deconstruct

Donald Trump's supporters are famously loyal. They followed his lead when he said the 2020 election was stolen from him. Some of them even stormed the Capitol to defend his honor and ended up in deep legal trouble. So far, many of them are sticking by him in the Republican presidential primary for 2024, as the rest of the field has been unable to knock him out of his polling lead.

And now, many of them are saying that they’d even be willing to have him be their president — from prison.

“If he’s convicted and he wins, put the Oval Office in whatever prison they have him in,” Dayna Duke, a Trump supporter from Arizona, said.

“It would be kind of fun to see actually. I know that sounds crazy,” Travis McMahon, a Trump rally attendee in Dubuque, Iowa, said.

​​“He can still run for president if he’s behind bars and he would still get the same amount of votes,” Republican Vicki Scott said. “Keep him tied up all next year, and we’re still going to vote for him. And I’ll tell you what, if it gets stolen again, it might be a third world war.”

Pro-Hamas extremists are flooding social media platforms with calls for attacks on Jewish communities and other targets in the U.S. and Europe, prompting U.S. law enforcement agencies to step up their readiness postures amid deep concerns about possible violence, American officials and private analysts told NBC News.

Tuesday’s explosion at a hospital in Gaza is threatening to become a flashpoint, they said, with posts on X and other platforms portraying it as an Israeli atrocity using an American-made bomb, despite an assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies that the damage resulted from an errant missile fired by a Palestinian militant group.

Groups linked to Al Qaeda and American neo-Nazis have been seeking to exploit the ongoing war to encourage attacks, according to two separate intelligence products obtained by NBC News.

“You must attack them in their homes, shops, posts and places of amusement … Tear their bodies apart, let their blood flow and take revenge for your martyrs,” said one Al Qaeda post quoted in an intelligence bulletin by the New York Police Department, which has maintained a global intelligence network since 9/11.

A Homeland Security official told NBC News that the DHS is monitoring a “heightened threat environment” in the U.S. and is concerned about attacks on Jewish-Americans, as well as Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans.

A separate intelligence bulletin by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that monitors extremism on the web and feeds information to law enforcement agencies, said Al Qaeda-linked groups and others posted a series of messages in response to the Gaza hospital incident, calling for attacks on U.S. and Israeli embassies and other targets.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is marching ahead with his Speakership bid despite increasingly grim signs for his path to the gavel, eyeing another floor vote on Thursday even as GOP lawmakers signal that his opposition is likely to grow.

“The expectation is, at least from the chatter I’m hearing, is that there will be some others that will move away from the Jordan candidacy,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), who voted for Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) on the first two ballots, told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

“It’s very clear that those numbers are not there and that it’s gonna get a lot worse,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who also backed Scalise in the first two rounds of voting, said after Jordan’s second failed vote, noting that he does not think he has a path to the gavel.

One centrist Republican who supported Jordan on the first two ballots said they are planning to jump ship.

“I committed to two votes. I’m not able to on the 3rd,” the lawmaker told The Hill in a text message.

Another Republican told The Hill that slowly increasing the number of votes against Jordan is a strategy among those opposing the Ohio Republican.

Judge Arthur Engoron, who previously handed Trump a gag order for attacking a court clerk on social media, ordered the former president to quiet down after he expressed frustration and interrupted real estate appraiser Doug Larson’s testimony by speaking loudly to his legal team.

New York State lawyer Kevin Wallace had complained to Engoron, saying that Trump’s “exhortations” were distracting to those on the witness’ side of the room, the Associated Press reported.

A few hours later, a reporter for Law 360 reported that an unnamed woman had “walked up to the front of the [public] gallery, approaching ‘the well’ where Trump was seated.” She was immediately confronted by law enforcement, who told her to return to her seat then later led her out of the courtroom.

In a statement to The Independent, a spokesperson for New York State courts said the woman was a court employee who had since been placed on administrative leave. She was “yelling out to Mr. Trump indicating she wanted to assist him,” the spokesperson said.

Douglass Mackey, the social media influencer known as "Ricky Vaughn," was sentenced Wednesday to seven months in prison for falsely assuring supporters of Hillary Clinton they could cast their vote in the 2016 presidential election through text messages or social media posts.

Mackey was prosecuted under the Ku Klux Klan Act that was enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to efforts by the KKK to prevent recently emancepated Blacks from voting.

Mackey was 26 years old in 2015 when he began posting on Twitter under the pseudonym "Ricky Vaughn," amassing 51,000 followers on Twitter and ranking among the "most influential voices" posting about the 2016 presidential election, according to a list compiled by M.I.T.

Federal prosecutors in New York said Mackey was intent on originating hashtags designed to "cause as much chaos as possible" by creating "controversy ... for the sole purpose of disparaging Hillary Clinton."

At 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey published the first tweet that falsely announced that people could register their vote by texting on their phones, according to trial testimony. Additional tweets followed.

A Republican activist who has been a reliable donor to Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — despite a racist tweet that put him on the outs with DeSantis’ predecessor, Rick Scott — shot a woman and then himself in the parking lot of a Palm Beach County restaurant, according to sheriff’s deputies.

The activist, 72-year-old Steve Alembik, died. The woman, wounded in the back and arm, survived when she ran into the restaurant bleeding and was rushed to the hospital.

