“We have information that Russia is planning a prolonged attack with Shaheds. Its bet may be on exhaustion,” Zelensky said in his nightly address Monday. “On exhaustion of our people, our air defense, our energy sector.”

Zelensky said Ukraine’s main task is to ensure Russia’s drone plans fail.

He said more than 80 have been shot down over Ukraine since the start of 2023.

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An initial two busloads were taken to local shelters, according to an administration official. More buses arrived outside the vice president’s residence later Saturday evening. A CNN team saw migrants being dropped off, with some migrants wearing only T-shirts in the freezing weather. They were given blankets and put on another bus that went to a local church.

Amy Fischer, a volunteer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, which has been receiving migrants sent to DC since the spring, said the organization had been prepared for Saturday night’s arrivals, having been informed about it earlier by an NGO working at the border in Texas.

The arrivals included asylum seekers from Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru and Colombia, according to Fischer, who told CNN the buses were supposed to go to New York but were diverted to DC due to the weather. Busloads of migrants have been arriving in Washington weekly since April.

SAMU First Response, a nonprofit that has been assisting migrants since the buses began coming to Washington earlier this year, was also on the ground Saturday night helping arrivals.

“The DC community has been welcoming buses from Texas anytime they’ve come since April. Christmas Eve and freezing cold weather is no different,” Fischer said. “We are always here welcoming folks with open arms.”

Migrants from Central and South America wait near Harris’ residence in Washington, DC, after being dropped off on September 15, 2022.

It’s not clear who is responsible for sending the migrants to the Naval Observatory, where the vice president’s residence is located, though CNN reported earlier this year that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had sent buses of migrants north, including to a location outside Harris’ home. CNN has reached out to Abbott’s office for comment on the latest arrivals.

The White House, however, put the blame on the Texas governor, calling it a “cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt.”

“Governor Abbott abandoned children on the side of the road in below freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any Federal or local authorities,” White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan said in a statement.

“As we have repeatedly said, we are willing to work with anyone – Republican or Democrat alike – on real solutions, like the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures President Biden sent to Congress on his first day in office, but these political games accomplish nothing and only put lives in danger,” Hasan said.

Abbott is one of at least three Republican governors who have taken credit for busing or flying migrants north this year to protest the Biden administration’s immigration policies. He previously confirmed in September that his state had sent the buses to Harris’ residence at that time.

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A new CNN/SSRS poll shows that 6 in 10 Republicans and GOP-leaning independents want their party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024. A similar slice on the other side hopes for a nominee other than Biden.

Those findings suggest that voters are ready for the days of presidential campaigns when one generation passed the torch to the next. A Biden versus Trump race would raise questions over whether a bitterly polarized political system, where democracy itself is at stake, has lost the capacity for self-renewal that has always been an American strength. And it would suggest that the heady appeal of an outsider, which produced presidents in 1992, 2008 and 2016, has for now been kept at bay.

Of course, it’s early. And the 2022 midterms offer a still fresh reminder that in a volatile, partisan age shadowed by crises at home and abroad, logic, history, polls and pre-race predictions months ahead of time often don’t count for much.

But the race is on, whether voters want it or not. Early perceptions of the contenders’ strengths are important since they shape the decisions of potential rivals and donors in the early money chase. Trump is already a declared candidate, although he could use a relaunch after a tepid start, and Biden is giving every sign he plans on running, suggesting he’ll let the country know for sure early in the new year.

The midterm elections, in which Democrats held the Senate and Republicans won a tiny House majority, help explain the poll’s findings. Voters hoping for a return to the normality Biden had promised after generational public health and inflation challenges weren’t exactly enthused with the president, whose low approval numbers largely kept him off the campaign trail in battleground states. But they didn’t trust a GOP still largely under Trump’s sway to fix things either.

The poll also hints at one of the emerging paradoxes in the nascent 2024 race. Even though they are the most powerful figures in their parties, both Biden and Trump seem oddly vulnerable at the start of the two-year campaign, and could face complications from a shifting political environment, outside factors or age.

Trump’s appeal seems to be fading. A disastrous midterm election for many of his candidates in swing states, which reflected the fatigue over his incessant whining about 2020, meant voters rejected his brand in consecutive national elections. Trump’s talent for thwarting accountability is, meanwhile, facing its toughest test from twin special counsel probes. And some Republicans are looking elsewhere. The CNN poll shows that when GOP voters are asked who they’d prefer, 47% have an alternative in mind. Nearly 4 in 10 of them pick Florida Gov Ron. DeSantis, who is untested on a national stage but already looms as a big threat to the former president.

