Trump has been working for months to turn back primary challenges and get Republicans behind his comeback campaign for the White House after four years out of power.

That goal was sealed after he scored a sweeping victory in the Super Tuesday primaries.

President Biden was already the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee even before he brushed off nominal primary challenges to his reelection bid.

Now, Biden hopes to utilize Thursday night’s State of the Union address to kick off his presidential campaign against Trump, a contrast he hopes will rally voters behind him despite concerns about his age and other potential political weak spots.

Here are some takeaways:

What will Joe say in SOTU?

Biden has a rare national platform to make his opening argument to Americans for why he deserves four more years in the White House.

Look for Biden to boast about his achievements and to pitch himself as uniquely qualified to lead the country and the world through a challenging period — and paint a sharp contrast with the chaos under Trump.

The stakes are quite high.

With voters on both sides of the aisle concerned about Biden’s age, any perceived gaffe could harden pre-existing opinions that he is just too old to serve.

On the other hand, Biden has the opportunity to cut through the political noise and demonstrate his often-underrated political skills.

Who benefits from the general election matchup being set?

Pundits have been puzzled by the persistently high number of Americans who did not believe that Biden and Trump would actually be their parties’ candidates for the White House.

Democratic strategists in particular believe that Biden could benefit from the matchup between the two men now being set in stone.

Team Biden believes that Democratic voters may start focusing on Trump, a candidate many of them loathe and is perhaps the biggest motivator for them to get behind anyone running against him.

Can Trump rally Republican critics who backed Nikki Haley?

For Trump, the immediate challenge is to win over Republicans who supported Nikki Haley in the just-completed primary fight.

“Clearly there are a quarter to a third of the people who voted in the Republican primaries … who simply won’t accept him or don’t wan’t him back in the White House,” Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst, said on CNN.

If past is prologue, Trump will likely seek to project strength with the Republican base as way to bring “traditional Republicans” back in the fold, Sabato added.

But Republican strategist Doug Heye noted that it won’t be a cakewalk for Trump, given that he deliberately sought to push away Haley supporters by declaring them “permanently banned” from his MAGA movement.

“That is dumb,” Heye told the News. “Anyone wearing a ‘Permanently Banned’ T-shirt is unlikely to return to the fold of the person insulting them.”

It appears that Trump’s mounting legal woes may not be the massive political headache they once seemed certain to pose.

So far, Trump’s indictment on 91 felonies and his four looming criminal trials have not damaged his political standing.

If anything, he has succeeded in using the trials to rally his supporters behind the idea that he is being unfairly targeted by liberal prosecutors.

Can Biden unify a fractured Democratic coalition?

The incumbent president has a unity problem of his own.

Biden is facing serious dissatisfaction with Democratic voters, some of whom are disenchanted over his handling of the economy or blame him for the influx of migrants across the southern border and into northern cities.

The most visible split is over Biden’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza. Critics have mounted modestly successful campaigns to register opposition to the war in states like Michigan, where 13% of Democrats shunned him to vote for “uncommitted” delegates.

Polls show Biden suffering from relatively low approval with Latinos, Blacks and young voters, all key portions of the Democratic base.

That’s a flashing danger sign for the incumbent. But it’s also an opportunity for Biden to win back voters who traditionally back the Democrat in the end.

Sabato notes that the White House needs to do a much better job communicating his policy achievements on issues like the economy and abortion rights.

“They have got to use the campaign and the State of the Union address to make it clear what they have actually done,” he said.

The outgoing Senate GOP leader, who famously called Trump “morally and practically responsible” for the violent attack on the Capitol, said in a statement that it was time for Republicans to unite behind the party’s presumptive nominee.

“Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for president of the United States,” McConnell said in a statement. “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

McConnell’s announcement came after Nikki Haley suspended her campaign the day after Trump won a sweeping victory in the Super Tuesday primaries.

McConnell, 82, last week announced he will step down as Republican Senate leader after the fall elections.

“I look forward to the opportunity of switching from playing defense against the terrible policies the Biden administration has pursued to a sustained offense geared towards making a real difference in improving the lives of the American people,” McConnell said.

He bragged about working with Trump during his first term in the White House, especially in remaking the federal judiciary and installing three conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices.

