Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.

There are benefits to relegation. The fixture list can be stripped of glamour, the prize assets can attract covetous glances from predators and there is a lingering uncertainty if an exile will last as long as Sheffield Wednesday’s but Southampton’s supporters had grown accustomed to the sight of their side propping up the table. A chorus of “we are top of the league” felt premature when Wednesday equalised. When Che Adams tucked in an 87th-minute winner, however, it was true. And if it was the product of a fixture list that meant they played first, it is not something they could boast since Ralph Hasenhuttl’s team reached the Premier League summit in November 2020. They can seem distant days now, though more recent than some of Wednesday’s achievements. The applause before kick-off for the late Trevor Francis was a reminder that he steered Wednesday to third place in the Premier League, a feat no one else may ever equal. It is with an illustration of shifting statuses within the game. Southampton’s previous away win came at Chelsea, Wednesday’s previous home defeat to Burton. Each is in unfamiliar surroundings and, for Southampton, the cast list may change dramatically over the next month, too. A winning start for Russell Martin, their fourth manager in nine months, came with the club in a state of flux. The price for failure is being counted. Tino Livramento was slated to start, but instead joined Newcastle. Romeo Lavia was on the bench; a prodigy valued at £50m made his last appearance against Liverpool and his next one could come for them. The club-record signing Kamaldeen Sulemana wants to leave this summer. The £18m striker Paul Onuachu needs to; he only even made the bench once in pre-season and the 6ft 8in forward was a conspicuous absentee. There is, however, always James Ward-Prowse. This, presumably, was not where he envisaged his season would start but the captain’s attitude was impeccable. The subject of two bids from West Ham, the man whose league debut was Saints’ return to the top flight in 2012 and whose 343 league appearances had all come in the higher tier kicked off the Football League season and had one of the night’s most telling touches: it was his low cutback that the substitute Adams converted. Adams is a former Sheffield United striker, which may have had a sadly typical feel for Wednesday. In a sense, the fixture list gave Southampton a glimpse of a potentially ominous future. Wednesday offer a salutary warning to those ejected from the Premier League. A top-flight club for 66 seasons, this is their 24th consecutive year in the Football League. They are more familiar with the third tier than the first of late. They have faced Accrington, Lincoln and Morecambe as peers in 2023, but not Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United in the league since 2000. But, amid the global fixation with the big six and the newer, stranger obsession with Wrexham, there are large, loyal fanbases across the Football League. There were 28,558 inside Hillsborough, a vast support given Wednesday’s decades in the doldrums. They can feel the forgotten big club – outside the Steel City, anyway – emerging from the shadows to sculpt the greatest play-off comeback of all. Hillsborough’s previous game had been the seminal, spectacular 5-1 win over Peterborough. Lee Gregory scored twice then – once at either end – and the former Stavely Miners Welfare striker had hauled Wednesday level with a sweetly-struck volley after a corner. That set-piece frailty may cost Southampton in other games; not here, though. Victory may have been validation. If the same may have been said of Vincent Kompany 12 months ago, Martin’s reputation that has outstripped his achievements when appointed by a club with aspirations of promotion; his league finishes with MK Dons and Swansea are 13th, 15th and 10th but he has progressed from League One to a club that was in the top flight. There may have been more style than substance so far, even if Martinball sounds more like the assistant manager at B&Q than a passing philosophy. But Southampton made 477 first-half passes, a divisional record, and had 80 percent of possession; they turned it into victory. They had Samuel Edozie, who sparkled on the left wing; if an example of misguided recruitment last season, when only three of Southampton’s 16 signings succeeded and, indeed, only three of them started in Sheffield, the 20-year-old has the ability to prosper. They had Nathan Tella, a catalyst in Burnley’s promotion and, seemingly, the scorer of the season’s opening goal; his shot actually glanced off Adam Armstrong’s hip, making the forward the fortunate scorer; he is another with a scoring pedigree at this level, albeit usually in more deliberate fashion. But Tella, the talent Southampton owned all along, is part of the rebuild after the confused mess of last season, as the club who were role models a decade ago became an example of how not to do things. That has been Wednesday’s lot for many a recent year. Having dispensed with Darren Moore, the dignified architect of promotion in a 96-point season, they introduced Xisco Munoz. One of the battalion of former Watford managers – indeed much the best of the last seven – had nevertheless won a mere four games in charge of Anorthosis Famagusta. His Wednesday team played an anti-pressing game, as though too old to close down. On a night of new beginnings, Martin’s promised more than Munoz’s.

