Twenty-three years after the landmark Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court again faces a momentous decision about a presidential election:

• A historic ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court yesterday will likely force the justices to decide — very quickly by SCOTUS standards — if states can ban Trump from the ballot using the U.S. Constitution's insurrection clause, Axios' Noah Bressner and Justin Green write.

Why it matters: This fuels a broader disqualification drive against the former president. Trump and his campaign are already feasting on the ruling as "election interference."

👂 What we're hearing: Anti-Trump Republicans fear the ruling could look like the establishment trying to thwart Trump, who can play the victim.

• Trump likely wouldn't lose much by staying off the ballot: He lost Colorado by double digits in 2020. No Republican has won the Centennial State since 2004. But he could benefit from the fight.

What's happening: The Colorado decision marks the first time a court has found that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — which bans insurrectionists who once swore to uphold the Constitution from holding office — applies to Trump.

• The Colorado Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling, removed Trump from the state's primary ballot, concluding that he "incited and encouraged the use of violence and lawless action to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power."

Courts have so far rejected similar lawsuits in other states. Minnesota's top court rejected an attempt to push Trump off the ballot last month. A judge ruled against another effort in Michigan that's now being appealed.

• Trump's legal spokeswoman, Alina Habba, said: "This ruling ... attacks the very heart of this nation's democracy. It will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order."

The court stayed the ruling until Jan. 4, with the option to keep the stay in place if the Supreme Court takes up the case before then.

• The state's primary is set for Super Tuesday, on March 5.

🖼️ The big picture: This isn't the only Trump question facing the high court.

• Special counsel Jack Smith asked the justices earlier this month to weigh whether Trump is "absolutely immune" from prosecution for crimes he committed in office.
• Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to review a charge — "obstruction of an official proceeding" — that has been used to prosecute over 300 Jan. 6 defendants.

🕶️ What to watch: There's already a budding campaign to pressure Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from any ruling because of his wife's connections to the Trump White House before Jan. 6.

• Ginni Thomas was involved with Trump's attempt to overturn the results of 2020 election.

🔮 What's next: The Supreme Court has an extremely narrow window to take up the case and issue a ruling.

• Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said the court would need to decide within weeks for her office to meet a Jan. 5 deadline to certify and print ballots.
• If the Supreme Court doesn't rule in time, Trump's name could remain on the ballot.

State by state: Where efforts stand to disqualify Trump from '24 ballots ... Share this story.

Within four hours of the 6 p.m. ET ruling, the Trump campaign sent a fundraising email with the subject line "REMOVED FROM THE BALLOT," saying: "Democrats who incited the lawsuit will immediately use this tyrannical ruling to challenge us in the remaining 49 states."

• "This is how dictatorships are born," the email says.

🥊 Also yesterday, Trump defended, and repeated, his assertion that migrants are "poisoning the blood" of America — phrasing that echoes Hitler about the "purity" of Aryan blood.

• "I never read 'Mein Kampf,'" Trump told 1,000+ supporters in Waterloo, Iowa, flanked by two big Christmas trees topped by red MAGA hats.

He didn't mention the Colorado ruling. (AP)

This story is part of a series supported by the Pulitzer Center.

A prominent pro-independence activist from the Japanese island of Okinawa is a pro-Beijing influencer who praises China's ethnic minority policies — and presents close ties to China as a way for native Okinawans to challenge Japanese rule, Axios' Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian reports.

• Why it matters: Such messaging underscores Beijing's growing power to sway global narratives across oceans and borders.

🖼️ The big picture: A growing number of non-Chinese social media users, with online followers both in China and abroad, promote content that praises the Chinese government and defends it against criticism.

• The rise of pro-Beijing influencers, some of whom have received undisclosed support from the Chinese state, makes it more difficult to distinguish genuine sentiment from state-backed content.

Keep reading.

Here's an early New Year's resolution: Stop saying "AI did this" or "AI made that."

• Why it matters: AI doesn't do or make anything on its own. It's a software tool that humans imagined and invented. Its only capabilities are those that people give it, Axios managing editor Scott Rosenberg writes from the Bay Area.

Throw away your pictures of AI as a robot — and start imagining the technology as a big puppet.

• The strings aren't always visible: Even AI developers themselves can't always find the connections between their intentions and the AI's behavior.
• But everything that an AI program does or says starts with the instructions and data that people have given it.

🔮 What's next: 2024 will bring an explosion of generative-AI-produced synthetic media colliding with pivotal elections around the world.

• Share this story.

Israel is offering to pause the fighting in Gaza for at least one week as part of a new deal to get Hamas to release more than three dozen hostages the terror group is holding, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

• Why it matters: The proposal, made through Qatari mediators, is the first Israel has offered since the end of a deal last month that had led to a seven-day ceasefire and the release of more than 100 hostages.

Israeli officials say the proposal shows Israel is determined to relaunch serious negotiations for the release of more hostages, even as Hamas has said it will not resume negotiations as long as the fighting continues.

• About 130 Israeli and foreign nationals are still being held hostage in Gaza. White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday that number includes eight Americans.

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A fast-spreading new COVID variant — JN.1 — could drive a new wave of disease across the U.S. this holiday season just as other respiratory viruses are cresting.

• While the situation isn't as dire as last year, when a "tripledemic" of respiratory diseases swamped hospitals, JN.1 cases have more than doubled since mid-November, Axios' Adriel Bettelheim writes.

The variant doesn't pose a major new public health risk, the World Health Organization says.

• COVID modeler Jay Weiland estimated on Monday that JN.1 would become the dominant strain within a week — and that daily new infections, now around 965,000, aren't close to peaking.

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From AP's obit of Lawrence L. Knutson — a longtime AP writer whose deep knowledge of the presidency, Congress and American history made him an institution in his own right — who died in Washington on Saturday at 87:

"Sitting beside Larry in the Senate Press Gallery for many years, I always admired his quick grasp of a story, his writing and his love of Congress as an institution," said former AP writer Jim Luther.
"And who doesn't take notes on a checkbook or use a paper clip to hold his glasses together?"

Keep reading.

The James Webb Space Telescope, which orbits the Sun, has "trained its sights on unusual and enigmatic Uranus, an ice giant that spins on its side," NASA announced:

• "Webb captured this dynamic world with rings, moons, storms, and other atmospheric features — including a seasonal polar cap."
• "With its exquisite sensitivity, Webb captured Uranus' dim inner and outer rings, including the elusive Zeta ring — the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. It also imaged many of the planet's 27 known moons, even seeing some small moons within the rings."

More images.