RATING THE REPUBLICANS — President Joe Biden today formally launched his campaign for a second term in a video announcement, setting up the prospect of a rematch in 2024 with his White House predecessor, Donald Trump.

As he kicks off his reelection bid — his fourth run for the presidency in four decades — Biden is in a precarious position. His approval ratings dropped under 50 percent around the time of the chaotic Afghanistan pullout in August 2021, and never truly recovered. Only three post-war presidents — Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Trump — were in a worse polling spot at this point in their reelection campaigns. And two of those three lost.

While Trump is considered the frontrunner in the GOP field, the nomination isn’t his for the taking. Five other Republicans have declared their candidacies, with the prospect of more to come. Here’s Nightly’s clear-eyed look at their strengths and weaknesses against Biden.

Former President Donald Trump: Twice impeached, once indicted, Trump is the only president since the advent of polling whose approval ratings never cracked 50 percent. But in 2016, he pulled off an upset for the ages by accomplishing an Electoral College feat that few thought he could pull off: cracking the industrial states of the so-called Blue Wall (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin).

In a rematch with Biden, Trump would likely be better politically positioned than many of his GOP rivals on issues like entitlement reform and abortion, where he’s tacked a bit more to the center. Still, there is the matter of the five states that Biden flipped in 2020.

The swing states that will decide the 2024 election are among those that have been the most destabilized by Trump’s polarizing politics, either because of his conflicts with the state parties or the forces unleashed by his baseless claims of election fraud.

Take Georgia: The 2022 Republican primary there represented a massive repudiation of the former president; the cherry on top came in the December Senate runoff, when Trump’s handpicked nominee Herschel Walker was defeated. In Arizona, ground zero for election denialism, the Trump-endorsed statewide candidates crashed and burned in November.

The Blue Wall that Trump cracked in 2016 is equally daunting. Democrats are now in ascendance in Michigan and Pennsylvania in no small part due to a backlash against Trump in their most populous suburbs. Short of a massive rural turnout in those states, or a black swan event, Biden has a decided edge against Trump in both places.

In Wisconsin, the closest of the three states in 2020, a mere 20,000 votes separated Biden and Trump. But the trendlines for the GOP aren’t promising there either. In both 2016 and 2020, Trump ran behind traditional Republican margins in the conservative suburbs of Milwaukee that are essential to GOP chances. Worse, the Trump era has seen the rise of liberal Dane County as an electoral powerhouse — witness the recent state Supreme Court election — and a Trump-led GOP ticket is guaranteed to generate another monster turnout there.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: In the view of many Republican officials, DeSantis is Trump without the baggage and drama. If he runs, they envision a conservative big-state governor, fresh off a landslide reelection, prosecuting a vigorous case against an enfeebled Biden — an incumbent who’s nearly twice his age.

It’s true that DeSantis might staunch the bleeding in traditionally Republican suburbs, particularly across the Sun Belt, while maintaining the other elements of the MAGA coalition. Just as important, his robust performance among all Latino groups in Florida in his 2022 reelection caught both parties’ attention — he outpaced even Trump’s 2020 Latino gains.

But the governor’s recent stumbles have raised real questions about how he’d fare on the national stage under the relentless pressures of a presidential election — where there is no place for the press-averse DeSantis to hide from the media.

In presidential elections, governors typically face questions about their lack of foreign policy experience, and DeSantis’ description of Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” — which he later walked back amid bipartisan criticism — will only bolster the case for Biden as an experienced hand.

Yet that stance may not be nearly so politically problematic as the bill he signed recently banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. DeSantis — who is expected to announce his candidacy in May, after the legislative session — may have advanced his prospects in a GOP primary, but polling and recent election results in the swing states that will decide the presidency suggest his position could be a millstone. If DeSantis is the GOP nominee, the ban makes it more likely than ever that abortion rights will be a central issue in 2024, drowning out the other issues where Biden would be more vulnerable.

Former Vice President Mike Pence: Biden proved that former vice presidents can sit on the sidelines for four years and still return to win the presidency. But Pence is no ordinary vice president. For one thing, his boss expressed support for hanging him amid the Jan. 6 riot.

That strained relationship with Trump has made Pence, who said Sunday he’ll announce his 2024 presidential decision “well before” late June, a longshot to win the nomination. The best case for Pence in a general election is that he is a Reagan conservative whose loyal service to Trump could bridge the gap between traditional Republicans and the MAGA wing of the party. As a former Midwestern governor, he’s positioned to compete in the industrial swing states that flipped to Biden in 2020. Georgia’s 16 electoral votes would also seem to be in reach for Pence, given the architecture of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s successful 2022 reelection campaign.

The flip side is that some corners of the MAGA movement might never forgive Pence’s refusal to bend to Trump’s pressure to block certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes. And Pence’s vote-winning appeal on his own remains uncertain. Despite his estrangement from Trump — and a suburban dad image — he can’t easily sidestep his affiliation with Trump’s slash-and-burn politics. Pence ran statewide just once — in 2012 in Indiana, a red state where he ran well behind Mitt Romney’s pace that year.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley: The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley would be a historic nominee — the first woman and the first person of color to lead the GOP ticket. That status, along with her age — she’s roughly 30 years younger than Biden — would make for a stark contrast on the campaign trail.

Haley, who announced her bid in February, also offers the prospect of shrinking the gender gap in the general election — which was a yawning 57-42 in 2020. Exit polls from her 2014 reelection also showed Haley ran strong in the suburbs and with independents, two additional groups Trump lost in 2020.

