Russian Federal Security Service investigators have formally charged Evan Gershkovich with espionage, but The Wall Street Journal reporter denied the charges and said he was working as a journalist, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said on March 30 that it had detained Gershkovich in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and had opened an espionage case against the 31-year-old for collecting what it said were state secrets about the military industrial complex.

“Gershkovich has been charged,” Interfax quoted a source as saying.

TASS reported that FSB investigators had formally charged Gershkovich with carrying out espionage in the interests of the United States but that Gershkovich had denied the charge.

“He categorically denied all the accusations and stated that he was engaged in journalistic activities in Russia,” TASS cited an unidentified source as saying.

The TASS source declined further comment citing the classified nature of the case.

Gershkovich is the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War.

The Journal has denied that Gershkovich was spying and demanded the immediate release of its “trusted and dedicated reporter.” The Journal said his arrest was “a vicious affront to a free press and should spur outrage in all free people and governments throughout the world.”

The Kremlin said that Gershkovich had been carrying out espionage “under the cover” of journalism. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told the United States that Gershkovich was caught red handed while trying to obtain secrets.

The United States has urged Russia to release Gershkovich and cast the Russian claims of espionage as ridiculous. U.S. President Joe Biden has called for Gershkovich’s release.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has yet to comment publicly on the case.

A fluent Russian speaker born to Soviet emigres and raised in New Jersey, Gershkovich moved to Moscow in late 2017 to join the English-language Moscow Times and subsequently worked for the French national news agency Agence France-Presse.

Russia announced the start of its “special military operation” in February 2022, just as Gershkovich was in London, about to return to Russia to join The Journal’s Moscow bureau.

It was decided that he would live in London but travel to Russia frequently for reporting trips, as a correspondent accredited with the Foreign Ministry.
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South Korea, the U.S. and Japan called for stronger international support of efforts to ban North Korea from sending workers abroad and curb the North’s cybercrimes as a way to block the country’s means to fund its nuclear program. 

The top South Korean, U.S. and Japanese nuclear envoys met in Seoul on Friday in their first gathering in four months to discuss how to cope with North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal. The North’s recent weapons tests show it is intent on acquiring more advanced missiles designed to attack the U.S. and its allies, rather than returning to talks. 

Despite 11 rounds of U.N. sanctions and pandemic-related hardships that have worsened its economic and food problems, North Korea still devotes much of its scarce resources to its nuclear and missile programs. Contributing to financing its weapons program is also likely the North’s crypto hacking and other illicit cyber activities and the wages sent by North Korean workers remaining in China, Russia and elsewhere, despite an earlier U.N. order to repatriate them by the end of 2019, experts say. 

In a joint statement, the South Korean, U.S. and Japanese envoys urged the international community to thoroughly abide by U.N. resolutions on the banning of North Korean workers overseas, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry. 

The ministry said a large number of North Korean workers remains engaged in economic activities around the world and transmits money that is used in the North’s weapons programs. It said the three envoys tried to call attention to the North Korean workers because the North may further reopen its international borders as the global COVID-19 situation improves. 

It is not known exactly how many North Korean workers remain abroad. But before the 2019 U.N. deadline passed, the U.S. State Department had estimated there were about 100,000 North Koreans working in factories, construction sites, logging industries and other places worldwide. Civilian experts had said that those workers brought North Korea an estimated $200 million to $500 million in revenue each year. 

“We need to make sure that its provocations never go unpunished. We will effectively counter North Korea’s future provocations and cut their revenue streams that fund these illegal activities,” Kim Gunn, the South Korean envoy, said in televised comments at the start of the meeting. 

Sung Kim, the U.S. envoy, said that with its nuclear and missile programs and “malicious cyber program that targets countries and individuals around the globe,” North Korea threatens the security and prosperity of the entire international community. 

South Korea’s spy agency said in December that North Korean hackers had stolen an estimated $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets in the past five years, more than half of it last year alone. The National Intelligence Service said North Korea’s capacity to steal digital assets was considered among the best in the world because it has focused on cybercrimes since U.N. economic sanctions were toughened in 2017 in response to its earlier nuclear and missile tests. 

