The 44-year-old Republican revealed his decision in a Federal Election Commission filing ahead of an online conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

It marks a new chapter in his extraordinary rise from little-known congressman to two-term governor to a leading figure in the nations bitter fights over race, gender, abortion, and other divisive issues.

DeSantis is considered to be Trumps strongest Republican rival even as the governor faces questions about his readiness for the national stage.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. APs earlier story follows below.

MIAMI (AP) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an outspoken cultural conservative long seen as Donald Trumps leading rival for the Republican nomination, is set to launch his 2024 presidential campaign Wednesday evening.

The 44-year-old Republican governor planned to announce his decision in an online conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they werent authorized to discuss the announcement publicly.

DeSantis path to the nomination will not be an easy one.

He enters the race looking up at Trump in early polls while facing serious questions about his far-right policies, his campaign-trail personality and his lack of relationships across the Republican ecosystem. Still, the combative conservative governor has generated significant interest among GOP primary voters by casting himself as a younger and more electable version of the embattled former president.

DeSantis audio-only announcement was to be streamed on Twitter Spaces beginning at 6 p.m. EDT. He was following up with prime-time appearances on conservative programs, including Fox News and Mark Levins radio show.

He gave no hint as to his plans during a meeting of the state clemency board in Tallahassee on Wednesday, where he granted several pardons to former prisoners charged mostly with drug-related crimes decades ago.

You are what the country needs, one man said after getting his pardon.

By days end, DeSantis was to join the crowded Republican contest to decide whether the party will move on from Trump in 2024 as it works to take the White House from President Joe Biden.

Beyond Trump, those already in the GOP field include former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to announce his candidacy in the coming weeks.

Trump continued his months-long verbal assault against DeSantis on Wednesday, arguing in a social media post that Ron DeSanctus cannot win the general election or the GOP primary because of his previous votes in Congress on Social Security and Medicare.

He was, and is, a disciple of horrible RINO Paul Ryan, and others too many to mention, Trump wrote. Also, he desperately needs a personality transplant and, to the best of my knowledge, they are not medically available yet. A disloyal person!

The timing of DeSantis long-expected announcement has been shrouded, with various iterations of plans being leaked over the past few days. Some close to him suspected that he was providing conflicting information about the timing and location to root out leakers. Others believe he changed his initial preparations after news reports came out about them.

DeSantis was expected to meet with donors Wednesday at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami before the evening Twitter conversation.

By mid-afternoon, there was no sign of the Republican governor or his donors at the Four Seasons Hotel on the edge of Biscayne Bay in Miamis financial hub, where journalists were gathered outside.

A black truck was driving around the hotel tower displaying a billboard funded by the Democratic National Committee that warned of DeSantiss extreme MAGA agenda. A pro-Trump super PAC planned to feature another truck running an attack ad describing DeSantis as a swamp creature because of his time in Congress.

The news of DeSantis impending announcement came as Trump was making a video appearance in a New York courtroom as part of his criminal case. A judge tentatively scheduled Trumps trial to begin March 25, which falls in the heart of the presidential primary season. Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records at his family company, the Trump Organization.

While it is common for campaigns to publicize their announcements in videos shared on social media, it is far more unusual and perhaps unprecedented to hold a campaign announcement in a live social media forum.

DeSantis has emerged as a national star in Republican politics as an unapologetic leader on controversial cultural issues.

The governor sent dozens of immigrants from Texas by way of Florida to a small island off the Massachusetts coast to draw attention to the influx of Latin American immigrants trying to cross the Southern border. He signed and then expanded a Parental Rights in Education bill known by critics as the Dont Say Gay law which bans instruction or classroom discussion of LGBTQ issues in Florida public schools for all grades.

More recently, he signed a law banning abortions at six weeks, which is before most women realize theyre pregnant. And he removed an elected prosecutor who vowed not to charge people under Floridas new abortion restrictions or doctors who provide gender-affirming care.

Trumps allies mocked DeSantis announcement plans.

In choosing to announce with Musk, DeSantis is linking his presidential announcement to one of the worlds richest men, who has emerged as a conservative cult hero of sorts.

