished to make his decision. But this week, that’s exactly what he is doing. Advisers insist a variety of factors led to the decision of Garland, but acknowledged that the long, often-criticized deliberations of Biden actually paid off in this case.

Garland, who in recent weeks has stepped away from hearing cases on the bench to prepare for the prospect of the nomination, steadily emerged as a leading contender over the last two months since Biden won the election.

The revelation that there is a federal investigation into the taxes and business dealings of Hunter Biden, the President-elect’s son, also contributed to those pushing Garland.

Defenders of Garland argued he would be a particularly strong choice to lead the Justice Department in the post-Trump era because he is seen as above reproach of partisan politics. Some allies describe him as a “Boy Scout,” which is intended to suggest he would be seen as a non-political figure.

In the end, a confluence of factors drove the decision, but people familiar with the matter say it’s largely because of how Biden believes Garland can rise above politics in the post-Trump era.

President Donald Trump’s escalating post-election antics have solidified Biden’s view of choosing Garland, people familiar with the matter say, as Biden believes the nation demands competence and craves unity.

Obama nominated Garland to the Supreme Court after a vacancy was created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. But Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, refused for months to hold confirmation hearings or the required vote in the chamber.

When Trump took office, Garland’s nomination expired and he returned to his position as chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The court is charged with reviewing challenges to administrative agencies. He stepped down from the position as chief judge in February 2020, but still serves on the court. President Bill Clinton appointed him to the court in 1997.

Prior to his appointment as a US circuit judge, Garland served as principal associate deputy attorney general. He supervised the investigation of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed more than 160 people and injured several hundred more. Garland also led the investigations of the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta, in which two people died and more than 100 others were injured.

Garland led the investigation into Ted Kaczynski, also known as “The Unabomber,” who is currently serving eight life sentences for murder. He killed three people and injured more than 20 others with a string of mail bombings.

The judge served as an assistant US attorney for the District of Columbia from 1989 to 1992, and as deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division of the Justice Department from 1993 to 1994.

Garland’s nomination will disappoint those who had pressured Biden to nominate a person of color as attorney general.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris met last month with civil rights leaders and members of the NAACP, who have been pressuring Biden to diversify his Cabinet and create a position within the White House for a civil rights czar. The Rev. Al Sharpton said at a news conference after the meeting that Biden should choose an attorney general with a civil rights background and said his preference would be a Black nominee.

Sharpton said mentioned as potential picks former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Tony West, the senior vice president and chief legal officer at Uber who was previously the associate attorney general of the United States under the Obama administration.

Clarke said at the same news conference that whoever is selected as attorney general “must have a clear and bold record when it comes to civil rights and racial justice.”

Sharpton responded to the Garland pick with a skeptical statement and asked for a meeting with the nominee.

“I would have still preferred a Black Attorney General nominee or someone with a clear record on voting rights and police reform, particularly at this day and time,” Sharpton said in a statement. “I’m unclear on Judge Garland’s record on both and there are very few, if any, written arguments that he has as a Judge to track these positions.”

He added: “I therefore think that he should immediately meet with the civil rights leadership that has met with President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris to discuss things like enforcement of voting rights and police accountability as well as pending legislation with both.”

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President-elect Joe Biden has selected New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland to serve as interior secretary, three people familiar with the matter tell CNN. If confirmed by the Senate, Haaland would be the first Native American Cabinet secretary.

Haaland was picked, in part, because she is someone who has “spent her career fighting for all Americans, including tribal nations, rural communities, and communities of color,” according to a person familiar with the decision. The department conserves and manages the nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage, as well as oversees the federal government’s relationships with Native American tribes.

A transition source familiar with the deliberations on the interior secretary pick pointed to Haaland’s current position as vice chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources as showing her knowledge of and commitment to environmental protections and clean energy. The source also tells CNN they expect that Haaland will bring perspective on other issues like land and water conservation, renewable energy, public lands and federal parks.

The Washington Post was first to report Haaland’s expected nomination.

While the Democratic majority in the House is remarkably thin, Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave her blessing to Haaland’s selection. She issued a statement on Wednesday, which an aide tells CNN was intended to send a green light to the Biden transition and beyond that she supported her nomination.

“Congresswoman Haaland knows the territory,” Pelosi said, “and if she is the President-elect’s choice for Interior Secretary, then he will have made an excellent choice.”