As for Biden, it’s hardly flattering to a president that a majority of his own voters would like to see someone else as their candidate. Any commander in chief with a sub 50% approval rating like Biden is typically vulnerable in a reelection race. And there’s never been a presidential election when an 80-something president is asking for a second term. Biden has said he’s a great respecter of fate – a hint that he understands that, at his age, the good health needed for a campaign is not taken for granted.

But the president ends the year in better political shape than Trump, and appears to have stabilized his slump. This summer, only 25% of Democrat-aligned voters wanted him to be their nominee. Now that figure is 40%. And among those who want someone else, 72% say they’ve got no one particular in mind, further bolstering the advantage a sitting president usually has against a primary challenger.

Trump at a crossroads

Republican politics may, or may not, be at a moment of transition. How things shake out in the next few months will be critical to Trump’s prospects. On the one hand, more and more Republicans – prompted by the failure of many of the ex-president’s hand-picked candidates in the midterms – are saying it’s time to move on.

And Trump’s dinner with extremists with a record of antisemitism like White supremacist Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago is bolstering their arguments that his general election viability is damaged beyond repair. Trump’s so-far lackluster campaign, which looks like it was declared to make it easier for him to portray criminal probes into his conduct as persecution, isn’t convincing anyone so far.

And yet, the former president’s allies, like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio, will be hugely influential in the new GOP House majority. Paradoxically, the failure of Republicans to do better in November means that a thinner majority will be easier for extremists to manipulate as they seek to turn Republican control of half of the Capitol into a weapon to damage Biden and help Trump in 2024.

Another campaign will test whether there’s been any erosion in Trump’s base. But even if his mythical connection to those voters might not be enough to win him the presidency, it could still carry him to his third straight nomination. The unwillingness of most Republican lawmakers to repudiate Trump over comments like his recent call to terminate the Constitution suggest that they are still under the sway of the ex-president’s supporters at home. The same can be said for House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who has found ways not to condemn Trump’s recent associations with extremists in his desperate bid to win the speaker’s gavel next month.

Trump was regularly winning big primaries in 2016 with between 30% and 40% of the vote in a large field. In the CNN poll, 38% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they want Trump as the nominee again. (And even two-thirds of those said they’d prefer someone else said they’d definitely or probably back him in the general election if he were the nominee.)

GOP hopefuls will see that 38% – the lowest point of three CNN polls on the topic this year – as an opening for an anti-Trump candidate. But another big field could splinter opposition to the ex-president among untested potential foes.

While DeSantis, for instance, has impressed conservative voters by seizing on hot button culture war issues like immigration, transgender rights, anti-Covid 19 measures and supposed voter fraud, he has not yet come face-to-face with Trump. The Florida governor, who won an easy reelection race last month, has not said whether he will run against Trump, who set him up in his first gubernatorial race with an endorsement. But a string of primary debate clashes with Trump would test his capacity to take a blow, his ability to think on his feet and his willingness to counter-attack a former president who still benefits from a personality cult among GOP base voters.

Trump, after all, is at his most ruthless and politically effective with an enemy in his direct sights. And DeSantis has a lot to lose.

Biden isn’t going to start listening to polls now

Biden’s best answer to those Democrats who would prefer another candidate is that he’s already beaten Trump in 2020 and staved off the traditional first-term shellacking for first-term presidents in the midterms, partly by warning Trump’s ultra-MAGA forces were mustering for another assault on American democracy.

It’s nothing new for Biden not to have the confidence of his party. His previous two presidential campaigns fizzled early and his 2020 effort was in disarray until a win in the South Carolina primary rescued his White House hopes. Heading into the midterms, the conventional wisdom was that Biden’s low approval ratings and raging inflation would deal him a devastating blow. But the Republican red wave never came and Democrats added a seat to their narrow Senate majority – even if the White House’s relief did obscure the liability it will face from a radical GOP-controlled House with investigative powers.

So a president who has constantly defied expectations about his political vitality is unlikely to pay much attention to polls that suggest voters want someone else. Biden also recently reinforced his firewall against a primary challenge by shaking up the Democratic primary season, downgrading the Iowa caucuses – where he’s never done well – and elevating his beloved South Carolina to the first spot in the primary race. The lack of a strong alternative Democrat also helps Biden. Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t performed strongly enough to have her party clamoring for Biden to step aside in her favor. And other Democrats with an eye on the White House will be loath to damage a sitting president of their party.

