ORLANDO, Fla. — House Republicans are seeing an annual gathering meant to highlight party unity and accomplishments thrown off balance this week as the potential indictment of former President Trump in New York looms over the central Florida retreat.
The annual GOP issues conference — taking place at a snazzy hotel in Orlando — was supposed to serve as an opportunity for the House GOP to discuss their successes over the past two months and how to chart a path forward, but it has instead been overshadowed by Trump’s Saturday assertion that he could be arrested on Tuesday in connection with the Manhattan District Attorney’s probe into 2016 hush-money payments.
GOP leaders opened a kickoff press conference on Sunday touting their recent successes, including President Biden reversing his position on a GOP-led resolution to block Washington, D.C.’s, revised criminal code from taking effect. And they looked ahead to upcoming legislation they said would deliver on their “Commitment to America” campaign promises, such as the recently unveiled H.R. 1 “Lower Energy Costs Act” that aims to boost domestic oil and gas production.
But Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was quickly peppered with questions about Trump, setting the tone for the three-day conference. The Speaker railed against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), but broke with Trump on whether the former president’s supporters should protest if he is arrested.
Trump indicated in a Truth Social post on Saturday that he will be arrested on Tuesday as part of the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into hush-money payments made during the 2016 presidential election. In that same statement, he urged his supporters to “PROTEST” and “TAKE OUR NATION BACK.”
“I don’t think people should protest this,” McCarthy told reporters when asked about Trump’s call for protests, adding that “we want calmness out there,” and that there should be no “violence or harm.”
Republicans are trying to also keep focus on pressing policy questions, with some members telling The Hill that the potential Trump arrest — which would be the first time in U.S. history that a former president is indicted — was barely mentioned during the closed sessions for members. Sessions ranged from 2024 electoral strategy to a foreign policy strategic tabletop exercise that focused on China and Taiwan.
But not even a bilingual press conference on the GOP’s successes with Hispanic voters could steer clear of the former president.
“I think you guys pay a lot of attention to him,” Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.) said after the press conference, which included questions about Trump. “We pay attention to the president and all of our leaders. But we’re really committed to the things that we talked about there – the Commitment to America.”
At a briefing about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, McCarthy faced a question about whether it was appropriate for Republicans, led by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), to request testimony from Bragg and request documents during an ongoing investigation. McCarthy said that he is supportive of committees being able to ask questions at any given time.
“You guys are the ones that are making a story. The story really should be about [President] Biden, for instance, being compromised because of all the money his family has gotten from China, but nobody’s writing about that,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said. “We’re gonna keep doing what we’re doing.”
GOP lawmakers appear keenly aware that Trump’s weekend announcement has cast a shadow over their annual retreat despite their efforts to keep conversations policy focused.
“Why did I think you would do that?” Jordan said facetiously when asked about the Bragg letters during a news conference about border security.
While the potential indictment is sucking the oxygen out of the GOP retreat, it’s also giving Republicans the opportunity to pivot to more well-worn talking points.
Lawmakers have largely zeroed in on Bragg and highlighting crime in New York — a message that led the party to pick up a number of seats in the Empire State last year — while moving away from the calls for protests.
That strategy has allowed Republicans to support Trump — the front-runner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary — without associating themselves with the potential political violence.
“Look, peaceful protests are right of the American people. And so I support peaceful protests and if they have the right to have peaceful protests,” Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas) echoed. “If the American people want to have a peaceful protest, that is something that we support.”
McCarthy suggested on Sunday that the former president was telling his supporters to “educate people about what’s going on” when he made his weekend call to action.
“He’s not talking in a harmful way,” McCarthy said. “Nobody should harm one another … And this is why you should really make law equal because if that was the case, nothing would happen.” ‘Tar spot’ is killing corn across the Midwest Yellen reassures bankers ahead of Fed meeting: ‘The situation is stabilizing’
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said “Peaceful protests all of us obviously support, and we must always protect peaceful protests.”