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Just last week, former Vice President Mike Pence said he hoped federal prosecutors would not bring charges against former President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, a day after Trump was arraigned on dozens of felony counts related to classified documents, Pence described the allegations as “a very serious matter." “I cannot defend what is alleged,” Pence, who is now challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said on CNBC. The former vice president's evolving message highlights the high-stakes dilemma for Trump's Republican rivals, who are struggling to find a clear and consistent strategy to take on the frontrunner as Trump’s unprecedented legal troubles threaten to dominate all other issues in the 2024 presidential contest. Some Republican leaders this week have demonstrated a newfound willingness to criticize Trump over the seriousness of the allegations, which include mishandling government secrets that as commander in chief he was entrusted to protect. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a former naval officer and Trump's top rival for the nomination, said that “if I would have taken classified (documents) to my apartment, I would have been court-martialed in a New York minute.” But that was just a brief mention in a weekend speech at a North Carolina GOP gathering, during which he focused his censure on the Justice Department and the Biden administration. It's been much the same for other challengers. Even the most aggressive have layered their criticism of Trump with attacks against the Justice Department — for bringing charges against him — that make it difficult at times to determine exactly where they stand on the former president. And that’s precisely the point, given Trump’s continued popularity among GOP voters and his rivals' desire to dent his lead without alienating his base. Indeed, most of Trump's competitors are making a risky bet — for now — that the weight of his extraordinary baggage will eventually sink his reelection bid. They believe it will take time. Trump's Republican opponents privately concede that the former president’s considerable political strength is likely to grow stronger, at least in the short term, as GOP voters, key officials and conservative media leaders rally around him. For example, Pastor Robert Jeffress, of the First Baptist megachurch in Dallas, initially declined to endorse Trump's 2024 bid but declared Tuesday night that the GOP's presidential primary was all but over. “I thought there would be almost a civil war in the Republican Party for the nomination, but that quickly turned into an unconditional surrender,” said Jeffress, who mingled at Trump's post-indictment gathering at Bedminster, New Jersey. "People absolutely love this president, and I believe his base is going to turn out.” The Republican establishment has tried and failed to reject Trump and his divisive politics for much of the last decade. But this time the GOP faces the very real possibility that a man who has been indicted twice and charged with dozens of felonies could become the party’s standard-bearer in 2024. Fighting that outcome, which once seemed all but inevitable, a powerful conservative voice is being raised in the fight for the first time. The Koch network’s political arm, Americans for Prosperity, has begun running online ads across Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — the first three states on the GOP’s presidential primary calendar — focusing on questions about Trump’s electability in next fall’s general election against Biden. The new ads make no mention of his legal troubles. “Trump did a lot of good things as president," one of the ads says. “But this time, he can’t win.” Americans for Prosperity CEO Emily Seidel said her organization has talked to thousands of voters in key states to determine the most effective arguments to undermine Trump’s political strength. “Based on the data we’re collecting, more than two-thirds of people who say they’re supporting Trump are also receptive to arguments that he is a weak candidate, his focus on 2020 is a liability, and his lack of appeal with independent voters is a problem,” Seidel said. "That tells us that many Republicans are ready to move on — they just need to see another candidate step up and show they can lead and win.” So far, Trump's rivals are still trying to find their footing as the former president commands a big lead in early Republican primary polls. And as they test evolving messages on the campaign trail and in media appearances, none of top-tier competitors are running paid advertisements seizing on Trump's legal troubles. Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, told Fox News on Monday that Trump was incredibly “reckless with our national security” if the allegations in the indictment are true. On Tuesday, she repeated the pointed criticism, but also said she’d be inclined to pardon Trump if he’s convicted. “I think it would be terrible for the country to have a former president in prison for years because of a documents case,” Haley said on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton radio show. Others have made defending Trump a central message in their early campaigns. Speaking outside the Miami courthouse on Tuesday, White House hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy announced that his campaign had sent a letter to other 2024 candidates challenging them to join his pledge to pardon Trump on their first day in office. “I respectfully request that you join me in this commitment or else publicly explain why you will not," it read. Trump, meanwhile, is trying to take advantage of the media storm. After his appearance in federal court in Miami, he made a stop at the city's famed Versailles Restaurant in Little Havana, with news cameras in tow. He then headed home to his Bedminster summer residence, where aides had assembled hundreds of supporters, club members and reporters for a post-arraignment speech. Trump was welcomed like a general returning home from battle. Insisting he was innocent of all charges, the former president vowed that, as president, he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden and his family. As for the indictment and charges? “This is called election interference and yet another attempt to rig and steal a presidential election,” Trump said. As they reckon with the fact that Trump faces years behind bars, as well as the logistical complications of balancing court appearances with campaign rallies, Trump's political advisers have stressed what they see as the political benefits. They believe the wall-to-wall coverage of his legal woes makes it difficult for his competitors to be heard, a point that other campaigns acknowledged privately. “From a campaign standpoint, I mean, what did the other candidates do today? Do we know?” asked Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung. “There’s no oxygen for the other candidates." Those other candidates are eager to highlight cracks in Trump's support, although for now, they appear to be modest. On Capitol Hill, a small but growing Republican minority of lawmakers have recently described the new federal charges against Trump as serious. “I would not feel comfortable with a convicted felon in the White House,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., told CNN. He pointed to Trump’s attacks against Hillary Clinton, who was accused of mishandling classified documents in her emails in 2016. “His words have set the standard.” Veteran Republican strategist Ari Fleischer warned that it would take time to understand the political impact of Trump's growing legal challenges. “A short-term rally around Trump now is not the true measure," Fleischer said. “The only test is a long-term test.” ___ Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report. Read More Ivanka and Jared split over attending Trump 2024 launch – follow live Why was Donald Trump impeached twice during his first term? 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