A source familiar with the push to get Haaland nominated says that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was endorsed by the congresswoman during the presidential primary, offered her support for Haaland privately to Biden.

Haaland made history in 2018 when she was elected as one of the two first female Native Americans in Congress. Haaland represents New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District, which covers most of Albuquerque. She replaced Michelle Lujan Grisham, who vacated her congressional seat to run for governor.

The vice president of policy and strategy for the progressive think tank Data for Progress, Julian Brave NoiseCat, praised the President-elect’s pick.

“We see our moms, our aunties and ourselves in Deb — and now we’re putting our greatest hopes as a people in her leadership. After four years of fossil fuel executives and lobbyists opening up Native lands and sacred sites to industry, the next Secretary of Interior will be a Laguna Pueblo woman who went to Standing Rock in 2016 and cooked for the people,” Brave NoiseCat said in a statement.

In 2016, Haaland traveled to North Dakota to take part in the protests over plans to build a pipeline underneath a key source of water for the Standing Rock Reservation.

Haaland graduated from a program created by Emerge New Mexico, which helps train Democratic women to run for office.

In 2012, she worked as the Native American vote director for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. She later ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2014.

She would go on to become the chair of New Mexico’s Democratic Party, and the first Native American woman in the country to lead a state party.

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President-elect Joe Biden is set to announce who will serve in top roles in his administration in the coming days and weeks.

He has already announced that Ron Klain, one of his most trusted campaign advisers, will serve as his incoming chief of staff. And Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign manager, and Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a co-chair of Biden’s transition team and presidential campaign, will serve in top roles in the White House.

The Biden campaign also announced several White House senior staff members on November 17, including: Mike Donilon, chief strategist for the Biden campaign; Steve Ricchetti, chairman of the Biden campaign; Dana Remus, general counsel to the Biden campaign; Julie Rodriguez, deputy campaign manager on the Biden campaign; and Annie Tomasini, Biden’s traveling chief of staff. Members of soon-to-be first lady Jill Biden’s office were also announced.

Each of Biden’s Cabinet nominees will need to be confirmed by the US Senate, which is currently controlled by Republicans. Two runoff elections in Georgia on January 5 could determine which party controls the chamber and impact the Cabinet confirmation process.

The Cabinet includes the vice president and the heads of 15 executive departments: Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

Several key positions also have Cabinet-level rank: White House chief of staff, Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Office of Management & Budget director, United States Trade Representative ambassador, Council of Economic Advisers chairman and Small Business Administration administrator.

This list will be updated based on conversations with Biden allies and advisers and Democrats with knowledge of the matter.

Here’s who has been mentioned in conversations about potential top roles in the Biden administration:

Chief of Staff

Ron Klain (announced on November 11)

Klain served as Biden’s chief of staff in the Obama White House and was also a senior aide to the President. He previously served as the chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore and Attorney General Janet Reno. Klain was appointed in 2014 by President Barack Obama to serve as the White House Ebola Response Coordinator. In 2000, he was the General Counsel for the Gore Recount Committee. Klain has been a top debate preparation adviser to Biden, Obama, Bill Clinton, Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

Deputy Chief of Staff

Jen O’Malley Dillon (announced November 17)

O’Malley Dillon will join Biden’s incoming administration as a deputy White House chief of staff. O’Malley Dillon was Biden’s presidential campaign manager and has served numerous other political campaigns — including former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s failed 2020 presidential primary campaign and both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. She is expected to have the operations portfolio in the White House — a role Jim Messina played in Obama’s first term. She has held a number of top jobs within the universe of Democratic organizations, including executive director of the Democratic National Committee and the founding partner at Precision Strategies, a Democratic consulting firm.

Senior Adviser to the President and Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement

Cedric Richmond (announced November 17)

Richmond will serve as senior adviser to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Richmond was a national co-chairman of the Biden campaign and is currently a co-chair of the Biden-Harris transition team. Richmond has represented Louisiana’s 2nd congressional district in the US House of Representatives since 2011. He previously served as the chairman of the influential Congressional Black Caucus.

Senior Adviser to the President

Mike Donilon (announced November 17)

Donilon will serve as senior adviser to the president. He served as the chief strategist for the Biden campaign, and was responsible for overseeing the campaign’s messaging, television advertising, speechwriting and polling. Donilon previously served as a counselor to then-Vice President Biden in the Obama White House.