“Well, look, we have great respect for President Trump and the work that he’s done for our country. And as my colleague said, up there, this is a — a left wing D.A. who’s going after a president,” De La Cruz said when asked about the focus on Trump during the retreat.
“We need to see what the facts are and to look at the situation closely, what comes over the next couple of days. But, look, I mean, the president did great things for our country,” she added.
This week’s set of elections across England will be a series of firsts: it will be the first big ballot box test of Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership and Kemi Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservative Party.
We will have the first by-election of this parliament in Labour-held Runcorn, the inaugural elections for the mayoralty of Hull and East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and our first chance to see if Reform’s surge in the polls since the general election can translate into seats.
Image: Former Runcorn and Helsby Labour MP Mike Amesbury leaves court. Pic: PA
And there is plenty at stake for the party leaders with all the upside in the hands of Nigel Farage, who has barely any council seats to defend and hundreds in his sights, as he looks to translate his poll leads into proper governing – be it through mayoral wins or council control.
Sir Keir is bracing for an early verdict on his leadership, with the Runcorn by-election a test of nerves for a Labour Party that will be loathed to lose a seat in the northwest of England to a surging Reform Party.
Image: Sir Keir Starmer in the House of Commons
For the Conservatives, the pressure is obvious and acute.
Of the 23 councils up for grabs, 16 are currently controlled by the Conservative Party and when they last fought these seats in 2021, the Conservatives were riding high on the back of a then popular Boris Johnson and COVID vaccine bounce.
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Back then, the party’s national equivalent vote share – an estimate of how the country would have voted if everywhere had had a local election – was at 40%, with Labour at 30%, the Lib Dems at 15%, and other parties at 15%.
Their support has collapsed since then, with current polling putting the Conservatives on 22% – an 18-point drop in vote share – while Reform, lumped in with ‘other parties’ in 2021, is now polling an average 25%.
So, expect to see the Conservatives lose control of councils and hundreds of seats as it haemorrhages support to Reform in a night that is set to be miserable for Kemi Badenoch and her party.
Image: Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch. Pic: PA
The Conservatives have majorities in 18 of the 23 councils up for grabs, and could even see the Lib Dems overtake them to become the second-biggest party in local government when it comes to council control. That would be a huge symbolic blow. The only glimmer of hope is whether the party can win the Cambridge and Peterborough mayoral race where a former Peterborough MP is looking to take the mayoralty from Labour.
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3:26
Labour and Reform face off in Runcorn
But like the Conservatives, there is little for Labour to cling on to in this set of elections as the party prepares for a lacklustre night at the ballot box, reflecting its steady drop in the polls following the autumn budget.
Support for Sir Keir’s government dipped below 30% last November and has continued on that trajectory, with Labour currently polling on average around 23%.
Labour has been haemorrhaging council seats in council by-elections since the national poll last July, and insiders are briefing that the party looks set to lose control of Doncaster Council, the only one it has control of in this set of elections, and perhaps the mayoralty of the city. Since last July, there have been by-elections in 95 vacant Labour council seats and Labour has lost 43 of them.
But the biggest race on the night for Labour will be the Runcorn by-election, where Reform is challenging to take a parliamentary seat that has long been part of Labour’s territory.
Image: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage
While Reform set out with the aim to destroy the Conservative Party, Labour insiders know how bad the Reform surge is for their own prospects, with the party coming in second to Labour in 89 constituencies in the 2024 General Election. The party is all too aware of the threat of Nigel Farage, as Reform taps into voters’ disillusionment.
“People voted for change in 2024,” explains one Labour insider. “We came in with the double whammy of public services on their knees and the economy facing big challenges, and we promised change. People will be judging us. There is change – waiting lists for the NHS are falling six months in a row – but do people notice it yet? Arguably not.”
Labour is preparing to intensify attacks against Reform. The party is already using remarks made by Mr Farage around re-examining the NHS’s funding model to launch a series of attack ads around the local elections and is likely to step this up ahead of polling day.