After the midterm elections, a president looking for a rationale for reelection can find plenty. The CNN poll shows Biden on an upward trajectory and in a better position in his party than Trump is in his. And economic indicators this week, which showed the high cost of living might be cooling, could also insulate Biden.

Still, any president is deeply vulnerable to unexpected outside events that could splinter his approval ratings and chances of reelection. And the oldest president in US history will have to confront the age issue every day. Republicans will seize on any slackening of the campaign trail pace, or even a cold, as proof he’s unfit for a second term. And while Biden appears healthy, the chances of an adverse event increase for people in their 80s.

The question of his age, however, might be less important if Biden faces Trump, who is already 76. But the current commander in chief might be vulnerable to a youthful Republican challenger like DeSantis, for instance, who is in his 40s.

Maybe the idea of leadership shifting between generations will be a potent 2024 possibility after all.

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The other major legislative item lawmakers are working to wrap up before the end of the year is the National Defense Authorization Act, the massive annual must-pass defense policy bill. The NDAA is expected to get a vote in the Senate this week and be approved with bipartisan support.

The House has already approved the measure so once the Senate votes to pass it, the bill can go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

The approaching deadline had members of Congress and their staffers from both parties, as well as Biden administration officials, continuing to slog through negotiations over the weekend to try to get to an agreement on a spending package.

“This is the time of the year when there’s no weekends for folks who work on appropriations,” one administration official closely involved in the talks told CNN.

Over the weekend, both Democrats and Republicans were sharing with one another their “bottom lines” on various fronts, and the White House remained publicly optimistic that an agreement could be reached on an omnibus: “There is absolutely still a path and time for a deal.”

But if Biden administration officials are still keeping their eyes on the ball on Congress ultimately reaching a deal on a government spending deal, there is also real recognition that lawmakers will need an extra few days – perhaps even a week – of cushion to buy themselves more time. That would be achieved through passing a short-term stop-gap measure called a continuing resolution, or a CR.

Particularly with that in mind, administration officials also continue to maintain that they do not see any real likelihood of a government shutdown.

Congressional aides acknowledged to CNN that the weekend talks went better than days prior, which is why Democrats have announced they will not introduce their own Democratic-only omnibus plan on Monday. Republicans on Capitol Hill had been reading a threat for Democrats to introduce their own bills as a messaging exercise that would only further divide negotiators, and by avoiding that messaging exercise, Republicans see a sign that Democrats are serious about trying to get to yes.

$26 billion apart, top Republican says

For now, a bipartisan deal on government funding remains elusive. Lawmakers have not yet been able to reach a negotiated agreement for a comprehensive, full-year funding package – known on Capitol Hill as an omnibus – amid a dispute between the two parties over how much money should be spent on non-defense, domestic priorities. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has told reporters the two sides are roughly $26 billion apart.

Republicans are critical of recent domestic spending by Democrats and argue that measures Democrats have passed while they have been in control both chambers of Congress, like the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill and the sweeping health care and climate bill, are wasteful and will worsen inflation. Democrats counter by saying those measures were necessary to help the country recover from the devastating impact of the pandemic as well as to tackle other critical priorities. And Democrats said that money to respond to Covid, health care and climate should not mean there should be less money next year for government operations and non-defense, domestic spending.

The impasse over a broader funding deal is likely to force both sides to agree to pass a short-term funding extension – known as a continuing resolution, or CR – before the fast-approaching Friday deadline on Friday.

Shorter-term extension possible

The key question will be how long such an extension would last. It could be as short as one week, a timeframe that would keep the pressure dialed up for lawmakers to reach a broader deal, while still allowing more time for negotiations. Or it could extend the shutdown deadline into the next Congress, which will convene on January 3, and when Republicans take control of the House.

That change in majority in the House would dramatically alter the dynamic for negotiations and likely make it far harder to reach a broader funding deal. Lawmakers could pass a full-year CR if it looks like a bipartisan funding deal can’t be reached, but leaders in both parties hope to avoid that scenario since it would keep spending flat for the Pentagon as well as domestic priorities.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell laid out the GOP position in remarks on the Senate floor Thursday. “Our commander-in-chief and his party have spent huge sums on domestic priorities outside the normal appropriations process without a penny for the Defense Department. Obviously, we won’t allow them to now hijack the government funding process, too, and take our troops hostage for even more liberal spending,” McConnell said.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, outlined the argument for his party in his own floor remarks on Thursday. Republicans, Leahy said, are “demanding steep cuts to programs the American people rely on.”

