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Good morning, Early Birds. Today is Super Tuesday. We hope your Tuesday is super, too. Tips: <a href="mailto:earlytips@washpost.com?utm_campaign=wp_power_up&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_powerup">earlytips@washpost.com</a>. Was this forwarded to you? <a href="https://s2.washingtonpost.com/38f3bdc/63d263741b79c61f87661669/5969896e9bbc0f6d71c1f555/12/59/63d263741b79c61f87661669?utm_campaign=wp_power_up&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_powerup">Sign up here</a>. Thanks for waking up with us.

In today’s edition … U.S. caps credit card late charges in new Biden crackdown on junk fees … Harris takes more public role criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza … but first …

This is one of Trump’s best political weeks

Scott Muthersbaugh

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> is perhaps the most flawed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/presidential-candidates-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">presidential candidate</a> ever.&nbsp;

He is facing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/trump-charges-jan-6-classified-documents/">91 indictments</a> spread over four trials, the first of which is set to begin in three weeks. He has been ordered to pay more than half a billion dollars in civil judgments against him. He has laid out what many critics call <a href="https://www.authoritarianplaybook2025.org/?utm_campaign=wp_power_up&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_powerup">authoritarian</a> plans for a second term, and at campaign rallies, he routinely makes inflammatory statements about minorities and immigrants.

Still, the former president is having one of his best weeks of this campaign.&nbsp;

He’s barreling toward the GOP nomination in more than dozen contests today, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that states <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/04/supreme-court-trump-ballot-decision/">can’t remove him from primary ballots</a>, and numerous polls in the past week show him leading <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a>.&nbsp;

“Both politically and legally, it’s been one of the best runs for Trump in any campaign in the last eight years,” one ally said.&nbsp;

Trump is set to beat <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/nikki-haley-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Nikki Haley</a> in most, if not all, 16 primaries and caucuses this Super Tuesday. He won caucuses in Idaho and Missouri and the Republican convention in Michigan over the weekend, as well as the North Dakota caucuses yesterday (although Haley won the Washington, D.C., primary on Sunday).

Haley’s campaign appears to be winding down, despite raising more than $28 million in the past two months and $1 million just this past weekend, according to a campaign aide. She hasn’t been running broadcast TV ads, according to AdImpact. A super PAC supporting her has focused on running cheaper digital ads in Utah, Vermont and Virginia, three states that vote today, according to campaign finance filings.

If Haley drops her bid after today, Trump will have no other meaningful challengers, and he’ll be just a few contests from clinching the required number of delegates to become the Republican nominee.&nbsp;

The Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision yesterday that Trump can be on the ballot in Colorado (and effectively all states) after some states had sought to remove him, citing his actions leading up to and after the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Jan. 6</a>, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.&nbsp;

The ruling wasn’t unexpected, but it did arrive on the heels of other positive developments for the former president, who has been able to delay his criminal trials:

Judge Aileen Cannon, overseeing the classified documents case in Florida, has suggested that a trial would not start soon, despite requests from special counsel Jack Smith to move expeditiously. &nbsp;

The Department of Justice case alleging Trump worked to overturn the 2020 election was supposed to start this past Monday but has been delayed until the Supreme Court rules, probably in late spring, on whether he is immune from prosecution, pushing the potential start date of any trial by months.&nbsp;

The Georgia trial about the 2020 election has also been delayed because prosecutor Fani Willis is fending off allegations of a conflict of interest.&nbsp;

The result: No case is likely to be resolved before Election Day, a key outcome for Trump’s legal strategy.&nbsp;

“To anyone hoping that Trump’s efforts to overturn the last election would lead the judicial system to meaningfully penalize him before the next one, recent developments have proved sobering,” our colleague Sarah Ellison <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/04/trump-supreme-court-ballot-voters/">reports</a>.

