Spiritual adviser and bestselling self-help author Marianne Williamson officially declared her candidacy for president on Saturday, launching a 2024 Democratic primary challenge against President Biden.

‘The status quo will not disrupt itself… that’s our job,’ Williamson said at her campaign kickoff event at Washington D.C.’s Union Station.

‘We know that this country is plagued by many challenges now, not the least of which is hatred and division, which is greater than any of us have experienced national life. It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear,’ Williamson said in her speech.

Williamson, who called for reparations and a Department of Peace as part of her unsuccessful long-shot campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, becomes the first Democrat with a national following to primary challenge the 80-year-old president. 

Most leaders in the Democratic Party from both the establishment and progressive wings say they will support Biden, who is expected in the coming weeks or months to announce his re-election campaign for a second term in the White House.

Williamson did not mention Biden in her speech Saturday, but said that not electing former President Donald Trump in 2020 meant that America didn’t go ‘over the cliff.’ She said ‘we’re still 6 inches away from it.’

She painted a dark vision of America with ‘broken windows,’ addiction, poverty and despair. ‘Half the people in this city don’t even notice [despair],’ she said, calling out leaders for lacking the ‘spine or moral courage’ to fix the issues. 

‘Ladies and gentlemen, let me in there, I will,’ she said.

Williamson announced her intentions to launch a White House campaign last month in an interview with the Medill News Service, saying ‘I wouldn’t be running for president if I didn’t believe I could contribute to harnessing the collective sensibility that I feel is our greatest hope at this time.’

A few days later, she declared in a Facebook posting and on her website that ‘I’m writing with some big news: on Saturday, March 4, I will formally announce my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president.’

An adviser in the White House contender’s political circle told Fox News earlier this week that Williamson will travel to South Carolina on Monday and New Hampshire on Wednesday, with stops in Michigan and Nevada in the coming weeks. 

‘You can appreciate what the president has done — defeating the Republicans in 2020 — and still feel it is time to move on,’ Williamson said last week in an interview on a New Hampshire news-talk morning radio program.

Williamson told host Jack Heath on ‘Good Morning New Hampshire’ that ‘many of us, myself included, feel that in order for the Democrats to win in 2024, we’re going to have to be able to offer to the American people something much more than’ what she says Biden is offering.

During the 2020 cycle, Williamson was an unconventional candidate who preached the politics of love. She emphasized ‘six pillars for a season of moral repair,’ including economic justice. She proposed creating a Department of Children and Youths and a Department of Peace, and she pushed for reparations for the descendants of African-American slaves. Among her unorthodox acts was holding a meditation session while campaigning in New Hampshire.

But Williamson struggled with fundraising and failed to qualify for most of the Democrat presidential debates. Days after laying off most of her small staff, she dropped out of the race in January 2020, just ahead of the start of the nomination primaries and caucuses.

‘With caucuses and primaries now about to begin, however, we will not be able to garner enough votes in the election to elevate our conversation any more than it is now,’ she said at the time. And pointing to what at that moment was a very competitive race for the Democratic nomination, Williamson added that she didn’t want to ‘get in the way of a progressive candidate winning.’

Williamson traveled to New Hampshire last month ahead of her 2024 announcement, and it’s likely she’ll spend plenty of her time campaigning there going forward. That comes as no surprise as political strategists have said that if there’s going to be a primary challenge against Biden, New Hampshire appears to be the state where the action will take place.

‘Now you have everyone who wants to take a shot at Biden coming to New Hampshire to do it,’ a longtime Granite State-based progressive strategist recently told Fox News as he pointed toward the near certainty of the state holding an unsanctioned Democrat presidential primary next year. ‘New Hampshire is the place where it’s happening.’

New Hampshire, which prides itself on its well-informed electorate and its emphasis on small-scale and grassroots retail politics, has for a century held the first primary in the race for the White House. While Republicans are making no changes to their presidential nominating calendar in the 2024 election cycle, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) last month voted overwhelmingly to approve a new top of the calendar pushed by Biden that upends the traditional schedule.

New Hampshire will now vote second in the DNC’s calendar, along with Nevada, three days after South Carolina, under the new schedule. 