Referring to Democratic-passed legislation that Republicans have criticized, Leahy said, “Those bills were meant to get us out of the pandemic, get the nation healthy, and get our economy back on track, and I believe they are accomplishing that goal. They were not meant to fund the basic functions of the American government in fiscal year 2023.”

Leahy also said that Democrats plan to introduce an omnibus bill of their own Monday – which would not be expected to have the Republican votes to pass in the Senate, but would serve as a marker of Democratic priorities in the funding fight.

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The ruling removes a major obstacle to the Justice Department’s investigation into the mishandling of government records from Trump’s time in the White House.

The three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order appointing a so-called special master to sort through thousands of documents found at Trump’s home to determine what should be off limits to investigators. The court said the judge should not have intervened in the first place.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”

The 11th Circuit said that either approach would be a “radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and that “both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

The Justice Department is investigating obstruction of justice, criminal mishandling of government records and violations of the Espionage Act, according to court filings. The probe exploded into public view with the August search, which came after investigators obtained evidence they said led them to believe that Trump had not complied with a subpoena for all documents marked as classified being stored at his Florida home.

The opinion – which was issued jointly by the three-judge panel made up of all GOP appointees – dismantled Trump’s arguments for why a special master was necessary. The court said that only in extraordinary circumstances should courts intervene in Justice Department investigations that are still in their early stages, and that standard had not been met here.

“This restraint guards against needless judicial intrusion into the course of criminal investigations—a sphere of power committed to the executive branch,” the court wrote.

The appeals court said that its new ruling will go into effect in seven days, unless a party in the case successfully seeks an order – known as a stay – pausing the ruling from going into effect while it is appealed.

Trump’s legal team has not decided whether to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court but is weighing the option, a source familiar with the discussions told CNN.

Rebuke of Judge Cannon’s deference to Trump

The ruling is a stinging rebuke of how Cannon inserted herself into the dispute. In addition to reversing the order, the appeals court is instructing her to dismiss the entire case.

The appeals court took aim at the idea, hinted at in her order appointing the special master, that Trump deserves special treatment because he is a former president.

“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president – but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the court said.

To create that “special exception,” the 11th Circuit wrote “would defy our Nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.’”

The three-judge panel that issued the ruling is comprised of appointees of Republican presidents, including two who were put on the bench by Trump: Britt Grant and Andrew Basher. Both jurists had previously hinted in a ruling related to the case that they believed Cannon had overreached.

The third, Judge William Pryor, the chief judge of the appellate court, is an appointee of George W. Bush who has long demonstrated his conservative bona fides on a host of controversial issues.

Trump had sought the special master in the weeks after the August search, securing the court order from Cannon. Judge Raymond Dearie, a senior judge who sits in Brooklyn, had been tasked by Cannon with leading the review of the thousands of documents that remained.

During oral arguments in the 11th Circuit case, Trump’s attorney James Trusty said that only about 900 of those documents were in dispute. Trump’s legal team contends the documents are his personal records or privileged and should be kept outside the scope of the investigation.

Lawyers for the Justice Department argued that the special master process stood to drag out for several weeks, if not months, impeding the probe into the documents. Prosecutors said that without access to the other documents, they could not question witnesses about the materials that had been found intermixed with classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

The Justice Department effort is now being led by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed last week to helm that probe and another investigation into efforts to reverse Trump’s 2020 election loss that could implicate the former president and current 2024 White House candidate.

Smith took over the investigation shortly before the 11th Circuit heard oral arguments in the case and said in court filings that he approved the stance federal prosecutors had taken. He has promised to not let his appointment slow the pace of the investigations he’s taking over.

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“Treasury has complied with last week’s court decision,” a Treasury spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday.

The spokesperson did not provide any additional information. Federal courts had decided the House could request six years of Trump’s returns, after the committee had requested them in 2019 and again in 2021, according to public court records.

The handover had been on hold, until the Supreme Court declined last week to intervene. Several judges, including Republican appointees, have found the House had power to request the returns from the IRS.