But the party is right to be worried by the Reform threat and to give you a bit of flavour of that, we ran a focus group of voters in Doncaster on the latest edition of the Electoral Dysfunction podcast to get a sense of the mood in a city about to re-elect its council and mayor.
‘The country is stuck in a doom loop’
Luke Tryl, director of More in Common, who carried out that focus group in Doncaster for us, told us that the group’s disillusionment with politics and the main political parties was a common refrain all around the country.
“You know, people basically keep hitting the change button, right? You know, they did it in Brexit. They did in 2017 when [Jeremy] Corbyn does very well, Boris Johnson in 2019 was a sort of change and in 2024, change was literally the slogan of Keir Starmer’s 2024 campaign.
“And they keep hitting that change and thinking they’re not getting the change. And so actually it pervades right across the political spectrum. It’s not limited to just the Tories, Labour, Reform. It’s just this sense that something isn’t happening and the system isn’t responding to what we want,” Mr Tryl says.
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Local elections tips and predictions
The undertone of the focus group reflected this sentiment, as respondents honed in on very common top-three concerns across the country – cost of living, the NHS, immigration – but also the sense of mistrust in politicians of all hues.
“It’s not just that people think that the UK is in a bad state, you know, cost of living is bad, the NHS is bad, struggles with immigration, crime,” Mr Tryl said.
“It’s that they don’t have faith in our political class to find solutions. I said recently, I think the UK public moves in a bit of a doom loop at the moment and we can’t seem to find a way out of it and how that changes.”
This is helping Mr Farage’s Reform as voters, turned off by the Tories and disappointed in Labour, look to hit the change button again. “Britain is broken and needs Reform” is Mr Farage’s pitch.
That’s not to say that he was universally liked in our Doncaster focus group.
“It wasn’t actually massively effusive about Farage personally, and we’re starting to pick that up in a few more focus groups,” noted Mr Tryl.
“It’s rather more like, ‘I like what Reform is saying’ – people tend to particularly like what they say on immigration – but I’ve got a few questions about Farage and a word I’ve heard in other groups is baggage. He’s got a lot of baggage.”
He added: “What you’re hearing there is people are slightly willing to put that… we tried the Tories for 14 years. We’re not that happy with what we’ve had from Labour so far. So we may as well roll the dice on this guy. And I think that’s what you’re going to see next week is that rolling the dice.”
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3:12
Who has more to lose?
The Conservatives fared particularly badly with the Doncaster focus group, with just two out of the nine respondents even being able to name their leader Kemi Badenoch.
“If you’ve got no public image whatsoever, and also no trust, then you’re not going to pull any votes,” was the brutal verdict of one respondent as Mr Johnson was brought up as a politician they thought of as more likeable, relatable and capable of taking on Reform.
As for Labour, only one of the respondents seemed prepared to give the government more time to turn around the country and deliver on election promises, with others voicing criticism over the government’s handling of the winter fuel allowance cuts, high immigration levels and the lack of progress more broadly. Voters were also hostile to Sir Keir, who they believed to be out of touch, privileged and posh.
The best Sir Keir can hope for next week is, in the words of Mr Tryl is to “tread water” as we watch to see whether Reform can translate polling gains into real governing.
A YouGov poll on Friday suggested Reform is in pole position to win the Lincolnshire mayoralty, while the party is ahead in the Hull and East Yorkshire battle, according to the polling. Labour is also nervous about Reform in the Doncaster mayoral race.
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Expectations for Reform are high, with some pollsters predicting the party could make hundreds of gains in traditionally Conservative counties and have a chance of perhaps even gaining control of Labour-held Doncaster council or Durham, where Labour is the largest party. Reform now has over 100 councillors, most of whom have defected from other parties, and is not defending any seats from 2021, so the only way for Mr Farage is up.
Mr Tryl expects the Tories to lose 500 to 600 seats and Reform to pick up the same sort of numbers if it manages to organise its support and turn out the vote.