Trump looks stronger in general election polling than he ever has.&nbsp;

Polls over the weekend show him leading Biden. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/times-siena-poll-coverage">The New York Times/Sienna College</a> poll found Trump with a five-point advantage.&nbsp;

Yes, we know, Democrats. A national poll doesn’t translate into an electoral college win.&nbsp;

But the reason this is significant is that Trump has NEVER had a clear and consistent lead at any time in any of his presidential campaigns. Ever. Check out the average <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/national-polls/">in 2016</a> and <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2020/national/">2020.</a>

Polling can be taken with a grain of salt at this stage. But the fact that Trump, who has a consistently high unfavorability rating, is beating Biden puts a ton of pressure on the president’s campaign.&nbsp;

“I think he’s certainly doing better than people expected,” Marc Short, a top adviser to former vice president Mike Pence, told us of Trump’s standing.&nbsp;

Reality check: Trump is still wildly unpopular. He’s known to turn a good news cycle into a bad one in an instant. He is still having to spend tens of millions of dollars on legal fees, taking away resources from his campaign.&nbsp;

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, the liberal group that helped<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/28/uncommitted-vote-michigan-ignites-democratic-debate/"> convince voters to mark their ballots “uncommitted”</a> in Michigan’s primary to protest Biden’s approach to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">war in Gaza</a>, said he hopes Biden makes the case for another term in his State of the Union speech Thursday.

“The president has not made clear the rationale for a second term, except that he would save us from Trump,” he said. “And I’m not sure that’s going to be convincing this time around.”

There’s more to follow tonight than just the presidential primaries.&nbsp;

We laid out some of the other primaries we’re watching <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/04/super-tuesday-primaries-were-watching-that-dont-involve-haley-trump-or-biden/">in Monday’s edition</a>, including the race for California’s open Senate seat and House races in Alabama, California, North Carolina and Texas. Here are three more races we’re keeping an eye on:

Alabama’s 2nd District: Eleven Democrats are vying for the nomination in a new Democratic-leaning seat that was drawn to comply with a court order. The race will go to a runoff if no candidate wins a majority of the vote.

North Carolina’s 6th District: Former Republican congressman Mark Walker is running to reclaim his old seat. He’s facing several other Republicans, including Bo Hines, who lost a race to Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel in 2022. (The district has been redrawn and is now much more favorable for Republicans.) The race has become a proxy battle between the Club for Growth’s super PAC, which has run ads attacking Walker, and Conservatives for American Excellence, which is funded by Republican megadonors and has run ads bashing Hines. (The two super PACs are also facing off in a House race in Texas.)

North Carolina’s 8th District: In 2018, a political operative working for Republican Mark Harris’s campaign was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/north-carolina-republican-in-congressional-race-tainted-by-ballot-fraud-says-he-will-not-run-in-new-election/2019/02/26/b72b292e-39fb-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_53">accused of ballot fraud</a>, triggering a do-over election. Now, Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, who won that do-over, is vacating his seat to run for governor, and Harris is running again. He is facing several other Republicans, including state Rep. John Bradford and Allan Baucom, a former chairman of the Union County Board of Commissioners.

U.S. caps credit card late charges in new Biden crackdown on junk fees

Elise Amendola

When Biden delivers his prime-time State of the Union address before millions of Americans on Thursday, he is expected to once again tout his administration’s effort to outlaw junk fees and, more broadly, promote competition and crack down on unfair or illegal pricing across the economy, our colleague <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/05/credit-card-fees-cap-8-month/">Tony Romm reports</a>.

The president is expected to highlight his administration’s latest round of regulatory action, announced this morning, targeting junk fees. The action “would sharply limit the fees that credit card companies can charge customers who fall behind on their bills, aiming to cap the penalties at $8 per month,” Tony writes.

“Under the new regulations, credit card issuers including Bank of America, Capital One, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase cannot charge more than $8 per month for a late payment unless they can explicitly point to data showing they must impose higher fees to make up for losses.”

“In issuing the restrictions, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said the government intends to close a legal loophole that had allowed some financial giants to charge an average of $32 per month for a missed or late payment. The amount has proved onerous for some cash-starved cardholders, while enriching the credit card industry, which reaped <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/19/companies-lobbyists-fight-junk-fees/?itid=lk_inline_manual_8&itid=lk_inline_manual_62">more than $14 billion in revenue from late fees</a> in 2022, according to the CFPB.”