Friday’s trilateral meeting will likely infuriate North Korea, which has previously warned that the three countries’ moves to boost their security cooperation prompted urgent calls to reinforce its own military capability. 

North Korea has long argued the U.N. sanctions and U.S.-led military exercises in the region are proof of Washington’s hostility against Pyongyang. The North has said it was compelled to develop nuclear weapons to deal with U.S. military threats, though U.S. and South Korean officials have steadfastly said they have no intention of invading the North. 

Earlier this week, the United States conducted anti-submarine naval drills with South Korean and Japanese forces in their first such training in six months. The U.S. also flew nuclear-capable bombers for separate, bilateral aerial training with South Korean warplanes. 

North Korea hasn’t performed weapons tests in reaction to those U.S.-involved drills. But last month, it carried out a barrage of missile tests to protest the earlier South Korean-U.S. military training that it sees as an invasion rehearsal. 

Takehiro Funakoshi, the Japanese envoy, said North Korea’s recent weapons tests and fiery rhetoric pose a grave threat to the region and beyond. “Under such circumstances, our three countries have significantly deepened our coordination,” he said. 

Sung Kim reiterated that Washington seeks diplomacy with Pyongyang without preconditions. North Korea has previously rejected such overtures, saying it won’t restart talks unless Washington first drops its hostile policies, in an apparent reference to the sanctions and U.S.-South Korean military drills. Many experts say North Korea would still eventually use its enlarged weapons arsenal to seek U.S. concessions such as the lifting of the sanctions in future negotiations. 

There are concerns that North Korea could conduct its first nuclear test in more than five years, since it unveiled a new type of nuclear warhead last week. Foreign experts debate whether North Korea has developed warheads small and light enough to fit on missiles. 
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has for more than two decades accepted luxury trips nearly every year from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reports.

In a lengthy story published Thursday, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization catalogs various trips Thomas has taken aboard Crow’s yacht and private jet as well as to Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks. A 2019 trip to Indonesia the story detailed could have cost more than $500,000 had Thomas chartered the plane and yacht himself, ProPublica reported.

Supreme Court justices, like other federal judges, are required to file an annual financial disclosure report that asks them to list gifts they have received. It was not clear why Thomas omitted the trips, but under a judiciary policy guide consulted by The Associated Press, food, lodging or entertainment received as “personal hospitality of any individual” does not need to be reported if it is at the personal residence of that individual or the individual’s family. That said, the exception to reporting is not supposed to cover “transportation that substitutes for commercial transportation” and properties owned by an entity.

A Supreme Court spokeswoman acknowledged an email from the AP seeking comment from Thomas but did not provide any additional information. ProPublica wrote that Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions from the organization.

Last month, the federal judiciary beefed up disclosure requirements for all judges, including the high court justices, although overnight stays at personal vacation homes owned by friends remain exempt from disclosure.

Last year, questions about Thomas’ ethics arose when it was disclosed that he did not step away from election cases following the 2020 election despite the fact that his wife, conservative activist Virginia Thomas, reached out to lawmakers and the White House to urge defiance of the election results. The latest story will likely increase calls for the justices to adopt an ethics code and enhance disclosure of travel and other gifts.

In a statement, Crow told ProPublica that he and his wife have been friends of Thomas and his wife since 1996, five years after Thomas joined the high court. Crow said that the “hospitality we have extended to the Thomases over the years is no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends” and that the couple “never asked for any of this hospitality.”

He said they have “never asked about a pending or lower court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one, and we have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue.”

ProPublica’s story says that Thomas has been vacationing at Crow’s lavish Topridge resort virtually every summer for more than two decades. During one trip in 2017, other guests included executives at “Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, major Republican donors and one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business conservative think tank,” ProPublica reported.

Crow wrote that he is “unaware of any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas on any case, and I would never invite anyone who I believe had any intention of doing that.”