McConnell did not mention Trump’s effort to overturn his loss in the 2020 election, an effort that culminated with the violent Jan. 6 attack by a mob of Trump supporters.

McConnell harshly denounced Trump for engineering what he called an attack on American democracy and the Constitution.

But the iconic leader of the GOP establishment opposed Trump’s impeachment over his incitement of the attack. He effectively blocked Trump’s conviction in the Senate, a decision that opened the door to Trump’s dramatic political comeback.

Trump has viciously derided McConnell for years, branding him an “old crow,” a Republican in name only and worse.

The former president also used anti-Asian nicknames to abuse McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who served as his own transportation secretary but quit after Jan. 6.

After nearly two decades as GOP Senate leader, McConnell says he will step down when the new Congress begins next January.

His two top lieutenants are vying for his spot, but Trump may seek to handpick a more pliant acolyte to the powerful position.

McConnell has said he will serve out the remainder of his term, which runs through the 2026 elections. But some predict he will retire sooner.

After being crushed from coast to coast on Super Tuesday, the former UN ambassador urged Trump to work to earn the support of her and the coalition of mostly moderate and suburban Republicans who backed her campaign,

“It’s now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those who did not support him,” Haley said. “This is now his time for choosing.”

Haley spoke the morning after Trump rolled to an impressive victory on Super Tuesday, winning 14 out of 15 states including giant California and Texas and running up the score with about 80% of the vote in many primary states.

“The time has now come to suspend my campaign,” Haley said. “Although I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in.”

Haley doubled down on her unshakable support for a muscular foreign policy and aid to Ukraine, which many fellow Republicans want to abandon in the face of a Russian invasion.

She leaves the race with wins in tiny, deep-blue Vermont and Washington, D.C. along with respectable showings of more than 40% in independent-minded New Hampshire and about the same in her home state of South Carolina.

Haley quoted former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, another trailblazing female politician: “Never just follow the crowd.”

Haley threw in the towel after spending the last several weeks ramping up her once-tepid criticism of Trump.

She has slammed the twice-impeached, four times-indicted ex-president as unelectable and a danger to democracy, barbs that spurred Trump to angrily deride her as a Republican in name only and worse.

Haley refused to commit to backing Trump in the general election even though she joined other GOP candidates in signing a pledge to endorse the eventual party nominee.

In what amounted to a concession speech Wednesday, Haley softened those attacks significantly, suggesting she may be laying the groundwork to endorse Trump at some point.

“I wish him well. I wish anyone well who would be America’s president,” she said. “Our country is too precious to let our differences divide us.”

Haley was the first major candidate to challenge Trump after he announced his run for a third straight Republican nomination.

She was later joined by heavyweights like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a raft of other candidates including Sen. Tim Scott, ex-N.J. Gov. Chris Christie and upstart entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

But Trump effectively cleared the field by eviscerating DeSantis with months of withering attacks. None of the other candidates really caught fire with the GOP voters, many of whom had backed Trump twice before.

Trump cleaned up with a big win in the Iowa caucuses, where Haley fell short of DeSantis in third place. Haley also fell short in New Hampshire, a state that looked like her best shot at an upset.

That set up a blowout win for Trump in South Carolina, a result that effectively delivered a knockout blow to Haley even though she soldiered on through Super Tuesday.

With Trump rolling to very lopsided wins over Haley in delegate-rich states from coast to coast, there were few signs that Republican voters are having second thoughts about handing the nomination to the man who lost to Biden last time.

Trump was poised to declare victory yet again from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida while Haley remained behind closed doors at her home in South Carolina.

Here are several takeaways:

Trump steamrolls from coast to coast

Trump won in big states and small, in the Deep South and Northeast and pretty much everywhere in between.

The MAGA leader strengthened his already vice-like grip on the GOP nomination race by sweeping to wins even in potentially problematic states like Virginia and Massachusetts, which boast more independent-minded and better-educated Republican electorates.

The vast Super Tuesday map with elections in 15 states, including sprawling powerhouses like California and Texas, always favored Trump, who commands legendary loyalty among the Republican base.

But Haley might have hoped that she could bolster her standing with affluent voters in places like Colorado, northern Virginia or suburban Houston. That simply didn’t happen, at least not in the numbers she needed to trip up Trump.