“The policy is set to take effect later this spring, and it could save cardholders about $10 billion each year, according to the bureau, which estimates that about 45 million people have faced such fees. But its fate remains unclear, because the banking industry is expected to sue the CFPB, adding to the agency’s legal woes as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/03/supreme-court-cfpb-funding/?itid=lk_inline_manual_10&itid=lk_inline_manual_63">Supreme Court is weighing the future of its funding and regulatory powers</a> in a separate pending case.”

Also happening today: Biden will meet with his top council of advisers on competition issues, Tony reports.&nbsp;

“Federal officials plan to unveil other actions there meant to crack down on ‘junk fees,’ including a ‘strike team’ run by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, which will probe anticompetitive pricing practices in areas such as prescription drugs, groceries, housing and financial services.”

Harris takes more public role criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza

Megan Varner

Vice President Harris has taken on a more public role in the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, bluntly criticizing Israel on Sunday for limiting humanitarian aid, calling for an immediate six-week cease-fire and meeting Monday with Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Israel’s war cabinet and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief political rival, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/04/harris-gaza-israel-ceasefire-humanitarian-aid/">our colleagues Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Tyler Pager, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Steve Hendrix report</a>.&nbsp;

“Although Harris’s calls for a cease-fire echoed Biden’s comments over the past week, she took a notably sharper tone, which comes as a growing number of Democrats are voicing their displeasure over Biden’s handling of Gaza in television interviews, protests, sternly worded statements — and at the ballot box.”

“For months, Harris has privately expressed concerns about the plight of Palestinians, and she has also told advisers that younger voters view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a different lens than older ones, according to people familiar with her views, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.”

Despite the change in tone, there are still signs in the White House that the administration is reluctant to aggressively criticize Israel in public, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/kamala-harris-gaza-speech-watered-down-cease-fire-rcna141750">NBC News’s Yamiche Alcindor, Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube and Monica Alba report</a>. Three current U.S. officials and one former U.S. official familiar with Harris’s Sunday speech told NBC News that officials at the National Security Council toned down parts of her address. “The original draft of Harris’ speech, when it was sent to the National Security Council for review, was harsher on Israel about the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the need for more aid than were the remarks she ultimately delivered.”

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/05/california-senate-races-ballot/?itid=lk_inline_manual_80">Why you have to vote twice in California’s Senate race. </a>By Azi Paybarah.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/05/palestinian-authority-security-forces-gaza/?itid=lk_inline_manual_81">The improbable U.S. plan for a revitalized Palestinian security force</a>. By Miriam Berger, Sufian Taha, Heidi Levine and Loveday Morris (pub. 1 a.m.).

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/04/hamas-rape-un-report-hostages/?itid=lk_inline_manual_82">U.N. report: ‘Convincing’ information Hamas raped, tortured hostages</a>. By Karen DeYoung and Sammy Westfall.

From across the web:&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/uncommitted-protest-aims-minnesota-over-bidens-israel-support-2024-03-04/">‘Uncommitted’ protest over Biden's Israel support heads to Minnesota</a>. By Reuters’s Nandita Bose.

The 2024 Fashion Campaign Trail

Thanks for reading. You can also follow us on X: <a href="https://twitter.com/LACaldwellDC">@LACaldwellDC</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/theodoricmeyer">@theodoricmeyer</a>.

Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for Excellence in Congressional Reporting in 2018

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New York Press Club Award for feature writing on Donald Trump in 2016

North Carolina State University, BA in Communications

Leigh Ann Caldwell is co-author of The Washington Post’s Early 202 and focuses on Congress and politics. She is also an anchor for Washington Post Live, conducting high-impact newsmaking interviews. Before joining The Post in 2022, Caldwell was a correspondent at NBC News, most recently as a member of its congressional unit. 

Leigh Ann Caldwell

Deadline Club Award for Newspaper or Digital Local News Reporting, 2014

McGill University

Columbia University

Theodoric Meyer is a national political reporter for The Washington Post and a co-author of the Early 202 newsletter.

Theodoric Meyer

Rutgers University, BA in Biological Sciences

American University, MA in Journalism and Public Affairs

Tobi Raji is a researcher for The Early 202, a pre-dawn newsletter about the nation’s major power centers, including the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court.

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