But Granite State Democrats warn that New Hampshire will still go first — courtesy of a long-standing state law that mandates the leadoff primary position — and that a primary not sanctioned by the DNC, where Biden doesn’t take part, could invite trouble for the president.

‘President Biden will not file for election in the New Hampshire primary, which will still go first,’ longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley emphasized on the eve of the DNC calendar vote. And he warned that ‘this will set him up, we believe, for an embarrassing situation where the first primary in the country will be won by someone other than the president. This will only fuel chatter of about Democrats divisions.’

Buckley’s prediction appears to be materializing with the arrival of Williamson.

Asked about the DNC’s nominating calendar move, she told Politico earlier this year ‘that is spitting in the face of democracy.’

And she’s not alone.

Environmental lawyer and anti-COVID vaccine crusader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was in New Hampshire on Friday. Kennedy, the son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy, defended the primary at an event at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, which for nearly a quarter-century has been a must-stop in the Granite State for potential or actual White House contenders.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has taken aim at President Biden’s ‘incompetent’ cabinet picks and issued a warning to Democratic senators who are on the ballot in 2024 that their support of the Biden administration and those who he nominates to serve in certain roles will be kept in check by the voters.

‘It has been amazing, this cabinet, the combination of putting people in place who don’t have the experience to do the job, putting people in place who are incompetent and nominating people because they’re ideologues and the two are intertwined,’ Cruz told Fox News Digital of the Biden administration.

Cruz’s comments came Friday from Palm Beach, Florida, where he addressed dozens of major Republican contributors gathered at a donor retreat hosted by the fiscally conservative Club for Growth.

Discussing Biden’s nomination of Denver International Airport (DIA) CEO Phil Washington to lead the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Cruz said he wondered ‘what senator, particularly what Democrat senator on the ballot in 2024,’ would ‘risk’ support to vote in favor of Washington — whom he said ‘knows absolutely nothing about aviation safety.’

‘Phil Washington knows absolutely nothing about aviation safety, has no background in aviation safety,’ Cruz said. ‘Now this is the guy in charge of the FAA, in charge of all the air traffic controllers, in charge of making sure that that flying on an airplane is safe. He’s not a pilot. He wasn’t a military pilot. He wasn’t a commercial pilot. He’s never been an air traffic controller. He’s never worked at an airline. He’s never worked in an airline manufacturer. He’s never worked at any place repairing airplanes. It is truly stunning.’

Though Washington made a career in the armed forces, Cruz said Washington’s military service ‘had zero to do with aviation.’

‘He’s been a Democrat appointee running the L.A. Metro and now running for 20 months the Denver airport,’ Cruz added of Washington. ‘But look, the important thing in running the Denver airport, it’s essentially a giant shopping mall. He’s running the restaurants. He’s running the coffee shops and the newsstands and the parking spaces. He doesn’t run the air traffic controllers. He doesn’t run the pilots. He doesn’t run the airplanes. He runs the physical plant. And by law, the head of the FAA has to have expertise in aviation.’

Washington was first nominated by Biden last year, but he failed to advance amid concerns from Republicans about his experience. His confirmation has been further stalled by allegations of discriminatory and retaliatory practices by Washington at DIA and his involvement with a corruption investigation at LA Metro.

Washington was CEO at LA Metro, which is being investigated after it awarded a pricey contract for a sexual harassment hotline — the hotline was found to cost over $8,000 per call it received — that was awarded to a charity run by a close friend of an LA Metro board member. Washington has denied wrongdoing, but Cruz has called on the Senate to proceed slowly with his nomination in light of these allegations and other whistleblower claims of misconduct.

The Texas senator, who has represented the Lone Star state in the Senate since 2013, said it ‘is shocking that the Biden administration would treat this job, a very specialized position, as essentially a patronage position, a place to give political spoils to support the political bodies of their Democrat supporters.’

During his interview with Fox, Cruz also took direct aim at Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg, who he said is responsible for ‘crisis after crisis’ during Biden’s continuing tenure in the White House.

‘Pete Buttigieg was the mayor of a small town, and suddenly, this president put him in charge of the Department of Transportation, a massive cabinet agency,’ Cruz said. ‘In two years, we’ve had crisis after crisis after crisis all on his watch.’