But establishing her independence from Trump won’t be easy. She’s frequently been critical of the former president, including in 2016 when she decried “the siren call of the angriest voices.” But she also went to work for Trump as his ambassador to the U.N. and has spent the last few years praising his agenda — positions that could limit her appeal with voters looking for a clean break from Trump.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott: His formidable political skills have been on display since then-Gov. Nikki Haley appointed him to the Senate in 2013. Within a year, he had outperformed both Haley and senior Sen. Lindsey Graham on the ballot. In 2016, he ran ahead of Donald Trump in South Carolina by more than 86,000 votes.

In his three Senate campaigns, however, Scott has never faced serious Democratic opposition or intense media scrutiny. It showed on his second day of campaigning after announcing a presidential exploratory committee, when he stumbled badly on the question of whether he’d back federal abortion restrictions.

And any expectation that Scott, who would be the GOP’s first Black presidential nominee, could carve out some of Biden’s considerable support among Black voters must be tempered by Scott’s actual performance. While the senator has improved his percentages over the past decade, he regularly loses the majority of the state’s nine majority Black counties.

Other candidates: Several candidates making the early state rounds — among them, Vivek Ramaswamy and Perry Johnson — don’t have an electoral record to assess. Conservative talk show host Larry Elder was the leading Republican candidate in the failed 2021 recall election to unseat Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom but showed little to suggest he could win a national election.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and former two-term Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson — whose official campaign launch is Wednesday — have both met with success at the ballot box and can boast of some of the highest approval ratings in the nation. As popular, traditional conservatives who have been lonely Trump critics within the party, they’d likely be well positioned to compete across the map in a general election — but the GOP base doesn’t show much appetite for nominating a Trump critic.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a one-time Trump ally who has become a sharp critic, faces a similar predicament.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s authors at [email protected] or on Twitter at @PoliticoCharlie.

— Harry Belafonte, activist and entertainer, dies at 96: Harry Belafonte, the civil rights and entertainment giant who began as a groundbreaking actor and singer and became an activist, humanitarian and conscience of the world, has died. He was 96. Belafonte died today of congestive heart failure at his New York home, his wife Pamela by his side, said Ken Sunshine, of public relations firm Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis.

— Montana transgender lawmaker silenced again, backers protest: Montana Republicans persisted in forbidding Democratic transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr from participating in debate for a second week and her supporters brought the House session to a halt Monday — chanting “Let her speak!” from the gallery before they were escorted out. Zephyr defiantly hoisted her microphone into the air as her supporters interrupted proceedings for nearly half an hour in protest of Republicans denying her requests to speak on a proposal that would restrict when children can change the names and pronouns they use in school and require parental consent.

— Proud Boys leaders: Trump caused Jan. 6 attack: Former Proud Boys national chair Enrique Tarrio — the man prosecutors have portrayed as the ringleader of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — told jurors today that he’s merely a scapegoat for the real culprit: Trump. “It was Donald Trump’s words. It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th in your amazing and beautiful city,” said Nayib Hassan, Tarrio’s lawyer, during closing arguments in a seditious conspiracy trial stemming from the Jan. 6 attack.

DE-INTERESTED — Despite donating $5 million to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reelection effort, Republican megadonor and hedge fund exec Kenneth Griffin is still undecided on who he’ll back in the presidential primary, report Maggie Haberman and Rebecca Davis O’Brien in The New York Times. Griffin and DeSantis reportedly met in Florida sometime in the past two weeks as some of DeSantis’ comments — in particular that the war in Ukraine is a “territorial dispute” — have frustrated Griffin, who was once considered all but certainly ready to back DeSantis. Griffin has indicated an interest in moving on from Trump.

SETTING THE STRATEGY — In addition to knowing for sure now that Biden is running for reelection, we now know who’s captaining his ship as he begins a grueling 18 months, reports POLITICO’s Matt Berg. After serving as one of Biden’s senior advisors and White House director of intergovernmental affairs, Julie Chávez Rodríguez will pivot to leading the reelection push. She has never run a campaign before, but she served as the deputy campaign manager on Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ last campaign and is close with the president.

In addition, Quentin Fulks will serve as Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager. A democratic strategist, Fulks was most recently the campaign manager for Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection campaign last year — the first successful reelection bid for a Democratic senator in Georgia in more than 30 years. Before that, he was the deputy campaign manager and senior political adviser to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, helping flip the seat blue in 2018.

BRUTALITY IN BURKINA FASO — According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, at least 150 civilians may have been killed in recent attacks in the northern part of the country.

Locals from the village of Karma have reported atrocities such as mothers being gunned down while carrying children on their backs by Jihadi fighters that have been waging an insurgency in the West African nation for seven years.

“Some villagers, happy to see ‘our soldiers’, came out of their houses to welcome them. Unfortunately, this joy was cut short when the first shots rang out, also causing the first casualties,” said a statement from villagers in Karma.

Extrajudicial killings have increased in Burkina Faso — which has seen two successful coups in the past year — since Capt. Ibrahim Traore took over in September. This most recent incident is one of the deadliest against civilians at the hands of security forces.

MOMFLUENCED — You might have seen them on TikTok, or Instagram or even Facebook. The moms with perfect skin, perfectly clean homes and seemingly perfect children. They, together, the “momfluencers,” a group of women making money and finding influence on these social platforms by crafting a perfect image of their lives. But what’s spurring the rise of the “momfluencer”? And why has this become such a lucrative business? Anna North interviews author Sara Petersen about the topic for Vox.