welcome back to the cnn newsroom. i m jim acosta in washington. just minutes from now former president donald trump will be less than ten miles from the u.s. capitol, addressing a crowd of his adoring supporters as for all intents and purposes the front-runner for the 2024 gop nomination. despite his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, trump has been loading in several polls of republican voters as he delivers the keynote address at the annual cpac gathering later on this afternoon, even though other gop contenders are warning the party to move on from trump. his maga faithful have come to dominate the republicans long-time event. at any moment they will release the results of their straw poll. trump has won the last two with florida governor ron desantis coming in second. both times desantis has not formally announced for 2024 and is skipping this gathering. kristen holmes joins us from cpac where they re gathering in maryland just outside the nation s capital. kristen,
hello and welcome to inside politics. i m john king in washington. thank you for sharing your busy newsday with us. president biden hits the road as we hit 12 days till election day. a handful of key senate races are a toss-up. republicans increase will go i confident about capturing the house. early voting way up, some democrats do see some hope there. plus, get this quote, security is a joke. we have some new cnn reporting shows millions of your tax dollars earmarked to protect election workers have not been spent and it leaves the people who count your votes vulnerable to threats. and donald trump sets campaign closing rallies in iowa, in pennsylvania, in ohio and in florida. his election lies echo across this year s republican campaigns, a new snub 6 a potential rival. more proof trump is thinking 2024 comeback. and now in order to make our country successful, safe and glorious again, i will probable h have to do it again but first we have to win a historic win for th
federal crime fighting programs. now they run around pretending that they re a bunch of tough guys. the republican party at the congressional level is weak on public safety, is weak on crime, and the vote proved that. wouldn t you be giving them a win on the house side with this crime bill? well, look, this is one of those einstances where you have to cast a vote. i have real concerns about what the district did. now, the district can go back to the drawing board and make changes. even mayor bowser vetoed this bill, she said that she agreed with a lot of it but couldn t support the whole bill. so i hope they would go back to the drawing board and make these criminal penalties tougher, at least not reduce some of the penalties they have been reducing. all right. and crime has been going up in the district. it is a problem that residents here deal with every day. senator bob casey, thank you so much for your time.
are blooming about the voting process. not a shortage of money. how much available? ballpark? over a billion in these grants. these grants aren t just dedicated to election security but a range of crime fighting programs. there are other programs that have funding for this but we took a look at how the federal government was able to adapt to threats and this is what we found a paltry uptake. you get complaints from state and local officials saying these programs, it s not clear, it s not clean, getting the money but you have the michigan secretary of state telling you it s also sometimes that maybe the states aren t doing a good enough job to find where the money is. sounds like a lot of red tape. the same reason our elections are spread out and run by state and local, that makes us more secure and that hacking or compromising one part of the system doesn t compromise the whole. that makes it a challenge. that same system is challenging to get money out the door and down into t
back. we have been abiding by federal law for quite some time before jeff sessions became attorney general, we ll continue to abide by federal law and u.s. constitution. and we re hoping that the federal government will also abide by the u.s. constitution. which gives my state, the right to decide how to do public safety. reporter: what is at stake for jurisdictions that find themselves at odd with federal law, $20 million for california, and $4 billion for other cities and countries in country, they would go toward crime fighting programs. back to you. arthel: we ll be right back. thank you, anita for that report.