The only state Haley had won on Super Tuesday was tiny, deep-blue Vermont, which awarded her 17 delegates — the fewest number of delegates assigned by a state holding elections on Super Tuesday.

What will Nikki do now?

As the results rolled in, the biggest outstanding question of the night was how or if Haley would respond to the punishing defeats.

Haley’s campaign gave no suggestion whether she would make a statement Tuesday night or perhaps Wednesday morning.

With Super Tuesday done, Haley will need to decide whether to stay in the race against Trump even as any chance of derailing his march to the nomination seems to have slipped away.

Haley has no campaign events scheduled, a big change from previous primary nights when she had laid out plans to compete in future contests.

The former UN ambassador has recently ramped up attacks on Trump as unelectable and has said she’s not sure if she will endorse Trump if he is the GOP nominee.

The Biden-Trump rematch starts now

A surprising number of voters in both parties have stubbornly clung to the belief that someone other than Trump or Biden will be the nominees.

After Super Tuesday, they can forget about it.

Trump is on track to come close to a majority of Republican delegates after sweeping to big wins. Ditto for Biden.

So the president and the former president are all but assured of being nominated by their parties’ conventions in the summer, regardless of the political parlor games suggesting they could somehow be replaced.

Biden cruises to easy wins

President Biden rolled to easy wins in all the Super Tuesday primaries that were declared.

The Democratic incumbent was running up the score from coast to coast against nominal opposition from Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minnesota) and Marianne Williamson.

Biden was expected to face some protest write-in votes in Minnesota over his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, but not on the same scale as the 13% who voted for uncommitted delegates in Michigan last week.

The president was watching the results from the White House where aides said he was working on Thursday’s State of the Union address, which will double as a kickoff for his general election campaign against Trump.

As of 11:13 p.m., Trump had won 12 states on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. Biden had picked up 14 Super Tuesday victories. There were more than 2,000 delegates up for grabs across the two parties.

Trump has steamrolled through the GOP primary, and is seeking to push his lone remaining rival, Nikki Haley, out the race. She had not spoken publicly about Tuesday’s results and did not have a public election night party.

She did score one surprise victory Tuesday, knocking off Trump in Vermont, according to The AP.

A win by Haley in any state would mark a major upset, but the Vermont victory did not change the trajectory of the race. Haley was seeking to score enough delegates to forestall Trump’s national primary victory, which could come as soon as next week. The longer Haley remains in the race, the more resources the Trump campaign must expend on the primary. It is unclear if Haley would endorse Trump if she drops out in the coming days.

Despite the Vermont drama, the broader Super Tuesday results confirmed the expectation going into the day: Biden and Trump are on the cusp of a rerun of the 2020 election.

In the Democratic primary, Biden has had to fend off protest votes from some Americans upset with his handling of Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.

Biden said the Super Tuesday results crystallized the choice America faces.

“Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” Biden said in a statement late Tuesday, asserting that Trump is “driven by grievance and grift, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people.”

11:13 pm: Biden and Trump win California 

The delegate-rich Golden State went the way of most of the rest of the map on Tuesday, with Biden and Trump both emerging victors, according to The AP.

11 pm: Biden loses American Samoa

Jason Palmer, a Baltimore resident who campaigned by Zoom call, beat Biden in the tiny Pacific territory of American Samoa, hauling in a reported 51 caucus votes, according to The AP.

10:45 pm: Nikki Haley beats Trump in Vermont

Nikki Haley salvaged a win over Trump in Vermont, The AP projected.

Haley edged out Trump by a narrow margin by rolling up a 3-1 win in Burlington, the biggest city in the deep-blue state.

It’s Haley’s second victory of the nomination quest after a win in the Washington, D.C., primary.

10:30 pm: Trump trashes Biden in Super Tuesday victory speech

Trump celebrated his win by trashing President Biden as he looked ahead to a near-certain general election rematch against the man who beat him in 2020.

“He’s the worst president in the history of our country,” Trump said. “It’s sad to see what’s happening.”

The former president slammed Biden in a rambling speech for mishandling the economy and the situation at the southern border.

“Our country is very divided,” Trump said. “In some ways we’re a Third World country.”