The disclosure of the lavish trips stands in contrast to what Thomas has said about his preferred methods of travel. Thomas, who grew up poor in Georgia, has talked about enjoying traveling in his motorcoach and preferring “Walmart parking lots to the beaches.”
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Republican lawmakers in the Southern U.S. state of Tennessee made the rare move of expelling two Democratic lawmakers Thursday from the state legislature because they participated in a protest last week at the State Capitol calling for more gun control, following the recent deadly school shooting in Nashville that killed three adults and three 9-year-old students.

A third lawmaker avoided the ouster by one vote.

“We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Justin Jones, one of the ousted politicians said.

U.S. President Joe Biden posted on Twitter: “Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting. And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action. It’s shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.”  

The expelled lawmakers –  Jones and Justin Pearson – are African American men.  The third lawmaker – Gloria Johnson – is a white woman.  Republican leaders, however, have denied that race had anything to do with the expulsions. 

“You cannot ignore the racial dynamic of what happened today. Two young Black lawmakers get expelled and the one white woman does not. That’s a statement in and of itself,” Pearson said. 

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
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It was an international summit of democracies, but several democratic countries in Asia and Africa were absent; some were not invited and some turned down the invitation. 

Pakistan declined to attend, giving no excuse except that Islamabad will engage Washington, a close ally, bilaterally.

The real reason for Pakistan’s absence, experts say, was not about democracy but about China. 

“This was a fairly straightforward diplomatic decision,” Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia institute at the Wilson Center, told VOA.

“China was not invited, and Taiwan was. Pakistan, out of deference to its Chinese ally, would not want to attend a forum where Taiwan was present,” he said.

The only nuclear-armed, majority-Muslim country in the world, Pakistan has extensive economic and political ties with the United States and China. 

In 2020, the United States was the top export country for Pakistani products — over $4.1 billion — while Pakistan imported products worth more than $12.4 billion from China, more than from any other country, according to the World Bank. 

China is the single largest creditor to Pakistan with over $31 billion in loans, while the United States has given more than $32 billion in direct support to Pakistan over the past two decades. 

It is unclear how Pakistan’s preference to skip the U.S. invitation to gain China’s approval will work out at a time when the country is facing serious economic challenges.   

Yet Pakistan’s decision was not driven purely by economic calculations, experts say. 

Fragile democracy

The U.S. summit came at a critical time for democracies around the world. The pace of democratization has slowed, while authoritarian regimes have become more effective and influential, according to Freedom House, a U.S. entity that reports on civil and political freedom globally.

“Democracy is on life support in Pakistan,” Kugelman said, adding that the country’s democratic progress made since 2008 is in peril.

For much of its existence since 1947, Pakistan has been taken over by a military dictatorship whenever the country suffered a civilian political breakdown.

Amid intensifying political brinkmanship between the incumbent coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, leader of a major opposition party, there is fresh speculation about yet another coup. 

A declaration of martial law by the Pakistani military “would be the worst possible outcome for the country,” tweeted Madiha Afzal, a fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.  

The United States has long held a policy of supporting and promoting democracy across the world, but Washington seems to be distancing itself from the intensifying political drama in Pakistan.

“The sobering reality is that the U.S. has itself contributed to Pakistan’s democratic deficit by emphasizing its relations with Pakistani military leaders. That may advance U.S. goals for Washington’s relations with Pakistan, given that the army makes the big decisions on relations with the U.S., but it doesn’t help a perpetually fragile democracy that today is gasping for breath,” said Kugelman. 

Turkey

The United States did not invite Turkey, a constitutional secular democracy and a NATO ally, to the first democracy summit held in 2021 nor to the one that took place last week. 

Often labeled as an autocrat and dictator, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is blamed for taking Turkey on an undemocratic path — criticism that Erdogan has strongly rejected. 

“Turkey is no longer a democratic state but is perhaps best described as an electoral autocracy,” Paul Levin, director of the Institute for Turkish Studies at Stockholm University, told VOA.