Counsel to the President

Dana Remus (announced November 17)

Remus will serve as counsel to the president. She served as general counsel to the Biden campaign, and previously was the general counsel to the Obama Foundation and former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama’s personal office. During the Obama administration, Remus was the deputy assistant to the President and deputy counsel for ethics.

Counselor to the President

Steve Ricchetti (announced November 17)

Ricchetti will serve as a counselor to the president. He served as chairman of the Biden campaign. Ricchetti has previously served in senior roles on Capitol Hill and at the White House, including as assistant to the president, chief of staff to then-Vice President Biden, deputy chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, deputy assistant to the President for legislative affairs for Clinton during the impeachment hearings, and executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1992.

Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs

Julie Rodriguez (announced November 17)

Rodriguez will serve as the director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Rodriguez served as deputy campaign manager on the Biden campaign. She previously was the national polling director and traveling chief of staff for Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. During the Obama administration, Rodriguez served as special assistant to the president and senior deputy director of public engagement in the Office of Public Engagement.

Director of Oval Office Operations

Annie Tomasini (announced November 17)

Tomasini will serve as director of Oval Office operations. Tomasini currently serves as Biden’s traveling chief of staff. She previously served as deputy press secretary for then-Vice President Biden and press secretary for Biden when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

White House Press Secretary

Kate Bedingfield

Bedingfield was the deputy campaign manager and communications director for Biden’s presidential campaign. She worked at the White House under the Obama administration as Biden’s communications director. She previously worked at the Motion Pictures Association of America, where she was the vice president of corporate communications. Bedingfield was also the spokeswoman for John Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign, and the communications director for Jeanne Shaheen’s 2008 Senate campaign in New Hampshire.

Bedingfield is also being considered for White House communications director.

Symone Sanders

Sanders was a senior adviser to the Biden 2020 campaign. Sanders worked as national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign. She later joined CNN as a political commentator. She is also under consideration for principal deputy press secretary.

Chief of Staff to Jill Biden

Julissa Reynoso Pantaleon (announced November 17)

Pantaleon will serve as chief of staff to Jill Biden. She is currently a partner at the law firm Winston & Strawn. During the Obama administration, Reynoso served as US ambassador to Uruguay and as deputy assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere at the State Department.

Senior Adviser to Jill Biden

Anthony Bernal (announced November 17)

Bernal will serve as senior adviser to Jill Biden in the White House. He was the deputy campaign manager and chief of staff to Jill Biden on the campaign. He worked with Jill Biden for all eight years of the Obama administration, including as the second lady’s director of scheduling, trip director and deputy chief of staff.

Secretary of State

Susan Rice

Rice served in the Obama administration as UN ambassador and national security adviser. She served in Clinton’s administration as the special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs at the White House, the assistant secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs at the State Department and the director of international organizations and peacekeeping at the National Security Council. Rice was one of a handful of women on Biden’s shortlist for a running mate.

Rice at one point was thought to be the clear choice to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, but in 2012 withdrew her name from consideration to avoid a bitter Senate confirmation battle. Rice was the target of Republican criticism after comments she made on Sunday morning TV shows defending the Obama administration’s handling of the September 11, 2012, attacks on the Benghazi consulate that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Antony Blinken

Blinken served in the Obama administration as the deputy secretary of state, assistant to the president and principal deputy national security adviser. He served as the national security adviser to then-Vice President Biden and deputy assistant to the president during Obama’s first term. He has been a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Democratic staff director at the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

During the Clinton administration, Blinken served as a member of the National Security Council staff at the White House, and held roles as the special assistant to the president, senior director for European affairs, and senior director for speechwriting and then strategic planning. He was Clinton’s chief foreign policy speechwriter.

Blinken is also being considered as national security adviser.

Sen. Chris Coons

Coons currently occupies the same Delaware Senate seat that Biden held for decades. A longtime Biden ally, Coons was one of the first members of Congress to endorse the former vice president when he declared his 2020 presidential candidacy. Coons sits on the following committees in the Senate: Foreign Relations, Appropriations, Judiciary, Small Business & Entrepreneurship and Select Committee on Ethics. Throughout his Senate career, Coons has been known for working across the aisle and forging strong relationships with high-profile Republicans who shared common interests.