Pointing to specific instances of what he considered to be failures under the transportation department, Cruz blasted Buttigieg for his handling of supply chain issues, a near nationwide rail strike, and the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

‘We had we came within inches of a nationwide rail strike, which would have had massive economic repercussions. We’ve got the price of gasoline skyrocketing,’ he said. ‘Under Buttigieg, we had the first aviation ground stop, all civil aviation grounded since September 11. Why? Because the FAA, on his watch, screwed up and messed up what’s called the NOTAM system and ended up grounding every plane in America. And then you’ve got the derailment in East Palestine, where for two weeks he wouldn’t show up.’

Cruz said he believes it was former President Donald Trump’s trip to the devastated Ohio region last week that pushed Buttigieg to finally make a trip to the town.

‘It took Donald Trump going there and guilting him into doing his job,’ Cruz said. ‘I asked at CPAC, ‘What the heck does this guy have to do to get fired?’ At some point competence matters.’

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this article.

Could Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker serve as the deeply progressive candidate to provide some political relief and optimism for his party in the 2024 presidential election amid growing concern within the Democratic Party about President Biden’s age and ability to serve?

Pritzker brushed off speculation he might pose a political challenge to Biden, who for months has said that he intends to run for re-election in 2024. But Pritzker, who won re-election in November to serve an additional four-year term leading Illinois, is keeping his options open regarding future political endeavors.

Speaking to The New York Times, Pritzker, an heir to the fortune of Hyatt Hotels, declined to say whether he would make a run for the White House. But he insisted the idea of a last-ditch effort by the Democratic Party to replace Biden as its nominee for president in 2024 was ‘such an odd hypothetical if you ask me.’

Regarding Biden’s age, Pritzker told the outlet, ‘I think it assumes a lot of things about someone who’s 80 in this world today. No kidding, you know, 80 is a lot different today than it was in the ’80s.’

With an estimated net worth of $3.6 billion, according to Forbes’ most recent estimate, Pritzker could sufficiently fund a campaign for president on his own. And with the support of those within his state, as well as the connections he’s established with other prominent members of his party nationwide, Pritzker’s chances of winning the White House – should he decide to run – aren’t very bleak.

‘He would run for two good reasons,’ Ray LaHood, a Republican who served as secretary of transportation during former President Obama’s first term in the White House, told the outlet. ‘He’s a billionaire who’s not afraid to spend his own money, and he’s very progressive, which is where the Democratic Party is today.’

Stressing the importance of coming together as a party, Pritzker, as he looks ahead to 2024, told the Times that unity would be the sole driving force in preventing former President Trump or another Republican, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, from winning the White House.

Most Democrats have voiced support for Biden’s 2024 re-election, but some have called for a change in party leadership. Michigan Democratic Rep. Elise Slotkin called for ‘new blood’ last fall

And while 37% of Democratic primary voters want to keep Biden as their party’s nominee, a majority of 53% says it would like someone else to run, according to a Fox News poll released last week.

Pritzker, who refers to himself as a ‘pragmatic progressive,’ told The New York Times he intends ‘to be impactful in the 2024 elections, helping Democrats run for Congress, helping Democrats run for United States Senate and helping Joe Biden win re-election.

‘But that doesn’t mean that you sit back and write a check to the DNC and say, ‘Hope you get it right. Good luck. Have fun storming the castle.”

With recent policy initiatives from Pritzker, including a plan to give children additional access to mental health treatment and his signing of a bill to expand paid leave for workers, some voters could be persuaded into tossing their support behind Pritzker for a higher office.

Pritzker’s tenure in the Illinois governor’s mansion, which has had its ups and downs with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic and forced lockdowns, still has areas for admiration among those who have studied his political abilities.

‘Look, we have only one president at a time,’ Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, told the Times. ‘But one of the things I watched when he became governor was the way he scooped up political and policy talent as he was taking office. His ability to put together a team and put them in the right spot was and still is really impressive.’

But not all Republicans are on board with the idea that Pritzker could clinch the Democratic nomination for president if he decided to run.

‘He will fail running for president as an out-of-touch billionaire who made Illinois less affordable and less safe,’ pro-Trump Rep. Mary Miller told the outlet.

A White House run from Pritzker would also face opposition from GOP mega donors, including Richard Uihlein, who spent more than $50 million in 2022 in an attempt to tarnish Pritzker’s re-election as governor.