Aside from concerns about its democratic backtracking, Turkey is the only NATO member country that has refused to enforce Western sanctions against Russia, particularly in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

“Ankara feels like it cannot afford to antagonize Russia, as it is dependent on energy imports and deferment of loan payments, as well as needing Russian cooperation to achieve its own objectives in Syria,” Levin said. 

By playing on both sides of the war in Ukraine, Erdogan tries to offset the economic crisis that Turkey has been facing, analysts say.

The absence of Turkey and Pakistan in the democracy summit was not conspicuous. Indonesia, the most populous Muslim democracy, Bangladesh and many others were also absent.

“Regarding why certain countries are not invited, we will not discuss internal deliberations. However, we reiterate that for the summit, we aim to be inclusive and representative of a regionally and socioeconomically diverse slate of countries. We are not seeking to define which countries are and aren’t democracies,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State told VOA in an emailed response. 

Bringing 74 democracies to a forum, despite significant differences evinced in the final declaration of this year’s summit, was officially lauded as a major achievement.

But that achievement has limits, some analysts say.

“There was a certain arbitrariness to the summit guest list that I fear takes away from the credibility of the summit itself,” Kugelman said.  
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Kansas is banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports from kindergarten through college, the first of several possible new laws restricting the rights of transgender people pushed through by Republican legislators over the wishes of the Democratic governor.

The Legislature on Wednesday overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s third veto in three years of a bill to ban transgender athletes, and came a day after state lawmakers passed a broad bathroom bill. Nineteen other states have imposed restrictions on transgender athletes, most recently Wyoming.

The Kansas law takes effect July 1 and is among several hundred proposals that Republican lawmakers across the U.S. have pursued this year to push back on LGBTQ rights. Kansas lawmakers who back the ban are also pursuing proposals to end gender-affirming care for minors and restrict restroom use.

The measure approved by Kansas lawmakers Tuesday would prevent transgender people from using public restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities associated with their gender identities, and bars them from changing their name or gender on their driver’s licenses. Kelly is expected to veto that.

“It’s a scary time to be raising a trans child in Kansas,” said Cat Poland, a lifelong Kansas resident and mother of three who coordinates a Gay-Straight Alliance at her 13-year-old trans son’s school about 65 kilometers northwest of Wichita. “We may face the very real threat of having to move, and it’s heartbreaking.”

The ban demonstrates the clout of religious conservatives, reflected in the 2022 platform of the Kansas Republican Party — “We believe God created man and woman” — and echoes many Republicans’ beliefs that their constituents don’t like any cultural shift toward acceptance.

“I wish it was 1960, and, you know, little Johnny’s a boy and Mary’s a girl, and that’s how it is, period,” Republican state Rep. John Eplee, a 70-year-old doctor, said during a committee discussion of the bathroom bill.

LGBTQ-rights advocates say its part of a national campaign from right-wing traditionalists to erase transgender, non-binary, gender-queer and gender-fluid people from American society.

Alex Poland, an eighth-grade cross-country runner who hopes to play baseball next year, said legislators are pursuing “bills against children” who “haven’t done anything to harm anyone.”

Alex, who lobbied for trans rights with his mother at the Statehouse last week, said it’s good for trans kids’ mental health to play on teams associated with their gender identities, and that most other kids just don’t care.

It’s largely adults who “care so much about what the trans kids are doing,” Alex said.

Kelly told reporters in the Kansas City area that she believes legislators eventually will regret voting for “this really awful bill.”

“It breaks my heart and certainly is disappointing,” Kelly said.

The first state law on transgender athletes, in Idaho in 2020, came after conservatives retrenched from the national backlash over a short-lived 2016 bathroom law in North Carolina. In Kansas, conservatives’ biggest obstacle has been Kelly, who narrowly won reelection last year after pitching herself as a political centrist.

Conservative Republicans in Kansas fell short of the two-thirds majorities in both legislative chambers needed to override Kelly’s vetoes of the transgender athlete bills in 2021 and 2022. But this year, the House voted 84-40 to override her veto, exactly the two-thirds majority needed. The vote was 28-12 in the Senate, one more than a two-thirds majority.