Secretary of the Treasury

Lael Brainard

Brainard currently serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. She previously served as the Under Secretary of the US Department of the Treasury and counselor to the secretary of the Treasury during the Obama administration. Brainard was the US representative to the G-20 Finance Deputies and G-7 Deputies and was a member of the Financial Stability Board. During the Clinton administration, Brainard served as the deputy national economic adviser and deputy assistant to the President. She also served as Clinton’s personal representative to the G-7/G-8.

If chosen, the Federal Reserve governor would be the first woman to hold the powerful position. Brainard is not quite a consensus pick. Party progressives have other favorites, but neither would her nomination set off the kind of internal ideological war the incoming administration surely wants to avoid.

Sarah Bloom Raskin

Raskin was the deputy secretary of the US Department of the Treasury during the Obama administration. She was previously a governor of the Federal Reserve Board. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Board, Raskin was the commissioner of financial regulation for the state of Maryland.

Outside of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Raskin, a former deputy secretary at the department, would be the top choice for most progressives. That she is less well known to the wider political world could also work in favor.

Secretary of Defense

Michèle Flournoy

If chosen and confirmed, Flournoy would be the first female secretary of defense. She served as the under secretary of defense for policy under Obama. Prior to her confirmation, Flournoy helped lead Obama’s transition team at the Defense Department. During the mid-1990’s, she served as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction, as well as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. She co-founded the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank, and WestExec Advisors, a strategic advisory firm. Flournoy was a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Former Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania

Murphy, America’s first Iraq War veteran elected to Congress, represented the state’s 8th Congressional District. He served on the House Armed Services, Select Intelligence and Appropriations committees. He later served as the 32nd under secretary of the Army under President Barack Obama.

Secretary of Homeland Security

Alejandro Mayorkas

Mayorkas was deputy secretary of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, and served as the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. While at USCIS, Mayorkas oversaw the implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was an executive action under Obama that protected young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation. President Donald Trump moved to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2017 and was ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court from doing so.

Lisa Monaco

Monaco played a critical role in Biden’s vice presidential selection committee, and served as Homeland Security and counterterrorism advisor to Obama. Prior to that job, Monaco served as an assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice, and was a chief of staff to then-Director of the FBI Robert S. Mueller III.

Attorney General

Sen. Doug Jones

Jones is the junior United States Senator from Alabama. He lost his reelection bid earlier this month to Republican Tommy Tuberville. President Bill Clinton appointed Jones as US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, and Jones was the lead prosecutor suing KKK members responsible for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. Jones was also involved in the prosecution of Eric Rudolph, whose 1998 attack on a Birmingham abortion clinic killed an off-duty police officer.

Sally Yates

Yates was fired by Trump from her role as acting attorney general. The stunning move came after CNN and other outlets reported that Yates told Justice Department lawyers not to make legal arguments defending Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees. Trump’s executive order, signed in January 2017, barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for the following 90 days, suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days and indefinitely suspended the Syrian refugee program. The executive order was later blocked by a federal judge, but the Supreme Court ultimately upheld a revised version of the ban.

Yates had been appointed by Obama and was set to serve until Trump’s nominee for attorney general was confirmed.

Secretary of the Interior

Rep. Deb Haaland

Haaland is a congresswoman from New Mexico, and is one of the first Native American women to serve in Congress. Biden has said he wants an administration that looks like the country. Haaland, the vice chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, would be the first Native American Cabinet secretary if she were to get an offer and accept it. Haaland also leads the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.

Secretary of Commerce

Andrew Yang

Yang is an entrepreneur and former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. He rose from obscurity to become a highly-visible candidate, and his supporters are sometimes referred to as the “Yang Gang.” His presidential campaign was centered around the idea of universal basic income, and providing every US citizen with $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year. His campaign slogan was “MATH,” or “Make America Think Harder.” Yang joined CNN as a political commentator in February, after dropping out of the presidential race.

Secretary of Labor

Sara Nelson

Nelson is the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. She cemented her image as a rising star of the labor movement during a prolonged government shutdown that stretched from December 2018 to January 2019. During the shutdown, Nelson appeared on cable television and used social media to warn of the dangers of not paying airport workers, and called for a general strike at an AFL-CIO gathering in January.