“This is the worst invasion. No country has ever seen anything like it,” he added.

Trump promised a crowd of supporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate that he would win back the White House.

“We’re going to take back our country,” Trump vowed.

9:24: Biden and Trump win Minnesota

The Associated Press said Biden and Trump took home victories in Minnesota. Trump has now won 10 states so far this evening.

9:09 pm: Biden and Trump pick up delegates in Colorado

In Colorado, Biden and Trump both won, according to the Associated Press. The state’s top court had knocked Trump off the ballot, but was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s the westernmost state called so far.

9 pm: Vermont’s GOP race too close to call

In the only competitive state so far, the Republican race in Vermont was too close to call. Trump had a 2-point lead with about half the vote in, but most of the vote had not been reported in Burlington, Vermont’s largest city and the home of the flagship state university. Haley could score a large haul of votes from the city.

9 pm: Biden and Trump win Texas

Biden and Trump both notched victories in delegate-rich Texas, according to the Associated Press. The AP called the victories as soon as polls closed in West Texas. Shortly after, The AP also called Arkansas for Trump.

8:49 pm: Trump wins Massachusetts

The 45th president hit New England turbulence in Vermont, but Massachusetts — which has some Republican strongholds outside the Boston area — went for Trump, according to the Associated Press. The AP called the race with little of the vote counted, suggesting Haley was not competitive in the Bay State.

8:45 pm: Biden and Trump win Alabama; Biden wins Arkansas

The president and his predecessor scored wins in Alabama, according to the Associated Press. Biden also scored a quick AP victory call in Arkansas.

8:27 pm: Biden wins Massachusetts, Maine; Trump wins Maine

The Associated Press has called Massachusetts for both Trump and Biden. Trump also won Maine, The AP said.

8:16 pm: Trump and Biden win Oklahoma.

Both Trump and Biden picked up victories in the Sooner State, according to the Associated Press. Early results showed both candidates romping.

8:05 pm: Trump and Biden roll in Tennessee

Trump wins the Tennessee primary as expected with the Associated Press projecting him as the winner just after polls close.

Biden also won.

7:45 pm: Trump projected to win North Carolina

Trump is projected as the winner of the North Carolina Republican primary, according to the Associated Press.

Biden won the Democratic contest.

7:25 pm: Biden and Trump projected to win Virginia

Trump is projected by the Associated Press as the winner the Republican primary in Virginia. President Biden, meantime, has also won Virginia.

Trump was running up wide margins over Haley in Virginia, which was considered one of the former South Carolina governor’s best chances for an upset.

7:05 pm: No immediate calls for Trump in Virginia, Vermont

There was no immediate call of the Republican primaries in Virginia and Vermont by major networks as polls closed at 7 pm. The two states were considered among the best possibilities for Haley to pull off upsets of former Trump.

NBC News noted that Trump was leading in Virginia.

An immediate call for Trump in either state would have signaled a looming landslide over Haley in the remaining 13 primary states with results rolling in later Tuesday night.

6:50 pm: Haley has no public schedule

Haley’s schedule on Super Tuesday is a blank slate, raising questions about her future plans in the Republican presidential primary.

The former South Carolina governor has no events on her public schedule and did not respond to inquiries about whether she plans to speak after results are announced.

Haley has said she plans to stay in her long-shot race against Trump for as long as she can be “competitive.”

That sounds a lot less definitive than what Haley said about Super Tuesday in recent weeks, which was that she was 100% going to stay in the race until the biggest raft of primary states went to the polls.

5:50 pm: Biden wins Iowa’s Democratic race: The AP has called Iowa for Biden in the first primary result of the night. The election was held by mail beginning last month; Biden scored more than 90% of the vote, according to incomplete results.

Tuesday morning: Taylor Swift told her Instagram followers to vote in Super Tuesday states, but did not say who they should support. She endorsed Biden in 2020.

The justices voted 9-0 that Colorado did not have the right to act on its own to bar him for violating the 14th Amendment’s so-called insurrection clause.

But they split along ideological lines about the legal meaning of the ruling and what should happen if Trump would be found to have led an insurrection by inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Here are five takeaways:

Trump will be on the ballot in 2024 everywhere

All nine Supreme Court justices agreed that individual states like Colorado do not have the right to bar Trump from the Republican presidential primary or general election ballots, assuming he is the GOP nominee.