Supporters of the ban could not have overridden Kelly’s veto this year but for the only Democrat to side with them against the governor. Rep. Marvin Robinson, of Kansas City, told reporters that he had wanted to “meet in the middle” but found the debate “all or none out there.” He said he prayed for guidance before the vote.

Two LGBTQ Democratic lawmakers from the Kansas City area were especially upset because they believed Republicans were gloating over the House vote.

Rep. Heather Meyer stood up, opened her jacket and displayed a “Protect Trans Youth” T-shirt before making a rude gesture as she left the chamber. Rep. Susan Ruiz yelled at GOP members, briefly cursing at them before being told she was out of order.

“We’re tired of putting up with it, and I’m tired of putting up with it,” she said later. “There needs to be some respect.”

Across the U.S., supporters of such bans argue that they keep competition fair. Track and field last month barred transgender athletes from international competition, adopting the same rules that swimming did last year.

Supporters argue that they’re also making sure cisgendered girls and women don’t lose the scholarships and other opportunities that didn’t exist for them decades ago.

“Over the past 50 years, females have finally been able to celebrate our differences and create a division that enabled us to achieve athletic endeavors similar to our male counterparts,” Caroline Bruce McAndrew, a former Olympic swimmer and member from the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame from Wichita, testified to lawmakers.

LGBTQ-rights advocates acknowledge that arguments about competition resonate outside Republicans’ conservative base because of the longstanding assumption that men and boys are naturally stronger than women and girls.

They’re also frustrated that the debate often focuses on whether transgender athletes have or can win championships.

Hudson Taylor, a three-time All-American collegiate wrestler said youth sports should be about learning discipline, “healthy habits,” and having fun in a supportive environment. He founded and leads the pro-LGBTQ group Athlete Ally.

“There’s been a professionalization of youth sports over the last 40 years,” Taylor said. “So often, the legislators and people who oppose trans-athlete inclusion really go directly to the most elite, top talent, Olympic-hopeful athletes.”

The Kansas measure bans transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ teams starting in kindergarten, even though sports and other extra-curricular activities aren’t overseen by the Kansas State High School Activities Association until the seventh grade.

That’s one reason LGBTQ-rights advocates are skeptical that the true issue is fair competition. Another is the scarcity of transgender female athletes.

The state association said three transgender girls competed in sports in grades 7-12 this year, two of them seniors. Taylor said transgender athletes in college likely number fewer than 500. The NCAA says about 219,000 women play collegiate sports.

The international track and field ban doesn’t affect a single transgender female athlete.

Cat Poland, the Kansas mother with a trans son, said: “They just keep taking the next, the next step, the next step, until where are trans people supposed to go? Where can they can exist to be safe and live happy and fulfilling lives?”
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Concerned that a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election is likely — despite the fact that polling shows a majority of Americans say they would prefer that neither man run — a group in Washington is prepared to spend $70 million to create a path for a third-party candidate to enter the race.

The group, called No Labels, describes itself as “a national movement of commonsense Americans,” and has been working for a number of years to create bipartisan compromise in Congress. Over the past year or more, it has turned its eye toward presidential politics, believing that most Americans are dissatisfied with the two-party system dominated by conflict between Democrats and Republicans.

The organization says it has not officially decided to nominate a candidate, and that doing so will only be necessary if neither the Republicans nor the Democrats nominate a candidate who appeals to a broad swath of politically centrist Americans.

Right now, according to No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy, that requirement would rule out both Biden and Trump. He cited recent surveys by his organization and other national pollsters showing that significant majorities of Americans say they would prefer that neither Biden nor Trump run again in 2024.

“Our intent from the beginning has not been to blow up the two-party system. Our intent has been to make it work,” Clancy told VOA. “The issue with 2024 is, we’ve now reached a place, unfortunately, where it seems like for the presidential race, both parties could be close to nominating candidates the vast majority of Americans do not want to vote for.”

Bipartisan affiliations

No Labels was founded in 2010 by former Democratic fundraiser Nancy Jacobson. The organization is affiliated with a number of well-known figures associated with both major political parties, including Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, Republican Senator Susan Collins, Republican former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, and Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic senator and vice presidential nominee who is now an independent.

