The nation has entered uncharted waters: Four times in four months, in four different courtrooms, former President Donald Trump has been accused of committing crimes. It’s the first time in American history that a U.S. president—current or former—has faced criminal charges.
To make matters even more historic, Trump is also running for president again in 2024 and is the current front-runner for the Republican nomination.
“We’ve never had a situation like this,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s like watching four-dimensional chess.”
Here are five things you need to know to make sense of the Trump indictments and what they might mean for the next presidential election.