CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is nearly ready to reveal his decision on entering the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, saying Sunday that he would make an announcement on May 22.

Scott didn’t definitively say that he’ll be announcing his official campaign, but he told those gathered at a downtown Charleston school during a town hall that he would be coming out with his decision at an event in about three weeks in North Charleston, which he calls home.

“It is time to make the final step,” Scott said to a room packed with cheering supporters, as well as a film crew, which a longtime Scott adviser said was gathering “content” for future use, a flick at a potential launch or campaign ad video.

“We will have a major announcement,” Scott added.

It’s all tied up.

With 18 days to go until the Democratic mayoral primary, the first nonpartisan public poll of the race shows a toss-up between the top five contenders.

The survey of likely Democratic voters commissioned by the good government group the Committee of Seventy and several partners found that Rebecca Rhynhart (18%), Cherelle Parker (17%), Helen Gym (15%), Allan Domb (14%), and Jeff Brown (11%) led the pack.

The poll’s credibility interval, which is similar to a margin of error, was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. All five top contenders fell within that margin.

vanka Trump replaced the lawyers defending her in a fraud suit against the New York attorney general on Friday. Her former attorneys are still representing her brothers, Don Jr. and Eric.

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit in September alleging Donald Trump, his three eldest children, his real estate firm and its top executives inflated property values to obtain economic benefits, such as securing cheaper loans. James is asking the court to disgorge $250 million in financial benefits and restrict the defendants’ ability to conduct business in the state. The defendants dispute the allegations.

Don Jr. and Eric Trump quickly hired Clifford Robert and Michael Farina of Robert & Robert to represent them, according to court records submitted a week after the suit began. The following month, those same attorneys notified the court they were representing Ivanka Trump as well. They were serving as her local counsel working with two Washington, DC-based attorneys whom Ivanka hired independently of her brothers, Reid Figel and Michael Kellogg of Kellogg Hansen.

A sign of a split in the siblings’ defense strategies emerged on March 6, when one of the attorneys representing just Ivanka wrote to the judge, asking the him to delay the trial. The letter claimed, “The complaint does not contain a single allegation that Ms. Trump directly or indirectly created, prepared, reviewed or certified any of her father’s financial statements. The complaint affirmatively alleges that other individuals were responsible for those tasks.”

Fox News has agreed to give voting technology company Smartmatic additional documents about Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and other senior corporate executives. Smartmatic is suing the right-wing network for $2.7 billion over its airing of 2020 election lies.

The agreement was announced Wednesday at a court hearing in Manhattan. New York Supreme Court Judge David Cohen scheduled the hearing after Smartmatic raised concerns about whether Fox was complying with its pretrial obligations to turn over relevant evidence.

“We will produce the materials as quickly as we are able to,” Fox lawyer Winn Allen said.

Fox also will give Smartmatic documents related to Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan Murdoch, who is the CEO of Fox Corp., as well as relevant materials about Chief Legal Officer Viet Dinh and Raj Shah, a former Trump administration official who is now a vice president at Fox Corp.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden cast himself as a defender of freedom on Wednesday in his first campaign ad since launching his 2024 reelection bid, aiming to flip the script on Republicans who have traditionally seized that mantle.

The television ad, which will air in major markets in the six states Biden carried in 2020 that are key to his path back to the White House, aims to portray Republicans as part of an “extreme movement” bent on overturning elections, restricting access to abortion and undermining voters’ economic security. It’s a taste of what is set to be the core of the Democratic president’s campaign message to voters, as he seeks to paint all Republicans as embracing former President Donald Trump and out of the step with popular opinion and the nation’s values.

“Courage, opportunity, democracy, freedom: They’re the values and beliefs that built this country and still beat in our hearts,” a narrator says. “But they’re under attack by an extreme movement that seeks to overturn elections, ban books and eliminate a woman’s right to choose.”

The ad goes on to say Biden “has made defending our basic freedoms the cause of his presidency: the freedom for women to make their own health care decisions, the freedom for our children to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to vote and have your vote counted, for seniors to live with dignity, and to give every American the freedom that comes with a fair shot at building a good life.”