Since buying Twitter last October, Musk has reinstated the accounts of prominent Republicans, including Trump and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had been removed. Popular conservative broadcasters have flocked to Twitter, with ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the podcast hosts of The Daily Wire announcing they will start streaming on the platform.

Twitter was once Trumps most important megaphone one he used to dominate his rivals in the 2016 primary and to command the news cycle for years. Trump was barred from the platform after a mob of his supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with Twitter citing the risk of further incitement of violence. Although his access was reinstated shortly after Musk took over, he has yet to tweet.

About 1 in 5 U.S. adults say they use Twitter, the Pew Research Center found last year.

Democrats are somewhat more likely than Republicans to say they have Twitter accounts, according to a Fox News poll from December. Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to say Musk buying Twitter was a good thing and to have a favorable view of him.

___

Peoples reported from New York. Izaguirre reported in Tallahassee, Florida.

A slow sort of country! the Red Queen wryly replies. Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

Most agree that Carroll uses the looking glass as a metaphor for times when the world suddenly appears unfamiliar, almost as if things turned upside down. In that unfamiliar world, the Red Queens Race is a cautionary tale that staying in the same place is falling behind.

We believe that today were in another kind of unfamiliar time, and in such times the Red Queens caution is especially applicable to the way organizations and their leaders should think about and manage risk.

The world faces a web of simultaneous challenges, each complex in its own right. Geopolitical instability remains rife 30 years after the Cold War and the alleged end of history. State-sponsored cyber risk, pandemics, adaptation to climate change, economic retrenchment, accelerating technological change, and demand internalization are all combining to create a risk environment that is unprecedented in terms of the challenges it poses.

After a generation of fairly stable growth, benign globalization, and business collaboration, todays multinationals face a perfect storm of supply chain volatility, reshoring pressure, and reduced availability of critical inputs.

Its not simply that we are facing an unprecedented accumulation of risksits that risk itself is different. It is interactive and rapidly changing. In our information-saturated world, it is ubiquitous. It seeps into every aspect of our personal and professional lives.

Most of what we need to do involves changing the way we think about risk.

Some see risk as an inconvenience to be mitigated, while others are overwhelmed, even paralyzed by it. Even sophisticated companies address risk in siloed structures. With no unifying focus, what is a priority to one, may be a negative to another. Increased inventory buffers, production redundancy, or more resilient but higher-priced vendors could mean lower margins. Risk identification processes are stagnant. They take periodic snapshots, relying heavily on qualitative judgments, and the hope that risk is therefore being managed comprehensively.  

There are ways to mitigate risk, even to find opportunity in risk. Today, the risk of inaction is much greater than the risk of action. When things are going well, when in a position of relative advantage, its natural for us to work hard to preserve the status quo. We have a natural tendency to be more comfortable with information that confirms our biases, seek data that reinforces our beliefs, and listen most closely to those who seek to convince us that near-term challenges will soon be replaced with a return to the normalcy that favors us, all of which results in a kind of self-limiting decision making. 

The bottom line is that there are things we can do. Failures to accurately assess risk are, at their foundation, failures of imagination. Therefore, organizations should embark on a deliberate campaign of learning to build a wider and stronger foundation of relationships and knowledge that allows them to see connections that they may not have otherwise seen.

Senior leaders must recognize and embrace their role as risk managers. Risk management can no longer simply be something provided to senior leaders, it should be driven by them. While Boards and C Suites understand the saliency of risk management, they must inculcate it in their teams priorities. Siloed risk functions must operate cohesively so that disparate teams see common threats to operations and supply chains and deploy holistic solutions targeting aggregated risks.

We believe there is a clear and urgent need for uncommon collaborations in risk management. Financial disruptions, national and global security issues, supply chain vulnerabilities, existing and emerging cybersecurity threats, disruptions in food security, sudden and unexpected changes in the environment, and concerns about public health are interrelated like never before and so risk management must become an increasingly collaborative enterprise. 

We can avoid the Red Queens trap and win the race to reduce our vulnerability to risk and take advantage of the opportunities that arise. That is, if we acknowledge the extent to which things have changed, allow ourselves to be less comfortable in what we think we know, take ownership of the challenge, and actearly and often.