The shooting happened at a Burgerfi outlet in Delray Beach a week ago Monday, although Alembik’s identity wasn’t revealed until last Friday in the Boca Raton News. The wounded victim was believed to be his wife.

Over the past 20 years, Alembik, gave more than $200,000 in political contributions, mainly to Republicans, including thousands of dollars to both DeSantis and Donald Trump. The founder of a Boca Raton digital marketing company, the Democrat-turned-Republican earned notoriety in 2018 by referring to former President Barack Obama as a “f******* Muslim n*****” in a post on the social media platform X, then known as Twitter.

“We are a broken conference,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) told reporters after walking out of another meeting in the Capitol basement on Thursday.

Hours later, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the man Republicans nominated as their candidate for speaker just a day earlier, withdrew himself from consideration for the job, citing opposition from certain members of the Republican conference.

“There’s some folks that really need to look in the mirror over the next couple of days and decide, ‘Are we going to get it back on track,’ or are they going to try to pursue their own agenda,” Scalise told reporters.

“The world’s on fire. Our adversaries are watching what we do and quite frankly they like it,” Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said.

He expects his pro-Israel resolution to be the first thing to be voted on once the House reopens, but he said the clock is ticking to send Israel more weaponry to defend itself against Hamas. “We’re talking weeks. You can’t drag this out any longer.”

Speaker-designate Steve Scalise (R-La.) is struggling to win the support he will need to be elected to the top spot on the House floor, signaling what could be a sequel to his predecessor’s fight to win the gavel in January.

Scalise scored a victory on Wednesday by defeating House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in the conference’s internal vote to become the GOP nominee for Speaker. But the tally was a slim 113-99 victory, with around a dozen votes for others or “present” — and even after Jordan swung his support to Scalise following the vote, it was unclear if his supporters would do the same.

At least seven Republicans say they plan to back someone other than Scalise; at least six others say they are undecided; and some have declined to comment on who they will stand behind — enough resistance to deny Scalise the Speakership on the House floor.

Democrats are all expected to unite behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) as their preferred Speaker, just as they did in lockstep through 15 ballots in January. That means Scalise, just like deposed Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), can only afford a handful of Republican defections.

But a second floor fight for the Speakership — a sequel to McCarthy’s marathon battle in January — would come with a dangerous backdrop: a war in Israel and a November government funding deadline, both of which loom over the divided GOP conference.

The House is set to reconvene at noon on Thursday, but it is not clear whether it will then move to a floor vote for Speaker.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) said he plans to vote for McCarthy for Speaker on the House floor. Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Bob Good (Va.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Max Miller (Ohio), Nancy Mace (S.C.) and Lloyd Smucker (Pa.) are among those who have said they plan to vote for Jordan.

A group of House Republicans from New York are introducing a resolution to expel Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., from Congress.

"Today, I’ll be introducing an expulsion resolution to rid the People’s House of fraudster George Santos," Rep. Anthony D'Esposito, R-N.Y., said in a post on the social media platform X.

He said the resolution will be co-sponsored by fellow New York House Republicans Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, Nick Langworthy and Brandon Williams.

Booting Santos would require a two-thirds vote of the entire House.

The move comes a day after federal prosecutors issued Santos a 23-count superseding indictment alleging he committed identity theft, fraud and other offenses. Santos has said he plans on fighting the charges and pleaded not guilty to the charges in the original 13-count indictment earlier this year.

North Carolina Republican lawmakers voted to override the Democratic governor’s vetoes on two election bills on Tuesday, giving themselves new power over election administration and shortening a key voting deadline ahead of the 2024 election.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bills earlier this year, saying in a statement that they make it harder to cast ballots, but Republicans have a supermajority in the legislature and voted to override his vetoes.

The bills promise to affect the swing state’s presidential election next year, though litigation is expected and could delay or block the implementation of challenged provisions.

In interviews earlier this year, advocates said they were most concerned about Senate Bill 749, which will rework the composition of state and local election boards, the five-person bodies that oversee democratic operations and certify election results.

County boards register voters, operate polling sites, and count ballots, while the state board appoints individuals to and oversees those local boards. Currently, all election boards in the state are controlled by the governor’s party, with nominations made by state parties and appointments made by the governor.

The legislation removes the governor from the process completely, creating state and local boards that are evenly divided between the two parties and comprised of members appointed by state legislative leaders.

Republican supporters of the legislation say it takes the politics out of election administration, but experts say it could result in a nightmare scenario of deadlocked election boards unable to complete the basic tasks of election administration.

The Coast Guard has recovered remaining debris, including presumed human remains, from a submersible that imploded on its way to explore the wreck of the Titanic, killing all five onboard, deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean's surface, officials said Tuesday.

The Coast Guard said that the recovery and transfer of remaining parts was completed last Wednesday, and a photo showed the intact aft titanium endcap of the 22-foot (6.7-meter) vessel. Additional presumed human remains were carefully recovered from within Titan’s debris and transported for analysis by U.S. medical professionals, the Coast Guard said.

The salvage mission conducted under an agreement with the U.S. Navy was a follow-up to initial recovery operations on the ocean floor roughly 1,600 feet (488 meters) away from the Titanic, the Coast Guard said.

The new materials were offloaded at an unnamed port.

The Coast Guard previously said it recovered presumed human remains along with parts of the Titan after the debris field was located at a depth of 12,500 feet (3,800 meters).

Investigators believe the Titan imploded as it made its descent into deep North Atlantic waters on June 18.