Treasury declined to say whether the committee members have accessed the documents, according to a Treasury official.

The committee, led by Democratic Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, had sought six years of Trump’s tax records, primarily from the time he served as president. That included records about both Trump personally and several of his corporate entities.

The panel is planning to meet Thursday to get briefed on the legal ramifications of the section of the tax law that Neal used to request Trump’s tax returns, according to a Neal aide.

Democrats are not expected to review the tax returns at this session, and the documents are not expected to be immediately released to the public.

House general counsel Doug Letter plans to brief the panel about section 6103 of the tax law at the meeting, which is a weekly session that Democrats on the committee have when they’re not on recess.

Neal refused to say to CNN if he had possession of the Trump tax documents, saying the law strictly prohibits him from discussing the state of the returns. Earlier Wednesday, the congressman also declined to say if they would release any of the returns publicly.

“The next step is to have a meeting of the Democratic caucus,” Neal said.

Trump’s legal team had continuously sought to keep his returns secret, and turned to the Supreme Court – composed of three of his nominees – after he lost at the lower court level.

“No Congress has ever wielded its legislative powers to demand a President’s tax returns,” Trump argued to the Supreme Court, as he warned of the “far-reaching implications” implications of the DC Circuit’s ruling. He had argued that that the way lower courts approached the House request ran afoul of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Mazars case, concerning a subpoena that the House issued to Trump’s accounting firm for his tax information.

Trump’s taxes have been largely a mystery since he first ran for office.

During his 2016 campaign, the Trump broke with presidential election norms and refused to produce his tax returns for public review, and they remained private after he took office.

Being under audit by the IRS does not preclude someone from releasing their tax returns publicly. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from using it as a defense against releasing his financial information.

In 2016, Trump released a letter from his tax attorneys that confirmed he was under audit. But the letter also said the IRS finished reviewing Trump’s taxes from 2002 through 2008. Trump did not release his tax returns from those years, even though the audits were over.

An expansive New York Times report in 2020 found that Trump paid no federal income taxes whatsoever in 10 out of 15 years beginning in 2000 because he reported losing significantly more than he made.

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The final vote was 61-36. The bill was supported by all members of the Democratic caucus and 12 Republicans, the same dozen GOP members who backed the bill for a procedural vote earlier this month.

The House will now need to approve the legislation before sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law. The House is expected to pass the bill before the end of the year – possibly as soon as next week.

“For millions of Americans, this legislation will safeguard the rights and protections to which LGBTQI+ and interracial couples and their children are entitled,” Biden said in a statement Tuesday evening after Senate passage, hailing it as a “bipartisan achievement.”

While the bill would not set a national requirement that all states must legalize same-sex marriage, it would require individual states to recognize another state’s legal marriage.

So, in the event the Supreme Court might overturn its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage, a state could still pass a law to ban same-sex marriage, but that state would be required to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state.

The legislation cleared a key procedural hurdle earlier this month, when the Senate voted 62-37 to break a filibuster.

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Some Republicans, albeit tentatively and often with self-protecting caveats, are beginning to test whether the political incentives for criticizing the ex-president could outweigh the hazards. This trend is obvious in reactions from ex-Vice President Mike Pence and some top lawmakers over Trump’s dinner at his Florida resort last week with White supremacist Nick Fuentes. It was also visible earlier this month in critiques of the ex-president after many of his election-denying, neophyte candidates flamed out in the midterm elections and suggested that he could again doom Republicans in a general election in 2024.

At the same time, however, the growing clout of radical, pro-Trump members of the new House majority, which takes over in January – and the reality that GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s hopes of being speaker may rely on Trump’s patronage – demonstrates his still robust influence. And fear of Trump is still so strong in some sectors of the GOP that some senators who want to have a political future are still not willing to condemn his outrages to journalists in the corridors of the US Capitol. Even if it should be a no brainer to trot out an unequivocal criticism of a White supremacist – especially one who was on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021, and promoted Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about 2020 election fraud. Fuentes was also subpoenaed by the House select committee probing the insurrection and his presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last week suggests that the ex-president remains unapologetic about his incitement of a revolt on democracy nearly two years ago.