Sen. Bernie Sanders

Sanders is reaching out to potential supporters in labor to ask for their support as he mounts a campaign for the job. But he is viewed as a long shot and so far has received mix reactions from labor leaders. In his public comments before and after the election, he focused on a 100-day agenda for the Congress. But with Democrats likely needing to win both Georgia runoffs to take control of the Senate, running a powerful agency might have become more appealing.

Sanders told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that if Biden asked him to join his Cabinet as Labor secretary, he would accept the nomination. “If I had a portfolio that allowed me to stand up and fight for working families, would I do it? Yes, I would,” Sanders said.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh

Walsh is AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s pick for the job, a big endorsement in what could soon turn into a contentious debate between moderate Democrats and progressives, who will favor Sen. Bernie Sanders or Michigan Rep. Andy Levin. Walsh grew up in a union family and became a top Boston labor leader before being elected mayor.

Michigan Rep. Andy Levin

Levin is a popular progressive who is also growing his base of support with labor leaders, including at the Communications Workers of America. The United Auto Workers and National Nurses United unions are backing the Michigan congressman for the role. Like Walsh, Levin has a background as an organizer with major unions. But he also has credibility with climate activists for having helped create Michigan’s Green Jobs Initiative.

Health and Human Services Secretary

Vivek Murthy

Murthy, a doctor of internal medicine, is the co-chair of Biden’s coronavirus advisory board. He previously served as the US surgeon general after being nominated by Obama. He resigned in April 2017 at the request of the Trump administration. He was confirmed by the Senate after facing opposition from Senate Republicans for calling to treat gun violence as a public health issue.

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms

Bottoms is the mayor of Atlanta and is a rising star of the Democratic Party. Bottoms stepped into the national spotlight when she denounced vandalism in her city as “chaos” after demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis. Bottoms is a former judge and city council member. She was considered as a potential running mate for Biden.

Secretary of Education

Randi Weingarten

Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO and has long pushed for education reform. Prior to holding that role, she was the president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2. Weingarten served on an education reform commission put together by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. She also chaired New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee.

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

Jay Inslee

Inslee is the governor of Washington state, and previously served in the US House of Representatives. He was a Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 election. Inslee is dedicated to addressing climate change and other environmental issues, and made the environment the central focus of his 2020 presidential bid. While in the US House of Representatives, he served on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

UN ambassador

Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. Buttigieg’s presidential bid was historic — he was the first out gay man to launch a competitive campaign for president, and he broke barriers by becoming the first gay candidate to earn primary delegates for a major party’s presidential nomination.

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Former President Barack Obama is set to join Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on the campaign trail in their first joint appearance during the final weekend of the election season.

The two will be in the key battleground state of Michigan on Saturday to “discuss bringing Americans together to address the crises facing the country,” the Biden campaign announced Wednesday.

Obama has held three solo appearances over the past week campaigning for his former vice president, relishing his return to the campaign trail to help deliver a closing argument against his successor President Donald Trump.

The former president, who remains a popular figure in the Democratic Party, made his debut last week with a stump speech in Pennsylvania and delivered his most direct attack against Trump to date. He continued his campaigning over the weekend in Miami and on Tuesday in Orlando, as he zeroes in on a handful of critical battlegrounds where voting is underway.

In the home stretch of the election, Democrats hope Obama can help motivate Black men, Latinos and younger voters to turn out and vote for Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

State polls show Biden leading Trump in Michigan, a state that was part of the Democratic “blue wall” Trump smashed through to win the presidency in 2016. Biden and Obama’s visit to the Great Lakes State could also help gin up support for Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, who’s facing a tough reelection fight.

Former presidents traditionally avoid directly attacking their successors, but Obama, who’s been a target of Trump since he left office nearly four years ago, has stepped up his criticism of the Republican President in recent days, hitting him on everything from his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, to his behavior in office and propensity to angry tweet, to his jobs record.

Trump on Tuesday appeared to be watching Obama’s rally in Orlando.

“Now @FoxNews is playing Obama’s no crowd, fake speech for Biden, a man he could barely endorse because he couldn’t believe he won,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, referring to Obama’s decision to sit out the Democratic primary.

Obama, like Biden, has held drive-in rallies, instead of the typical campaign rallies that attract large packed crowds, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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