So this will be a moment to test whether the Reform momentum in the polls translates into real progress on the ground and sees it become a major electoral force capable of challenging the two main parties across the country. In the general election, the party clocked up votes, but didn’t manage to concentrate that support into concrete wins. Can Reform change that in 2025?
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This set of local elections is far smaller than normal when it comes to the number of councils being contested than normal (Labour’s restructuring of local government has left a number of elections postponed), while the 11 million eligible to vote in England are just a quarter of those who could cast a vote across the UK in last year’s general election.
But these polls are seriously consequential. This will be a moment when we are able to better observe if the two-party system, battered in the 2024 General Election, really is dying.
Last July, third parties secured more votes than ever and a record tally of seats as support for the two establishment parties hit a record low. These elections could be the moment that Reform tastes real power and the Liberal Democrats surge.
Voters keep saying they want real change. On 1 May, we’ll get a better sense of how serious they are in a set of elections that could point to a profoundly different future for British politics.
Tkachuk’s hit, in the third period of his team’s 5-1 loss, received a five-minute major. According to sources, the NHL Department of Player Safety determined that was enough, considering Guentzel had recently touched the puck and Tkachuk didn’t make contact with Guentzel’s head.
The department also believed that the force in which Tkachuk hit Guentzel was far lesser than the hit Tampa’s Brandon Hagel made on Florida captain Aleksander Barkov in Game 2, which earned Hagel a one game suspension.
The plays led both coaches to trade jabs in the media. After Barkov went down in Game 2, Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice said: “The only players we hit are the one with pucks.”
Barkov missed the end of the third period, but played in Game 3. Game 4 is Monday at Amerant Bank Arena.
At his postgame press conference, following Tkachuk’s hit on Guentzel, Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper deadpanned the exact same line as Maurice.
Tkachuk leads the series in scoring with three goals and an assist through three games. Guentzel has two goals and two assists for Tampa Bay.
The Battle of Florida is living up to the billing as one of the most contentious rivalries in hockey; either Tampa or Florida has made it to the Stanley Cup Final in each of the last five seasons.
ST. LOUIS — Connor Hellebuyck, a two-time Vezina Trophy winner who is among the favorites to win the award again this season, allowed five goals before being pulled early in the third period as the top-seeded Winnipeg Jets fell to the St. Louis Blues5-1 on Sunday, evening their Western Conference first-round series at 2-2.
Hellebuyck has now been pulled in back-to-back games in St. Louis, during which he has allowed 11 goals and posted a paltry .744 save percentage. Eric Comrie made five saves in relief of Hellebuyck on Sunday, but the game had long been decided by that point.
His performances have not only energized the Blues, the No. 8 seed who lost the first two games of this series, but their fans, as well. In the third period Sunday, the St. Louis faithful chanted, “We want Connor” as he sat on the Jets’ bench.
Across the ice, St. Louis goaltender Jordan Binnington, who defeated Hellebuyck in the 4 Nations Face-Off final in February when Canada outlasted Team USA, made 30 saves in the win. The Blues have now won 14 straight regular-season and playoff games at home dating back to Feb. 23.
“The last 10 minutes, we gave up three goals,” Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel said of the second period. “Those are coverage goals, and those are situations that we usually handle pretty well. They are finding ways to get that puck in the net.”
Kyle Connor scored for the Jets, staking the road team to a 1-0 lead, but the powerful Winnipeg offense that helped the club win the Presidents’ Trophy was never heard from again.
“This is obviously not what we wanted,” Winnipeg forward Mark Scheifele said. “But it’s a best two-of-three series now.”
Hellebuyck has been pulled in consecutive games only one other time in his career, and given the Jets lost in Round 1 last season to the Colorado Avalanche, the Winnipeg goaltending situation figures to be a storyline the rest of this series.
“At the end of the day, you know what, they took advantage of home ice,” Arniel said of the Blues. “We’ve put ourselves in this position. And our best players have to be better than their best players.”
The Jets and Blues return to Winnipeg for Game 5 on Wednesday night.