A five-judge majority of the court also further ruled that only Congress could pass legislation barring an accused insurrectionist from becoming president.

But such legislation is unlikely to be passed anytime soon given the divided Congress, where the House is led by Republicans and Democrats lead the Senate.

States cannot use 14th Amendment to bar candidates for federal offices

All the justices agreed that individual states should not be permitted to decide whether a presidential candidate is ineligible for office.

The unanimous decision said allowing states to do so would create a “chaotic patchwork” of rules for electing the person to serve America’s highest office.

The justices did not address the fact that such a patchwork already exists when it comes to ballot access for third-party and independent candidates, not to mention voting rules like those covering voting by mail and barring felons from voting.

Four dispute idea that only Congress can enforce insurrection clause

The court’s three liberal justices disputed the majority’s contention that the only way for a candidate accused of being an insurrectionist to be barred from the ballot would be for Congress to pass legislation.

The trio’s concurring opinion suggested that the Supreme Court could bar a presidential candidate under the 14th Amendment if that person had been categorically found to have participated in an insurrection, perhaps by his or her own admission.

The liberals also slammed the court for going beyond what was required to decide the matter at hand, a key judicial principal that the top court’s conservative majority has regularly invoked in recent decisions. Those include its controversial decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with the legal point made by the three liberals, but declined to join their opinion. She criticized the “stridency” of their views.

Ruling sidesteps whether Trump led insurrection on Jan. 6

Everyone knows the ruling is about Trump.

But neither the unanimous ruling of the court nor the concurring opinions actually mention the former president by name.

That could be because the Supreme Court is generally not called upon to determine the facts of a particular case.

And in the Colorado case, the state Supreme Court found that Trump’s actions amounted to inciting an insurrection.

So there was no need for any of the justices to opine on whether they agreed with that assessment or not.

Few clues for Trump presidential immunity case

Some legal analysts believe the Supreme Court might be planning a so-called “grand bargain” on Trump: allowing him access to the ballot but refusing to block his criminal trials.

The ruling gave few signs of such a deal, which would involve rejecting his plea for blanket presidential immunity against prosecution, a very different legal issue.

A possible bread crumb about the immunity decision could be gleaned from the timing of the ballot decision, which was issued a month after oral arguments.

If the justices act at a similar pace in the immunity case, they could issue a decision by Memorial Day after hearing arguments in late April.

That timing would permit a trial to start by Labor Day in Trump’s federal election interference case if the court rejects Trump’s appeal.

With 15 states prepared to vote, Trump leads Haley in all of them, although the former UN ambassador is within striking distance in a few, such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, Virginia and Vermont, that are strongholds of more moderate suburban Republicans.

Haley boasted some momentum from a lopsided win in Sunday’s Washington, D.C., GOP primary, her first win after Trump swept all the traditional early voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire and her home state of South Carolina.

Haley beat Trump by a nearly 2-1 margin in the D.C. contest, where Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats by a 10-1 margin and most GOP voters are moderate, affluent and well educated, demographics that have favored her.

But Trump remains the overwhelming favorite to romp to a lopsided victory in populous, delegate-rich states such as California and Texas, which will likely all but seal his win in the Republican nomination fight.

He could win a majority of the GOP delegates, effectively wrapping up the nomination, as early as next week, before he faces any of four expected criminal trials on a total of 91 felonies.

On the Democratic side, President Biden is facing only nominal opposition and is expected to cruise to overwhelming victories in all the states on tap.

Biden could face some pockets of resistance from progressive opponents of his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza, some of whom may vote for uncommitted delegate slates after about 13% did so in last week’s Michigan primary.

The vast coast-to-coast map on Super Tuesday seems tailor-made for Trump to keep rolling on his way to an insurmountable lead over Haley.

Haley rallied supporters on Monday in Texas, the second-biggest delegate prize next to California.

The ex-president, who remains the most popular and powerful leader in the GOP, has been ramping up pressure on Haley to drop out, and another big win could be the final straw for her.

Haley still boasts a significant campaign war chest and has said she wants to stay in the race until the Republican National Convention in July in case delegates there have second thoughts about formally nominating Trump amid his legal woes.