Still, the split in the GOP will be watched for how much it becomes an indicator of key figures and donors ready to pass on Trump’s chaos, scandal and extremism. It also could signal that after his underwhelming campaign announcement two weeks ago, the former president is struggling to stir momentum or to overcome liabilities exposed by his loss in 2020 and his disastrous role in the 2022 midterms. Trump’s decision to spend time with people who espouse antisemitism, like Fuentes and another dinner partner – rapper Kanye West, who has legally changed his name to Ye – raised questions about the ex-president’s capacity to draw more publicly acceptable associates.

Then again, there’ve been multiple false dawns when a party that often looked ready to ditch Trump fell back into line because of the power of his bond with its base.

Pence slams Trump, again

The most unequivocal criticism of Trump’s meeting with Fuentes came from Pence, who often stood by admiringly when his boss smashed norms in office – until he broke with the ex-president’s scheme to steal the 2020 election in Congress.

“President Trump was wrong to give a White nationalist, an antisemite and Holocaust denier a seat at the table, and I think he should apologize for it,” Pence told NewsNation in a clip released on Monday. “He should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification,” Pence said, slamming Trump’s “profoundly poor judgment in giving those individuals a seat at the table.”

Pence’s courageous refusal to play along with Trump’s attempt to block Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win effectively made his future political choices for him. Any successful presidential run by the former vice president will only unfold in a post-Trump GOP. So that’s the political lane he’s seeking to widen with his comments. And while those comments are principled and more acute than those of most other Republicans, they are not free of political calculation. Pence, who would still need to appeal to his former boss’ base, also made clear he did not think Trump was a bigot.

Jason Greenblatt, White House envoy to the Middle East in the Trump administration, wrote of the dinner in a CNN op-ed published on Monday: “It should not have happened. Period.” Greenblatt noted that he’d seen the former president “speak strongly against antisemitism” and be an “incredible friend to Israel” before calling on him to condemn Fuentes and West. “People like Fuentes are dangerous to the United States. The President Trump that I know would recognize that and issue this condemnation.”

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who refused to permit Trump’s election-stealing efforts in his state and is seen as an increasingly influential national figure after winning reelection earlier this month, also criticized the ex-president, suggesting there is now sustainable political ground for bucking the former president. “That was a bad decision. There’s no place for that in the Republican Party,” Kemp told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in an interview that will air on “CNN This Morning” on Tuesday.

Criticism from a safe space

Another category of Republicans willing to be direct about the Fuentes meeting are those who may be electorally safe, do not face a primary in the near future and have some independent power base that doesn’t rely on Trump.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune, for example, who has criticized the ex-president in the past, said Trump’s meeting with Fuentes was “a bad idea on every level” and that he hoped whoever was advising the ex-president “got fired.”

Another top GOP senator, John Cornyn of Texas, said: “It’s bad – there’s no question about it.”

Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa said the whole thing was “ridiculous,” while Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia also thought it “ridiculous” anyone would associate with guests with such views.

These are strong comments about Trump from powerful figures who have an interest in reshaping their party. But they hardly represent profiles in courage. The terms of Cornyn, Ernst and Capito end in 2027. And Thune was reelected to a new six-year term earlier this month.

Criticism with an off ramp

Some Republicans talked tough – but also offered themselves a safety ramp by refusing to condemn Trump’s character or quickly pivoted to a criticism of Democrats. These include Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who cozied up to the ex-president in his successful reelection run this year and may also have ambitions to run again for the White House.

Rubio slammed Fuentes as “a purveyor and a spreader of an evil poison.” He also told CNN he hoped that Trump would condemn Fuentes in a way that made it clear the Florida senator was not directly taking aim at the ex-president.

“I hope he will. Because I know he’s not an antisemite. I can tell you that for a fact that Trump is not, but this guy (Fuentes) is evil.”

Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who will be a powerful figure in the next Congress as the expected Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, was also critical of Trump – but tried to deflect the heat toward Democrats including Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, who faced criticism from within her party in 2019 for what many colleagues regarded as antisemitic rhetoric.

“Obviously, I condemn it,” Comer said of Trump’s dinner with Fuentes in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday.

“And I can shed some light on why Republicans don’t immediately respond to many in the media every time they’re offended by something Trump does, is because a lot of Republicans believe there’s a double standard in the media. We have seen things that Ilhan Omar has said. We don’t get asked if we condemn that by the mainstream media.”

Where Trump’s influence reigns strong

Lawmakers seen as close to Trump or who owe him for his support expressed banal semi-condemnations that won’t get them in trouble with fiercely pro-Trump voters in their states.

