Get Ready for a Bumpy Ride

Welcome to our first Trump on Trial newsletter of 2024, a year that’s almost certain to put American democracy to the test.

If the polls prove right, Donald Trump is on pace to lock down his party’s 2024 presidential nomination. And his campaign will unfold as the courts are jammed with accusations of his misconduct.

Trump will be juggling hearings — and potentially a trial or two — in his four criminal cases. He could lose control of his business in a civil fraud case. And he will find out if states can brand him as an insurrectionist and remove him from their ballots, legal moves that are likely to end up in front of the Supreme Court.

This pileup of problems would make for utter chaos in a normal year, but 2024 will be anything but normal. Trump’s legal woes are set to crash headlong into his crowded campaign calendar, with the first collision coming this month when, as he told Maggie, he wants to testify in a New York case beginning just one day after the Iowa caucuses to determine how much he will have to pay a woman he has already been found guilty of defaming.

To help prepare for a year like no other, we have mapped out a few landmark issues and events that will help determine Trump’s fate.

This week, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to settle a dispute over whether he can be removed from state ballots under the Constitution.

The measure in question, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, was put in place after the Civil War to stop Southern rebels from serving in important federal positions. So far, two states — Maine and Colorado — have found that Trump can be considered an insurrectionist for having incited the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. But other states have disagreed, and Trump is mounting a legal challenge to the