But Haley had been most adamant about staying in the race through Super Tuesday, raising the possibility she might not soldier on if she endures another round of punishing defeats.

One big question for Trump will be if he continues to perform relatively poorly with affluent college-educated Republican primary voters, a onetime reliable GOP voting bloc that has swung hard to Democrats since he burst onto the political scene.

Nikki Haley wins Washington, D.C., GOP primary — first victory over Donald Trump

Key tests of his weakness with those voters could come in Virginia, a state that Sen. Marco Rubio nearly won in the 2016 race when he ran against Trump as  a moderate, and Minnesota, which Rubio won. Massachusetts and Vermont, where Republicans elected moderate GOP Gov. Phil Scott, might also give Haley stronger than expected showings.

Biden traveled to Brownsville, Texas, where he met with Border Patrol agents and immigration enforcement officials on the banks of the Rio Grande. He laid out what he called a needed compromise border security measure.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was recently impeached by the Republican-led House of Representatives, said the visit is a working trip and not a chance to spar with Trump.

“This visit is focused on the work that we do, not the rhetoric of others,” Mayorkas told reporters. “The fact of the matter is that the only enduring solution is legislation. Congress needs to act.”

Trump, for his part, jetted into Eagle Pass, Texas, about 325 miles west of Brownsville, a small town that has become the poster child for surging border crossings.

“They’re pouring into our country and they’re bringing with them tremendous problems,” Trump said. “We’re going to take care of it.”

The dueling trips underline the growing salience of immigration and border security in the 2024 presidential race especially since Trump lobbied to kill the congressional compromise to rein in illegal migration with fresh funding and GOP-friendly policy shifts.

Before that dramatic development, Trump and Republicans had enjoyed a political advantage by trashing Biden as the architect of rising migrant crossings and what they characterize as an open-border policy.

Trump has also dialed up his anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent months, suggesting migrants are poisoning the blood of Americans in a phrase that historians say recalls Nazi Germany.

But Biden and his Democratic allies have started to fight back, accusing Republicans of refusing to take action to stem the tide of migrants because they prefer to use the crisis as a political pawn.

The compromise that Republicans killed would have tightened border security, given Biden power to block all crossings and dramatically increase funding for processing migrants.

The number of people who are illegally crossing the border with Mexico has been rising for years for a variety of reasons but mostly due to the strong economy and job market in the U.S. The arrival of migrants has impacted liberal cities such as New York City, which has been experiencing a migrant crisis these last two years.

The Biden administration has sought to tweak policy where it can to encourage asylum seekers to enter the country legally at ports of entry instead of on foot across the border.

Biden is considering executive actions to help discourage migrants from coming to the U.S. But many Democrats and pro-immigration advocates oppose such unilateral actions, saying Biden would open the door for abuse of the powers by future presidents.

Many executive actions would likely be challenged in court where they would face an uncertain future.

The conservative-dominated court’s ruling that it will only hear oral arguments on Trump’s appeal in late April means a trial would almost certainly be delayed until late September at the earliest, even if the Supremes shoot down Trump’s immunity claim, legal analysts say.

The case is expected to take about three months, meaning it would take a legal Hail Mary for Trump to face a verdict from a jury of his peers before Election Day.

COURT

“They have given Trump the win,” Andrew Weissman, a former federal prosecutor, said Thursday on MSNBC. “It’s very, very hard to see how this goes to trial before the election.”

The top court could have rejected the appeal and let stand a comprehensive and unanimous ruling by an appeals court panel rejecting Trump’s claim.

That would have allowed the trial to start as soon as late spring with a verdict possible by Labor Day.

The fact the court decided to schedule the case when it did — taking much more time than its hearing on the decision of a Colorado court to bar Trump from the ballot for violating the 14th Amendment — suggests to some political observers that they are intent on letting voters decide Trump’s fate, not a jury.

“The Supreme Court’s message to us is: ‘Hey voters, we’re leaving this up to you,’” Joyce Alene Vance, an Alabama law professor and former federal prosecutor, tweeted.

Some Supreme Court-watchers note that the two months before oral arguments is still a speedy timeframe by the top court’s standards.