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said that Trump could “make better choices” and that “probably we all make mistakes.”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham has suggested that his own influence in Washington depends on his closeness to Trump. “No, you don’t want to give oxygen to people like that,” Graham said, before accusing reporters of double standards for not raising questions when “Democrats hang out with (Nation of Islam leader Louis) Farrakhan.”

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, a possible future GOP presidential hopeful, said: “It’s a free country, you can do whatever you want, but I’m not a big fan of giving people who say they hate Jews, hate Israel, giving them a platform.”

While some Republicans were willing to go on the record criticizing Trump it was notable that many only did so when they were asked days after the dinner when they returned to the Capitol after the holiday weekend. And plenty of party leaders have yet to disavow Trump’s meeting with Fuentes. This includes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is touted by many in his party as a possible alternative nominee to Trump. While DeSantis is now a prominent national figure who might be expected to weigh in on such matters, he probably has little political interest in triggering an immediate public showdown with the former president at this point.

And McCarthy, who may well need Trump’s support to win sufficient Republican votes to become speaker in January and who criticized Trump over the Capitol insurrection only to quickly head down to Mar-a-Lago to make amends, has also been silent so far.

The next time he’s on camera, the California Republican will face a fresh choice about how to handle Trump’s excesses. His answer may reveal a lot about his ambitions, the future direction of the GOP and Trump’s remaining clout despite his most recent transgression against decency.

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“I’m glad that President (Joe) Biden is gonna be pushing us to take a vote on an assault weapons ban,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday morning. “The House has already passed it. It’s sitting in front of the Senate. Does it have 60 votes in the Senate right now? Probably not. But let’s see if we can try to get that number is close to 60 as possible. If we don’t have the votes, then we’ll talk to [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and maybe come back next year, with maybe an additional senator, and see if we can do better.”

Murphy also said there needs to be a conversation in the US Senate about funding law enforcement in counties that are refusing to enforce state and national gun laws.

“They have decided that they are going to essentially refuse to implement laws that are on the books. That is a growing problem in this country,” he said. “And I think we’re gonna have to have a conversation about that in the United States Senate. Do we want to continue to supply funding to law enforcement in counties that refuse to implement state and federal gun laws?”

He added: “I’ll talk to my colleagues about what our approach should be to this problem. But 60% of counties in this country are refusing to implement the nation’s gun laws, we’ve got to do something about that.”

A recent shooting at an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs, Colorado, involved an assault-style weapon and a handgun, while officials said the shooter at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, last week was armed with a handgun and multiple magazines.

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado was pressed in two separate interviews Sunday about a total ban on assault style weapons, telling both NBC and CBS that a variety of factors go into his thinking on the issue.

“I think all of these things, including the red flag law and expanding its use, should really be looked at,” Polis told NBC.

“We learn from each instance, but you also have to look at all of the causes,” he said in his interview with CBS. “We also need to pursue the mental health aspect of this and other shooting incidences.”

Asked by NBC about Colorado’s red flag law and its role in the recent mass shooting, Polis said: “This looks like this would have been a good instance for the use of Colorado’s new red flag law, which has been used several hundred times but could have been used even more to prevent these kinds of tragic events or more often to prevent self-harm or suicide.”

Colorado passed its red flag law in 2019, which is intended to temporarily prevent an individual in crisis from accessing firearms through a court order, triggered by the individual’s family, a member of their household or a law enforcement officer. While it’s still unclear whether a red flag law was triggered by the shooter’s past incident of a bomb threat in 2021, Polis told CBS: “I’m sure what will be looked into is, ‘Why wasn’t it pursued?’”

Congress returns this week with a jam-packed to-do list in the lame duck session, focused primarily on the must-pass government funding bill, as well as other priorities. But any action on gun legislation – particularly the assault weapons ban Biden has repeatedly called for – does not have the votes to pass. And the reality of a divided Congress in next year’s session makes it highly unlikely that anything will pass over the next two years.

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“He had the gun up to my forehead,” Wilczewski told CNN’s Erica Hill Wednesday night on “Erin Burnett OutFront,” describing the moment when she encountered the suspect, who was identified by Walmart as an “overnight team lead” at the store. “He told me to go home.”

“I got up real slow and I tried not to look at anybody on the ground,” Wilczewski said. She made her way through the double doors out to the egg aisle, gripping her bag and wondering if the suspect would shoot her in the back. She began running and didn’t stop until she reached her car.

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