Martin Dempsey served as the 18th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Charles Bralver is the co-founder and chairman of Sigma7.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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An asset class recession means essentially that the economy as a whole would not shrinkand unemployment may not go up much from its recent 50-year lowbut markets and asset values would take a prolonged hit, and most of the pain would be focused on those who rely on the value of their investments in addition to or instead of their salaries. Stocks in particular have made up a bigger and bigger chunk of U.S. households financial assets in recent years. In fact, Americans havent been invested in the stock market at this rate since 2008.

Stock ownership now touches 61% of U.S. households, the same rate as in 2008, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

Americans abruptly shedded their reliance on stocks as they lost $7.4 trillion in stock wealth between July 2008 and March 2009, according to the Federal Reserve, the equivalent of each U.S. household losing $66,200 on average. 

The decline in market values during the crisis likely derailed or delayed the plans of many new potential investors, Gallup found, resulting in a decade of relatively low stock ownership rates. Between 1998 and 2008, the average stock ownership rate was around 61%, while in the decade following 2009, around 54% of households on average held stock. Ownership rates bottomed out at 52% in 2013 and 2016.

Stock ownership rates have been steadily ticking up since 2020, however, and those who waded back into the market since then have likely made a splash, as the S&P 500s value has risen by more than 27% since the beginning of 2020.

Americas love/hate affair with stocks

But the near future may not be as promising for stock owners. A year of rising interest rates, a banking crisis, and a standoff over the U.S. debt ceiling that could conceivably cause the government to momentarily default on its debt have dampened confidence in the market. 

And despite a rally early this year that has boosted the S&P 500 around 7%, some top Wall Street analysts have warned that the brief respite could end as yet another bear market trap. Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanleys chief U.S. equity strategist who correctly predicted last years market selloff, warned in a note this week that various economic risksincluding the debt ceiling debateare likely to keep the bear market alive a little while longer.

If the market spirals once again it could lead to what Marc Rowan, billionaire investor and CEO of Apollo Management, a private equity firm, called a non-recession recession in an interview with CNBC earlier this month, a downturn in asset values that does not lead to the same economic woes traditionally seen during a recession.

Asset prices are coming down, he said. We in the financial markets who benefit and live in an asset world, were going to feel like we had a real recession. Rates went upgoing up as much as they have, were going to feel it.

Rowan was joined in his assessment by Apollos chief economist Torsten Slok, who wrote in a note last week: The big correction during this recession will not be in the economy but in asset prices as the Fed continues to deflate the buy-everything bubble created due to global easy money.

Slok wrote that 15 years of low interest rates and money printing had created a significant bubble for asset prices, while the Feds battle to tame inflation will likely keep capital costs high next year as well.

A mild economic recession with a big recession in asset prices is what we call a non-recession recession, he continued.

To be sure, this asset class is still concentrated in households that are already wealthy, according to the Gallup poll, which found that stock ownership correlates most strongly with household income. While 80% of Americans with a household income above $75,000 own stock, that share shrinks to around half when it comes to middle-income Americans earning between $30,000 and $74,999, and less than a quarter of Americans who earn under $30,000 own any stock at all.

A lower court had previously granted the creator of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and his former chief financial officer a bail of 400,000 euros, or about $435,000, to stay under house arrest with police supervision until the trial. 

That decision was overturned after the prosecution appealed. The court that originally made the bail decision will now have to make another ruling, but there is no limit to the number of motions that can go between the lower and higher courts on the bail issue, according to Bloomberg. Kwon, at least for now, remains in jail.

Kwon pleaded not guilty after being arrested for allegedly trying to use a fake Costa Rican passport to fly from Montenegro to Dubai. Kwon and Han Chang-joon also were holding what authorities described as forged Belgian passports as well as their South Korean travel documents. Kwon had been evading authorities in several countries since South Korea put out a warrant for his arrest in September.

Prosecutors in both South Korea and the U.S. are looking to extradite him, but that would have to come after his trial in Montenegro. If hes tried in South Korea, he could face 40 years in prisonthe longest sentence ever handed down in the country for financial crimes, the lead prosecutor on his case told the Wall Street Journal.

Federal prosecutors in New York have charged Kwon with conspiracy to defraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to engage in market manipulation.