Those analysts dispute the notion that the court is letting Trump off the legal hook, suggesting that a trial could still be resolved before America goes to the polls on Nov. 5.

“SCOTUS schedule for Trump immunity argument leaves just enough time for case to be tried before the election,” Barb McQuade, another ex-federal prosecutor, said.  “The expedited briefing and argument schedule indicate (the) court is working to uphold public’s right to a speedy trial.”

So what is the schedule for the case as things stand now?

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments the week of April 22. It could rule anytime after that but it’s likely it would only rule at the end of its session at the end of June.

If the court agrees with Trump, the case effectively dies.

If the justices reject Trump’s appeal, as most legal analysts across the political spectrum believe is likely, they would hand the case back to Judge Tanya Chutkan for trial.

Chutkan had originally set a March 4 trial date, but put all pretrial proceedings on hold in early December when Trump filed his immunity appeal.

Assuming she gives Trump’s defense the same amount of time to prepare for trial, that would be just under three months from the time the case resumes. That would mean a possible trial date at the end of September.

Prosecutors have estimated their case against Trump would take four to six weeks and Trump’s defense could take about the same time.

That means the election interference trial could still start before the November election, but would likely not be finished by the time Americans decide whether they want Trump to be the next president.

Trump has not said what he would do about the case or any possible conviction if he were to return to power. But he could seek to order the Justice Department to halt the case or even try to pardon himself.

And depending on who you ask, that could either amount to a potent warning sign from Democratic voters that President Biden should adjust his strongly pro-Israel stance or an underwhelming sign of a modest intraparty split unlikely to significantly impact his reelection campaign.

“It does speak to some fissures within the Democratic coalition,” said Jacob Rubashkin, an analyst with Inside Elections. “The frustration extends beyond just the Arab-American portion of the population — plenty of other voters went for uncommitted as well.”

“You could just take it all with a lot of grains of salt and say that it probably does not mean all that much either way,” countered Kyle Kondik, an analyst with the non-partisan Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Backers of the “uncommitted” movement say they outperformed their own projections of about 10% and scored a remarkable 101,000 raw votes against a sitting president who is very popular within his own party and is cruising to the nomination with only token opposition.

They note that Biden lost to “uncommitted” in Dearborn, a city that boasts one of the biggest share of Arab Americans in the nation, and faced significant protest votes in areas with many progressive and young voters, all of whom disproportionately oppose the war in Gaza.

The “uncommitted” forces vowed to continue their protests in future Democratic primary states, and some even say they will threaten to stay at home in looming Biden’s general election fight against former President Trump.

The protesters warn that could tip the balance in battleground states like Michigan, where Arab Americans make up an estimated 2 to 3% of the electorate.

Critics counter that an early surge of uncommitted voters faded as the night faded and more votes rolled in from Detroit and other big cities where mainstream Democrats dominate.

They say the real story of the night was heavier-than-expected Democratic turnout across the board, which Biden’s team says portends well for the president in a general election.

They note that the 13% is not much more than the 11% who voted “uncommitted” in Michigan’s 2012 Democratic primary to signal dissatisfaction with then-President Barack Obama.

While “uncommitted” performed strongly in heavily Arab areas, it failed to put up big numbers in college towns where supporters had predicted Biden-skeptical young people would turn out in droves to send a message of dissatisfaction with the president.

It’s unclear whether the protest vote can affect the rest of the Democratic primary states, including the Super Tuesday states that vote on March 5.

Michigan offered a best-case for the protesters with its large Arab-American population and support of elected officials like U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, whose sister led the grassroots Listen to Michigan movement that backed “uncommitted,” and state Rep. Abraham Aiyash, the trailblazing Democratic leader of the assembly.

The protesters organized rallies and spoke out in mosques and churches to win support for “uncommitted,” and build opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.

None of the upcoming states in the primary race appear to have the same critical mass of opposition to Israel and most have primary systems that make it much more difficult to express dissent without voting for a rival candidate.

An effort to convince New Hampshire Democrats to write in the name “Ceasefire” on their ballots flopped badly.

New York’s presidential primary will be held on April 2. Pro-Palestinian organizers in the Empire State have not yet publicly announced if or how they want their supporters to register their anger with Biden’s stance on Israel at the ballot box.