The group was responsible for the creation of the Problem Solvers Caucus in the House of Representatives, a bipartisan group of lawmakers who seek to bring the parties together on issues of mutual agreement.

No Labels’ plan to potentially support a third-party candidate has begun to attract some criticism.

William Galston, a public policy scholar and a co-founder of No Labels, has publicly broken with the group over its third-party plan. He said he is concerned that the addition of a third-party candidate to a close 2024 contest would siphon support away from Biden and lead to the reelection of Trump, whose efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election remain the subject of an investigation by the Department of Justice.

“I am proud of No Labels’ record of bipartisan legislation, and I know its leaders want what is best for the country. But I cannot support the organization’s preparation for a possible independent presidential candidacy,” he said in a statement issued to The Washington Post.

“There is no equivalence between President Biden and a former president who threatens the survival of our constitutional order. And most important, in today’s closely divided politics, any division of the anti-Trump vote would open the door to his reelection,” Galston said.

No Labels insists it has done extensive polling that indicates a centrist third-party candidate would draw votes away from the Republicans and Democrats in equal measure.

‘Unity’ ticket

On the No Labels website, the group describes its effort as “Insurance Policy 2024.”

Clancy told VOA his organization has already secured the ability to place a candidate on presidential ballots in 28 states, and said he is confident it will be in a position to enter a candidate in all 50 states by 2024.

The group has said it would most likely look for one Republican and one Democrat to fill the presidential and vice presidential slots, creating a “unity ticket.”

The No Labels candidate would be chosen by a nominating committee. The composition of the committee would be made public, but its deliberations would remain confidential, Clancy said. The nominating committee, he said, would be “a diverse, distinguished group of Americans” made up of “established figures from across the political spectrum, different genders, ethnicities, we wanted as much as possible to look like and think like America.”

Clancy said the group is already planning to hold a convention in Dallas in spring 2024, and that it is recruiting delegates who could vote to ratify the nomination of a candidate.

Funding secret

No Labels is organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code as a social welfare organization. The law does not require the group to reveal the names of the people and organizations who donate to it. According to its 2021 tax return, No Labels brought in $11.3 million in 2021 and had net assets of $9.7 million at the end of that year, suggesting a large inflow of cash has made the third-party effort possible.

Clancy said the $70 million the organization is currently investing in the effort is coming from “donors across the country, across the political spectrum by geography.”

In the event that the money his group spends winds up building what he called the “launchpad” for a viable presidential candidate in 2024, Clancy said the organization will still decline to identify the sources of the funding that made it possible.

“We never have and never will release individual donor names,” Clancy said.

Political scientists dubious

On its website, No Labels challenges the idea that by nominating a third-party candidate, it would be acting as a “spoiler” and tipping the election to one of the major parties by leaching support from the other.

A slide presentation offers one entry suggesting that a No Labels ticket “is not a spoiler, it’s a winner.” The accompanying graphic shows a hypothetical three-way 2024 election outcome in which Biden wins only California and Connecticut, Trump wins nine hardcore Republican states, including Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and a No Labels candidate wins the 39 remaining states.

Political scientists contacted by VOA said they doubted the projection was realistic.

“This is utterly ridiculous,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told VOA. “If they want to be taken seriously, that’s not how to do it.”

Sabato said he believes a third-party candidate nominated by No Labels would be likely to help a Trump campaign while harming Biden’s. He also expressed concerns about the lack of transparency of No Labels’ financing.

“If they can’t even tell us who’s funding them, then it does make me very suspicious of their motives,” he said.

Seth Masket, director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, told VOA he does not expect any third-party effort to gain much traction in 2024.

“It seems like pretty much every election … someone gets some millionaires to donate some money for this effort to put together a unity ticket,” he said. “There’s some initial interest, and it doesn’t really go anywhere.”

The reasons, Masket said, are structural.

“The American election system is engineered to produce a two-party system outcome, and so voters tend to not want to waste their votes,” he said.
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